What do they teach them these days?

[mrcharly-YHT]

I-am-not-an-engineer

I have multiple engineers tasked with providing me with information.

One was tasked with running up a sample program, small enough that all the code could be pasted on one side of A4, and writing instructions for running up QEMU and debugging sample program with GDB. Instructions had to use specific architectures and builds.

That was on Fri. Didn't hear back. So I emailed said engineer to ask about progress. The response was that they'd looked into it and as far as they could tell, GDB could only be used with QEMU to debug Linux userland.

They've had this task since Fri morning.

It took me 45seconds to find instructions for how to do this, in detail. 45 seconds. I could have written the sample C program, worked out the compile options, worked out the build, QEMU options, tested it and written it up in probably half a day. And I'm not a sodding programmer and this is a specialist build & example type.

Earlier in the day I tried running a setup script for a system. It failed, with multiple syntax errors. I fixed the first two, took me a couple of minutes.
And I'm not a sodding programmer.

What do they teach them these days?

[Beardy]

I believe that there is a module on how to wind up project managers and avoid doing what they asked for.

[ian]

It's a good question. I'm mostly useless at anything other than kittens and giraffes (working on otters) but someone who ought to know stuff told me the other day that some task wasn't possible. Nope, we couldn't do it and if we did, it would take forever.

So one baby-I-can-Google later, I downloaded a script and despite having zero programmatic knowledge (OK, once-upon-a-time VBA, but we don't talk about that), I made it work on my computer. Took about 35 minutes from search to having a CSV file full of allegedly impossible results.

Oh, we wouldn't do it that way was the response. Well, yes.

[Ben T]

You asked him to write instructions? As in, documentation, for a human, rather than machine instructions? IF so, that's possibly where you went wrong.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I didn't ask for instructions - I just wanted the commands. Very specifically the commands.

Not a 'him', btw, ben

[rogerzilla]

They must have been recruited for their soft skills 

[ElyDave]

Bah!  I have exactly the same problem with new verifiers and consultants. Ask them to estimate how significant something is, or "tell me what you think?" And blank looks ensue.

First thing they do is reach for the iso standard instead of trying to understand what's going wrong first. It's the system the client needs to fix, not the procedure.

[Mr Larrington]

Testing?  We've heard of it...

[ian]

I think to be honest that a lot of people just lack curiosity. They don't attempt to solve a problem. They just do what they normally do, over and over. I've lost track over my corporate years the number of times I've had a 'we don't do it like that' type response. It's worse in bigger companies where people find their little niche in the corporate hierarchy and dig themselves in.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Apparently one of the potential benefits of AI is that processes can seek all possible solutions rather than the obvious or mundane. 

Computer it say 'No!' maybe a thing of the past one day.  As may computer programmers as we know them.

[Andrij]

Computer it say 'No!' maybe a thing of the past one day.

[Ben T]

I didn't ask for instructions - I just wanted the commands. Very specifically the commands.

Not a 'him', btw, ben

Hmm..... 

[Kim]

I think to be honest that a lot of people just lack curiosity.

This.  It's not so much what they're taught (which, in the normal engineeringy scheme of things, is only going to be a wider context for real-world skills), it's what they learn.

[Beardy]

The curriculum of many courses tend these days to be very focused on passing the assessment points, which again are very prescriptive. This is partly due to the fact that the student is paying £27k for the education and EXPECTS to get a first, and partly because of widening participation targets have lowered the entry threshold and thus not all the students are capable of dealing with a wider perspective.

[TheLurker]

I think to be honest that a lot of people just lack curiosity.

Hmmm.  I think that it may be that they have it beaten out of them by the corporate machine, specifically bean-counters.  Curiosity costs money.  I've lost count of the times I've heard replies along the lines of, "No you can't investigate an alternative solution.  We want this delivered yesterday and for nothing so get on with it."  In the end people give up trying and go with the "tried and tested" even when it's patently NBG.  I should imagine much the same applies in most jobs not just programming.

[ian]

I suspect they conflate. Any corporate operates ian's rule of innovation where actual innovation is inversely proportional to the number of times management and marketing use the word 'innovation.' I've plotted this on a graph with lines and things and presented it in Powerpoint so it must be true. There's a disdain for risk that oozes down the corporate ranks. Someone spills coffee on the bridge, it'll eventually drip down to the subdecks after a deck-by-deck transmutation into something that looks and tastes like century out-of-date Bovril. So yes, some people give up. It's easier just to press the buttons they tell you. It amuses me that our entire 'professional development and review' grading system actually discourages risk, it gets you to set as many easy-to-achieve goals as possible on the grounds that you can check them off. There's zero point including anything difficult, because you'll get 'marked down' if you don't achieve it. So, yes, it's a culture that is basted in banality and the steady corrosive drip drip of bridge-deck Bovril.

But there's some people who just seem to lack curiosity. I like learning new things, understanding the whys of things, and things like that. Some people seem have had it surgical removed or it was never there. That just lack any interest.

