Zoho Don't Need No Stinking Ph.D. Programmers 612
theodp writes "When it comes to tech academic credentials, Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu has The Right Stuff: a Ph.D. in EE from Princeton. But Vembu has eschewed Google's Army-of-Ph.D.s approach to software development in favor of tapping into the ranks of high school grads who would not normally go to college for Zoho. Seeing his youngest brother succeed at programming without a college degree convinced Vembu that others could follow that example with the proper training and guidance. And studying the best employees in his own company led to another epiphany: 'What if the college degree itself is not really that useful?' thought Vembu. 'What if we took kids after high school, train them ourselves?'"
Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa. Someone with common sense. Someone in charge with common sense! I need to get some people around my workplace to read this blog entry.
While I'm sure that everyone's personal experience is different, this observation matches perfectly with what I've seen over the last 30 years or so in the field. On-the-job performance is the application of skills that are atually needed somewhere. Education in school is teaching something that may be needed at some future date. A new graduate still has to learn how to adapt their knowledge to the real world. Given what schools seem to be teaching these days, and the typical student's retention rate and enthusiasm, I'm not surprised that grads and non-grads are about equal in skill after working for awhile.
Kudos for admitting that, Vembu. I hope others follow your example.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Many, many people have gotten themselves trapped into paying off student loans for the rest of their lives for a degree that is inherently worthless. Expect a lot of denial of this truth contained in this article because for some people the idea that they sold themselves into debt slavery for nothing is too much to bear.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Informative)
Many, many people have gotten themselves trapped into paying off student loans for the rest of their lives for a degree that is inherently worthless.
On the other hand I got a 4 year electrical engineering degree from a respected university for a grand total of about US$500. Thats what you get growing up in a country where the government thinks that education was important. I have no idea what student loan is and I think made my money back about 25 years ago.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
You paid for it just like the rest of us. The only difference is that your payment came (and comes) in the form of taxes, rather than student loans (or whatever else).
I'm not trying to make judgements as to which way is better. I'm merely saying you shouldn't be deluded into thinking that it was free (or nearly free, in your case), simply because you didn't write a check to your school.
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You paid for it just like the rest of us. The only difference is that your payment came (and comes) in the form of taxes, rather than student loans (or whatever else).
Sure it was paid by taxes. But once I had that degree it was never incumbent on me to have to earn money to pay it back
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Sure it was paid by taxes. But once I had that degree it was never incumbent on me to have to earn money to pay it back
You keep digging a deeper hole.
Good for you, you got a taxpayer funded education and (apparently) it was a good investment for us. Want a cookie with that too?
The taxpayer funded educations that turn out to be BAD investments are arguably a worse situation than what the GP said - people with only personal debt. I don't know, maybe you LIKE the idea of free government handouts with no strings attached?
Meritocracy rules (Score:4, Insightful)
Except you don't understand that there was a meritocracy based selection process which acted to dampen out the negative aspects of a free for all system.
This is pretty much what a lot of us in the U.S. do not understand, and which is at the root of the matter when it comes to personal student loan debts. Couple that with this pedestrian, quasi-ludite fear of tax-based services (ZOMG, the gubermenmnt took mah money!), and you can see why many of us fail to understand that.
We have a culture that
Put all that together and you can see how we are the way we are. We do have a measure of belief in self-reliance and independence. The idea of depending on a government-sponsored program is abhorrent. We stupidly equate government programs with hand-outs. Ergo people don't have qualms in getting in debt for getting an education.
The unfortunate side effect of this is that:
We don't provide our youth with a chance to explore a vocational trade. Then boom, they are out of HS and we expect them to work as adults. But they have no skills and nobody wants them except as hamburger flippers. The only way out is to get a 4-year college degree, even if that is not what is in their hearts and would be much better off learning a trade.
A fine merit-based, government-paid college education system coupled with equally funded vocational training and a society that appreciates and nurtures the later is what we need.
Unfortunately, that would require a cultural change of a great magnitude. It ain't gonna happen in my lifetime, I'm sure of it.
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Slight problem with that is it probably fucks around with some of the freedom of movement rules within the EU and would be illegal since it would be very similar to fining people for moving.
But just for arguments sake- why not a similar system for primary and highschool? can't have people leaving before they've paid off the whole cost of their education.
Or medical care.
You get your cancer treatment for free but actually log 'virtual' costs of a treatment onto a 'virtual' debt card for each patient.
The same
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll take their taxes and free higher education over the mess we have any day.
Even if they quadruple my taxes, it's still far cheaper than what I owe for my education + the interest I have to pay. Only a complete fool thinks the USA system is better than elsewhere. Paying 4X my current taxes for 40 years will be cheaper than my student loans.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Please post the name of your accountant. Because if you quadruple my taxes, I owe a lot more than I make. Actually I think quadruple my current taxes for one year would about pay for my entire college education (at a state school, granted), though that's without interest and without accounting for inflation).
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Texas by the way.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting perspective, except that your figures are wrong. Sales tax is high in Europe, but 25% is the maximum [wikipedia.org], not the common amount.
Gas is expensive indeed, but because of that Europeans have been driving more fuel efficient cars for years. Our densely populated continent is better of this way to keep the air cleaner, but also because we can keep parking lots smaller. And again, you picked the maximum (8USD/gallon [about.com])
10-19% unemployment? The average [europa.eu] is 10.1 in Europe. And although there are some extremes like Spain at 19.7, a country with fairly high taxes (the Netherlands) is currently at 4.3. So maybe you can say 4.3-19 %. But I would rely on the official average of 10.1 And in the USA it was 9.7 [bls.gov] in May.
