There really needs to be a trade school for software engineering. Not just a short boot camp, either. A rigorous 4 year degree that focuses on industry relevant skills and hands-on projects.
The biggest reason I got my 1st job out of college at Cloudflare was because I worked on a lot of personal projects and self learned Go and got experience with Postgres, Redis, and basic frontend. These things were not, or barely covered in my CS degree. No wonder new grads nowadays are struggling to get jobs. Schools aren't preparing them well for jobs.
It would depend on the course load. Learning languages and how to use them can easily be encapsulated in capstone, software engineering projects, & internships. The goal of a CS degree, as opposed to a bootcamp, is for students to fully understand in intimate detail the background , history, ethics, & the 5 whys of the tool that they’re using. The way I would design a CS degree is:
1. for the first two years to be about general computing with an intro to programming via Java, Typescript, Python, & Go.
2. by the end of the 2nd year Data Structures and Algorithms should be mastered
3. Third year is for tracks , whether frontend, backend, full stack, Theory.
4. Fourth year is capstone project or internship
When I went to a US university in the 90s there was even more extracurricular work needed than now, from my anecdata. I didn't even have any kind of group capstone project. It was understood that the framework college provided was the bare minimum and you needed to push yourself to stand out. And I did, and landed internships, and had no trouble getting hired. Lots of students do the minimum and/or use LLMs to do the work and they have trouble getting jobs for sure. The ones who push and use the school as a springboard get hired even in this downturn.
Some countries like Austria have a school type that combines high school with vocational training [1]. It's five years instead of the regular four-year high school there, but you start with 5h/weeks of C programming and write your own linked list implementation at the end of year one. They have similar schools for other vocations, not just software engineering (everything from construction to chemical engineering and accounting). At the end you graduate with a high school diploma that later also enables you to go to college, if you so choose, but gives you enough skills to get hired by industry.
They got a CS degree. Maybe we should have a degree for practical engineering prep, but the subject matter as organized is very beautiful and should not go away just to help people catch up to building apps in Java or whatever.
They have this where I live and it's great for pumping out web developer and generic C#/Java CRUD dudes. And to be fair, 90% of the work here is doable with their skills. It's just fucking wild talking to one and they have zero clue about theory or advanced algorithms the rare time it does come up at work. Like a deer in headlights blank stare sort of situation
Are trade schools four years now? When I was pursuing auto tech it was a two year program. I thought the benefit of vocational programs was the ability to be compressed because they don’t include the breadth of topics of a full undergraduate degree.
It's easier to get a training for those tech (that change all the time) on the job. It's harder to get the CS fundamentals later. Functional programming, type theory, etc are all very important and they are taught in CS schools
We run one in India (kalvium.com). The key differentiation is to being real world work for students for upto 6 semesters, leading to extended hands on learning.
> because I worked on a lot of personal projects and self learned Go and got experience with Postgres, Redis, and basic frontend.
Do you think you would have been able to do that project to the same caliber and as fast had you not had your degree?
> These things were not, or barely covered in my CS degree.
The degree isn't there to teach you a specific technology. Those come and go. Some people will work on web like you while others will work on games, graphics, machine learning, databases, languages, or other things. The degree is to teach you the generalized principles that all these things share so that you can learn the specifics you want. They try to cover a broad base to give you exposure because you likely don't know what you want to do or what you like until you get some exposure. That broad base also makes you more effective working with those other niches.
The degree isn't to teach you a niche, it is to make it effective in the broad field.
> No wonder new grads nowadays are struggling to get jobs. Schools aren't preparing them well for jobs.
What do you expect to be taught in only 4 years? Maybe you learned Postgres and Redis in the summer but I'm certain you wouldn't have learned it that fast had you not had other programming experience. It's not hard to learn one language once you already know another. Especially if that other language is low level or "mid" (like C/C++ or Java)[0]. The skills transfer even if the specifics aren't identical.
The problem is tragedy of the commons.
We question why train a junior if they're just going to leave instead of questioning why they will leave. We laugh at someone not "negotiating good enough" or hiring new employees at higher wages than we'll offer in raises.
We believe a new senior will be more effective out the gate than a mid level engineer with years of experience in the codebase. We act like institutional knowledge is meaningless. The senior might solve more jira tickets but their lack of institutional knowledge may lead to more being created and more complicated code that isn't leveraging existing libraries.
