Curious

[snasta]

I have question for you people. What do you think of the current
college and university graduates coming out of IT courses? What do you
like and dislike about them in terms of skill levels, education and
attitude? I ask this question because I am one of those new graduates
looking for work in the IT field.

Snasta

 

[Gary Labowitz]

I have question for you people. What do you think of the current
college and university graduates coming out of IT courses? What do you
like and dislike about them in terms of skill levels, education and
attitude? I ask this question because I am one of those new graduates
looking for work in the IT field.

They are all oafish, lazy, louts, who couldn't program their ways out of
paper bags! All are smelly, argumentative, unimaginative, and I wouldn't
give them the time of day.
Okay?
Just what kind of answer do you really want? Specify a school, a teacher,
and a specific student; let me interview him or her; I'll be glad to give
you an evaluation. Otherwise, the post is of the type "Seen any movies
lately?"
[Now that I feel better] you'll probably get lots of answers, which won't
make all that much sense.

 

[Anthony]

I have question for you people. What do you think of the current
college and university graduates coming out of IT courses? What do you
like and dislike about them in terms of skill levels, education and
attitude? I ask this question because I am one of those new graduates
looking for work in the IT field.

Snasta

I find in the work envirnoment that there are a lot of older employees who
themselves never had the confidence to attend university so their skills
have mostly been learnt in house, quite resentful of graduates and unwilling
to give them a fair go, not all but some.

However, I am currently a post grad student in Internetworking. Things in
Australia are vastly different to when I was at university ten years ago. I
have watched people cheat their way out of assignments by paying to have
them done over the internet. Currently, Australian universities are lifting
fees for most courses and attracting a lot of full fee paying overseas
students whose English is terrible. These people can't afford to fail
subjects, due to visa constraints and costs of courses.

 

[Toast]

On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 17:52:06 -0700, snasta wrote:

My experience has been the following:

Good Stuff
1. Fairly up to date on theory
2. Fairly up to date on latest trends - especially if the student / recent
graduate is really interested in the topic
3. Fairly aggressive with technology - especially if the student has some
graduate-level courses

Bad Stuff
1. Can be arrogant
a) assured that there is only one way to solve a problem
b) disconnect between person and average user experience
2. Poor problem-solving skills
a) lack of experiential - theoretical insight
b) all problems are "nails" . . . and the recent graduate only has a
hammer

Solutions

I think all IS / IT / CS students should develop a strong interest in
another field as well as the computer field. Once that strong interest is
developed, the student should then apply the computer expertise to solving
annoying problems in the other interest.

This marriage of experiential knowledge and theoretical knowledge does at
least two things.

1. Provides the student with an appreciation of a user point of view.
After all, in the business / scientific world we are here to provide
services. Simply because we have fun doing it is no reason to lose sight
of this purpose.

2. Develop a concept of mapping real-world challenges to solutions based
on (hopefully) excellent technical / theoretical knowledge.

3. Ingrain the Perl maxim as said by Larry Wall:

As you know, the slogan for Perl culture is, "There's more than one way to
do it."
<a ref="htpp://www.wall.org/~larry/keynote/keynote.html">Keynote</a>

There is probably more, but I hope you get the idea.

/mde/
just my two cents . . . .

 

[Roedy Green]

I find in the work envirnoment that there are a lot of older employees who
themselves never had the confidence to attend university so their skills
have mostly been learnt in house, quite resentful of graduates and unwilling
to give them a fair go, not all but some.

One thing rather distressing is the extreme degree of cheating going
on in schools now. I'm pretty sure hardly anyone cheated on exams in
the 50s and 60s in my high school, now a majority admit to it.

Most of the offers I get for work are from students wanting me to do
their student projects for them. I turn these down.

This widespread acceptance of cheating as a way of life is going to
reflect badly on ALL students of that generation.

A degree mostly proves you CAN learn. If it no longer means that,
what good is it?

The knowledge itself goes stale so quickly.

Employers are going to start requiring various professional
certifications, things that are only valid for a few years, that use
more stringent means to stop cheating on tests e.g. no cell phones and
tests are open-book.

 

[Elspeth Thorne]

I have question for you people. What do you think of the current
college and university graduates coming out of IT courses? What do you
like and dislike about them in terms of skill levels, education and
attitude? I ask this question because I am one of those new graduates
looking for work in the IT field.

Snasta

I'm about to graduate from a Bachelor of Engineering (Software) at the
University of Queensland, so I'd say I have a fairy reasonable view of IT
graduates, at least in this city.

Don't waste your money on anyone who's done a degree in Information Technology.
Sure, there are a few, exceptionally bright thinkers, who can actually program
and do useful things with a computer. The vast majority did IT because it was
fashionable, and have no depth of understanding or theory, let alone practical
knowledge of the systems they have been 'taught' to use. Sure, sit them down at
their usual GUI IDE with plenty of example code and they'll be able to code a
simple application. Throw them at, say, a Linux box with vi/vim/gvim or emacs,
and a nontrival problem, well, they're sunk. I've met final-year IT students who
had better-than-passing grades who couldn't understand the concept of scope.

Of course, there is some inter-degree rivalry surfacing here, since engineers
(of which I am one) universally believe that IT students suck.

Then again, I took a survey of a fairly fundamental subject comprised of about
half engineers and half IT students ... and IT students suck. Or at least, on a
comparison of final marks for the subject.

Simply put: very few IT programs out there give more than a cursory
understanding of the field, and since cheating is so prevalent...well, don't get
your hopes up. Hire someone with an engineering degree instead. They tend to
have a better knowledge of what's in the box, and be able to think outside the
box when required.

my 2c.

Elspeth.