And 75-99 % unemployment rate among teenagers? I have no idea where you got that from, but in Europe most teenagers are still in school/college. And the only figures I could find are that in most countries the youth unemployment is roughly twice the average, no where near 75%
If you yourself are educated the way you advocate, you in my view are a perfect example why we should encourage youth to go to college! They do teach you to do some research and how to interpret the figures. Don't think I ever saw an episode on that on Discovery.
Nothing like a few lies to prove your point (Score:3, Informative)
I lived in England and traveled around Europe for 3 years. Great beer, old/ancient cities, and gorgeous women. Everything else pretty much sucked ass though.
Let's see a 25% sales tax rate, $8 for a gallon of gas, houses for 3 times the price at 1/2 the size, electronics, clothing, food, and cars that are nearly twice as much, oh yeah did I forget the cronic 10-19% unemployment rate among adults and 75-99% unemployment rate among teenagers.
Get me a plane ticket I want to move right now!
Most college degrees in the US are pretty much not worth the paper they're printed on. Euro degrees even more so. I think the concept of hiring young people the moment they are legal to work and then train them according to their skills is a long missing concept in society.
All the rest of a "well rounded" education can easily be filled in by watching the discovery and history channels and reading a few books.
US employment rate has consistently been higher than the UKs [tradingeconomics.com] over the last decade (currently USA 9.3%, UK 7.9%). The youth unemployment rate is 19.1% [guardian.co.uk] (2009 figure, latest I could find), almost exactly the same as the USA rate [hispanicmpr.com] for the same year year. Sales tax (VAT) is 17.5%. Petrol is currently £1.14 per litre = £4.31 per us gallon = $6.53. Food is not double the price - its very hard to compare basics like bread and milk are about the same, other things are a little more. Cars are a lot more,
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Another way to look is that while your taxes go into funding a couple of wars for reasons you don't even know (no, it's not about terrorism, but I don't want to end up discussing this), his country used that same money to put him through college.
I'm not even going to get into the whole healthcare bit, but if you think paying somewhat higher taxes (and to a goverment who has it's priorities right on where to put that money) is NOT WORTH not ever having to worry about saving up money for your kids' college education (and even after that, watching them struggle to pay off the debt), then I don't really understand your way of thinking.
It all boils down to you (and people who think like you) apparently thinking that having higher taxes lowers europeans' acquisitive power, when that couldn't be further from the truth (could someone back me up with some links?). Now, having a huge-ass student-loan debt to pay... I think that would diminish your acquisitive power for quite a number of years.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:4, Insightful)
And due to his increased income potential, he will in turn, subsidize their retirement and health care. Probably a decent investment overall. The only loser is the bank that doesn't get to collect a gadzillion dollars in usury on a loan.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not true. A degree is a requirement for access to lots of different kinds of high-paying jobs, if only because the HR manager has a degree and decides on wages.
Whether a degree is actually useful in day-to-day work, well there I might agree with you.
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Fixed that for you. I have never, ever been asked to provide evidence of any qualification or previous employment.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Informative)
My current employer did a background check that included my high school records. Sadly, the cuniform tablets had crumbled.
Almost every employer will veryify that you in fact worked at each place that you claimed on your resume, and most large companies now have automated systems to facilitate this. Claiming that you worked somewhere that you didn't is a very stupid way to pad your resume.
Just because they're not askinng you for proof means nothing.
And hiring manager (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not true. A degree is a requirement for access to lots of different kinds of high-paying jobs, if only because the HR manager has a degree and decides on wages.
Whether a degree is actually useful in day-to-day work, well there I might agree with you.
and hiring manager....
Two stories:
The first one is about a supervisor I had who felt one must have a college degree to program device drivers. He blew off a really brilliant (I've never worked with a guy since who was that smart - even the PhDs at IBM) guy because he had only a HS diploma.
Second - a bit longer:
There's a company in SE Florida that needed someone to test circuit boards. A two year technical degree was all that was needed: plug board in, read test equipment, note failure.
When they were looking for someone, an EE shows up. They hired him. This guy then takes advantage of the tuition reimbursement and gets a MS EE. He leaves for greener pastures and maybe to actually use his education. Now, they list his job. Guess what? Requirements for thejob: MS EE. A test job. All because this guy got one on the job. They're reasoning? Well, because he got one he must have needed one.
It wouldn't have surprised me if they were one of the companies that said "We can't get any qualified Americans" and eventually hired a H1-b.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Your degree gets you your first job. Your first job gets you your second job and all subsequent. Maybe it's different in non-tech fields, but for me and my hiring decisions in my field (networking infrastructure software and hardware), that's the way it is. Show me your projects, show me your code, show me your references.
Yes it's the first job that gets you the second. But my experience at least is that without what I learned on the degree I wouldn't have done well enough in the first job for it to get me the second. A degree isn't just a piece of paper.
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Yes it's the first job that gets you the second. But my experience at least is that without what I learned on the degree I wouldn't have done well enough in the first job for it to get me the second. A degree isn't just a piece of paper.
The question is did that degree help you get your second job more than the four years of on the job experience helped the other guy get his? Who will be getting the "6/8+ years of experience required ... Senior/Lead blahblah" jobs first?
