Ask Slashdot: How To Teach Generic Engineers Coding, Networking, and Computing? 197
davegravy writes: I work at a small but quickly growing acoustic consulting engineering firm, consisting of a mix of mechanical, electrical, civil, and other engineering backgrounds. When I joined almost 10 years ago I was in good company with peers who were very computer literate -- able to develop their own complex excel macros, be their own IT tech support, diagnose issues communicating with or operating instrumentation, and generally dive into any technology-related problem to help themselves. In 2017, these skills and tendencies are more essential than they were 10 years ago; our instruments run on modern OS's and are network/internet-capable, the heavy data processing and analysis we need to do is python-based (SciPy, NumPy) and runs on AWS EC2 instances, and some projects require engineers to interface various data-acquisition hardware and software together in unique ways. The younger generation, while bright in their respective engineering disciplines, seems to rely on senior staff to a concerning degree when it comes to tech challenges, and we're stuck in a situation where we've provided procedures to get results but inevitably the procedures don't cover the vast array of scenarios faced day-to-day. Being a small company we don't have dedicated IT specialists. I believe I gathered my skills and knowledge through insatiable curiosity of all things technology as a child, self-teaching things like Pascal, building and experimenting with my own home LAN, and assembling computers from discrete components. Technology was a fringe thing back then, which I think drew me in. I doubt I'd be nearly as curious about it growing up today given its ubiquity, so I sort of understand why interest might be less common in today's youth.
How do we instill a desire to learn the fundamentals of networking, computing, and coding, so that the younger generation can be self-sufficient and confident working with the modern technology and tools they need to perform -- and be innovative in -- their jobs? I believe that the most effective learning occurs when there's a clearly useful purpose or application, so I'm hesitant to build a training program that consists solely of throwing some online courses at staff. That said, online courses may be a good place to get some background that can be built upon, however most that I've come across are intended for people pursuing careers in computer science, web development, software engineering, etc. Are there any good resources that approach these topics from a more general purpose angle?
How do we instill a desire to learn the fundamentals of networking, computing, and coding, so that the younger generation can be self-sufficient and confident working with the modern technology and tools they need to perform -- and be innovative in -- their jobs? I believe that the most effective learning occurs when there's a clearly useful purpose or application, so I'm hesitant to build a training program that consists solely of throwing some online courses at staff. That said, online courses may be a good place to get some background that can be built upon, however most that I've come across are intended for people pursuing careers in computer science, web development, software engineering, etc. Are there any good resources that approach these topics from a more general purpose angle?
Re: Generic engineers? Really? (Score:1)
How about hire better candidates? If these are essential skills you expect out of a recent grad, why not hire people with those skills?
Re: Generic engineers? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about hire better candidates? If these are essential skills you expect out of a recent grad, why not hire people with those skills?
This is the case of unreasonable expectations. Just look at the list : "fundamentals of networking, computing, and coding" from "acoustic consulting engineering firm, consisting of a mix of mechanical, electrical, civil ".
Does he also expect them to write thier own compiler, all while willing to accept $50K starting salary?
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Just look at the list : "fundamentals of networking, computing, and coding" from "acoustic consulting engineering firm, consisting of a mix of mechanical, electrical, civil ".
They need someone who has an A+/Network+ certifications and went through a coding boot camp or two.
Does he also expect them to write thier own compiler, all while willing to accept $50K starting salary?
Level-entry A+/Network+ techs typically start off at $30K per year in Silicon Valley.
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That "Level-entry" salary of 30k in SV is quite unbelievable.
That's $30k for certified techs. Uncertified techs make minimum wage ($20K per year). You may find it unbelievable but I worked those wages at the beginning of my technical career.
I live in the midwest where 120k can get you a 2000 sq.ft. house with an acre and the entry level salary for techs that can do desktop and network support is 45k.
No employer has ever offered to move me out to the Midwest.
Re: Generic engineers? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't want to deal with lousy IT, no matter how much money you 'save'; because that's just miserable; but if you are paying an electrical engineer to spin up EC2 instances or a civil engineer to be poking at a recalcitrant data logger rather than thinking guru-level thoughts about concrete loading, you are arguably squandering relatively expensive and rare talent on problems that a reasonably competent small-shop IT generalist is exactly the sort of person to make go away so that your subject matter experts can do their thing.
