Slashdot Mirror
LinkedIn Testing 1970's-Style No-CS-Degree-Required Software Apprenticeships (mercurynews.com)
theodp writes: The Mercury News reports on REACH, a new software apprenticeship program that LinkedIn's engineering team started piloting this month, which offers people without Computer Science degrees an opportunity to get a foot in the door, as Microsoft-owned LinkedIn searches for ways to help diversify its workforce. For now, the 29 REACH participants are paid, but are only short-term LinkedIn employees (for the duration of the 6-month program). LinkedIn indicated it hopes to learn if tech internships could eventually be made part of the regular hiring process, perhaps unaware that no-CS-degree-required hiring for entry-level permanent positions in software development was standard practice in the 70's and 80's, back when women made up almost 40% of those working as programmers and in software-related fields, nearly double the percentage of women in LinkedIn's global 2016 tech workforce. Hey, even in tech hiring, everything old is new again!
Most companies already don't require a CS degree, or any degree, for programming jobs. Your GitHub activity carries more weight. Show me what you can do, not where (or if) you got a piece of paper.
Oh the irony of a website that presents its members as basically a resumee decides to ignore resumees....
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I find this interesting. I did an EE degree, but only did two papers on software, and to be honest, they were pretty basic. I had taught myself programming before hand but was much more interested in hardware and circuits rather than software. However, as my career progressed, I basically just became a full time software developer. For some reason, having an EE degree is considered the same (or for some people better, if you have software experience) than a CS degree, because supposedly I know how computers work at a gate level.
In the end I use almost nothing that I learnt in my EE degree to do software development, and certainly none of the really hard math/sig pro stuff, and I can't see why someone who has gone through all the self taught/on the job training I did to learn programming wouldn't be able to do what I do now. Of course there is causality - if you can finish an EE degree you can probably do anything technical if you put your mind to it, but it does seem a bit pointless spending all that money and effort to get a piece of paper.
I drop out of university in the 80's. Went on a 4 month government run programming/job placement course at a different university learning to program COBOL on VAX/VMS. I was found a job doing C programming on Unix, where I was giving on the job training and sent on courses. I've gone on to have a successful career, with the last 20 years running my own consulting business. Without this opportunity and taking a chance on me, I would have never had my career.
Since then, I have gone on to get 2 degrees, Bsc in Math and Post-grad in Computer Sci, but this was after I was already established, had changed jobs a few times to better positions and didn't need the degrees to be looked at.
After learning math, and studying Knuth, learning Java, database theory, Lisp, Prolog, sure I have a better understanding now than when I started, but lack of the knowledge didn't stop me from getting started.
One of the best programmers I work with had a degree in English.
A lot of people, who could either be talented or good enough would miss out if only Comp Sci degreed people were considered.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
But...but...we're supposed to be great salary negotiators! /s
Ezekiel 23:20
I have a CompSci degree from a few years back, and it was heavy coding/dev/math. There is no way you could have gotten through the degree and been unable to program. I have run into recent CompSci graduates who have a hard time or can't write code, and don't even like coding. What has changed in the curriculum? Has CompSci become the catchall for 'I want a computer degree'? With that sort of expectation, I can see why I'd rather hire someone excited about dev work, than someone who has it on paper but no urge or drive or skill.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
... but it is a quite good reason to assume certain basic knowledge and attitude. On the other hand, thinking that a specific degree provides all or most of the required knowledge to perform a given work is far from being true; even pure nonsense when talking about highly specialised positions. A misconception which only seems possible in people with low-to-no actual experience in the given work.
I have worked with computer-engineering recent graduates who weren't able to do virtually anything (or a few things under very specific conditions). Even after working for quite a few years under not too demanding conditions, a person with a CS degree might be a bad programmer. Same ideas apply to virtually any field, like mechanical/industrial engineering (what I studied at university): actual work experience is the most relevant factor.
