Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World
Posted on September 10, 2007 Comments (5)
Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World
Zilka noted that many of the new hires he’s seen during his career continue to echo the same sentiments as he did. Some of the things the school didn’t teach Zilka and many who are now entering the work force include issues around communication, development skills, and business and product design. On the communication front, Zilka said, “Presentation skills are critical, and selling and influencing peers is critical.”
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“When graduates join organizations [after college] they are often shocked to realize they are dealing with limited resources, deadlines, fuzz requirements, requirements that change weekly, applications that scale, the use of frameworks and libraries, existing code—that may be bad code with bad design decisions, issues of interaction within and among teams, and having to develop code that is secure,” Scherlis said.
via: Sean Stickle. Related: High School Students Interest in Computer Programing – A Career in Computer Programming – Hiring Software Developers – software programming posts on our management blog
5 Responses to “Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World”
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October 8th, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
This is not the first time I’ve heard that there is a skills gap coming out of college for CS majors- it makes sense, also, as most classes CS majors take are theoretical, and do not have much, if any, business application. It’s too bad- people with business know-how and programming skills are much more versatile than programmers without business sense.
July 10th, 2008 @ 6:21 am
Okay, I’m biased (because I train people to make presentations, as a living), but this is a problem I see on this side of the Atlantic too. Rest assured though, that it’s not just engineers who don’t like making presentations – it’s a problem for social scientists, medics and… well, pretty much across the board!
Interestingly, some places (like Imperial College, London) now run “transferable skills” training to try and counter the problem, but have to do so in the face of resistance from the students, who say “What’s this got to do with getting my PhD?” and don’t attend. Such a shame!
Simon
January 3rd, 2009 @ 3:03 pm
“As faculty members at New York University for decades, we have regretted the introduction of Java as a first language of instruction for most computer science majors. We have seen how this choice has weakened the formation of our students, as reflected in their performance in systems and architecture courses…”
June 9th, 2009 @ 6:54 pm
[…] College degrees matter less than hands-on knowledge and time spent at the keyboard. I outpaced my entire class in college because I bought my own programming books that deviated from […]
June 12th, 2011 @ 12:32 pm
it seems to me, an understanding of computing is extremely important to those that want to lead in the next 40 years and we should be able to put more of that into undergraduate studies…