We act like training juniors isn't a shared community cost that builds a pipeline that we all rely on. Sure, maybe Google trains a junior that leaves for Apple, but Apple trains a junior that leaves for Google. Those costs balance out.
Juniors are having a hard time getting jobs because we've become myopic. We've created the richest companies ever but have become incredibly stingy. We care much more about the quarter than the decade. The customers became the shareholders instead of those buying the things we sell. We spend pounds to save pennies.
[0] it feels weird to call C "high level" in the days of interpreted languages and no memory management
it is not “engineering” - calling software development “engineering” is the craziest thing we’ve been able to squeeze through as an industry.
trade school won’t help here and 4 (even 8) year degree won’t help. at 4 years by the time you finish sh*t you learned the first year are obsolete. and everyone needs to spare us “the fundamentals” as that doesn’t exist - in my 3 decades in the industry the absolute worst colleagues were once with solid fundamentals (knows all of theory, can’t get any work done…)
> it is not “engineering” - calling software development “engineering” is the craziest thing we’ve been able to squeeze through as an industry.
Even ignoring the 'craziest thing' hyperbole in light of an industry that gave the whole planet depression and anxiety to increase 'engagement' how could you possibly defend this position?
Definition of engineering:
> The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems.
> why don't the kids themselves have the right to vote?
"Cortical white matter increases from childhood (~9 years) to adolescence (~14 years)," while "cortical grey matter development peaks at ~12 years of age in the frontal and parietal cortices, and 14–16 years in the temporal lobes" [1].
The latter processes emotions and language [2]. Its myelination continues significantly through at least 17 years old [3], through one's mid twenties.
Similar to the Apple CEO who said who needs a degree. Meantime he has an MBA from Duke, and BS in Industrial Engineering from Auburn, not an absolute top school but a very good one.
You're asking the wrong question. Even if they do recognize the benefits they received from college education, it doesn't mean they want to share those benefits with others. These people have made it abundantly clear on many occasions that they hate sharing, and even more so when it comes to sharing access to quality education.
they are looking for cheapest labor they can squeeze out. I am highly educated with 30 years in, won’t answer an email under $250/hr. my neighbour coming out of HS will work for $20/hr
I had an internship at HP when I was 16. I probably wasn't particularly useful, but I learned a lot about how the corporate world works. I'm glad I didn't have to wait until I was 18 to figure that out, and get on the right course for my education and career.
One of my high-school friends went to college for a teaching credential, only to learn at the end that he didn't like teaching.
College or not, it's extremely useful to be exposed to a field of work for at least a few months, before dedicating years if your life to it.
In defense of foobarian AFAIK driver code is famously the lowest quality code of just about any domain, even worse than academic code. The software is written by cost cutting hardware companies.
Visit Phnom Penh (its not pleasant), visit the killing fields and the prisons. There are pictures of the child soldiers that were authorities at prisons, encouraged to report on adults and punish.
My first job was a dotcom startup who heard via social connections I was a bright high school student who could program. I think I was paid $15/hr to write Windows GUI code. In retrospect I think they were just happy for the cheap labor and I didn’t know any better. There was no mentorship or any other useful growth to make up for the low pay.
On the other hand, you were probably also learning on the job, which meant they were paying you to learn. Not a bad arrangement, especially if they did not demand senior-level code from you.
I was also fortunate to get paid to learn web development in the 90s. This was a work-study job so I was barely paid anything (I think it was something like $100/wk). But I was thrilled to be given a computer in an air-conditioned office. The alternative was to do some other dumb work-study job like making sure students swiped their meal plan cards when they walked into the cafeteria. Although it took me awhile, that job is what set me on the path I’m still on now.
It's an Alex Karp pet project that is less of an apprenticeship or professional skills program and more of a mini-uATX [0] style "great books" program [1].
Apprenticeship programs have value, but how this Palantir program is structured clearly isn't providing the technical chops needed, and is just an ideological bootcamp
Finally, if Palantir wanted, they could always just recruit from a more diverse set of universities or create a hiring pipeline out of community colleges. Yet Palantir is notorious about only interviewing and hiring candidates from high prestige programs.
