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> Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. No, they're really n

> Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. No, they're really not, for at least a year. It takes at least that long for most new graduates to get over the hump and learn enough of the practical skills and industry practices that their university left them woefully ignorant of, so that they can start being marginally useful. Once in a while you find somebody who has been doing real work on the side for years during or before college, and thus has a clue how things work, but that's a diamond in the rough, usually. And unfortunately, many of them just can't hack being a professional programmer, and they never get to the point where they become a net positive, in which case you just hope they leave of their own volition or you can silo them off in some area of little importance that won't cause you problems down the road.

vinceguidry 9y ago
Code schools try to solve this problem. But they need to become an actual structural part of the industry before companies can really start to rely on them.
- thesimon 9y ago
  They seem to be on the other side of the extreme though.
shrimp_emoji 9y ago
>Once in a while you find somebody who has been doing real work on the side for years during or before college, and thus has a clue how things work, but that's a diamond in the rough, usually. Can you define "real work"?
- lkbm 9y ago
  I assume essentially anything that isn't a school assignment. Something built for a need--whether profitable business, or personal need--tends to provide more meaningful experience than a "write this contrived program to learn how [specific programming functionality] works" project.
hinkley 9y ago
I worked with and later became a “student programmer” when I was in college. I had classes with some of these guys and I would ask them how long the homework took. “2 hours”? That’s crazy. It took me 10 and I knew people who were 15 hours in and not done yet. Then I got on a new project as a dev. Within months I was down to 3-4 hours for similar assignments. My last class at school was the first time we had a shortage of hardware (good school). I would sit at home and remote into one of the machines, get my code to compile and show up to the lab the afternoon before it was due to debug. And everybody looked at me like I looked at my old coworkers. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to undergrads but I always tell them to beg borrow or steal an internship or a job on campus. You have no idea how far a little concrete experience takes you.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Yeah, there was a great incentive to get done with the homework fast, because then you could get back to writing scripted mob behaviors and quest scripts for your MUD. Finish with the boring programming, and you get to do fun programming.
ams6110 9y ago
All of those things comprise "entry level" to me. Maybe we have differnent concepts of what an "entry level" job is. To me, entry level == first job. The candidate has been a student but never a professional. They won't have practical skills or much knowledge of industry practices. I'm not an accountant but I did do a business minor and I don't see this being much different for new accountant hires vs. new developer hires.
alistairSH 9y ago
No, they're really not, for at least a year. Isn't that the definition of entry-level or junior? FWIW, the four recent graduates I hired this summer are all capable of completing well-defined programming tasks with minimal assistance. Does that mean I spend more time with my PO ensuring those tasks are well-defined and consumable by the new developers? Yeah (but that's our job). Do the senior team members spend part of their day mentoring? Yeah (but that's their job). As for some of them not hacking it. Yeah that's true. But, I've also interviewed plenty of "senior devs" who were terrible. I've even hired one or two who didn't work out. I just do my best to avoid hiring them.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>or at least a year. It takes at least that long for most new graduates to get over the hump and learn enough of the practical skills and industry practices that their university left them woefully ignorant of, so that they can start being marginally usefu A year?! You're either scraping the bottom of the barrel for new hires, have a terrible on-boarding process, over-estimating the difference between the code someone fresh out of college writes or have absolutely terrible documentation or some combination thereof. I'm leaning toward on-boarding and/or documentation. Junior devs are the ones who most need documentation because they're not gonna be able to infer the existence of policy and best practices from existing code and procedures as well as a senior dev will. Either you and your HR is doing a terrible job giving new hires a lead on what to be asking and where to find information or that information just doesn't exist outside of the heads of existing employees. I work at a CDN. We have plenty of issues with legacy code, cumbersome interactions between business units, outdated policies/docs, lack of documentation on stuff and all the other BigCo problems. A huge chunk of new hires at any time are fresh out of school. It takes ~3-4mo before they're dealing with stuff on their own with perfectly fine results. People aren't idiots but they don't know what they don't know. People with more experience are better at knowing when there's something that they don't know. Fix your process and you'll be able to get good value for junior devs. If you don't fix your process don't whine when someone who has business practices that let them deliver the same results at lower cost by utilizing cheaper labor comes along and undercuts you.

