• Guy (unregistered)

    Duuuuuuuuuuuude that's sic!

  • Zylon (unregistered) in reply to Guy

    "Many large companies will bring in graduates with the goal of attrition: they'll instill such hopelessness in their impressionable minds that they'll never have the desire or motivation to leave."

     Isn't that the opposite of attrition?
     

  • Jeronimo (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Of course, Federico wasn't allotted any additional hours to do this, but he did the best he could by providing examples of database access and internationalization (as the application needed to be in both English and Spanish), and periodically reviewing the code.

    I think the real WTF is Fedrico didn't catch the internationalization problem although he was supposedly reviewing the code.

    I have to check up on developers daily, and they've been coding professionally for years.  If you've got someone fresh out of college, the leash has to be very short...

  • (cs)

    Dude, I may not be a recent college grad... but still, dude, I am from California. And so I gotta say: dude! That is serious stereotyping you've got going on there, dude. I mean, that's callous and insensitive, dude, and you should really examine your bias. Dude.

     

  • ozamosi (unregistered)

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

     

  • wacco (unregistered) in reply to ozamosi
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.
  • (cs) in reply to ozamosi

    It must be said:

     

    The Dude abides. 

  • (cs)

    I'm supposed to be surprised because....? College graduates are generally SHITTY programmers. Maybe only 1-5% of the class actually knows how to do anything, and most likely they were programming before college anyway. College grads that haven't really done much programming should have a person looking over their shoulder for the first couple of months. If they don't, crap like this happens.

     BTW, When did people stop asking other people about the proper way to do things? When I need to do something (like internationalization) that I've never done before, I either ask someone who knows how to do it well how they did it, or I look for a good example on the internet (not saying all examples on internet are good, quite the opposite). Do people really need to be taught to do this? THAT's the TRUE WTF!

     

     

    P.S. Where's Zhe Money Lebowski!!! 

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Anonymous:

    "Many large companies will bring in graduates with the goal of attrition: they'll instill such hopelessness in their impressionable minds that they'll never have the desire or motivation to leave."

     Isn't that the opposite of attrition?
     

     Technically, yes. Perhaps the author should've used accumulation instead.
     

  • mausbrain (unregistered)

    9-to-5 office job dude thats awesome!

    here we work 8.30 to 6.30 when we leave early, and people shout jabbadabbadoo at you beacuse you are leaving at 6.30 and you are not giving more!

  • (cs) in reply to mausbrain
    Anonymous:

    9-to-5 office job dude thats awesome!

    here we work 8.30 to 6.30 when we leave early, and people shout jabbadabbadoo at you beacuse you are leaving at 6.30 and you are not giving more!

     You know it's been shown that the most productive programmer workweek is 37 hours?
     

  • Roll Over (unregistered) in reply to wacco

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.

     

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?
  • Moose (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over

    Yes.

  • (cs)

    Dude.. this is like.. a total insult.. 'cause like.. you know.. I hate that college people get paid to be this stupid.

    Maybe I don't have these problems and don't say "dude" all the time because I never attended college.. higher learning, indeed.. go figure.

  • Earl (unregistered)

    You know, I've been in this situation (in college, thrown into a 30MM line codebase with virtually no help or supervision) and, well, you get what you pay for.  Underpay people and provide no mentoring or help?  This sort of thing happens.

     And you don't get to whine when people leave for jobs where they actually take care of their devs, ie understand people fresh out of college need to learn about the software lifecycle, source control, working in large teams, scheduling, etc; and ensure that such learning happens.

     earl

     

  • (cs) in reply to Roll Over

    Anonymous:
    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

    What the heck do you do for 2 hours in the morning?

    ... my classmates should have considered themselves lucky that I even bothered to put on pants for my 7:30 AM classes.
     

  • RichieUT (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.

     

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

     

    amateurs. I used to have to get up for a 7:00 class. Normally would roll out of bed at about 6:50. Even the professor wore pajamas to class half the time. 

  • (cs)

    In all fairness, I've found programmers who understand proper internationalization are very rare.  Web authors who understand it are even rarer.

