Mostly the human factor in working in IT. It shows you have to manage systems and the larger concepts so that you can keep yourself up-to-date, but they don’t prepare you for how bad some people can be.
IT, at almost every level and position, is 50% psychology, 40% reading, and 10% working with technology.
Honestly, I think it would be better if we had actual trained councilors / therapists to take some tickets, maybe as a different department that was trained on taking or working with the same ticketing system but also handling confidentiality correctly. The people who contact IT just to talk or to bitch about the current state of the world as seen through a technology lens, or those who are overstressed about tech… I’m not really a people person, I’m a tech person, hence why I didn’t go into social services or the like.
Meetings, managing email/chat, valuing the team over your personal grade where all shocks when I first started.
Working a deckade in retail prepared me for that.
Like… Literally any of it. I’m a software engineer and my degree didn’t have anything to do with software or engineering.
I’d have to really stretch to something like “time management” or “active listening” to find any connection, lol.
Computer Science was great dont get me wrong, but I totally agree. Comp Sci helped with some of the basics, but didnt prepare you at all on the soft skills that get you ahead, nor why task management, version control, and other such concepts are so important.
I can’t believe in my comp sci course they never went over git. Like cmon that’s core to software development these days.
It’s a little unfair to criticise a CS course for not being a SWE course. But I agree that graduating students in CS without having covered the basic requirements in the SWE day job most of them will move into is a disservice.
I did CS (30 years ago) and things entirely missing in the syllabus back then:
- any and all soft skills
- version control
- refactoring
- testing and the value of testing
- staging and replicated environments for raw dev, QA, live, etc
Totally agree! git is a standard for a reason.
It never fails too how many times I have to teach jr devs git right off the bat. Its just weird enough to require a little bit of handholding when they start.
It doesn’t require university level study to understand. You took Comp Sci, not applied software development. If you can pass Comp Sci, you should be able to use a system like git without it having been part of a tertiary level curriculum.
it doesnt require university level study to understand
Yeah you can learn it outside of uni but I could say the same for anything in that course. Students wouldn’t know they need to learn it because they haven’t worked in the industry.
During the course you are doing projects with multiple people. Looking back it would have been a great place to introduce version control.
If you were to study version control in a comp sci degree, you would study the way it’s implemented, not how to use it. The data models for how to store and access repositories of many files with many changes is interesting, and can have different aspects depending on if it is text content or binary. Is it optimal to store each file as an aggregate of its diffs, no matter how many. Should there be snapshot points, etc?
Those are the aspects of version control that belong in tertiary level computer science. Learning how to use “git add” and “git push” don’t.
Teaching about version control would be preferable to a singular tool. Git wasn’t always the #1 tool nor will it be forever, & there are some great tools pushing against Git as we speak which will be great for all of us when something truly better usurps—like Subversion, the former king. Training on a singular tool is like learning Microsoft Word instead of document processing where the broader concepts are more valuable for your career as you understand not just how but why.
Personally I had a lot of fun giving darcs & Pijul fair shakes in 2023 to understand what makes the patch theory cool to work with. You could probably do a whole course on VCSs & their models since you are correct that they are rather integral to real world teams & projects.
My comp sci course used SVN.
There was one tutor who used git on their course though, albeit via GitHub Classroom so that was probably more a convenience thing
My university created an entirely new school because while the computer science graduates could do computer science they couldn’t write an email or contribute to a meeting.
It’s crazy that someone can go through college for comp sci and never touch things like VSC or PuTTY until they’re in the workforce.
Meanwhile a programming boot camp or IT Security Analyst boot camp will have you digging into the tools of the trade immediately.
Heh yeah. Lots of fresh grads don’t even really know anything about application development. Like they have a handful of sorting algorithms memorised and can explain what a compiler does (and are thinking about writing one some day) but can’t actually build anything.
Often, they can pick it up quickly, whatever the “it” is… But it doesn’t give them that much of a head start compared to someone who did a shorter program or self-taught.
I’ve never used PuTTY either, tbh… Is that just what Windows users use for SSH stuff?
Not anymore, it’s a terminal emulator but most have transitioned to just using Poweshell to SSH into things. I like multi-tabbed putty and use it heavily when configuring network appliances.
It’s also not a Windows thing lol you can install it natively in Debian, Fedora, and Arch that I know of with the basic package manager of each.
Oh lol TIL. I just read “PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform” on putty.org.
I wonder how many of the people I work with have used it before. Maybe I’m an outlier for never encountering it.
How did you become one? Every job description I’ve seen says it requires like a friggin doctorate or some shit. Lol.
I dunno, most of the job descriptions I see say something like “a relevant degree or equivalent experience…” And lots of places don’t even list an educational requirement, at least for more senior roles.
