My degree was a formality. It's a footnote on my resume, for HR's eyes only.
When I get into the interview, I'm completely candid - All college taught me was how to pay off debt. I'm still learning.
When I get into the interview, I'm completely candid - All college taught me was how to pay off debt. I'm still learning.
During the interview, the man uttered a phrase that stopped my heart: "So, tell me about your electrical engineering experience." As it turned out, the career services woman understood my basic PC building skills as electrical engineering skills. Much like you, I was up-front in the interview and told him that it was a mistake on the resume. I got the job.
Him: Oh why is that?
You: Because I had someone else do my resume.
(odd pause)
Him: You're hired!
He was actually a pretty cool boss. I have to imagine that making that same mistake wouldn't fly in most places, which is why I mentioned it as a warning.
I don't know why that is though, it's obviously important. Maybe these, err, kids, think that as they have no working experience, employers aren't likely to look at it a lot?
It can be done, obviously. But making a good resume is a skill that generally take time to master. If you do it right the first time, you may never need a resume again. These difficulties are why career services exist at colleges. And even they can't get it right sometimes.
My exasperation comes from the CS field interviewing recent CS graduates. Many don't put the personal/hobby programming/adminning/etc projects they have done on their resume. The result is a resume of less than half a page that lists their name, study and hobbies (outside CS!). And sometimes with sloppy formatting & layout.
They presume "it wasn't real work" so it "doesn't count". I'll be the judge of what counts!
If I'm applying for a network administration job, knowing the Linux source code wouldn't be required but you'd better believe putting "hobbyist Linux programmer" would do nothing to hurt your chances of being hired.
It's typical here to put them at the very bottom. I've have interviewers in the Valley use the put-at-ease technique on me, so it must happen in the States too.
Allow others to proof read or make suggestions certainly but all keystrokes on the page should have come out of your own fingers.
Cue an awkward conversation. A polite lady candidly told me that I clearly hadn't proof read my CV because in the third paragraph it read 'I am a smelly cunt' randomly in the text. Presumably a prank gone wrong.
Clearly someone had doctored my CV in my flat or in the labs and I'd not proof read it. I would have been embarrassed but I was too devastated.
Needless to say, I picked myself up but not before I edited my CV!
He was a good candidate but not quite what we were looking for and we both wasted an hour of our day. The only upside was that I was already looking for a reason to stop working with that recruiter.
For people who just want to follow the beaten path, college is just another footnote. For those who want to explore, there is a lot of opportunity.
College for software engineering/comp sci lacks depth and applicability. They try to pander too much to people who don't have the discipline to learn what a computer is.
For me, there were a lot of learning opportunities because I am naturally a curious person.
I'd agree with the BS part. The best BS students can write programs that accomplish the goal they want to accomplish, but aren't "good" at it.
The MS students are hit and miss,in the sense that most (let's say 70%?) are not significantly better than the BS programmers at programming, though they are often have better at algorithm understanding.
However, there are some MS students who are really good at programming. I don't know why there is such a stark difference from the BS folks, who are uniformly bad, but it does exist.
I'd expect a 21 year old who studied computer-science to have programming experience outside school exercises, and not show any signs of sucking at it.
If this isn't the case I see no reason to expect them to improve to a level that they "can program your socks off" after another 2-3 years.
We can argue about what "bad at programming" and "program your socks off" means, but my main point is that there is no excuse not to have some programming experience by the time you graduate.
Personally, if college is not preparing them for the practical practice of their art (I'm not saying it should be done to the detriment of the theoretical side, i'm just saying it's not being done at all right now), that seems like not necessarily the best use of time/money.
FWIW: I have the same view of law school, which is essentially worthless in terms of real world practice. If you practiced law how they test you in law school or on the bar exam, you'd be disbarred.
Can you elaborate on this some?
Why do people feel that they belong in a comp sci program if they've never written a line of code in their life?
If I have an option of hiring someone at 22 and mentoring them for 2-3 years in the hopes that they'll become useful or hiring someone at 22 who has been programming for the last 6-8 years and knows what the hell they're doing, I'm going to pick the self-taught programmer almost every time.
I chose to do Computer Science because I wanted to properly understand computers. I had essentially no programming experience although I had tried a couple of times but hadn't found the right way in, (QBasic by Example didn't work for me and I didn't discover K&R or a C compiler which I think would have worked better for me). At the end of my degree I was definitely not a great programmer but I could program in Java and ML (taught in the degree programme) and C/C++ and the WIN32 APIs self taught and used for my final year (significant scale but poorly structured) project.
There people on the course (at a very famous university) who really couldn't program at the end of the course but knew the material and official answers well enough to get good degrees. There were also many that started with good programming skills but it was certainly possible to learn enough in the three years to be able to start work and do useful programming and build experience.
Something that surprised and disappointed me at University was how few people seemed to really try to take advantage of being there and learn generally within and beyond their subject rather than being course and exam focused (not just CompSci but all subjects).
Am I a great programmer? No, but I've only spent 15 months within a professional development team, another couple of years on demo level and proof of concept software in an R&D environment and the last year self retraining in iOS and Rails development following five and half years in Product Planning and Business Development.
Who should you hire? I don't know but some simple programming tasks I. The interview stages are probably a good idea. If you want someone who is just a programmer maybe someone incurious is a good bet if they have the skills you need now but whether they are self taught or university educated I think the big question is whether you want someone to fill a particular role now or for the future growth potential that they have. If you are only interested in the fully capable now rather than the trainable (and mouldable to your company way) you may miss out onbetter long term bets.
I would expect a ms/phd to be distinctly better at questioning and thinking about things outside of face value than a bachelors, on average.
Some of that will transfer into coding, ofc.
Most people prefer the beaten path -> average.
In an engineering point of view you are absolutely right but the fundamental mistake here is you have no idea what you signed up for. Computer science is not software engineering.
Then there are those students that were diligent and made use of the opportunities college provided. This not just means classes, but building relationships, participating in groups, starting businesses, etc. Do you need college for this? Not as all, but the things I mentioned are made a whole lot easier when in a community of like-minded individuals.
Your point about still learning however is a good one. So many stop truly learning the few years after college once they get into a career.