    I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it isn't taught in college. 

  • Um (unregistered)

    Dude, that is like....me in the picture.  Go iStockphoto!

  • (cs)

    Typo alert:

    Alex Papadimoulis:
    Usually miss; the company just doesn't *have* the resources to adequately coach and mentor new blood.

  • (cs) in reply to VGR
    VGR:

    In all fairness, I've found programmers who understand proper internationalization are very rare.  Web authors who understand it are even rarer.

    I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it isn't taught in college. 

     Hells no! Most CS courses don't even go out of their way to teach good style and design. Personally, I understand internationalization, but do not know how to implement it properly.
     

  • (cs) in reply to Sykes
    Sykes:

    Anonymous:
    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

    What the heck do you do for 2 hours in the morning?

    ... my classmates should have considered themselves lucky that I even bothered to put on pants for my 7:30 AM classes.
     

    good call brozilla... i usually got up at 7:55 for my 8am class (when i got up at all), and i had a 10 minute commute...

    they're also much less tolerant to one showing up hungover [or still drunk 0:-) ] in the business world...

  • (cs)

    This is one pretty lousy trimester: I have to be in college at 8:45 3 days, start my job at around 9 am on tuesdays. I must admit i'm not very good at that point, although I volunteer to get out of bed half an hour early twice a week to do some swimming (as anti-RSI measure). (and yes, I'm late a little too often :()

    I am able to imagine the problem above: out of 10 persons in my Master classes, only 3 can do some actual programming. They ones who got there Bachelor of Science at a University are all much better at math than the ones who got their Bachelor at a school for Professional Education, but the latter ones can produce some usefull code. So guess who's doing the code part on an assignment with mixed students...
     

  • el rafuzo (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    [image]There's always a risk in hiring employees straight out of college. It can be pretty rough adjusting to a normal adult lifestyle (shaving, bathing, not beginning and ending every sentence with the word "dude")

    What? My 2nd job out of college isn't a normal adult lifestyle? Dude!

  • thickasabrick (unregistered)

    I dunno, I use "dude" in quite a few of my sentences and I have absolutely no issues whatsoever finding/holding a job.  In fact I am currently receiving offers and am not even looking.  Also I wear basketball shorts and a t-shirt on most days.

     / crusading for people to realize that casual speak/dress does not make someone a bad engineer.
     

  • Jimbo (unregistered)

    Going to college is mostly a waste of time.  I went to college to learn how to do web coding.  I was told emphatically that there were classes in the CS major that would help me learn web design and programming.

     

    When I got there there was one class on how to use MS Frontpage.  

     

    That said, college was good in that the friends there helped me land the job i have now. 

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.

     

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

     

    Mistake #1: Putting an 8am class on your schedule

    Mistake #2: Not skipping the 8am class 

  • ozamosi (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.

     

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

    The secret is to not attend any classes before noon. It's not my fault they want me to go up at the time when I'd want to go to sleep...

  • (cs) in reply to Jimbo
    Anonymous:

    . . . I went to college to learn how to do web coding. . .

    If I've said it once, I've said it a million times.  That is not what college is for.

     

  • 604 (unregistered) in reply to Jimbo

    Going to college is mostly a waste of time.  I went to college to learn how to do web coding.  I was told emphatically that there were classes in the CS major that would help me learn web design and programming.

     

    When I got there there was one class on how to use MS Frontpage.  

     

    That said, college was good in that the friends there helped me land the job i have now.

     

    That sounds more like the college you chose was a waste of time.  At my school we didn't have any web-design/web-programming classes (at least not till the my last year or so), but it most certainly wasn't a waste of time.  Most of the courses for CS used C++ a few java, lisp and other miscellaneous languages all of which definitely helped in web design/programming even if the webbiest thing we did was write a simple web server in C++ or a distributed app in java + Corba 

  • (cs)

    Dude... I love how he translatated the variable names! He put all of the rest of us, who only translate the UI strings to shame. I guess thats what the early bird does, extra translating...

