Daily Archives: August 28, 2008

Airplane engines and teamwork

Charles Fishman has a wonderful article on a aircraft engine manufacture plant in Durham, NC. There are a lot of interesting lessons in here about teamwork, motivation, and work that make it a highly recommended read.

I’m supposed to be packing up the house and instead just read that.

Update:Jon supplied a link to a Joel Spolsky article counterpointing the above article. Now I’m going to be reading that instead of doing some chores.

No American resumes? – state of CS education

I had been planning on writing a blog entry on the apparently sad state of our CS industry these days, and the complete lack of qualified American resumes that come across my desk, when we actually got a decent one today.

Still, there is much to be said about the poor quality of education. At some points, we’ve gone through dozens of candidates that had such weak skills that I’m surprised they graduated from a reputable institution.

Then I noticed on the Google blog today a new initiative to partner with CS programs around the country. I applaud this effort and all like it. Serious companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Adobe, Apple, and everybody else who builds amazing software need to get involved and lay down the expectations.

Does anyone know if Microsoft has a similar comprehensive program? I know that they have MSDNAA, but that seems more like giving software in a marketing campaign than setting the agenda. I do see smaller efforts with robotics that are great, but a more general push is needed.

I consider myself lucky for having gone through a fantastic computer science education at BYU. I found it even much better than my graduate program.

The thought leaders need to start insisting on higher standards, and we need to shame schools that churn out useless bodies whose jobs will soon be outsourced.

I can see some pushback from academic circles because they won’t want big business telling them how to teach, but the reality is that when schools are doing such a poor job of preparing people, they need to change and listen to those who are going to be hiring.

We need to stop complaining and start changing the situation.