Colleges are doing a horrible job at relevant skill sets for sure. But also, much of the time what I’m seeking is passion for the field. In today’s world, kids with passion learn everything themselves in their teens and go directly to the workforce because they’d learn nothing at college. College became a place to go if you can’t figure it out yourself, which also means you lack the passion, hence you’re really not a great hire for a small company.
I currently never hire college grads anymore unless they’re older.
Things are different at enterprises. They need so many people that the passion requirement is dropped and you end up with tech leads who are passionate leading armies of worker bees who need constant oversight. This also works but has its own inefficiencies far outside the scope of this comment lol.
That’s how I see the state of the industry. People need to follow passion, not money. Unfortunately the incentives are misaligned by society in general. Not sure how to fix the value problem. For instance, teachers and childcare should be far more expensive and as such pay more. It’s a super heavy regulated sector tho, which is part of the problem.
But I digress. College for a general software engineering job is a complete waste.
I’ve been a pro software engineer for 30 years.
Colleges are doing a horrible job at relevant skill sets for sure. But also, much of the time what I’m seeking is passion for the field. In today’s world, kids with passion learn everything themselves in their teens and go directly to the workforce because they’d learn nothing at college. College became a place to go if you can’t figure it out yourself, which also means you lack the passion, hence you’re really not a great hire for a small company.
I currently never hire college grads anymore unless they’re older.
Things are different at enterprises. They need so many people that the passion requirement is dropped and you end up with tech leads who are passionate leading armies of worker bees who need constant oversight. This also works but has its own inefficiencies far outside the scope of this comment lol.
That’s how I see the state of the industry. People need to follow passion, not money. Unfortunately the incentives are misaligned by society in general. Not sure how to fix the value problem. For instance, teachers and childcare should be far more expensive and as such pay more. It’s a super heavy regulated sector tho, which is part of the problem.
But I digress. College for a general software engineering job is a complete waste.
This isn’t digression - it’s pretty accurate to how I feel… Passion is the missing ingredient