  • JL (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Anonymous:

    "Many large companies will bring in graduates with the goal of attrition: they'll instill such hopelessness in their impressionable minds that they'll never have the desire or motivation to leave."

     Isn't that the opposite of attrition?

    I'm not seeing the contradiction.  "Attrition" is the act of wearing something down.  Alex is saying "Many large companies will bring in graduates with the goal of [wearing grads down]: [description of wearing grads down]."  How are you reading it?
     

  • (cs)

    1. You get what you pay for in this case a graduate who can spell, research and debate the various aspects of global warming, war, politics, and sex with other humans.

    2. you never give a graduate "loose" guidelines on a project and you never leave them hanging demos around without a code review *first*

    3. Duuuuuuuuuuude is ok but not in the real world, Duuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

    <idiot: adj. for recent graduate/>

  • (cs) in reply to Roll Over

    Anonymous:
    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

    Dude*, 6am? When I had an 8am class I got up at about 7:45. Showering can wait until after class...

     

    * The funny thing is that this is how decided to start the post before I realized that everyone is already using "dude"  deliberately, so while I was very possibly influenced by it, it wasn't intentional.

  • (cs) in reply to VGR
    VGR:

    In all fairness, I've found programmers who understand proper internationalization are very rare.  Web authors who understand it are even rarer.

    I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it isn't taught in college. 

    One place I worked for had to ship an order to China. The download software wouldn't work on the Chinese version of XP.

    The solution? We bought them an English version of XP and gave it to them as part of the package. It was cheaper than the development time. 

  • (cs) in reply to mbvlist
    mbvlist:

    This is one pretty lousy trimester: I have to be in college at 8:45 3 days, start my job at around 9 am on tuesdays. I must admit i'm not very good at that point, although I volunteer to get out of bed half an hour early twice a week to do some swimming (as anti-RSI measure). (and yes, I'm late a little too often :()

    Last year I had 9am lectures 6 days a week. Rarely missed but often slept through them. I even had a Saturday exam.
    This year it's just the 3 9ams (MWF), and 3 10ams (TuThS). However rowing is notorious for requiring early starts; last term the earliest I had was 7:15 but next term the boat club'll likely start asking for 6am starts.
    The earliest classes I've heard of at my uni are 8am (maybe one person had a 7:30), and the latest 8pm. Few subjects have Saturdays, but mine is one of them.

  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez
    GoatCheez:

     BTW, When did people stop asking other people about the proper way to do things? When I need to do something (like internationalization) that I've never done before, I either ask someone who knows how to do it well how they did it, or I look for a good example on the internet (not saying all examples on internet are good, quite the opposite). Do people really need to be taught to do this? THAT's the TRUE WTF!

    Even a BAD example from the Internet is a start, because at least you'll have eliminated one thing you could possibly do.

    Most people are afraid to make mistakes or look stupid, so they'll plod along without asking for help. In a large company (or even in some cultures) showing that you don't know something is a sign of weakness. This is fostered by academia. The higher your GPA, the better you are. This means two things.

    First, you start to foster an air of elitism. You've got a near-perfect record. You don't need help with...with anything! 

    Second, you don't have any experience in being wrong. You don't know how to react to problems you can't solve. 

    Me? I know nothing.

     

  • SM (unregistered) in reply to JL
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    "Many large companies will bring in graduates with the goal of attrition: they'll instill such hopelessness in their impressionable minds that they'll never have the desire or motivation to leave."

     Isn't that the opposite of attrition?

    I'm not seeing the contradiction.  "Attrition" is the act of wearing something down.  Alex is saying "Many large companies will bring in graduates with the goal of [wearing grads down]: [description of wearing grads down]."  How are you reading it?
     


    In the sense of a workforce, attrition is a form of personnel reduction.  So in that case, it's contradictory.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Jimbo

    College can be useful but but more for concepts than to teach you a specific language. Of course what college you go to matters too. (and it also helps pad the resume)

    <font face="Arial" size="2"></font>
  • - (unregistered) in reply to RichieUT
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.