Engineers who can't handle writing(or at least prototyping) simulation code are potentially more of an issue(expecting them to whip out their l33t optimization skills to save you a modest amount of CPU time by rendering the code unmaintanable is often folly; but it's been a while since most engineering disciplines were amenable to calculations entirely on slide rules and legal pads); but even there the value of an engineer who can go from Debian_netinst_x86-64 to 'fully configured numPy environment' is something that is a trifle hard to stress over as long as they know what to do with a development environment once set up.
I have a personal fondness for generalist tinkering, so I sympathize; but I also recognize that much of my generalist tinkering is purely recreational because it involves either fiddling with stuff that I'm not very good at; or doing things that someone cheaper could easily do because I'm interested in how they work. In this case, I'd be severely doubtful of the wisdom of trying to impose IT stuff on a bunch of actual, went-to-engineer-school-and-are-priced-to-reflect-that, engineers rather than investigate the possibility of finding a reasonably flexible IT/lightweight 'CS' with strong tinkering background person who appreciates the variety of an office too small for rigid specialization and the chance to poke at a wide variety of problems; and making that person available to your engineers for fiddling with peripherals, basic network and systems administration, any EC2 jockeying, etc.
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I wish the engineering world worked as you described. And yes, I am an engineer (Master's in geological engineering, and my PE/P.Eng thank you very much).
The sad truth is that there is a hell of lot of engineering time spent on mundane work that can and should be automated away --most of my life was spent pushing around columns in excel, hunting down typos, and debugging god awful analyses written in excel. I jokingly refer to heavy infrastructure engineering (I did landslides, soils, mines, tunnels, rai
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Lets go back to the unpaid apprenticeship days.
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This is the case of unreasonable expectations. Just look at the list : "fundamentals of networking, computing, and coding" from "acoustic consulting engineering firm, consisting of a mix of mechanical, electrical, civil ". Does he also expect them to write thier own compiler, all while willing to accept $50K starting salary?
I am a mechanical engineer by trade and training. These are not unreasonable expectations. Today, all engineers are taught the basics of computing and coding in school. Right now I think most schools teach Python, I was taught MATLAB, and the generation before me Fortran. It sounds like some of these new hires blew off those classes since they weren't in their "core discipline".
Networking is a bit of a stretch though. Most new engineering grads only know enough to communicate with other disciplines,
Re: Generic engineers? Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
I once worked with an H1-B visa holder who I thought was a great guy and a hard worker. I consider him a good friend from that time of my life. He had never used silverware or a plate before he came to America, so it's not hard to imagine that he'd also not had any deep exposure to tech as a youthful tinkerer, which I understood the original poster to consider favorable, maybe even essential, to his particular workplace's needs. There is a particular stereotype most H1-B workers fit into. They tend to be very intelligent, hard-working people who lack the confidence to take decisive action without frequent oversight or feedback. They are generally great at well-defined tasks that can be converted from specifications into product with rote processes. Coaching them out of that rut often forces both you and them to grow extensively. I mean this an objective look at the challenges involved, as I have developed a fondness for several people in this situation. The same things that tend to make them a bit hesitant in the workforce tend to also make them great people: they generally legitimately care about what others think and are looking for friends in a strange place!
Beyond that, does anyone log into Slashdot anymore? AC's used to be branded as shameless trolls to be ignored, and now it seems like every other post is from one. Maybe it's my fault for not ignoring you, but your comment seemed like it might be intended to be serious.
Re: Generic engineers? Really? (Score:2, Informative)
No, Nathan, you in particular are just really ignorant and unaware of it. I read some of your posts and the consistent theme is you know things that other people don't because like uhhh... magic and brain powerz.
Perhaps you should just shut the fuck up for a decade and learn something for a change. Because let tell you, your high school education ain't cutting it. Anyone who has called you smart must be incomprehensibly stupid and know only other people of the same.
In conclusion, go fuck yourself.
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I completely reject the idea of a "Generic Engineer".
An Engineer is someone with extensive specialized knowledge in a specific field so that they can "engineer" solutions to problems.
Either these "laborers" have specialized knowledge in one or more fields, or they don't.
By Generic Engineer, the author seems to be implying that "they're smart people with some math skill, and therefore can do anything I throw at at them", which is simply not in line with reality.
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This.
I used to work with a 60+ year old analog electronics engineer. He neither knew nor cared anything networks or modern ways of working but with pen, paper and a lab he would build up a SMPS for whatever the current product was and then refine the shit out of it until it was quiet, reliable, efficient and small. He had a side business selling interesting audio electronics products.
