Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!sei!rsd From: rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: What exactly is a software engineer ? Message-ID: <3444@ae.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 3 Jun 89 11:54:13 GMT References: <3359@ae.sei.cmu.edu> <5004@goofy.megatest.UUCP> Reply-To: rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito) Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 71 In article Marshall Cline writes: >In article <5004@goofy.megatest.UUCP> Dave Jones writes: >>From article <3359@ae.sei.cmu.edu>, by Richard S D'Ippolito: >>> In article <40386@think.UUCP> Franklin A Davis brings up certain points >>>that >>>>...Fortunately the real world is often a good >>>>teacher, so people with CS degrees (or no degree at all) become >>>>proficient engineers with experience. > >>>I find it difficult to believe that one can acquire enough knowledge of a >>>technical field without the benefit of a formal period of study of the >>>field, such as you suggest, though I suppose it has been done by those rare >>>folks that you and I cannot hope to emulate. > >>Gimme a break. College is not magic and professors are not magicians. > >AGREE! The idea that coursework is _necessary_ for learning is LUDICROUS! >Coursework isn't even _sufficient_ for learning! This is getting a bit far afield from the original context, isn't it? Why is only college instruction considered formal training? What about previous schooling and apprenticeships? I will stand by my original statement, even in the isolation that it's presented above. >However: Raw, Hard, Industry Experience seems to show that teaching Computer >Scientists how to be an Engineer is harder than teaching an Engineer how to >program. The point is not that Engineering _coursework_ is required, as much >as the whole _mentality_ that is developed over time when trained (formally >or informally) as an Engineer. I suspect that you are not using formal in the sense that I was, that is, within a carefully defined educational framework, as opposed to simply purchased schooling. >High Tech job opportunities invariably list Education Requirements. >That's the way "The System" evaluates people. >Unfortunately we've no way of rewarding _ability_; instead we use _education_. Nonsense! The education completed is simply used to determine initial compensation; companies which fail to base continuing compensation on performance pay the penalties in many ways. Universities and similar organizations can get away with this almost indefinitely because their reputations are slow to change and the customers (read students) have no direct, immediate economic power over the suppliers (read individual professors). Additionally, they have no immediate way of determining the value received, unlike employers, who can obtain current feedback of job performance. >I'd like to change the way it works, but I can't -- I have no better way. >How else would we evaluate people's abilities? You are again confusing potential with performance. We could go back to the old educational system where the students paid for each class at the end of it and refused to come back to the next one if unsatisfied! Restaurants and other service providers survive this every day. Immediate and direct economic feedback does the trick every time! Rich -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ideas have consequences. RSD@sei.cmu.edu Richard Weaver ---------------------------------------------------------------------------