Maybe the four years I spent in military service instead of college gives me bias but I do believe even four years of on the job experience in the private sector is worth quite a lot. At least I don't see how four years of school can teach someone how to learn any better t
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None of this musing changes the fact that sometimes solving a hard problem requires a deeper or more theoretical understanding of the problem space. One typically doesn't get that kind of understanding from googling for ready-made solutions.
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Indeed. What you need for that is Wolfram Alpha!
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If you also add the opportunity cost of the 4 years of pay and experience which you missed out on the degree looks even less attractive....
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Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta disagree with you. College is NOT a glorified vocational school, even if some people in CS treat it as such.
Any decent college won't claim that the knowledge you gain is worth anything in 5 years. Their purpose is (and should be) teaching some fundamental principles of a particular major discipline (CS, in this case), and, more importantly, a set of attitudes and philosophies that teach you how to teach yourself. In engineering, you know your basic skill set will be obsolete in 5 years (and the Head of our EE dept. told us this before classes even began), so it's more important to get the basic mental framework in place and learn how to learn.
Even at my place of work, some talented high school students could probably be taught how to do the job about as fast and well as college graduates. The difference comes 2 or 3 years down the road. The people most able to keep up with emerging trends and extending their abilities tend to be the ones with degrees. And it tends to be the ones with PhDs or Masters that do better at it. The ones whose skill sets don't seem to expand as quickly or as much do tend to be the ones with less schooling.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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Teaching someone how to learn is like fucking them into a slut. Except not as fun.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Hm. You have a very charming witticism, but I think you're wrong.
You can teach critical thinking, which is a major component in learning how to learn. True, some people are better at it than others, but it can be a skill you pick up. If not, everyone would be born understanding Plato and Wittgenstein.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Teaching someone how to learn is like fucking them into virginity.
The difference between smart (apparently lacking in this thread) and witty (as seen above) is pretty much the same as between an educated person and someone who cuts and pastes C++ source from tutorial.
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Informative)
Operating Systems -- The underlying principles are mostly the same
Algorithms -- New ones are constantly being discovered but the most popular ones have been the same for 30+ years mostly (the undergrad level ones are generally not newer things)...
Networking -- Some changes with wireless but most of the TCP/IP protocol that is taught in undergrad courses is the same
Discrete Math -- Again mostly the same for the past 30 years
Computer Organization -- Mostly this is the same (assuming the course on digital system design/k-maps/binary number systems/etc...)
Some Intro Programming Class -- The underlying concepts apply, although the specific language is changing all the time. Although they are not that different...C#/Java/C++ all imperative languages
The rest is all math (Calculus...not changing, Linear Algebra, etc...) and electives (Compilers, Databases, etc.). A lot of the electives are mostly the same at an undergraduate level. Although there do seem to be more fad of the minute classes, ie iPhone game design or state of the art classes...ie Video Game Design..... But they are in the minority and in 1998-2002 when I was an undergrad they didn't exist...in my school (today they do)
What seems to change hourly are the various libraries/programming language of the day/framework of the day. And my college didn't teach any of those. It focused on the core CS concepts, not specific technologies. Although we did use Oracle/MySQL a bit in database class, we did not learn Oracle/MySQL, we just used it as a vehicle for expressing concepts in class. Programming assignments were mostly straight forward algorithm implementations which just used programming concepts and easily can be ported into any language. We didn't get crazy into C++/Java specific things.
But one of my complaints has been that I really don't use any of that... I use some common sense things from algorithms about linked lists/arrays/hash tables and the various orders of magnitudes of common applications, but mostly I use libraries that implement them. And I knew that stuff before algorithms class. Mostly in business program you are using the STL/Java Library/C# libraries and all the collections are implemented. For building a quick GUI to a database it really doesn't take the advanced math/concepts of a CS program.... Admittedly if you were building video games or working for Google then sure computer architecture and advanced knowledge comes in handy. In a Google phone interview they took everything into consideration, the memory hierarchy, the swap space, disk access times, etc... With a job like that it is good to know the PC to wring out performance... Or video game programming because games are constantly pushing the envelope. But those are the exception, not the rule.
Where I have failed and a lot of companies are failing is that for the first job it is important for a lot of grads to learn how to organize big programs and program with an eye towards maintenance. That is where you really learn how to program (or working on an open source project). Colleges don't teach that. Most assignments are short, maybe 1,000 lines of code or less. Also you usually don't need to maintain them, so you can throw a bunch of garbage together that runs correctly and then wash your hands of it. Implementing a Hash Table, or maybe your own database class that writes to a file is not the same thing as taking over some 10,000 line accounting package....
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Operating Systems -- The underlying principles are mostly the same Algorithms -- New ones are constantly being discovered but the most popular ones have been the same for 30+ years mostly (the undergrad level ones are generally not newer things)... Networking -- Some changes with wireless but most of the TCP/IP protocol that is taught in undergrad courses is the same Discrete Math -- Again mostly the same for the past 30 years Computer Organization -- Mostly this is the same (assuming the course on digital system design/k-maps/binary number systems/etc...)
My experience is that the ability to grasp the complexity of the above areas varies widely but generally the higher the degree, the better one is able to appreciate trends and anticipate them. The above areas only look static to one who hasn't studied them very deeply.
A higher-level degree is not an advanced apprenticeship. It is about knowing what came before and anticipating what's coming next. Someone with a B.S. is likely to think he knows everything. Someone with a Ph.D. is smart enough to know how ignorant he is.