You don't dismiss that wealth of experience and talent because they don't care about netmasks and gateways. You hire it and r
Re: Generic engineers? (Score:1)
Yes, "generic" indeed. As one of those Engineers, who have been responsible for the design of virtually every building, transport system, etc. of significance through the ages, I found it disrespectful. ;)
But most of you aren't real engineers anyway, so what did I expect.
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Obviously, he was speaking of them as generic in the software sense.
public class Engineer<T>...
That's just a programmer's way of saying this: "consisting of a mix of mechanical, electrical, civil, and other engineering backgrounds" (from the summary).
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They all inherit from dweeb.
No IT Specialists? (Score:4, Insightful)
But make sure the ones who actually learn to do it on their own get promoted over the ones who come crying to your senior engineers to reset they whatchamathingy every ten minutes.
Let's see how absurd that statement is when applied to other areas of business.
Being a small company we don't have dedicated Finance specialists.
Being a small company we don't have dedicated Accounting specialists.
Being a small company we don't have dedicated HR specialists.
Being a small company we don't have dedicated Engineering specialists.
Being a small company we don't have dedicated Sales specialists.
The reality is you better buck up and get one. IT isn't something you can do on the side like some Shade Tree Mechanic anymore.
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Shit...Fucked that up.
The intended quote
"Being a small company we don't have dedicated IT specialists. "
Fuck all.
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All the companies I have been in that were small enough to not have dedicated IT specialists were awesome workplaces. They also didn't have password rules or office rules or messed up firewall proxies or the massive weight of corporate bureaucracy. You got to operate the coffee machine yourself rather than being at the mercy of an underpaid contract worker trained in food safety.
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Should have clarified this in my OP, but we have outsourced IT for workstations, file&print, backup, etc, and we wouldn't survive without them.
The specialized and uncommon (acoustics is a niche market) engineering tools we use (some are off the shelf, others are internally developed) aren't in scope for them. Their business model is generally to provide support for IT systems that are common across their client base... systems that most offices have.
You need to have IT person (Score:5, Insightful)
Hire multiple people to do multiple jobs or keep looking for a unicorn that knows it all and be prepared to pay appropriately high salary.
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Re:You need to have IT person (Score:4, Interesting)
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Oh yeah, the other thing is if you find such people when they're youn
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It is unreasonable to expect mechanical engineer to be able to diagnose network issues, just like it would be unreasonable to expect network engineer to know how to calculate shear forces going through a support beam.
Funny you mention the latter. I would worry about you if you were unable to calculate sheer forces going through a beam. This stuff is high level enough that it is nothing more than typing numbers into a prepared excel spreadsheet.
Now whether you know the answer or not is entirely different. I would most definitely expect a mechanical engineer to be able to diagnose network issues. I don't expect them to be able to perfectly design it from the ground up or optimise the loading network wide but there is a ve
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It is unreasonable to expect mechanical engineer to be able to diagnose network issues, just like it would be unreasonable to expect network engineer to know how to calculate shear forces going through a support beam.
Funny you mention the latter. I would worry about you if you were unable to calculate sheer forces going through a beam. This stuff is high level enough that it is nothing more than typing numbers into a prepared excel spreadsheet.
Now whether you know the answer or not is entirely different. I would most definitely expect a mechanical engineer to be able to diagnose network issues. I don't expect them to be able to perfectly design it from the ground up or optimise the loading network wide but there is a very large scope of IT that we should expect people in general to be able to do.
My first paid job 30+ years ago was to port a mechanical engineer's basic code from a Sinclair QL to the Apple ][ called "Columns to BS449". So I'm pretty good with columns, not so much with beams.
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Most applicants suck (Score:3, Interesting)
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>I've found that most applicants suck.
That isn't because most applicants suck. That is because sucky applicants apply for a lot more jobs and interview many more times. Non sucky engineers tend to interview a lot less. So when you're on the interviewer, you see more sucky candidates.
If you want to see a higher quality of engineer walk in the door, offer more money and a nice work place with reasonable levels of autonomy.
Wrong solution (Score:2)
You are trying to change something intrinsic to the people in question. Young or not, they are too old already; their personality/approach is already set. Interview for the skills you need when hiring, and clear out those who don't fit the job description you've posted here.
