What Student Developers Want in a Job (techrepublic.com)

Organizations desperate for software engineering talent tend to follow similar plays when it comes to attracting student developers about the enter the workforce, including offering perks like free food, beer, and ping pong. However, student developers have a much stronger appetite for other workplace elements when making employment decisions, according to a Tuesday report from HackerRank. From a news writeup: The three most important criteria students look for in job opportunities are professional growth and learning (58%), work/life balance (52%), and having interesting problems to solve (46%), according to a survey of 10,350 student developers worldwide. These far outpaced compensation (18%) and perks (11%), which they view as "nice to haves" rather than deal breakers, the survey found.

For many student developers, a computer science degree is not enough to teach them the skills they will need in the workforce, the report found. Nearly two-thirds (65%) said they rely partially on self-teaching to learn to code, and 27% say they are totally self-taught. Only 32% said they were entirely taught at school, the survey found.

Comments

When surveyed, people lie!

[petes_PoV]

The three most important criteria students look for in job opportunities are

I think you will find that this is "interview bullshit". It is the sort of answer that people think the ask-er wants to hear.

The reality is that is you offer a candidate a lower than expected "nice to have" salary, say: 50% less, they'll walk to the next employer who is offering more.

Re:When surveyed, people lie!

[JaredOfEuropa]

The reality is that is you offer a candidate a lower than expected "nice to have" salary, say: 50% less, they'll walk to the next employer who is offering more.

To some extent that is correct. But salary is a hygiene factor: if it's lower than expected it leads to dissatisfaction, but paying above expectation does not yield a lot of extra satisfaction. I look for different things in jobs now that I am older. But even when I was young, I usually picked lower paying jobs, with opportunities for learning and growing and interesting work, over crappy but well-paying jobs. And I've done a few crappy but well paying jobs as well... and it sucked. Pay is poor compensation for that.

Re:When surveyed, people lie!

[lgw]

The reality is that is you offer a candidate a lower than expected "nice to have" salary, say: 50% less, they'll walk to the next employer who is offering more.

first job is to be a full-time developer. To rise above the crowd who claims that can do dev work, and maybe does it part time. My second job paid 3x my first job, because I had that credibility.

Do Millennials really care that that much about work-life balance out of school? When I was in my 20s, I was full of energy and passion, and happy to work my ass off on any project that was actually interesting. Good thing, too, as I had a lot to learn. It was only in my 30s that I started to care about time for other things. Now it's my primary concern, but I'm close to retirement.

Re:When surveyed, people lie!

[lgw]

Dang, Slashcode really mangled that one!

That post should start with "My first job paid half of market rate. What's really important in your first job ..."

Re:When surveyed, people lie!

[dcw3]

There's certainly a whole lot more to choosing a company than $3k in salary difference.
- Are you going to be able to work on cool stuff and grow in your abilities/marketability?
- Is the management cool - #1 reason people hate their jobs is because they work for dicks
- Do they have flexible hours, can you work from home, etc?
- Is your commute gonna suck at one, more than the other?
- What does the 401k matching look like?
- etc., etc.

These aren't "nice to have", they're essential to your quality of life.

Re:When surveyed, people lie!

[jittles]

LMOL first define what you compensation is then tell people it's not about the money. You have bills to pay. Employers bottom dollar pay. So money is everything. When you get paid beyond a certain amount, then and only then do you think, maybe I would like ping pong. But with student loans, rent / mortgage, family and what not, it's about getting paid.

When I finished school, I was definitely looking for professional growth, work life balance, and interesting problems to solve. In fact, AMD offered me a very nice salary to work for them when I finished. I turned it down, even though it was the highest paying offer I received. I ended up going to another company that was about the same size as AMD, but transitioning from analog to digital. At AMD I would have been one of thousands of software people. At this other company I was one in about fifty. I started out making less than 50% of what AMD had offered me. However, thanks to a bit of luck and hard work, I was leading projects by the end of my second year at the company. End result? I was making more than someone I knew who took the exact same offer from AMD I had received and I was gaining much better experience than they were, too.

Re:When surveyed, people lie!

[Quirkz]

Really? I would have thought it likely that half of all employees accept below-average salaries.