Not everyone needs or should get an advanced degree. But to claim that such degrees are worthless is the height of hubris
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Zoho only writes very basic online office applications. I'd imagine they've got people who know some statistics working on those functions for their spreadsheet, but otherwise we're not talking very advanced programming work. Imagine you're writing a Farmville knockoff, would you hire a PhD or a high school kid?
Google otoh sees themselves on a mission to change the world by making all human knowledge accessible. Ain't so surprising they want PhDs even when just building web applications now is it?
Re:Yay for common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup.. Cue up the people that spent too much for their Masters and PHD clamoring how they are far better than the unwashed masses...
I know high school dropouts that are smarter than some that hold multiple Masters degrees.
I also have met many people that work in a foundry or factory that know far more about engineering than the idiot engineers that the same company hires.
When you are in IT, you get to watch the fun of the engineers that have never assembled the item fight with the guys that actually touch their design and know it's a mess.
Re: (Score:2)
investing in your employees advancement is one of the smartest decisions a business can make.
No degree, bad citizen (Score:5, Insightful)
College is a mix of vocational training (particularly important for some professions) and personal growth in the "learn to be a good citizen" sense. It's socially irresponsible to encourage people cut back on the latter, and being lax on the former results in a lot of "not seeing the big picture" kind of thing. I suppose it might be good for businesses that want to lock their employees into working for them long-term, but it's bad for society.
Re:No degree, bad citizen (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense.
These high school graduates will get much more "learn to be a good citizen" benefits
from merely being encouraged to better themselves on their own time and to travel
outside their little bubble and visit another continent.
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Bull.
University in the United States is not a mix of vocational training and citizenship.
That's what the United States military does, they take someone out of high school and train them up to steer 4 billion dollar warship or "own" a 140 million dollar fighter-bomber in 2-4 years as a maintenance tech. While installing a work ethic and respect for elders, society and other citizens.
I've lived in the dorms with 17-22 year olds and now I live in an apartment complex with a mix of 18-25 year old soldiers and a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would I spit on the military? What they do is necessary.
What university offers is a chance, not a guarantee. A chance that that kid who comes from a small town with evangelical parents might hear some things his town and family didn't plan. A chance that the kid whose family told him that not to be of a particular ethnic group marks someone as inferior. A chance that the kid whose high school science teacher believes in astrology might be exposed to actual science. A chance that the kid raised in a Yesh
Re:No degree, bad citizen (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any data to back up your claim that non-college educated folk are dim-witted drains on society? Or are you just being a douche?
I know a lot of people that have no college at all. Some volunteer at shelters, most have traveled the world extensively, and continue to challenge and learn new things on their own just fine. The difference being is they don't pay some stuffy institution for the privilege.
Attending college doesn't make you better at anything. In fact most people I knew back in college were a bunch of binge drinking twats that hardly turned out to be better citizens.
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Some people manage to make up some or all of the loss on their own. Many people do not. Knowing people in many smaller towns, the ones who didn't get a college degree almost all ended up staying in their home towns, believing almost the same as their parents did, and failing to really understand the world. Among those who went to university, far more (but not all) journeyed in mind and/or body and had a lot more personal growth. Sure, it's possible to waste one's time in university, but many people do not,
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Some people manage to make up some or all of the loss on their own. Many people do not. Knowing people in many smaller towns, the ones who didn't get a college degree almost all ended up staying in their home towns, believing almost the same as their parents did, and failing to really understand the world. Among those who went to university, far more (but not all) journeyed in mind and/or body and had a lot more personal growth. Sure, it's possible to waste one's time in university, but many people do not, and those people are not the sort you'll see drawing attention to themselves with alcohol and misbehaviour.
I don't buy it. Who's to say those people would actually succeed at college? Who's to say they would change their belief structure if they attended college?
I find that recent college graduates almost always share the mutually reinforced views of their social clique, and have no ability to relate to anyone who is of a different age group or has a different worldview.
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In fact most people I knew back in college were a bunch of binge drinking twats that hardly turned out to be better citizens.
You are either your own counter-example or just another binge-drinking twat.
Re:No degree, bad citizen (Score:4, Interesting)
>>Do you have any data to back up your claim that non-college educated folk are dim-witted drains on society? Or are you just being a douche?
In a startup, I took a group of 6 very bright community college guys (active game modders and the like, but no formal training) and taught them technical skills, like programming, sys admin stuff, etc.
Verdict: I'd rather hire people with a four year degree in computer science.
As much as I liked the guys, they just didn't have enough background in computer science to succeed. I'm not in the business of running a four year university to train them, and they had the net effect of increasing my workload instead of decreasing it. Being involved in three other businesses already, I had to scrap the experiment after a half year.
Re:No degree, bad citizen (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe true in general, but most, if not all, of the brightest minds on earth got tired of college and did their own thing for much better results. Heck, I'm not one of the brightest minds on earth and I did the same. I learn better and faster on my own. With a book and an internet connection, I can pick up the basics of almost anything in about a month of spare time. I taught myself C++ basics over the course of a summer when I was 11 mostly out of boredom and curiosity, last time I was in a college CompSci programming class they didn't introduce that much information the whole semester.
College is a good place to learn to learn if you have the ability and haven't yet picked it up, otherwise, it's redundant.
Re:No degree, bad citizen (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel like I say this almost every time a bunch of computer geeks start talking about being entirely self taught: Just be glad that your passion is in a field with a basically zero cost of entry, and hardly any legal liability. The nature of software allows you to prototype, test, and modify your creations in a way that allows you to learn and develop much more quickly and cheaply than most professions.