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Strange crowd (Score:2)
If these people are not engineering-minded, you cannot do much to change that. You can suggest them to have a look at some cool pieces of engineering, b
WTF? Really? (Score:2)
How do you teach someone coding and concepts that take years to learn? Send them to school and wait a few years at least.
Hire IT Staff! (Score:5, Interesting)
Translation: We are too fucking cheap hire an IT staff to service our IT needs.
Seriously ass-hole, go fuck yourself. Hire the staff that you need and stop complaining. This has nothing to do with the lack of curiosity of anyone. This has everything to do with how your company is fucking cheap. The problem lies with you.
Re:Hire IT Staff! (Score:4, Insightful)
other than tone I agree, it doesnt take much to get IT, there's companies that do nothing BUT IT and since its not a full time need to be there position its not that expensive to have a contractor do it
it may be costly and painful at first as they will have to unfuck your cobbled together by amateurs "network" but once its up and running correctly you wont have very many issues, and if you do, often times they can fix it offsite in a matter of moments
then your generic engineers can do engineering and not have to waste valuable time (ie money) fiddle dicking with your rats nest of crap
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Any monkey with half a brain can learn IT jobs. That's why it's taught by bullshit for profit colleges and institutes.
Engineering school simply proves a competency to learn new things. No engineer worth their salt learns what they need to do their job at school.
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Any monkey with half a brain can learn IT jobs.
I don't know too many successful businesses that let someone from the Geek Squad run their IT department. Pay the extra money for someone with an A+/Network+ certifications.
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Did you really just suggest paying extra for someone with A+ certifications?
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Did you really just suggest paying extra for someone with A+ certifications?
Yes. A Geek Squad tech is probably $10 per hour. An A+/Network+ tech is $15 per hour. That's the going rate in Silicon Valley.
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You do not need a comp-sci background to install a virus checker, or update a few PCs.
Most A+/Network+ techs don't have a CS background. They may know how to code with PowerShell or Python.
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Really... A+ certs are quality? Color me shocked....
When I took the A+ certification 15 years ago, one of the exam questions was for Token Ring network. I thought that was stupid since Token Ring was obsolete network technology. Two years later... I worked on a Token Ring to Ethernet conversion project for 500 workstations. The 250 workstations I did were done correctly the first time. The 250 workstations done by two high school graduates without certifications were done wrong — and the project manager sent them home without double checking their work
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So two high school graduates who never learned token ring didn't know how to setup or convert token ring environments.
They got an instruction sheet with a half-dozen steps. The last step is to verify that the Ethernet cable connection was working was to view the TV video app. They didn't complete that last step. If they did, they would have caught their mistake of plugging the Ethernet cable into the Token Ring card instead of the motherboard Ethernet port.
But the old man who took a course and paid for it does?
I can follow instructions. I can also tell the difference between coaxial and twisted pair connectors on a Token Ring card, and an Ethernet (twisted pair) connector on t
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An extra 60 bucks! Wowzers!
An extra 90 bucks (time-and-a-half was $22.50).
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Ye gods. What company or institution still had Token Ring in place as recently as 13 years ago? I thought all of that had vanished with the miles of 10base2 and coax.
Stock brokerage company. For financial transactions, Token Ring was adequate. When the powers to be decided that everyone should watch a financial TV channel from their desktop, they had to switch over to Ethernet for more bandwidth. The building itself was brand new and wired for Ethernet, but the company had coaxial cable installed. I guess that was cheaper than getting Token Ring switches that accepted twisted pair cables. The Token Ring cards could accept either coaxial or twisted pair.
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Same situation (Score:2)
So, I end up shoulder-surfing people working, and yelling at
Get more funding to look at applications (Score:2)
Interview people and see if they have the skills needed.
"Rely on senior staff" could be the only skill they are good at and it got them a job.
The background story, did their past education show any of the same "rely on others" issues?
Its a skill thats worked on over years.
You don't (Score:2)
Your engineers already have a job, doing electrical design or mechanical engineering. To me, your question sounds a lot like, "We have a team of highly talented airline pilots. What can I do to make them all brain surgeons?"
Software design is its own discipline. And doing it well is a full-time commitment. If you push your engineers through some software classes or workshops, all you're going to get from them is - at best - half-assed stuff you'll need an actual software engineer to fix later on.
Do
Add it to their curriculum (Score:2)
Engineers already have to learn math, physics, chemistry, organic chemistry, operations research, statics, dynamics, and on and on. They learn whatever they have to in order to manipulate the world to a new shape. It could be anything. You think metallurgy is easier than Java? Hah.