I basically self-taught while I was working in a different field, and then eventually found a bootcamp with a good alumni network and career placement services. Once you get a little bit of experience, it starts to snowball, but getting that first opportunity (or first few) can be a steep hill to climb.
Oh, and you gotta be pretty good at building software too, of course, but not as good as you’d think to get going-- Most of your learning is on the job, regardless of what educational path you take. In that respect, most go-getters with some diligence and aptitude can exceed the capabilities of a typical compsci grad inside of a year, I’d say.
There will always be employers who think the degree is really important, and there will be roles where it actually is… But plenty just want evidence that you can do the job well.
You just apply anyway.
Usually they’re not willing to pay anywhere close to doctorate money for doctorates anyway, and will end up settling no matter who they pick.
I’m not sure if i’ve ever known any engineer who has met the listed job requirements for their role. They say requirements, but what they mean is “this is my ideal”. Put another way: think of it like a dating app profile. dude may act like he only dates 10s in his profile, but you show him some attention and suddenly you’re just as good as a 10, because he’s lonely and needs affection from someone.
Basically, for most companies, they’re essentially the corporate version of incels. Way too high of standards, but will settle for anyone who is into them regardless of what they think their standards are, because they just need someone ASAP, and their standards disappear quickly once you make yourself available.
I’ve enjoyed a 20+ year long career as a programmer, and I dropped out of college 3 months in because i couldn’t afford it. That’s because early in my career i took a few shitty jobs until i had a decent enough resume that i didn’t have to take shitty jobs anymore. That took study and practice and passion in programming, but i did that for fun years before i even showed up on the university doorstep.
Same except i dropped out of college 3 months in and have enjoyed a healthy career for the last 20 years anyway.
Most of it. I went to college for Funeral Directing. School will tell you it’s an ancient and honourable job of serving people in a time of need. 50% of school is learning “the art” of embalming and the other 50% is rules and regulations.
In real life, embalming is becoming a rare option, so most funeral homes have one or two directors on staff who can easily do every embalming the business gets. The other directors are essentially just salespeople. Most funeral homes are now owned by a few large corporations who don’t run it like an honourable service but rather like a used car lot. These corporations have found every trick to skirt regulations meant to protect consumers and drive up prices while lowering quality of service.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed by the consumers, who will take out their anger and frustrations on the overworked and underpaid funeral director who are not in on the take. Directors are typically paid for 40 hours a week but are required to take on all clients who call. It’s rare that a director can handle every client a week in just 40 hours. All places I worked were severely understaffed and burnout was incredibly common.
I eventually got burnt out myself and switched jobs. I would not recommend funeral directing to anyone. College acts like you’ll be treated like a doctor or lawyer but they must just mean the gruelling hours because funeral directors get none of the pay or respect.
Are people embalming less because cremation is increasing in popularity?
Yes. The places I worked had about 80% of clients choosing cremation. I assume it’s mostly a cost decision. Cremation does not require a casket or a cemetery plot, which are two very expensive items.
Even if I could afford it I’d feel bad taking up the land.
I agree, it always seemed selfish to me.
How frequently business leaders will ignore advice from experts and “go with their gut” instead.
Business decisions based on feels rather than hard outcome data or cost analysis.
All the more reason to start replacing employees with AI starting at the top
*in spite of hard outcome data or cost analysis
Touché
Look buddy this business is run on vibes and vibes alone
I have friends who work in data. The amount of stories I hear about well drawn up reports, forecasts, and estimates they give leaders to only be thrown out with leaders saying “yeah but I don’t think this is right” is just astonishing.
There really is a generational divide. Older leaders just go off what they feel. millennials and younger want some facts to back up those decisions
Senior citizens being the outright meanest demographic. Not by frequency, but by intensity. The amount of stubbornness, entitlement, and just absolute resentment for everything around them shocks me. The way they react to things not going exactly how they think they should go is astounding. Don’t get me wrong, the majority of them are pleasant and wonderful. But when an old person is mean, it’s on its own level. I’d say middle aged people are more likely to be difficult, but they never even come close to the tantrums that seniors will throw. Part of this could be chalked up to mental decline, but the main part is entitlement. Plenty of people experience mental decline, and dont become vitriolic assholes. They truly think they’re special and should get whatever they want at all times. Its exhausting explaining to an adult why I can’t do something for them that our organization is literally unable to do.
Understanding benefits packages and basic labor laws.
I’m a filmmaker. Allllllllll of it. What I really needed to learn is that the name brand of the film school you went to will ABSOLUTELY have a huge bearing on how high you can climb. If your film school isn’t name brand, drop out and start working in the industry instead. I went to art school and learned all technical aspects of filmmaking. If I hadn’t actually worked on set while I was in school, I’d be absolutely clueless.
In the end, I have come to realize that it’s who you know.