Those of us who still have real physical aspects to our work are saddled with the fact that physical materials are often unwieldy and expensive, and making mistakes can cost a lot more than time. A good college program will provide you with a physically and legally safer environment in which to make mistakes and learn from them. And hopefully surround you with a wide variety of experienced people who are willing to help you learn from the mistakes they've already made.
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Those of us who still have real physical aspects to our work are saddled with the fact that physical materials are often unwieldy and expensive, and making mistakes can cost a lot more than time. A good college program will provide you with a physically and legally safer environment in which to make mistakes and learn from them. And hopefully surround you with a wide variety of experienced people who are willing to help you learn from the mistakes they've already made.
This is the difference between softare development and "real" engineering - it's not that there isn't real engineering involved in software development (when done right), but you can't practically get into physical engineering without the facilities that a college provides. Of course, that's starting to change thanks to really good modeling software and BitTorrent, but it's understandable why an engineer in a traditional field is skeptical of a self-taught software engineer.
Of course, unless you roll explo
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We have plenty of funding; in fact, the USA enjoys one of the highest funding-per-student levels in the world. We've thrown lots of money at the problem, but throwing money at things doesn't generate results.
Part of the problem is poor teacher pay. How is it that teachers get paid shit, while we have high per-student funding levels: the answer is administration. Administrators are paid handsomely, while their teachers are paid poorly. For some reason, we think following the corporate model (CEO paid mil
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Graduate of the school of hard knocks here.
I've grown personally so much since I quit school. I look at the whole world and its issues way differently. It's very sobering to see how the real world works, and I think that the very insulated and imaginary environment that a classroom creates hinders growth as much as it develops it.
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I would define it as a year's worth of review of junior high and high school material followed by a year's worth of actual new material spread out over three years.
But maybe that's just the schools I've been to.
and 2 very important business traits (Score:3, Insightful)
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Human brains are not fully developed in high school. In university, one is exposed to a variety of ideas as part of general education (apart from one's major(s)). Students rub shoulders with people who believe different things, often have different faiths, are of different races, and have different backgrounds. It's one's only real shot to learn and grow outside the controlled environment of the home or a small town. That's precious.
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I'd rather say slim than none - some rare people really are able to pick up the theoretical foundations on their own. Instruction helps a lot though, and for some types of programming, the theory is not quite as necessary (although it's still very helpful over a career). If someone could read Knuth's works and intelligently discuss them despite a lack of degree, I'd consider them to be part of that small group of people who actually did self-teach themselves enough. (Still leaves the general learning issue
Re:No degree, bad citizen (Score:5, Interesting)
After high school (with AP Comp Sci classes) I joined the military. I became a 4067 (computer programmer) in the USMC. I did my tour and got a good conduct discharge (ie: Good citizen). I joined the ranks of software developer consultants and did pretty well for myself until the market went to complete crap after the .Com blow out. I figured I'd use the down turn in the economy along with my GI Bill and veterans benefits to go get a degree and make myself more marketable.
Picked up a Comp Sci Assoc first and followed it up with a double load BSIT and BSTM program.
All in all, I learned virtually nothing about writing code in college. I learned a lot about working with other people and many of the soft skills that go along with coding. But at that point, even the highest level programming classes at the school were child's play.
Point being, you can get excellent programmers from high school graduates, but their soft skills are likely going to be horrendous. If that's fine for your environment, then go for it. But realize that what you are getting is a junior coder, not a senior developer.
Then again, most high school kids picking up high tech jobs (in my experience) are freaking sponges. They suck up every bit of knowledge they get exposed too. College grads, especially the ones from more prestigious institutions, constantly rebut and argue against the tried and true. Any time I hear, "My professor said..." it makes me want to vomit.
-Rick
Re:No degree, bad citizen (Score:4, Informative)
Last I heard, the USMC had disbanded the 4067 field, and has since moved all programming requirements to out sourcing companies like MCI and other major military contract players.
The USMC's Comp Sci training was a 8+ hour/day 8+ week crash course. Everyone in the room was a GT110 or better, so the pace was decently fast, but I wouldn't have claimed it to be anything like a university experience. It was effectively like cramming 2-3 tech college style CS course classes into every single day.
-Rick
Horrible idea, for both parties (Score:2, Insightful)
The company gets crappy code written by people who understand the syntax of the language, but has no deep understanding of algorithms or data structures. They might think they know what they're doing, but having been at that point myself once, they really don't.
The workers end up not really knowing their craft, and have a much harder time getting their next job without a degree.
The only winner here is management, who makes a quick profit off bonuses for cutting costs so much, and don't need to worry about
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This could be done right. But you will need a mix of those who know and those who dont. Like what other types of work do such as electricians, plumbers, carpenters...
When I was hired out of college my first boss pulled me to the side and said "your *REAL* study begins now, you have the theory but none of the knowhow". He was right, it was also why I got paid very little. However, as you rightly point out you can have tons of knowhow but none of the theory. Which is just as bad. You want the master/app
Re: (Score:2)
Where exactly do you get the notion that people are still learning to write real algorithms in university ? Sure they get shown the result of algorithms. They might even get to implement a binary tree search algorithm (though without the memory allocation part that makes all the difference in real programming). But that's pretty much it.
