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Can we have this self-discovery process without the giant 6-figure bill? As someone who went to college myself, I agree that it was a tremendous time for perso

Can we have this self-discovery process without the giant 6-figure bill? As someone who went to college myself, I agree that it was a tremendous time for personal growth - it was also expensive as all hell, and I'm lucky I chose a field where paying it off is a piece of cake. In any case, I think there's a false dichotomy here: there's the apprenticeship/trades camp, and the pro-college camp, but really the truth lies somewhere in between. The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs, but for the most part people studying for these jobs have completely abdicated their responsibility to seek apprenticeship and mentorship (in the non-regulated sense of those words). A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless. The problem here is that so many in the pro-college crowd see a degree as an end-run around having to bust your balls and apprentice with skilled professionals when apprenticeships (or internships if you want to call them that), regardless of college/no-college, is absolutely necessary.

Zimahl 14y ago
Six figures? You know all those taxes you (or your parents) pay to the state you are living in? Some of those are going to subsidize in-state colleges. If you want to go to an expensive private school or out-of-state because they are top notch, you'd better be top notch as well. Like I've said elsewhere, if you aren't willing to pay the cost, maybe that degree or school isn't worth it.
jshowa 14y ago
>> The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs. >> A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless. Seems you contradict yourself when you claim there is a move towards knowledge based jobs, yet in the very next sentence, advocate that knowledge without experience is "nearly/even more than" worthless. So are you implying that a person with a CS degree who probably did tons of programming exercises and at least 1-3 projects (i.e. requiring design, doc., etc.), who was taught by these "under experienced" PhD's who have studied the subject, wrote about it, and have done projects for 10+ years of their life produce something that is "nearly" worthless? Holy cow, either the students priorities were very screwed up or there goes logic and rationality out the door.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  You're splitting hairs on semantics - the notion of a "knowledge economy" as we've been referring to it for, oh, 3 decades now, does not exclude the value of experience. Knowledge economy doesn't imply that experience or skill is unnecessary, it is simply a catch-all term that suggests that low-skill, menial labor jobs are disappearing (and they are). The level of training required for any in-demand job, whether it's an electrician or an astrophysicist, is much, much higher than it historically has been. > "So are you implying that a person with a CS degree who probably did tons of programming exercises and at least 1-3 projects (i.e. requiring design, doc., etc.), who was taught by these "under experienced" PhD's who have studied the subject, wrote about it, and have done projects for 10+ years of their life produce something that is "nearly" worthless?" I don't like to yell, but here it is plainly: YES. The kind of things they make you work in school, even in advanced degrees, is nothing like what private industry needs. Shit, the software engineering program at my alma mater spends a shitload of time on UML, as opposed to practical architectural skills that are actually useful in the real world. Your school projects do not in any meaningful way approximate a real software project in the real world. Your design docs are held to a completely different standard than real design docs, and the process by which they are synthesized, iterated upon, and approved is also either completely absent in academia or heavily bastardized. Likewise, programming exercises you see your typical CS or engineering program are incredibly simplistic compared to what you would run into the real-world once you're hacking on production systems at-scale. This is why open source experience is valuable, but class projects are not. A CS student, sans external experience, is like a Call of Duty player joining the Army. Heart might be in the right place, but by God they are a long way from ready. [edit] On-topic but aside: consistently the second worst programmers I've ever interviewed in my life are PhD candidates or holders. They are almost universally clueless, able to rattle off all kinds of incredibly complex knowledge, but are absolutely clueless about real-world engineering issues, and generally poor at implementation. Scalability and usability are theoretical constructs to the bulk of them. They can talk a lot of shop about algorithms, but to get them to implement their own algorithms (and do it well) is nigh impossible. Code quality is on the whole probably worse than fresh undergrads. Off-topic and aside: the worst demographic I've ever had the pleasure of regularly interviewing are current/former employees of outsourcing consultancies (Accenture, InfoSys, and the ilk). I'm unsure what percentage of their programmer population actually know how to code, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's < 25%. I've interviewed multiple such candidates who couldn't put together a loop in a language of their choosing.
_delirium 14y ago
Is this a CS-specific mindset? Because in other engineering fields, the expectation is that students will gain a strong scientific/mathematical grounding at university, but specific vocational skills, like say how to use Boeing's wind-tunnel simulation software, will be taught on the job, in training programs for new hires.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  I don't think software is really different - there are certain companies with unrealistic expectations that want fresh grads to know the obscure libraries and APIs they rely on, but that's relatively uncommon. e.g., I got hired into Amazon out of school, and they use a crapload of proprietary software internally I had to learn in a hurry. Software supports this model of operation as much as traditional engineering. I've also interned in traditional engineering before - and the differences really aren't significant. Both software and traditional engineering fields highly value internship experience both as an indicator of competency and as a recruitment tool. IMO software simply does this on a much larger scale - e.g. literally hiring thousands of interns across a single summer.
EricDeb 14y ago
You can easily go to college without a 6-figure bill. I finished two master's degrees and paid very little. All one has to do is leave their ego at the door and not go to the best school they can get into for their credentials. I scored high on the SAT and instead of going IVY-league I went to a lesser school for free. I scored high on the GMAT. Instead of going to HBS I went to a lesser school and finished a masters in CS and an MBA for a fraction of the price.

