4 ms·

Lots of valid criticisms here against academia, but I'll take this time to get on a mini-soapbox about communication skills. The biggest value-add I honed over

Lots of valid criticisms here against academia, but I'll take this time to get on a mini-soapbox about communication skills. The biggest value-add I honed over the course of my academic career is my ability to communicate technical topics. Now, that isn't to say every master's student or CS degree holder is definitely better than a bootcamp grad at tech comm, in fact the winning combo there would be a communications/english degree + bootcamp for entry-level positions. And this isn't just making presentations and writing documentation. It's making effective use of your time in standups. It's conversations about your future relationship with your employer. It's knowing how to ask the right questions to weed out bullshit when digging through other technical documentation respectfully. It's taking a bold new idea that entered your head and figuring out which way would be the best to envangelize it at your organization. I think in an ideal case, a master's degree in a computing discipline hits the intersection between intense training on a subfield of computing that can be difficult to break into (e.g. statistical machine learning, robotics, formal methods, cryptography) and your demonstration of your "mastery" is taking a cutting edge concept in that subfield and demonstrating mastery through effective technical communication in the form of a project/thesis. A master's degree isn't guaranteed to make you a "better" programmer, but I would really hope that it would make you much more familiar with the field, and also teach you how to take that familiarity and leverage it to become a more effective communicator.

f17 4y ago
It's making effective use of your time in standups. If you have an advanced degree and your job is making you do standups, you should get another job.
- distrill 4y ago
  most of the eng on my team have masters degrees, and we have standups. this is common where i work and i assume other faang
  - f17 4y ago
    You should aim for a research environment where you don't have to justify your existence to some "product manager" every 24 hours. Take it from me as an old person: if you work in stupid environments in stupid ways on stupid stuff... what happens is exactly what you'd think would happen.
    - pcmoney 4y ago
      Why do you think standups are stupid? They are merely a way to understand what the rest of the team is working on and to make sure you have the resources you need to do your job without having to interrupt you later or are you having to interrupt somebody else later it takes 15 minutes and it often saves hours of wheel spinning.
      - ipaddr 4y ago
        It's a process without a purpose. It is a process that kills flow and causes less work to get done. Everything important must fit within a short story 24/h later which means work gets packaged into easy to explain daily concepts. It serves no purpose because if you are blocked today waiting till a morning meeting is a bad approach because the meeting than expands to discussing an issue that belongs at another meeting. Plus the time wasted adds up. Asking for help today is something seniors do. Standup meetings treat developers like children and encourage bad habits.
    - dwrodri 4y ago
      I agree with the sentiment that justifying your existence every 24 hours isn't an effective use of anyone's time. Perhaps "standup" wasn't the right word. But in general, verbal communication/meetings/etc. was the gist.
  - sirmoveon 4y ago
    Common to you means right? That was a good point, an olympic swimmer trains to swim not to explain how to swim.
- lmm 4y ago
  Standups are the worst way of doing status updates except for all the others. For me an environment without standups is at least a yellow flag.
  - dijit 4y ago
    I used to have a bot that asked people every day if they needed help, then ask who they needed help from and what they were blocked with. That adds just enough push to force people into asking for help. If you’re using a standup as anything other than a pulse on making sure progress is possible. You failed.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      As a manager, one has to manage many different personality types. Not all people are proactive in communicating that they need help or are lagging. The manager could go to each of his directs and ask these questions individually, but it is more efficient to do it as a group. The group setting also gives coworkers the opportunity to say, “oh, I know what’s going on. I can help with that.” Stand ups do not have to happen every day. That’s where a lot of managers fail.
      - ipaddr 4y ago
        Those different personality types react differently to standups. Managing different personalities could mean providing different approaches.
        TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        It could mean that. It could also mean that there are some parts of working in a group (instead of solo) that are non-negotiable, such as periodically meeting with that group even if it is on a call.

f17 4y ago

It's making effective use of your time in standups. If you have an advanced degree and your job is making you do standups, you should get another job.

distrill 4y ago
most of the eng on my team have masters degrees, and we have standups. this is common where i work and i assume other faang
- f17 4y ago
  You should aim for a research environment where you don't have to justify your existence to some "product manager" every 24 hours. Take it from me as an old person: if you work in stupid environments in stupid ways on stupid stuff... what happens is exactly what you'd think would happen.
  - pcmoney 4y ago
    Why do you think standups are stupid? They are merely a way to understand what the rest of the team is working on and to make sure you have the resources you need to do your job without having to interrupt you later or are you having to interrupt somebody else later it takes 15 minutes and it often saves hours of wheel spinning.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      It's a process without a purpose. It is a process that kills flow and causes less work to get done. Everything important must fit within a short story 24/h later which means work gets packaged into easy to explain daily concepts. It serves no purpose because if you are blocked today waiting till a morning meeting is a bad approach because the meeting than expands to discussing an issue that belongs at another meeting. Plus the time wasted adds up. Asking for help today is something seniors do. Standup meetings treat developers like children and encourage bad habits.
  - dwrodri 4y ago
    I agree with the sentiment that justifying your existence every 24 hours isn't an effective use of anyone's time. Perhaps "standup" wasn't the right word. But in general, verbal communication/meetings/etc. was the gist.
- sirmoveon 4y ago
  Common to you means right? That was a good point, an olympic swimmer trains to swim not to explain how to swim.
lmm 4y ago
Standups are the worst way of doing status updates except for all the others. For me an environment without standups is at least a yellow flag.
- dijit 4y ago
  I used to have a bot that asked people every day if they needed help, then ask who they needed help from and what they were blocked with. That adds just enough push to force people into asking for help. If you’re using a standup as anything other than a pulse on making sure progress is possible. You failed.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    As a manager, one has to manage many different personality types. Not all people are proactive in communicating that they need help or are lagging. The manager could go to each of his directs and ask these questions individually, but it is more efficient to do it as a group. The group setting also gives coworkers the opportunity to say, “oh, I know what’s going on. I can help with that.” Stand ups do not have to happen every day. That’s where a lot of managers fail.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Those different personality types react differently to standups. Managing different personalities could mean providing different approaches.
      - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        It could mean that. It could also mean that there are some parts of working in a group (instead of solo) that are non-negotiable, such as periodically meeting with that group even if it is on a call.