The days of getting 2 years of education with only Maths + Scheme and C with at least 2 hours per day spent programming are over. Long over. I don't think these kids will be
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, I don't know... coming from an environment where there are lots of well-degree'd coders writing crap code and doing stupid things with computer systems, I can see why there's a backlash. Many of my magnet high school friends did great academically in high school, but floundered in college for several years, despite being very clever coders. CS education in particular was crammed with weed-out classes and poorly-arranged "team" projects where most of the effort had to be carried by the 1-2 competent se
Why else might he want high schoolers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any other reason? Perhaps they are a bit cheaper?
I do think he has a point that a degree in anything doesn't mean you're going to be any good, and I learned a heck of a lot of programming back in the 80's on my own, in my basement.
But, the motive here seems to be cost, not anything else.
And Zoho products show it. They are poor quality knock-offs of other, more commercially popular packages.
The are the Rodger Corman of software.
(Apologies to Mr Corman)
Re:Why else might he want high schoolers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Find the cheapest workers possible who can accomplish a given task.
Hire them.
Run spin control to make it look like you're doing it For The Good Of Humanity.
Re:Why else might he want high schoolers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bring Back Apprenticeships (Score:4, Insightful)
What if we took kids after high school? (Score:2)
That is how I started. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Funny story, my grandfather was an electrical engineer and did a lot of design stuff for a big aluminum smelting company on the west coast. He decided to teach me to code at the tender age of 6, and I really took to it. I kept teaching myself right through high school (QBasic, VBasic, PHP, Java, C/C++, C#, ASM (using debug, not pansy NASM junk)) and decided to go to college for CS. I flunked out after the first year of doing idiotic crap in ADA.
Joined the military, now I'm back at university (BE in EE) with
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
These stories invariably arouse the collective insecurities of the Slashdottosphere. Forgive me for indulging mine.
Your web app is "highly profitable." Means nothing, except that it can call a library to open up an SSL socket to a credit card gateway. It doesn't mean it required skill to code, that it provides a great end user experience, that it's robust or scalable. Without more information, I'm left suspecting that you may be taking credit for your marketing department's efforts.
As for your ability t
I spot a slight flaw (Score:5, Interesting)
The students are taught very little theory, avoiding computer science altogether.
Yes there are many things you can do in programming without a formal education, and I'm all for rewarding people who want to make an effort. But by not studying theory they are missing out on all those giants whose shoulders they could be standing on. This will lead to wasted effort as they reinvent everything from the wheel to Unix badly.
Why not? Take a look at the game industry. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's full of self-taught, degree-free programmers who learned on the job... just like what this bozo wants. It also kills two out of every three projects that it starts. Job security is terrible. Much of the code is unmaintainable. Software engineering discipline is regarded as a waste of time for bureaucratic wusses.
Teaching people on the job means they make their costly, disastrous mistakes on the job instead of making them in college, where nobody gets hurt.
Re:Why not? Take a look at the game industry. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, the game industry thrives on just-out-of-college developers, or technically-interns-but-not-going-back.
You've all seen the articles, they burn through developers like mad. They need the young and inexperienced because they don't complain when they make 1/3 of industry average for 2x the hours and no job security. There are only a few senior members that stay on. The 'complex' parts of the program are bought from middlewear or game engine companies or developed by their seniors. The tailoring - that's left to the newbies. I got to see the team for one of the cookie-cutter Madden-20xx games, and 80% of them appeared within a year of 20.
You hire young, keep the price and expectations low, train em how you want, and ditch them as soon as they become too expensive, or you can find another kid who costs less.
Turn it around (Score:5, Insightful)
Would Google's index (and infrastructure) be as good as it is if they relied on high schoolers?
Umm...no.
Non-cookie cutter programming requires serious, well-educated people.
Re: (Score:2)
It might not be any better without PhD's, but then again, they might actually have a product that's not eternally in Beta, either.
Re: (Score:2)
The crafts
Re: (Score:2)
Non-cookie cutter programing relies on thinking "outside the box", and the knowledge to carry out the idea.
I have met several people who, as summer interns, had really interesting and innovative ideas. Many where impractical in real world applications but they had a spark that made them ask "what if
They would shoot down any new
good programmers? sure? Good software engineers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope.
Programming isn't that hard. I began at the age of 8 myself. You can go from zero to a hacking code monkey in a month, and from there to a decent programmer in 6 months if you are willing to learn.
But when it comes to the hard problems: design, algorithms, efficiency; most everyone is going to need a broad spectrum of formal education to be able to handle that properly.
Re:good programmers? sure? Good software engineers (Score:2)
We follow a similar strategy only at the college level. I have degrees in international business and german, but spent the last 10 - 12 years doing systems work. Roughly half was systems admin, the other half systems integration. I know enough programming that I could get the job done and build something that worked. The company I now run, I wrote the initial the two versions of the software myself. But we started hiring CS & ECE students as interns first and then some full time when they graduated
How about looking tech school not dropping resumes (Score:2)
How about looking tech schools not dropping resumes from people who when to them they tech stuff that uses in the real work places vs the big schools that some are more about sports then classes also they have less filler classes that have little to no use in the work place that most IP people / codes are in.
Re:How about looking tech school not dropping resu (Score:5, Funny)
How about looking tech schools not dropping resumes from people who when to them they tech stuff that uses in the real work places vs the big schools that some are more about sports then classes also they have less filler classes that have little to no use in the work place that most IP people / codes are in.
How about hiring people who can construct sentences that make some fucking sense?
