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Re:Build stuff by dang on Friday March 20, 2020 @03:52PM (#22640987)
You'd do better to post a comment giving your own perspective rather than flaming someone else for theirs, which you may not have evaluated accurately. (I think you misread the GP, and speaking generally, we're more likely to misread other people on topics we feel strongly about.) Since it sounds like you have experience with the topic, sharing your experience and stating the conclusions it's led you to would be a substantive contribution.

In addition, sharing experience is at lower risk of misunderstanding and less likely to descend into flamewar. There's no contradiction between experiences. A hiring manager in (let's say) one state has their experience, and a new college grad in (let's say) another state has theirs. Both are real because they happened. If we report from that level, we can't contradict each other.

It's when we turn our experience into abstractions (e.g. the abstraction "new CS grads") that trouble arises. Abstraction A appears to contradict abstraction B. Both are lossy conceptualizations of a more complicated reality, and it's the lossiness that makes it seem like we're at odds with each other.

Re:Build stuff by justin66 on Friday March 20, 2020 @06:03PM (#22642104)
> A hiring manager in (let's say) one state has their experience, and a new college grad in (let's say) another state has theirs.

That's interesting, and a fair point. The differences I'm admittedly fixated on are the differences between software development as a profession versus engineering, medicine, or law, for example - or even the creative arts or science, not just the licensed professions! And I really do think it's a bit much to unpack adequately in the comments here, though I have seen a few good ones that touch on some things I think are important.

> the abstraction "new CS grads"

No abstraction intended, you can read that as "members of the set of students who recently graduated from CS programs in the United States and will now look for jobs or continue further in academia" if you like.

I would encourage them, if any were nutty enough to ask me for advice, to be enthusiastic about their future contribution to what is (well... should be) an amazing field, to be proud of their education, and to negotiate as well as possible with their first employer out of college, since that will help set the trajectory of their future career.

And to avoid people who misunderstand them by saying things like:

They come with a chip on their shoulder, flaunt their degree, and demand a salary close to what they think they should be getting, according to their advisers or statistics or whatever.