Lesson: if you go to film school, at least make it a name brand like NYU, AFI, USC, etc or you will basically be a carnie because those rich kids look out for the kids they went to school with and NO ONE ELSE.
All of it
I work a job that doesn’t require a degree
Edit to specify: I’m a forklift inspector in the LTL industry, I use excel a lot but that’s something I learned on my own for personal reasons. Basically everything I do now is something anybody could do for little to no education except perhaps some training for the spreadsheets I made to make my job easier and our terrible software that I wish I could change. And I make about $30 per hour. So that’s nice.
Nice! What’s LTL? Does your job require a lot of walking, standing, or physical labor?
LTL stands for Less Than Truckload
Basically if you have a business that doesn’t move enough product to need their own trucking network they’ll use LTL shipping.
In general you get a decent amount of walking, little to no standing, a decent amount of physical labor (must be able to lift 100lbs), and you drive a forklift all day.
It’s pretty chill for the most part but one thing to keep in mind is that safety is of the utmost importance.
In general injuries happen because someone wasn’t paying attention, don’t be that person who sends someone to the hospital because you didn’t look behind you when backing up.
Edit: Specifically what I do now is inspect the forklifts we have for defects and needed maintenance and if it’s something small to take care of it myself. Also making sure we’re in compliance with the state for our forklifts (the scales, needed safety features, etc) and doing a lot of paperwork.
Oh, okay, that’s really interesting. Thank you. :)
I basically double majored in international affairs and economics but ultimately became a software engineer. I actually think both my courses of study were valuable. I’m basically self-taught as a developer (though I had mentors) and other than Comp Sci or Physics, there’s probably no other majors I’d pick as a base.
For international relations, it’s just always good to know about diplomacy and history. We had courses where we studied successful negotiations. The military history wasn’t so useful but there’s way more history made without guns than with them.
Econ is a good default major for a lot of fields. You learn to make statistical models and there’s strong math requirements with more of a focus on practical math than theoretical. (There’s even a little coding involved.) There’s classes on how businesses are run at a high level. Behavioral econ is helpful in small, but important ways (like designing little user interface nudges and prompts).
If I could redesign college, I’d make everyone in STEM majors do a minor in one of the humanities (and vise versa). We’d all be better off.
Risk assessments.
These days my job doesn’t have much connection to my degree subject at all, so there is very little that it prepared me for. But my previous role - ranger - was very much tied into the subject that I took: Environmental Science.
Risk assessments are not unique to this area, of course and some of this is due to it being 20 odd years ago that I that I got my degree, but even so, looking back, I am surprised that risk assessments didn’t feature anywhere. Not during that degree nor during the - much more practically based - arboriculture course that I took shortly before.
Douchebaggery and ultra elites.
They never told me I couldn’t get a job as a programmer. I just reset passwords all day.
Tight deadlines. In college, we were given 2 weeks to complete projects. Of course that time also took up other assignments from other classes but it was manageable. In a real job, sometimes we need to get something done TODAY, or even 3 hours from right now.
In a real job, sometimes we need to get something done TODAY, or even 3 hours from right now.
I work third shift and it’s so much worse in this case. I walk in the door at 10 PM to an email saying I have to do a training module that takes an hour, and it has to show completed before midnight. Then they wonder why I wasn’t able to get my work area set up and make progress on a long term project in that same time frame.
The basic hand on aspect of experimental science (then engineering) it’s one thing to have lab work where the setup works and is often ready. It’s another thing to deploy electronic, azay from the main lab, and sometimes under bad weather. Suddently, everybody expects you to know how to use a soldering iron or configure a network
Do you have any tips for books, websites, or whatever on how to get started? I love computers and the whole topic of programming is fascinating to me, but I don’t have the money (or time (or energy)) to go to back to school.
I work in a dead-end retail job and I really really really need to get out. Lol.
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I got out of a 7 year retail streak and into technology through support. Many organizations or BPO’s see a lot of churn in technical customer support and have on the job training to get your feet wet. Then the ones who stick around and learn the product move up or laterally within the organization. A good org will farm from support. A good org will provide up-skill and training opportunities, subsidies etc to help people progress their career and stay at the company.
Find a local call center or look for remote support jobs if you are tired of retail and then use the company perks to progress.
Source: I left retail for tech support in 2012, 2 years at a BPO, 8 years working with varying tech and progressing titles learning new things and getting free certifications. Now I manage a support team of 14 because I like helping people. Former colleagues from the same BPO are now directing program management, engineering teams, development etc.
That sounds like a great idea, but I get serious anxiety from phone calls so I don’t know if that’d be a good fit for me. (I have an anxiety disorder and phone calls are a bit of a sore spot with it.)
Thank you for commenting with it, though! I really appreciate the advice!