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I fully agree. And if you do not have enough IT work for full-time jobs, get tech-consultants as part-time experts. Do not get them from any of the large consultancies, they will just rip you off. Get them form a small high-quality shop and pay what they ask.
The same way you teach an engineer... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Such generic advice.
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Urgh. That will go well...
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Shhhhh..... I want to watch.
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Makes sense. About as much as the "Hour of Coding". For a real improvement, I would like an "Hour of Brain-Surgery" though, will all those in favor of this stupidity as test-subjects....
Am I missing the joke? (Score:2)
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' able to develop their own complex excel macros' There's his problem right there.
Anyone else see "Genetic" the first time through? (Score:2)
Find the Common Ground (Score:1)
All the negativity? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with the original poster. Here, we have someone complaining that a mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, etc. can't write their own simple excel macro, or figure out why they have no internet connection. This is akin to your car not starting and not being able to figure out that it is the battery and being able to jump it or having a flat tire and calling AAA to change it.
When I first dropped out of college, I took a job working for a hardware engineer (Seth) at a very small company. If there was a problem, he'd toss me the chip puller and tell me where the scope was. Years later, at one company, they had moved offices and needed to change the IP addresses of a couple of the Linux based workstations. They were waiting for a consultant to show up the following week. I took 5 minutes to do it.
This is not an issue of every non-software engineer being able to write good quality code. It is an issue of having basic understanding of the tools and being able to simple tasks, like write a macro, or and simple diagnostics? How many of you laugh at people who don't know how to change a tire or jump a dead battery?
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This is akin to your car not starting and not being able to figure out that it is the battery and being able to jump it or having a flat tire and calling AAA to change it.
If my car has a problem, I take it to the mechanic. If I'm stranded on the road side, I call AAA. I pay these people good money to do a job that I don't want to do because I got better uses for my time.
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Except that until they get there and fix it you're probably not doing much with that time.
I can always check email, browse the Internet and read The Wall Street Journal on my smart phone.
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How many of you laugh at people who don't know how to change a tire or jump a dead battery?
How about doing a full body respray? Designing and building your car from scratch?
At some point, it becomes easier/cheaper to get someone else to do the work.
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Why don't you get your head out of your ass. These "trained engineers" should have a basic understanding of their tools and a modicum of problem solving skills.
Even though dropped out of North Eastern University, I still kept my part time teaching assistant position at MIT.
"One day a PC files" Huh?? Didn't use a PC, I was hired to design and write code on an Apple ][+.
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Who said mummy and daddy sent me to Northeastern and MIT. I earned a scholarship to Northeastern. I didn't attend M.I.T, i just worked there. I taught myself Pl/1, Adascript, CMS, VM360, for a programming job there. Then I taught myself Multics and Emacs to get the teaching assistant job. And I actually read the manuals.
A professional engineer should be to analyze problems, and at the very least be able to narrow a problem down. If they don't know the answer, they should be able to figure out how to use ba
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All of your engineers will need healthcare at some point. You could probably save a mint if your engineers could diagnose and treat some simple medical problems on their own.
Actually I would expect engineers (and everyone really) to be able to diagnose and treat simple medical problems. Have a headache? Take an aspirin, ibuprofen, etc. Have a small cut or scrape? Wash it and put on a band aid. Sure, a headache that won't go away or a cut that becomes horribly infected may need a doctor but these are stepping away from "simple medical problems". Most people know where the line between simple and not simple medical problems lies and those that don't create quite a burden on socie
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"take an aspirin for a headache"
What? Real engineers would have walked to the employee lounge where they have the "bang your head here" to relieve stress.
To engineers, aspirins are for hangovers.
You don't. (Score:2)
This isn't their job or their problem. Hire someone to do it or outsource the work.
RTFM (Score:2)
Tell them to RTFM. They must be used to it.
Simple: Have them study CS (Score:2)
There really is no other good way. With things they already have credits from, they should at least be a year faster as well.
Your answer is in your question (Score:1)
Do you want bad code? Because that's how you get b (Score:2)
Yeah, sure, it will work, as long as you use it exactly the way the guy who wrote it uses it. But whoo boy, forget about any testing or defensive programming.
Curiosity Killed the Cat.... (Score:2)
There are a number of items that can be unpacked from your question. You are saying that you have smart people who are Engineers but have little technical knowledge. You want to figure out how to get them to learn networking, etc. Not only that, but you want them to get to a level where they can operate autonomously.
