On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 at 02:54:22, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

Also, the recent computer science grads I have come across make my
head spin. They know virtually nothing about computers or
programming. Seriously, they barely know what a mouse is. And they
are in debt up to the asses with student loans.

We'd get CSci university interns to help in Software QA. They were
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instructional CDs) the rest of us got. The interns just had no grasp of
how to dig into software to test it, and how to document their testing
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like 1st-year students instead of near-grads. No initiative, no talent
for testing, and poor writing skills.

I remember - I _think_ it was in the last decade, but it might have been
more - being startled when I spoke to a young computing graduate, to
find he'd never done any assembler. At that time, after my initial
double-take, I thought to myself: the field is big enough, that there'll
be plenty of room for him, and in practice he'll probably never have any
trouble finding interesting and well-paid employment.

I remember someone remarking that college isn't about training their
students for a particular job. It's to train them on how to learn. Not

That is certainly part of it, especially if they hadn't picked that up
at school (UK meaning). It's also - at _some_ levels - when the brain is
at peak ability: I remember holding two conversations at once, something
I'm not sure I could do to the same extent now. (In contrast, my now
slower brain has more _experience_. And that combines with my
"generalist" outlook.)

evidenced by the interns that we got. I think we used interns for 6
months: the contract length. Never again thereafter. A failed

Why did you use them in the first place - was it because of some form of
state subsidy, of about that duration?
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Field Support was easy to get unless they were at a job site, plus they
were experienced on how customers used the product, not how Dev thinks
it should work per the Functional and Engineering Spec docs. Eventually

(-: [Users constantly amaze you in the ways they use things. (Doesn't
just apply to software, of course.) Occasionally, it's very innovative!]
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were, um, lenient in our report to the college for our assessment of the
interns. We still wanted them to get academic credit.

You were, in short, decent guys.

There were no later experiments using interns to better gauge the
usefulness of that workforce source. Before the contract ended, my
manager asked for reviews on their performance. I told my boss that I'd
write scripts to do the work of the interns. I didn't get overtime, but
I did accrue flex time that I could add to my PTO. I took some long
vacations or extended weekends when QA wasn't in prep or crunch mode.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"... all your hard work in the hands of twelve people too stupid to get off
jury
duty." CSI, 200x