Good god man, this is the Internet in 2010 not a telegram in 1910. There isn't an extra charge for punctuation.
1 trick ponies. (Score:5, Insightful)
With almost no computer science and a disdain for math, these guys will fit right in with the majority of the programming workforce, probably on par with a technical college grad (and perhaps myself) in coding ability. However, in my experience, I have seen very little correlation between raw ability to code and the success of projects. Zoho better have some kickass business analysts and project managers for these coders.
I have seen masters for help desktop level 1 that (Score:2)
I have seen masters for help desktop level 1 that is way over the top even 2 years with tech schools being passed over is way to high.
Same thing with jobs hoppers and people who have been out work for more then 3-6 months. I thing that HR is to stuck in the old ways doing things and today high cost of school / hard to find jobs. Also places don't like to hire people who been in the work place for a long time for low level jobs.
Yeah, maybe (Score:2, Interesting)
This might work. This might not work. One thing, though, is clear from Google's example: hiring a huge number of incredibly well-educated people does, apparently, also work.
My two Google friends are both motherfucking good programmers. I was in college and asked one of them his strategy for handling exceptions in his code. He shrugged and said, without any sense of irony whatsoever, "I don't really know how to handle exceptions. I find it easier to just write code without any bugs in it."
For almost anyone e
Re:Yeah, maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I rather have someone working with me that is an average developer who does their best to write bug free code, but deals with unexpected situations than one who thinks they're smart enough to forsee every possible outcome during code execution.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
He must be one of the guys that thought that building an entirely new computer language without exceptions (Google Go, for a name that doesn't Google) was a good idea too.
Oh, how I love code that is written like this:
boolean ok = true;
if (!someMethod()) {
ok = false;
}
if (ok && !someOtherMethod() {
ok = false;
}
return ok;
Now you've got rid of all the exceptions. Oh, but the method calls are hidden within if statements, and although you have a single return at the end, the *
Just like the old days (Score:4, Insightful)
This actually isn't new... it's a return to the classic "apprenticeship" model. I think it's a great idea.
Consider the benefits. It's all real-world experience, learning how things actually operate and how they are actually used. The modern academia "ivory tower" model, in which people with no industry experience are teaching students only a small portion of what they need to know, isn't serving the industry particularly well. There is also the issue that college/university these days seems to be at least as much about political indoctrination as job skills, but that's another discussion.
Additionally, the instruction in the apprenticeship model is much, much more effective. The mentor-to-apprentice ratio is far better than the teacher-top-student ratio, and the instruction is always what the apprentice needs (you're not going at the least-common-denominator pace, time isn't wasted on rehashing things you already know, you can ask questions as they arise, and you can't hide what you don't know behind standardized Scan-Tron style tests). As a result, the apprentice learns much more quickly, and will become a seasoned veteran in less time.
The one hazard I see is that there is the potential to lowball the apprentices on pay. At the very least, a conventionally-trained college grad has demonstrated they have what it takes to make a four-year plan and get it done in... um... let's call it five years. They aren't going to settle for minimum wage (except in the video game industry), and they aren't going to pull down the average wage for others (again, except in the video game industry). The potential does exist for these issues arising, but it's by no means certain that they WILL arise, and if an employer gets a rep for either turning out ill-trained apprentices or for being an exploitative sweatshop that leverages the naivete of an 18-year-old (sorry, if you're 18 you're a rookie no matter who you are or what grades you got), that employer is going to get blackballed by the rest of us real quick-like.
I do hope Zoho's approach succeeds and gains traction.
Haven't ever seen this work (Score:2)
People with little or no formal education in programming can very well be capable of programming whatever tools you need, but they are much less likely to be able to do it well. Before I took any classes in programming, all I knew how to do was make things work for myself. That didn't mean they were secure, and that didn't mean they were optimal or user-friendly. They just accomplished a single task, and it took me much longer to create those tools than it would take me now.
This is only kind of rela
Finally (Score:4, Interesting)
After some 15 years in the industry one thing is amazingly clear; Formal computer science education is more of a warning sign then a merit badge.
The vast majority of people I've worked with that actually had a CS degree have been inept to put it kindly. Regardless of experience, if they went to college for computers chances are good they have trouble wiping their own ass. While I've worked with a few very notable exceptions, the rule still firmly stands. Maybe it's because I'm a product of the dot.com boom, but most people that get a CS degree did it purely for the money and not at all because they had a talent or interest in computers.
The one unifying trait in good, practical computer professionals is an aptitude for music. Pretty much all played an instrument and most still regularly do. Any college degree they have tends to be in something random that interested them, like sociology, if they have a degree at all.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree about the music. I think everything else you said was horseshit (and I say that as someone who matched your profile - my degree was EE - who programmed for twenty years and has been managing programmers for the last twenty). Those of us who were not formally trained in CS and succeeded in the software world learned material that was the equivalent of a CS degree. I took my own time to study algorithms, data structures, compilers, databases, complexity theory, programming language theory, project management, and other topics that a well-rounded software engineer should know. It would have been a lot easier if I had done this in college, rather than studying transistors, amplifiers, power systems, and antenna theory. However, I got into programming via the electronic CAD field and I needed to become a good software engineer, too, so I learned the other stuff on my own.