Readit News
The biggest reason I got my 1st job out of college at Cloudflare was because I worked on a lot of personal projects and self learned Go and got experience with Postgres, Redis, and basic frontend. These things were not, or barely covered in my CS degree. No wonder new grads nowadays are struggling to get jobs. Schools aren't preparing them well for jobs.
1. for the first two years to be about general computing with an intro to programming via Java, Typescript, Python, & Go. 2. by the end of the 2nd year Data Structures and Algorithms should be mastered 3. Third year is for tracks , whether frontend, backend, full stack, Theory. 4. Fourth year is capstone project or internship
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Höhere_Technische_Lehranstalt
Deleted Comment
The degree isn't to teach you a niche, it is to make it effective in the broad field.
What do you expect to be taught in only 4 years? Maybe you learned Postgres and Redis in the summer but I'm certain you wouldn't have learned it that fast had you not had other programming experience. It's not hard to learn one language once you already know another. Especially if that other language is low level or "mid" (like C/C++ or Java)[0]. The skills transfer even if the specifics aren't identical.The problem is tragedy of the commons.
We question why train a junior if they're just going to leave instead of questioning why they will leave. We laugh at someone not "negotiating good enough" or hiring new employees at higher wages than we'll offer in raises.
We believe a new senior will be more effective out the gate than a mid level engineer with years of experience in the codebase. We act like institutional knowledge is meaningless. The senior might solve more jira tickets but their lack of institutional knowledge may lead to more being created and more complicated code that isn't leveraging existing libraries.
We act like training juniors isn't a shared community cost that builds a pipeline that we all rely on. Sure, maybe Google trains a junior that leaves for Apple, but Apple trains a junior that leaves for Google. Those costs balance out.
Juniors are having a hard time getting jobs because we've become myopic. We've created the richest companies ever but have become incredibly stingy. We care much more about the quarter than the decade. The customers became the shareholders instead of those buying the things we sell. We spend pounds to save pennies.
[0] it feels weird to call C "high level" in the days of interpreted languages and no memory management
trade school won’t help here and 4 (even 8) year degree won’t help. at 4 years by the time you finish sh*t you learned the first year are obsolete. and everyone needs to spare us “the fundamentals” as that doesn’t exist - in my 3 decades in the industry the absolute worst colleagues were once with solid fundamentals (knows all of theory, can’t get any work done…)
Even ignoring the 'craziest thing' hyperbole in light of an industry that gave the whole planet depression and anxiety to increase 'engagement' how could you possibly defend this position?
Definition of engineering:
> The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems.
Yup. Do all of that on the daily.
Dead Comment
I registered to vote when I was still in high school.
For example, why don't the kids themselves have the right to vote?
"Cortical white matter increases from childhood (~9 years) to adolescence (~14 years)," while "cortical grey matter development peaks at ~12 years of age in the frontal and parietal cortices, and 14–16 years in the temporal lobes" [1].
The latter processes emotions and language [2]. Its myelination continues significantly through at least 17 years old [3], through one's mid twenties.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain_development_timeli...
[2] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/16799-temporal-lo...
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33359342/#&gid=article-figur...
Four out of the five top executives of Palantir earned degrees from top 10 US universities.
One of my high-school friends went to college for a teaching credential, only to learn at the end that he didn't like teaching.
College or not, it's extremely useful to be exposed to a field of work for at least a few months, before dedicating years if your life to it.
> working on drivers
Yup, checks out :-D
Visit Phnom Penh (its not pleasant), visit the killing fields and the prisons. There are pictures of the child soldiers that were authorities at prisons, encouraged to report on adults and punish.
I was also fortunate to get paid to learn web development in the 90s. This was a work-study job so I was barely paid anything (I think it was something like $100/wk). But I was thrilled to be given a computer in an air-conditioned office. The alternative was to do some other dumb work-study job like making sure students swiped their meal plan cards when they walked into the cafeteria. Although it took me awhile, that job is what set me on the path I’m still on now.
Apprenticeship programs have value, but how this Palantir program is structured clearly isn't providing the technical chops needed, and is just an ideological bootcamp
Finally, if Palantir wanted, they could always just recruit from a more diverse set of universities or create a hiring pipeline out of community colleges. Yet Palantir is notorious about only interviewing and hiring candidates from high prestige programs.
[0] - https://uatx.substack.com/p/this-is-why-we-built-uatx
[1] - https://americanmind.org/salvo/great-books-is-for-losers/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12211296