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>> going to school helps prepare people for this kind of work Is there some specific teamwork that goes on in a CS degree? Can't teamwork skills be picked up i

>> going to school helps prepare people for this kind of work Is there some specific teamwork that goes on in a CS degree? Can't teamwork skills be picked up in the previous 14 years of schooling?

andylei 12y ago
kohanz is not saying that college is the only way someone can learn teamwork, or that college is a prerequisite to teamwork skills, but merely that college is positively correlated to such skills.
- walshemj 12y ago
  You get a degree on your own merits at passing exams its not a team thing.
  - mpyne 12y ago
    That wasn't the case in my CS undergrad.
  - kohanz 12y ago
    Exams made up part of our marks, but projects factored in as well. One could certainly achieve a passing grade while being a terrible team-player, but it generally was not a successful strategy.
  - wlievens 12y ago
    Wasn't the case for me. We had several courses that were team efforts, and the typical method was to determine a shared team score, and then let individual scores deviate by a small margin (+- 2/20 at most) from that, based on the professor's appreciation of your individual contribution in the team.
  - dwild 12y ago
    I'm currently getting a software engineering degree and I got multiple class where we had 50% of graded teamwork and you needed to pass them to be able to pass the class. Even if you got 100% in your exam, if you failed your teamwork, then you fail the class.
kohanz 12y ago
I did Computer Engineering, but I assume they're similar. I think most post-secondary educations are filled with a lot of team-based projects (RTOS was a memorable one from my past). I certainly had team projects in high school but of course they weren't at the same technical level, with the same caliber of people. It's not the only way to get that experience though. As I mentioned, if someone has several years of real-world experience working in industry, with positive recommendations to back up that they're good at what they do, then degree or no degree becomes more of a moot point. It's the cases when there is not enough work experience, or diversity of experience, to paint a full picture, that one might factor in the presence of a degree.
dyeje 12y ago
I think it's more so the context of the teamwork. I worked on group geography project in 12th grade. Did I gain skills that would help me be a productive member of a software development team? Maybe a little, but we mostly goofed off and begrudgingly did enough to pass. My senior capstone in college on the other hand definitely did help me gain some of those skills.
cdr 12y ago
As a CS student I took roughly 50% CS courses/50% Software Engineering courses. SE is a much rarer degree, I think. At least at my alma mater SE courses were exclusively team based - teams of 3-5 for every course from start to finish - whereas I'd have difficulty recalling a single CS course that was team based. If my SE courses were representative, I would think a SE degree would be a very positive signal for working in teams. CS I'm not so sure, the strength of CS was the actual science/math/theory.

>> going to school helps prepare people for this kind of work Is there some specific teamwork that goes on in a CS degree? Can't teamwork skills be picked up in the previous 14 years of schooling?

andylei 12y ago

kohanz is not saying that college is the only way someone can learn teamwork, or that college is a prerequisite to teamwork skills, but merely that college is positively correlated to such skills.

walshemj 12y ago
You get a degree on your own merits at passing exams its not a team thing.
- mpyne 12y ago
  That wasn't the case in my CS undergrad.
- kohanz 12y ago
  Exams made up part of our marks, but projects factored in as well. One could certainly achieve a passing grade while being a terrible team-player, but it generally was not a successful strategy.
- wlievens 12y ago
  Wasn't the case for me. We had several courses that were team efforts, and the typical method was to determine a shared team score, and then let individual scores deviate by a small margin (+- 2/20 at most) from that, based on the professor's appreciation of your individual contribution in the team.
- dwild 12y ago
  I'm currently getting a software engineering degree and I got multiple class where we had 50% of graded teamwork and you needed to pass them to be able to pass the class. Even if you got 100% in your exam, if you failed your teamwork, then you fail the class.

kohanz 12y ago

I did Computer Engineering, but I assume they're similar. I think most post-secondary educations are filled with a lot of team-based projects (RTOS was a memorable one from my past). I certainly had team projects in high school but of course they weren't at the same technical level, with the same caliber of people. It's not the only way to get that experience though. As I mentioned, if someone has several years of real-world experience working in industry, with positive recommendations to back up that they're good at what they do, then degree or no degree becomes more of a moot point. It's the cases when there is not enough work experience, or diversity of experience, to paint a full picture, that one might factor in the presence of a degree.

dyeje 12y ago

I think it's more so the context of the teamwork. I worked on group geography project in 12th grade. Did I gain skills that would help me be a productive member of a software development team? Maybe a little, but we mostly goofed off and begrudgingly did enough to pass. My senior capstone in college on the other hand definitely did help me gain some of those skills.

cdr 12y ago

As a CS student I took roughly 50% CS courses/50% Software Engineering courses. SE is a much rarer degree, I think. At least at my alma mater SE courses were exclusively team based - teams of 3-5 for every course from start to finish - whereas I'd have difficulty recalling a single CS course that was team based. If my SE courses were representative, I would think a SE degree would be a very positive signal for working in teams. CS I'm not so sure, the strength of CS was the actual science/math/theory.