Personally, I do prefer to work with university-degree holders (in a technical/scientific/engineering field), but am also sure that just the degree isn't a relevant factor to adequately assess the software development skills and related issues (i.e., learning capability, adaptability, working attitude, etc.). For senior/highly-specialised positions, the actual work experience/outputs and attitude (+ hiring people being able to adequately assess them) are almost everything.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Employer/employee loyalty is the thing that has to improve first -- then OJT will move beyond an experiment. Back in the good old days, employers would take recent college grads and even recent high school grads, knowing they were only getting raw material, and train them to their standards. Now employers see employees who will jump to the competition in 6 months or less just because they're upset about something or will get a small raise. Because of that, training is a liability and they'd rather hire consultants who may or may not have lied about their level of experience.
Employers need to come to the table too. We need to stop the constant cycle of layoffs and offshoring and maintain a reasonable level of steady employment. If employees feel safe in a job, they'll worry less about finding another one and worry more about doing a good job in the current one. This is one thing from the old days I'd like to see come back -- employers would have to think very hard about hiring someone because they'd at least have some sort of commitment to them.
Training on the job and starting in the bottom of an organization aren't totally dead. I know a lot of people who work for the state university system. Here in NY, university professional staff are effectively tenured the same way faculty are, after a long probationary period and having to convince your department to nominate you. Training is an accepted part of life in this environment because they're keeping the employees whether or not they're skilled up. In this case, it makes perfect sense to invest in employees because you'd rather have a good loyal employee than one who knows you can't get rid of them and doesn't advance their career.
Also, CS degrees are probably overkill for most web programming jobs that LinkedIn typically hires for. You may need a CS degree to write their deep learning algorithm that maps your connections and mines them for data, but you don't need one to be a JavaScript monkey cranking out the front end stuff. I'm in IT, with a chemistry degree, and the only thing I use from my degree is the ability to methodically break down a problem and troubleshoot. It's helpful but I know plenty of older iT people who have no degree or a completely unrelated to CS degree, and they do well.
Yeah, my next doctor is going to be someone who didn't go to medical school.
There are plenty of those around and there have been for a long time. Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Homeopaths, Acupuncturists and a whole lot more. They succeed because any given illness has an 80% chance of being self limited and going away on its own. That's a phenomenal success rate for these "alternative doctors", although it's no better than if you had just stayed home.
The problem is when you have something that falls into the 20%.... we who did go to medical school don't claim to be able to save anyone, but we have documented proof that we can usually offer you a more desirable outcome than doing nothing at all.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...as Microsoft-owned LinkedIn searches for ways to help diversify its workforce.
as Microsoft-owned LinkedIn searches for ways to help Microsoft make H-1B irrelevant by churning out new American programmers until programming becomes a low-wage commodity-class skill. FTFY.
That's not to say they will, or even can, succeed in that goal - but I'm pretty sure 'diversity' is just a politically-correct red herring.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I say this simply because as a developer with no CS background. I've worked with graduates who could belt off different concepts from definitions they've memorized but don't know how to implement it or more importantly, don't know how to spot errors. My job interview consisted of maybe 1-2 minutes of discussions on my background before a 45 minute long whiteboard session where I had to hand write various algorithms and solutions to problems the interviewer would present.
In addition to your irony, TFA ignores some pretty important facts. In the 1970s we had Math, Engineering, and Physics. There was no such thing as a CS degree. One learned to code because it helped your education, not because it was seen as a cash cow specialty. The successful coders may not have all completed a degree, but were all the brightest of the bunch in College. If they left without a degree it was by choice, not because they lacked aptitude to finish.
Let me use a Basketball analogy. Linked in believes that anyone can be Shawn Kemp, or another player that never played college ball and was not highly educated. In reality, the Shawn Kemp like people are extremely rare. About 1 in a billion.
Can linked in find people "good enough" to get a job done without? Probably, but I would rather have people better than "good enough" as a hiring manager.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Good story, but I think that stories like yours are the exception rather than the norm. This kind of seems like survivor bias to me. Of all the people who entered similar government run programs there's probably a large number who just couldn't make the cut and we'll just never hear about them.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
they actually need to have a degree to practice.