Re:When surveyed, people lie!

[khchung]

But salary is a hygiene factor: if it's lower than expected it leads to dissatisfaction, but paying above expectation does not yield a lot of extra satisfaction.

It's a LIE spread by HR departments to suppress salary increases. If it were true, all C-level executives would only be paid similar to, or maybe 2-3x, the average wage of the company, not 100-200x of it. And they won't asking for, and get, even more millions in bonus and stock options every year, plus a golden parachute, even if they drove the company to the ground.

Speak for yourself. Pay ME above expectation will certainly give ME a lot of extra satisfaction.

In fact, everyone I know at work PREFER to get a bigger bonus/higher pay as appreciating for job well done, instead of stupid appreciate cards or such cheap gimmicks.

Re:Employers focus on what they can easily change

[110010001000]

What about leveraging synergies between business and IT using digital transformation? That should be a high priority for you.

I could make more, or keep working from home

[raymorris]

I could make 50% more by switching jobs to one that has crappy work-life balance and is unpleasant.
Or I could stay at my current job where I work from home instead of sitting in traffic, while doing exactly what I most love to do - mentoring programmers in security.

If you're reading this from the US, you're probably already in the top 2% highest-earning people in the world. Most Americans in IT are already 2%ers. You're already rich, no matter what Nancy Pelosi tells you. Getting a tiny bit richer isn't going to change your life much.

* Rich in terms of income. If you spend your money on Starbucks instead of slowly building wealth, that's na different kind of rich that has nothing to do with your job.

Re:Those seem like pretty good goals - one caveat

[lgw]

Schools have gotten somewhat better in equipping students to actually code. "Teaching languages" are mostly a thing of the past now, and most students seem to be taught in some combination of Java and JS, which sets you up for more than half the coding jobs out there.

Also, I think you'll find the people who are self-motivated to "learn new languages or techniques all the time" are the ones who separate from the pack over the first decade. The rest ... don't, and remain at a mid-career job title their whole career. At least, I've never worked any place where half the engineers were senior.

Book Larnin'

[93 Escort Wagon]

"For many student developers, a computer science degree is not enough to teach them the skills they will need in the workforce, the report found."

If they're anything like me, what the school courses will have done is just teach them various languages' syntax. I didn't really "learn" how to write code until I had to actually use it to accomplish various tasks (mostly on the job).

Java and Javascript pretty widespread in IT

[SuperKendall]

If you believe Java, and the completely unrelated JavaScript languages comprise half the IT work "out there" then you are woefully ignorant.

I don't do Java anymore myself, but I used to do Java for many years as an enterprise developer - if you lumped Java and Javascript together (which I agree are unrelated except by name) I think that would be around half of all IT work you'd find in most companies today - especially so with Javascript which has really gained a pretty widespread use for server development...

If you wanted to work in IT I'm honestly not sure what would be a better choice at this point, maybe Python... .Net is always big of course but that's a little too tied to a specific platform (in terms of how it's used in real companies) for my tastes.

Re: Java and Javascript pretty widespread in IT

[Zero__Kelvin]

It is *absurd* to even suggest such a thing. All web development doesn't even account for anywhere close to half the work in IT. Have you never heard of embedded systems? C, C++, C# and so many other languages too numerous to list?

Re: Java and Javascript pretty widespread in IT

[lgw]

You said "IT Work", which is almost an unrelated field to software development engineer jobs these days. I don't think you meant "help desk and system admins" but that's what "IT works" means these days.

You said "Web development", but did you mean "UI work", or "stuff that has a remotely-callable API"? The latter is most Java code, though coding for Android has started to shift that balance a bit.

If you know Java, you can usually get hired for a C# job (and vice versa), especially straight out of college. Looking at job post statistics on Indeed for the https://www.codingdojo.com/blo...>past year
* 93k - Java + C#
* 46k - Python
* 38K - JS
* 31K - C++

Python is often a "nice to have" in job postings, so it's somewhat misleading. C++ shops generally want more veteran talent IME, as the kind of stuff still done in C++ isn't generally the kind of stuff someone fresh out of college is going to do well, regardless of the language.