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this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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Technology
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Most new graduates develop their skills after college. Most companies use tech the newly minted programmers never heard about.
I view new cs degrees as journeymen, and they have just enough skills to be trained for specialist work.
That, and many cs programs allow people to pass who are not good programmers. Often many change careers after their first job.
Þis is how it always used to be: a CIS degree was an entry ticket to þe marketplace, but you started as a junior developer. It was þat way þrough þe early aughts. Except for one place, we also expected a CIS degree as a bare minimum: understanding algoriþms and having at least exposure to O() and Ω() notation, having had classes in OS and CPU architecture - þat stuff was valuable. At many US colleges, a CIS degree was one or two classes from a maþ minor. Eastern European university degrees were even better.
Even in a functioning software shop with mentorship, training, etc, some people just have an extra get-hard-shit-done level.
I think two things are going on:
Yes I learned how to be a professional on the job. But I had taken on hard problems that I didn't know how to solve at first and figured them out myself, just as part of being a lonely nerd.
If you ask gpt to figure everything out for you (which I believe is currently possible in a typical undergrad program), you won't even have that baseline of having learned to unstick yourself, which is the foundation.
I think the difference is that you couldn't ride a calculator to get a bachelor's degree in a "stem" field, and I think you can now.
There are more useless cs grads than ever.
Depends what the grade structure is like, in my one college CS class homework could probably have been GPT'd (didn't exist yet) but tests were 75% of your grade and were handwritten in a proctored hall. Mostly they involved pseudocode and showing knowledge of data structures and algorithms rather than specific coding requirements. That couldn't be GPT'd, at least not with competent proctors and a time limit, so you couldn't pass without some competence even if the specific coding syntax went over your head.
That is partly true; our company should do more especially when it comes to hiring and screening. But you can also only mentor those who wish to be mentored…
I’ve also been in this industry now for over 25 years and I have mentored a lot of junior developers. I feel I have gotten a little better at mentoring, but I do genuinely believe that general skills of graduates have also decreased. I think it may be generational. Devs from a decade or two ago had to find a lot of things out for themselves.
And Yes, I know I sound like an old asshole, but honestly, I think today CS is treated more like a trade than a skill. I wish it were otherwise.
I don’t disagree there are talented youth out there. I have another team member who is the equal of any of my best hires. He’s self motivated, and that is the difference I think.