I've worked with plenty of folks who had CS degrees and they did fine. I've also worked with plenty of folks (sometimes CS trained and sometimes not) who were idiots. In general, a CS degree was not sufficient to show quality, but neither was there any indication that it marked the bearer as deficient. However, it usually meant that when I asked them why they didn't use a hash table, they were able to understand what I was talking about and usually were able give me a good reason for it. But then, maybe I was programming in fields where you actually needed to know this material. I guess if you were hacking Perl scripts for some craptacular website, you wouldn't need to know any of this stuff - the site you built wouldn't scale, but then, chances are you wouldn't ever have been successful enough for it to need to anyway.
This seems quite risky... (Score:2)
Hiring PhDs for programmers? (Score:2)
Only an idiot would hire a PhD for a programming job. PhDs are research scientists.
Am I the only one... (Score:4, Insightful)
What the .... ? (Score:2, Insightful)
These guys need to consider their own future (Score:5, Interesting)
Hiring coders out of high school may very well work for some projects, and those kids may be happy to have a "real job". But in the long run the joke will be on them. Unless they plan to spend the rest of their life in that company (unlikely, as they seem intent on using a cheap supply of fresh young kids) they will find that most projects do appreciate (and need) a bit more education. Back to school for them, and not at the time when it's most convenient - it's hard to go back.
On the specific issue of coding vs. education. 20 years ago I started working as a software developer full time before I had any education above high school. I did some useful things that seemed "cool" then and worked out well enough for my employers. 20 years forward and two masters degrees later (Comp. Eng and Comp.Sc./Infosec) I can see that I am by far a better engineer (and coder too, but that's almost secondary), in part due to all the experience and in part due to education. I would have never been able to do what I do now without additional years of studying.
YMMV
Not high school graduates (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd prefer English majors. Then I'd teach them to program. I find communication is easier.
Programming is a craft (Score:4, Interesting)
Most programmers don't have a CS degree (Score:3, Interesting)
I've worked with god awful programmers, and a few excellent ones. My conclusion is that the majority of programmer graduates of elite schools are very good; but the reason is probably that their degree affords them plenty of choices of career, and they would have no reason to stick to programming if they didn't excel in it.
There's another problem, though, and it hasn't got much to do with the reputation of their alma mater, but the vast majority of programmers did not study CS. I didn't (and I'm a sysadmin anyway) but I tried to educate myself in theoretical stuff. Take for instance compiler theory; formal grammars and what not. Most programmers I've worked with have absolutely no idea what the fuck it is. The result is brain dead regex-only based parsers full of glaring bugs. The other day I discovered that a piece of software I had been delivered stored financial transaction amounts in floats. I dare to advance that no CS graduate who didn't get his degree from a diploma mill would commit such a sin. But here the self-taught developer looked at me as if I was nitpicking.
Is this a show for the shareholders? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can teach them to use iterators, to use hardcore object-orientation, derive classes, overload streams etc.
but to be really good, you need profound knowledge about thread-synchronisation, discrete math (esp. graphtheory), automatatheory, and complexity classes, because without these, you will unavoidably code shit!
your programs will be slow:
you will use backtracking (exponential running time) for polynomial problems (e.g. problems related to matching- or network-cut problems). You will not use branching-vector minimization or kernelizations (you won't even understand why you should use those and your programs for NP-complete problems will be to slow to actually use them and you won't even be able to recognize these problems). Hell, you won't even be able to understand why polynomial running time is good and exponential running time is bad...
your programs will have race conditions and mutual-exclusion problems
or don't you want to benefit from any further processor-developments? processor development means more cores at the same speed nowadays, so you need multithreadding or you are stuck at using one core (which will not improve speed anymore)
you won't model parsers as (pushdown-)automata and you will NEVER be remotely able to know whether your program is reliable (whether it works for all inputs)
you won't be able to distinguish a fast program from a slow program, so you won't even know the quality of your programs.
My wife works at a software company's support hotline today and just ask her: bazillions of problems with all programs except those from the graduate computer scientists...
If you really think that ALL major software companies pay so much just for fun, then you are out of your mind! They just know and value how much more quality you get out of graduate computer scientists.
IMHO this guy just tries to make "we are nearly broke and can't afford good programmers anymore" sound good to the shareholders...
PhD vs BA, vs high school (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as me, college basically added some advanced math and a broad overview of computer science. But do I actually use any of that on the job? No. Basically I use high school algebra and the same basic loop structures you could get from Teach yourself C# in 20 days or something. I taught myself SQL as a freshman in college for a summer internship, and in both my undergrad and graduate database jobs the SQL was much less advanced than what I did on my own. In college I have not met a program that I couldn't do. They mostly consist of stringing together a few algorithms to do this or that based on concepts learned in class. On the job you don't even code the algorithms, you use the collection libraries (C++/Java/C#/Almost all the scripting languages have these...). Most of it is about taking the business rules, and converting it to code with loops, conditionals, etc... I could do all this after high school (because I learned C on my own to fiddle with a MUD).....
Anyway once I finish my Masters I hope to find one of those few jobs that actually uses at least a Bachelors level of computer science education..... In some places there are a few senior guys who do the interesting work and then all the normal guys end up using their libraries... In others it is all just business applications to link to files/database and it is all about the business rules. And then there is Google where the company is on the bleeding edge in many things... Or even Microsoft, although I think the windows kernel would be a nightmare to touch... And office as well.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure I'd call a majority of the coding that takes place on the planet engineering.
More like plumbing.
That includes most of the stuff done by degreed "computer scientists" working in industry, and it's not necessarily because they're incompetent (though it's often a factor) but because the work simply isn't engineering work; it's plumbing.