To begin with, you can't instill curiosity or an interest in technical skills in people, all you can do is encourage them or hire people who already have that drive and tinker at home. One w
You don't. (Score:2)
I'm a Mechanical Engineer that codes heavily and I'm a complete oddity in my field. I switched at last minute from CS to ME because I wanted to use the tool not make it. There are a very few 'jack of all trades' out there
Most of my co-workers know at most one language. Asking them to diagnose something written outside of that language is a non starter. If they know VBA, their tools are written in VBA. Matlab is so entrenched in most of the engineering fields that jus
Hiring processes (Score:2)
I remember going through university with a lot of people who didn't see the value of learning outside a very defined scope of their discipline.
We had engineers who said "we are not programmers I shouldn't be forced to use Matlab" or "in the real world software does that for us".
Likewise I see electrical engineers who have no idea what ethernet is, IP address, RS-232, baud rate, stop bits etc.
If I hire an electrical engineer to design and commission a piece of electrical equipment, questions about networking
You are a special snowflake (Score:2)
You are an outlier. Your personal interests and professional skills are tightly aligned in a way that very few other people ever develop themselves. To expect to find a large pool of candidates who are similar to yourself is completely unrealistic.
It takes a certain type of exceptional individual to make a small company work. There are only so many of those people in the world. As companies grow, expectations need to change. Primary among those is the expectation that a new employee will be able to per
Trophy for participation recipients. (Score:2)
Tech Literacy (Score:1)
Serious Replay to your Question (Score:2)
I understand you are small and need to get a little more growth out of your workers so you can invest in your core. This is double edged, but I will no try to disuade you.
There is an excellent online learning site called Lynda.com $300/year per employee and you can create custom learning playlists for them to build their skills from nearly all of the Microsoft Certification Exams/Linux/Opensource. In fact, if you want to give them a bonus for getting A+ certified, they have a learning path for that as well.
iGeneration (Score:1)
No no no, bad idea (Score:2)
I'm not an engineer but I have worked with engineers and I do have a strong CS background as that's my education. I think something that you'll need to realize is that while it's possible to maybe train or teach someone a field that they never had any background in, it doesn't mean they'll ever be able to come close to someone who's worked on IT their entire lives. There's too many things that experience teaches you that you would never hope to know. So in reality, hire a specialist to help everyone or j
In house work groups. (Score:2)
I think the best way to accomplish what you are trying to do has 2 parts.
1) scheduled in house work groups where select leaders show off and teach skills to employees who might be able to use them in their job.
the working group should focus on nuts and bolts type of stuff that can help people get the job done , more work in less time.
2) allocate a specific number of clock hours/ project time to training weekly to ensure people learn or practice the skills taught in the working group.
You lost me at Pascal (Score:1)
Seriously?
It's not the 90s anymore, buddy.
We all use Perl, C, C++, and that kind of thing now.
Wake up and smell the 21st Century.
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Well, if he needs I have an 8" floppy of TurboPascal for CP/M hanging above my desk.
WTF? (Score:2)
Oh Hell No! (Score:2)
Working IT in Aerospace the very last thing I want is my engineers thinking they know something about networking or IT. Just about every IT issue we have is some engineer thinking they know more than IT about our network. Many hands have been slapped, many a GPO crafted.
teach them to fish (Score:1)
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His optimal solution required executing the query a million times and skipping the rows he had already seen. He couldn't figure out why my version ran for 15 seconds and his ran for 90 minutes
Ran into that problem myself. My team lead showed me how to do vlookup in Excel. We had identical laptops. It ran 15 seconds on her laptop and 90 minutes on my laptop. Turned out that my SharePoint spreadsheet was "dirty" with numerous hidden background calculations. I have to copy and paste the SharePoint data into a blank spreadsheet. Now vlookup takes 15 seconds.
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Hehehe, there is a SF series "Epic Failure", by Joe Zieja, where the author takes great pleasure in describing things like that. For example, he made the cooks into engineers and the engineers into cooks. I guess Zieja is an industry veteran that has seen this kind of stupidity...
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There are also those people called "technology consultants". From small companies they are often quite good and well worth the rate they ask. And you can get them part time and often also effort-based.
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1. Send them back to uni to take the required courses for a CS degree.
2. While they're all at college, claim there are no suitable candidates.
3. Hire H1-Bs
4. Profit!!!!!!