Sure. Said degree is not granted by a medical school though. It's granted by some other school - of chiropractic, of acupuncture, etc. I never said they were "quacks" - after all what is medicine anyway? I will state, however, that they do not follow the scientific method and cannot back up their claims with scientific studies. Even though they have thousands of testimonials from people who say they feel better. At the end of the day feeling better is what medicine is supposed to be about. But god help you if you see an acupuncturist for malignant melanoma...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Very successfully. They hire intelligent people with a variety of backgrounds and train them how to program. New hire training was I think 6 weeks for people with a C.S. background and 16 weeks for non-cs individuals. There are some* dev positions with esoteric considerations that would really require a C.S. degree. Most however can be filled by a smart person with who understands the basics of programming. I would also like to point out Bloomberg has been turning profit at about 2.5 million per developer per year for the last 20 years.
... than a programmer engineering.
My degree is Mechanical Engineering. I've been mostly Sysadmin in my career but did data analysis when I started and now do DevOps with more dev than sysadmin.
I couldn't do the development I do now w/o my sysadmin experience. Engineering made me learn to look at larger systems with an analytic eye. Programming was part of the degree; I had to write a FEM sing Chebychev differentiation to find the optimal spacing for fins on a plate for heat transfer. It was calculating values on a NxN grid with initial guesses of the initial values at the grid points. Each time through the N^2 calculations, you'd get converge. When the difference between n and n-1 values was close enough, that's be your approximate answer.
I wouldn't expect a CS programmer to be able to come up with the formula, though I would expect them to be able to code it once it was broken down.
Yeah, my next doctor is going to be someone who didn't go to medical school.
In many other countries, when you go to see "the doctor" you are actually seeing a nurse or PA. You are only referred to an actual MD if your problem is non-routine. This leads to faster and more affordable healthcare and MEASURABLY BETTER HEALTH OUTCOMES.
So would you be better off if your next "doctor" is someone who didn't go to medical school? Apparently, yes.
Yes, it has certainly become a tick box exercise. When I tender for contracts, there is normally a requirement for which degree is held. I can tell you, having a BSc in Math fills the box ticking, but doesn't make me more competent in my field.
I know the theory behind PKI, and could create my own poor implementation, but why would I, when there are teams of professionals that can do a far better job than me.
The only thing the Math degree has been good for is getting me upset at the reporting of statistics in the mainstream media.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
No need for dictation, short hand and smart staff with the skills to spell engineering, legal or medical terms.
Professionals do their own work with their own powerful computers.
Printer, fax machine, punch cards still need support per department? Accounting paperwork? Staff going to the bank during working hours?
Computers or outside contractors have taken many of the roles that normal working class staff could expect in the 1970's.
Legal is now a lawyer not a vast in house legal department with all its own support staff.
A real coffee machine has replaced a canteen full of staff to push a trolly around with coffee.
The phone system that needed a human to take a call, direct a call and keep messages is now a professionals own smart phone.
The role of poor people with no or few skills is not needed in vast numbers to support a few professionals or experts all day.
Working for a computer company in the past was doing maths by hand to get the work ready for computer programming, programming a computer by creating punch cards, ensuring the printer had paper. Waiting for the computer to print out why it failed, looking at the math by hand again and trying to work the complex math with on the computer again. Low paid staff had to help with getting the computer ready again.
Ordering more paper and punch cards, ensuring the supply of paper and punch cards was always ready for a larger project.
Keeping accounts on paper. Entering paper accounts in to computers, then paying bills on time and ensuring the generated paper work matched the computer records.
Connecting calls, taking messages, making coffee, greeting visitors and guiding them past departments full of support staff to meet the expert staff.
So a lot of people could claim they worked with "computers" or "programmed" a computer as a "job".
Doing the same "math" on "paper" all day to help a computer expert was not programming or a job with much internal advancement or good pay.
A few experts back then did all the real work like in 2017. Many other people with much fewer skills and low pay just ensured everything was ready for the complex tasks.
Tax rates and political import controls also helped. A company had to do all the complex computer work within their own nation or factor in complex import tax issues or for security reasons. Now a gov, mil contractor, the private sector can buy much cheap support globally.
The CRT allowed one expert to see and correct their all their computer work without staff having to prepare and load up the computer again.
So lots of low wage staff got to work on vast projects that only ever really needed a few smart people and better computers.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"