Scary thoughts
We've been doing a lot of phone interviewing at work lately to fill a couple positions. Granted, Connecticut isn't exactly a mecca of high tech and most CS grads flee for their lives as soon as they graduate. Even knowing that, the candidate pool still appears depressingly dismal. What really strikes me is that the worst candidates seem to be the ones with a Master's degree in Computer Science. I assume most of these are course-work only Master's. I really would like to believe that someone could not possibly complete a thesis (which in CS is usually a programming project, rather than a research paper) and not be able to answer some very simple questions pertaining to their chosen field of work.
Looking through the recent resumes two things stand out:
1. More than half of the candidates have a Master's in Computer Science.
2. Less than half (out of those only one had a Master's) did well enough in a phone screen to progress to an in-person interview.
The obvious possible conclusions are:
1. A Master's in CS dumbs a person down.
--- or ---
2. The kind of person who chooses to pursue a Master's degree is not the kind of person we'd like to hire.
The second choice leads to a conclusion that people who are not exactly the greatest in their field will move on to pursue higher degrees in order to showcase better qualifications on their resumes. Pretty much every single person we interviewed with a Master's would barely qualify for a junior-level position. It's really stunning how little interest these candidates appear to have in a field they chose to pursue graduate work in.
And here I am about to become one of them. Yikes. Pray for my brain.
Comments
Perhaps anyone that can put up with a CompSci degree and not want to run away screaming is not the sort of person cut out to be a programmer. Perhaps I'm biased, I was kicked out of CompSci after my first year.
Posted by: Tom Hawtin | June 22, 2007 10:44 PM
It's also possible that you were asking such rudimentary questions that the more educated students were taken aback, unable to verbalize things that had been so ingrained that they become obvious. You can ask any five year old how to tie their shoe, and they'll probably have a cute little rhyme to explain it. Ask an adult and they'll probably shrug at you and say "You just DO it!".
That's always been my problem with phone interviews. Even though I have my Masters, and even though I'm skilled enough to have earned the position of Senior Programmer, if someone asks me a question about sorting algorithms I get flustered. It's something that I DO - and WELL - but not something that I can explain (at least without a diagram at my disposal).
Posted by: Thanatos | June 23, 2007 04:28 PM
Nah, we ask a variety of questions all over the spectrum and don't expect anyone to get all of them. I prefer to hear a person reason out an answer to something they don't immediately recognize rather than answer with a definition.
Posted by: kasia | June 23, 2007 06:34 PM
There's a theory that the people who do better at school are those who are better at memorizing, those who do averge can be the ones that do the work necessary to pass, but work and learn on their own (ie self projects) and have less time dedicated to class work.
or something.
I recently did a round of coop interviews, it was surprising to see who coudn't answer the most basic questions vs those who could.
Posted by: Gavin | June 24, 2007 03:04 AM
Hi Kasia,
You're leaving some information out: how many of the non-masters did pass the phone interview? Was that more than half?
Moreover, have you considered this conclusion ?
3. A Master who hasn't left Connecticut yet, but who we would hire, is not likely to interview with us.
After all, it is a seller's market again out there ;-)
Posted by: Tom Klaasen | June 25, 2007 07:29 AM
Simply put, most masters programs will give you a fantastic background in theory, but no practical application. Not to mention the books that are usually printed are outdated before they are finished printing....
Posted by: Alex | June 25, 2007 04:22 PM
Just saw your blog when I googled looking for my own! Thought I'd say hi. My grandparents always called me Kasia when I was growing up.
Posted by: Carly | June 26, 2007 10:32 AM
well, it might also mean that there's something wrong with the education system. Or maybe it's the university they did their master's at. There are so many crap universities around these days, especially those so-called "online universities". Little to no standard at all. To make my point, I doubt you'll find a Yale or Harvard master's grad of such poor calibre. Here in singapore where i live, the govt has a list of universities it "accepts", so if for example you're applying to be a civil servant, and you graduated from ABC University, and ABC University is not on the list, you would not be accepted. It's called "quality control", and it's even more important these days, now that so many of those commercial universities have sprung up. The commercialisation of education has really lowered standards. This makes graduating from a reputable and reliable education institution all the more important. For example, many singapore companies don't like to hire candidates, no matter how high their qualification might be (masters/PhD/what-have-you), who are graduates of australian universities.
cheers from a 1st-time visitor cum passerby
Posted by: Am | July 4, 2007 05:07 AM
Hey, it's been a while. Next time you're in NYC, would you like to get a drink?
Kate & Andrew
Posted by: Kate & Andrew | July 7, 2007 04:32 AM
I think we're on to something here.
The type of people who really know the ins and outs of UNIX, OS X and yes, even Windows, are not the sort of people who study for years in Uni solely because they have to.
They're the techno-nerds who actually love reading up on the latest technology in their own time.
They're the guys and girls who spend their own money buying the best tools of the trade just to play with them.
If you need a techie contact your local geek, not a CS graduate who's knowledge base extends only as far as the syllabus.
Posted by: James Conroy-Finn | July 16, 2007 10:36 AM
I've noticed a similar trend. A lot of the best people I've interviewed had little or no formal education in CS. Others who had masters degrees and proclaimed they were programmers/dba couldn't even tell me what the pros and cons of database normalization, or even list a single example of something using a singleton pattern. Even though I understand that people don't memorize even single term, its detrimental to the communication process when it is suggested they normalize/denormalize or employ a pattern and they have no idea what you're talking about. These are basics! It's not like I'm asking them to show me how to write a schwartzian transform or something :)
Posted by: Billy K | July 17, 2007 06:23 PM