This is all the hardest adjustment I found when moving from academia into the business world.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Initiative and enthusiasm can be dangerous.

Very early in my career I was put to work chasing up orders that the port workshops had made to their suppliers.  There were hundreds and in my imagination I pictured our ships, North Sea ferries, malfunctioning and unseaworthy due to lack of these mysterious parts.  For several months I made it my mission to rouse our suppliers and have them fulfil their contractual obligations asap.  I think I was rather good at it.

Much later I was moved to another department and could actually speak to the people who stored and used the parts.  I learnt that there had been chaos and confusion for some time due to the sudden and unprecedented influx of parts from all over the UK and abroad even, many of which hadn't been needed for years, if not decades.  I kept very quiet about my previous assignment.  No doubt the tidal wave eventually reached the accounts department and upset the budgets and company profits for months if not the entire year.  Later still the port workshops were closed as not being cost-effective and I have always wondered what they did with the stock of spares I had ordered.

[ElyDave]

Having spent ten years in my current org, I'm appalled at how slowly an organisation of <100 people moves, inverse corporate inertia vs the 5000 strong corporate parent. We're the super tanker, them the America's cup mcboatface

Stuff I suggested not long after joining is only just coming to fruition, having been poo-poohed for years.  I was suggesting it from a process improvement perspective, it didn't become urgent until our accreditation body threatened our license to operate 

I've been getting more involved with the overlords recently and there's much we could learn.  At least our new boss is a bit more dynamic.

[David Martin]

Maybe I am being a bit subversive then. Meet the spec to standard and you get a B. Bring in something else, go beyond and you will get the A grade you desire.
Looking stuff up and finding out things that you haven't been taught that are relevant are learning objectives.

WHich makes it more fun but assessment is time consuming and expensive. And this does go alongside following specs and process. Both need to be taught and encouraged, with experience demonstrating which one is the appropriate action.

[Polar Bear]

I recall learning to programme in the early eighties.  A rigid three month course covering all aspects of what the organisation wanted me to do.  However, they made one big mistake in issuing me a comprehensive reference guide.  Being of a curious nature I read the guide and discovered all sorts of wonderful things not taught to me.   I got into hot water on many occasions for writing software that the TL didn't understand on a technical level.

After about three years I became his TL...

So many people aren't inquisitive and live and work by rote or dictat.   Just look at our politicians for 630 plus prime examples.

[T42]

I recall learning to programme in the early eighties.  A rigid three month course covering all aspects of what the organisation wanted me to do.  However, they made one big mistake in issuing me a comprehensive reference guide.  Being of a curious nature I read the guide and discovered all sorts of wonderful things not taught to me.   I got into hot water on many occasions for writing software that the TL didn't understand on a technical level.

Done that many a time. It was interesting to observe the kind of people who got shirty - usually those with little or no imagination. Others loved it.

On one glorious occasion I was in a meeting with the firm's boss, our development head and an outside contractor: boss/dev boss said they wanted a particular feature added to our house programming language, and the contractor stroked his beard and learnedly opined "3 months". I leant over to boss and whispered "I already did it last week". Nice feeling.

[ElyDave]

Perhaps that's the difference between us and them?

I've done umpteen personality tests in my working life and all of them has said two things 1) I have one  and 2) I'm a curious individual with a penchant for lifelong learning.

So two weeks ago having seen them, but never used them, I taught myself how to use the VLOOKUP function in excel, trivial I know  but I found a practical reason to use it that week.  I'm currently trying to teach myself to build wheels.   

I know so many people that say "why bother" but that's not the point, now I have that knowledge it's available. I have no idea how I might use it, but I know I'll use it sometime, somewhere.

[T42]

Having been self-employed for most of my career, I always found it a good idea to give the client more than he asked for, but very often I was simply having fun when I went beyond the spec or did totally unconnected things. Very often I could see possibilities the client hadn't forseen and put them in to earn attaboy points.  On the downside, I didn't get many formal courses, but on the other hand I didn't get useless crap shoved down my neck under the heading of education.

Interesting phenomenon: as a subcontractor, putting in extra features got me more contracts and more money.  A salaried friend who put in extra hours and features was so productive that he got loaded down with more work and shorter deadlines than he could handle, and got hauled over the coals when he couldn't manage them.

[Somnolent]

I know so many people that say "why bother" but that's not the point, now I have that knowledge it's available. I have no idea how I might use it, but I know I'll use it sometime, somewhere.

And apart from which, learning is just plain fun, sometimes 'type 2' fun, but fun all the same.

[Ben T]

Maybe I am being a bit subversive then. Meet the spec to standard and you get a B. Bring in something else, go beyond and you will get the A grade you desire.
Looking stuff up and finding out things that you haven't been taught that are relevant are learning objectives.

But then go from academia into business and it becomes: Meet the spec to standard and you get paid. A certain amount. Bring in something else, go beyond and you ... still get paid the same amount.
What's is more fruitful however, in business, is using curiosity to figure out how to do it not necessarily better, but faster.