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Two points: first, even if "solid" universities are right to run away from this (and IMO they don't run away from it, they just move the IT program into the bus
by munin 8y ago
Two points: first, even if "solid" universities are right to run away from this (and IMO they don't run away from it, they just move the IT program into the business school where you don't see it any more) there are still many other universities pumping out students into a dead career field, which should be concerning. Second, this is not just about IT programs. Computer science programs are impacted to. From the OP:
> But instead of five backend developers and three ops people and a DBA to keep the lights on for your line-of-business app, now you maybe need two people total.
All nine of those people would probably have been CS graduates, or at least many of the backend developers would be (and perhaps the DBA). Or they would be people that thought of themselves as "developers" and not "IT" for whatever that distinction is worth now.
- geggam 8y agoInterviewing college graduates is depressing. No way the current education system will create people competent enough to keep this going
- eldavido 8y agoDon't generalize. Are you interviewing graduates from the top 10-15 programs or lesser-tier? I think this is a big error people make. Some colleges are great. Others are horrible. It's very hard to say, "College is a waste" or "college is great".
- nradov 8y agoIt's not even a matter of tiers. There are plenty of great candidates coming out of lower rated schools, although the hit rate is lower. In general interviewers just have unrealistic expectations for entry level candidates. They forget how incompetent they were at the same age. Or they have ridiculous notions that everyone should know how to write a quicksort algorithm or whatever, when some students may have focused their studies on other (but equally challenging) topics.
- geggam 8y agoI expect you to know fundamentals about things like TCP networking and how to install, configure and manage Linux Distributions. I find many people who can install Ubuntu and run the canned commands or curl foo.sh | sudo bash or docker / k8s scripts they download, think they know what they are doing. They dont. Its getting to the point someone who can install windows is more technical than someone who can install linux
- nradov 8y agoYour expectations are unrealistic and counterproductive. Bachelor's degree programs shouldn't be teaching students how to install Linux. That's just job training, not education.
- Latteland 8y agoAgree, installing linux is IT, not normally in the background of CS. It's not that hard, devs could figure it out. Yes, I built my own machines because that was a lot cheaper. But no one taught me that in my cs program.
- geggam 8y agoWhen the job is managing Linux systems and colleges arent producing people who know how there is a problem
- nradov 8y agoBachelor's degree programs aren't intended to provide job training on narrow technical skills that will probably be obsolete in a few years anyway. If you want entry level Linux sysadmins then hire college graduates with the right aptitude and train them, or recruit from community colleges which do provide technical job training.
- geggam 8y agoDid the interviews in Silicon Valley. MIT UCLA Stanford Berkley are some of the grads I interviewed.
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoExcept that there are more developers than ever developing more software than ever. Instead of one business app with five backend developers and three ops people and a DBA you have five business apps each with two developers.