Zimahl 14y ago

Six figures? You know all those taxes you (or your parents) pay to the state you are living in? Some of those are going to subsidize in-state colleges. If you want to go to an expensive private school or out-of-state because they are top notch, you'd better be top notch as well. Like I've said elsewhere, if you aren't willing to pay the cost, maybe that degree or school isn't worth it.

jshowa 14y ago

>> The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs. >> A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless. Seems you contradict yourself when you claim there is a move towards knowledge based jobs, yet in the very next sentence, advocate that knowledge without experience is "nearly/even more than" worthless. So are you implying that a person with a CS degree who probably did tons of programming exercises and at least 1-3 projects (i.e. requiring design, doc., etc.), who was taught by these "under experienced" PhD's who have studied the subject, wrote about it, and have done projects for 10+ years of their life produce something that is "nearly" worthless? Holy cow, either the students priorities were very screwed up or there goes logic and rationality out the door.

potatolicious 14y ago
You're splitting hairs on semantics - the notion of a "knowledge economy" as we've been referring to it for, oh, 3 decades now, does not exclude the value of experience. Knowledge economy doesn't imply that experience or skill is unnecessary, it is simply a catch-all term that suggests that low-skill, menial labor jobs are disappearing (and they are). The level of training required for any in-demand job, whether it's an electrician or an astrophysicist, is much, much higher than it historically has been. > "So are you implying that a person with a CS degree who probably did tons of programming exercises and at least 1-3 projects (i.e. requiring design, doc., etc.), who was taught by these "under experienced" PhD's who have studied the subject, wrote about it, and have done projects for 10+ years of their life produce something that is "nearly" worthless?" I don't like to yell, but here it is plainly: YES. The kind of things they make you work in school, even in advanced degrees, is nothing like what private industry needs. Shit, the software engineering program at my alma mater spends a shitload of time on UML, as opposed to practical architectural skills that are actually useful in the real world. Your school projects do not in any meaningful way approximate a real software project in the real world. Your design docs are held to a completely different standard than real design docs, and the process by which they are synthesized, iterated upon, and approved is also either completely absent in academia or heavily bastardized. Likewise, programming exercises you see your typical CS or engineering program are incredibly simplistic compared to what you would run into the real-world once you're hacking on production systems at-scale. This is why open source experience is valuable, but class projects are not. A CS student, sans external experience, is like a Call of Duty player joining the Army. Heart might be in the right place, but by God they are a long way from ready. [edit] On-topic but aside: consistently the second worst programmers I've ever interviewed in my life are PhD candidates or holders. They are almost universally clueless, able to rattle off all kinds of incredibly complex knowledge, but are absolutely clueless about real-world engineering issues, and generally poor at implementation. Scalability and usability are theoretical constructs to the bulk of them. They can talk a lot of shop about algorithms, but to get them to implement their own algorithms (and do it well) is nigh impossible. Code quality is on the whole probably worse than fresh undergrads. Off-topic and aside: the worst demographic I've ever had the pleasure of regularly interviewing are current/former employees of outsourcing consultancies (Accenture, InfoSys, and the ilk). I'm unsure what percentage of their programmer population actually know how to code, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's < 25%. I've interviewed multiple such candidates who couldn't put together a loop in a language of their choosing.

_delirium 14y ago

Is this a CS-specific mindset? Because in other engineering fields, the expectation is that students will gain a strong scientific/mathematical grounding at university, but specific vocational skills, like say how to use Boeing's wind-tunnel simulation software, will be taught on the job, in training programs for new hires.

potatolicious 14y ago
I don't think software is really different - there are certain companies with unrealistic expectations that want fresh grads to know the obscure libraries and APIs they rely on, but that's relatively uncommon. e.g., I got hired into Amazon out of school, and they use a crapload of proprietary software internally I had to learn in a hurry. Software supports this model of operation as much as traditional engineering. I've also interned in traditional engineering before - and the differences really aren't significant. Both software and traditional engineering fields highly value internship experience both as an indicator of competency and as a recruitment tool. IMO software simply does this on a much larger scale - e.g. literally hiring thousands of interns across a single summer.

EricDeb 14y ago

You can easily go to college without a 6-figure bill. I finished two master's degrees and paid very little. All one has to do is leave their ego at the door and not go to the best school they can get into for their credentials. I scored high on the SAT and instead of going IVY-league I went to a lesser school for free. I scored high on the GMAT. Instead of going to HBS I went to a lesser school and finished a masters in CS and an MBA for a fraction of the price.