vinceguidry 9y ago

Code schools try to solve this problem. But they need to become an actual structural part of the industry before companies can really start to rely on them.

thesimon 9y ago
They seem to be on the other side of the extreme though.

shrimp_emoji 9y ago

>Once in a while you find somebody who has been doing real work on the side for years during or before college, and thus has a clue how things work, but that's a diamond in the rough, usually. Can you define "real work"?

lkbm 9y ago
I assume essentially anything that isn't a school assignment. Something built for a need--whether profitable business, or personal need--tends to provide more meaningful experience than a "write this contrived program to learn how [specific programming functionality] works" project.

hinkley 9y ago

I worked with and later became a “student programmer” when I was in college. I had classes with some of these guys and I would ask them how long the homework took. “2 hours”? That’s crazy. It took me 10 and I knew people who were 15 hours in and not done yet. Then I got on a new project as a dev. Within months I was down to 3-4 hours for similar assignments. My last class at school was the first time we had a shortage of hardware (good school). I would sit at home and remote into one of the machines, get my code to compile and show up to the lab the afternoon before it was due to debug. And everybody looked at me like I looked at my old coworkers. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to undergrads but I always tell them to beg borrow or steal an internship or a job on campus. You have no idea how far a little concrete experience takes you.

logfromblammo 9y ago
Yeah, there was a great incentive to get done with the homework fast, because then you could get back to writing scripted mob behaviors and quest scripts for your MUD. Finish with the boring programming, and you get to do fun programming.

ams6110 9y ago

All of those things comprise "entry level" to me. Maybe we have differnent concepts of what an "entry level" job is. To me, entry level == first job. The candidate has been a student but never a professional. They won't have practical skills or much knowledge of industry practices. I'm not an accountant but I did do a business minor and I don't see this being much different for new accountant hires vs. new developer hires.

alistairSH 9y ago

No, they're really not, for at least a year. Isn't that the definition of entry-level or junior? FWIW, the four recent graduates I hired this summer are all capable of completing well-defined programming tasks with minimal assistance. Does that mean I spend more time with my PO ensuring those tasks are well-defined and consumable by the new developers? Yeah (but that's our job). Do the senior team members spend part of their day mentoring? Yeah (but that's their job). As for some of them not hacking it. Yeah that's true. But, I've also interviewed plenty of "senior devs" who were terrible. I've even hired one or two who didn't work out. I just do my best to avoid hiring them.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

>or at least a year. It takes at least that long for most new graduates to get over the hump and learn enough of the practical skills and industry practices that their university left them woefully ignorant of, so that they can start being marginally usefu A year?! You're either scraping the bottom of the barrel for new hires, have a terrible on-boarding process, over-estimating the difference between the code someone fresh out of college writes or have absolutely terrible documentation or some combination thereof. I'm leaning toward on-boarding and/or documentation. Junior devs are the ones who most need documentation because they're not gonna be able to infer the existence of policy and best practices from existing code and procedures as well as a senior dev will. Either you and your HR is doing a terrible job giving new hires a lead on what to be asking and where to find information or that information just doesn't exist outside of the heads of existing employees. I work at a CDN. We have plenty of issues with legacy code, cumbersome interactions between business units, outdated policies/docs, lack of documentation on stuff and all the other BigCo problems. A huge chunk of new hires at any time are fresh out of school. It takes ~3-4mo before they're dealing with stuff on their own with perfectly fine results. People aren't idiots but they don't know what they don't know. People with more experience are better at knowing when there's something that they don't know. Fix your process and you'll be able to get good value for junior devs. If you don't fix your process don't whine when someone who has business practices that let them deliver the same results at lower cost by utilizing cheaper labor comes along and undercuts you.