     

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

     

    amateurs. I used to have to get up for a 7:00 class. Normally would roll out of bed at about 6:50. Even the professor wore pajamas to class half the time. 

     Due to a very bad train schedule, I had to wake up at 5.15 to get to the early classes...

  • David (unregistered) in reply to JL
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    "Many large companies will bring in graduates with the goal of attrition: they'll instill such hopelessness in their impressionable minds that they'll never have the desire or motivation to leave."

     Isn't that the opposite of attrition?

    I'm not seeing the contradiction.  "Attrition" is the act of wearing something down.  Alex is saying "Many large companies will bring in graduates with the goal of [wearing grads down]: [description of wearing grads down]."  How are you reading it?
     

     

    Friction and wearing down is one meaning of attrition, but you don't really get any physical friction in jobs.  Look at the second and third definitions below, the commonly used meaning of attrition when relating to business:

    Attrition (n) 

    1. A rubbing away or wearing down by friction.

    2. A gradual diminution in number or strength because of constant stress.

    3. A gradual, natural reduction in membership or personnel, as through retirement, resignation, or death.

    4. Repentance for sin motivated by fear of punishment rather than by love of God.

     

    These definitions came from answers.com.  Feel free to contest them, but I agree with Anonymous in that attrition was incorrectly used.

  • (cs) in reply to kmactane
    kmactane:

    Dude, I may not be a recent college grad... but still, dude, I am from California. And so I gotta say: dude! That is serious stereotyping you've got going on there, dude. I mean, that's callous and insensitive, dude, and you should really examine your bias. Dude.

    I agree, that was harsh.  It's also too difficult to put "dude" into writing, since you lose all of the intonation.  The nuances of the communication are lost.  You can give a full code review by only pointing and using the word "dude" with different tonalities.  It is a spoken part of grammar, and I can't represent it here correctly.  "Dude" is not just a noun that refers to the listener, or an interjection.

  • Martin (unregistered) in reply to David

    Atrittion is a reduction in quantity, not quality.  It was a poor word choice.  Get over it.

     

    In my experience people who learned programming in college were lured by a programmer's salary, and don't really have a passion for code.  The people with Master's degrees have always been the least talented and highly touted programmers.  I am sure there are exceptions, but that's been my experience.  Then again I am biased since my education camed from Tower and Barns & Noble. 

  • violet (unregistered) in reply to ozamosi

    Being a first-year grad student myself, I must say the dude-ful description of college students is truer of one professor I know than any college student.

     That said, he's a great prof.
     

  • (cs) in reply to m0ffx
    m0ffx:

    Last year I had 9am lectures 6 days a week. Rarely missed but often slept through them. I even had a Saturday exam.
    This year it's just the 3 9ams (MWF), and 3 10ams (TuThS). However rowing is notorious for requiring early starts; last term the earliest I had was 7:15 but next term the boat club'll likely start asking for 6am starts.
    The earliest classes I've heard of at my uni are 8am (maybe one person had a 7:30), and the latest 8pm. Few subjects have Saturdays, but mine is one of them.

    saturday class? um... umm....... change subjects, or colleges, or countries if need be. saturday class is the anti-"college-experience." and it just sucks. i used to do everything i could to end up with just MWF classes, and i have friends who managed to get TWTh schedules... your one day weekend pales in comparison to the beloved 4 day weekend every week!

  • Rafael Larios (unregistered) in reply to Martin

    I'm Amazed of your college schedule.....

     
    here in colombia, the norm is to have 6:00 am classes, all the way to 6:00pm classes, all days.... there was a time when i had a calculus class saturday at 6:00 am... (I almost lost that class, not for the lack of skills but for the lack of booze-less fridays..) 

     Our work schedule around here is from 7:30 am to 6:00 pm with 1 hour of lunch.... in my latest job here we have a much better schedule: 7:30-5:30 with 2 hours for lunch! (and i don't have to work saturdays!)
     

  • Richard Head (unregistered)

    Here is my issue with this.  This country is turning into a bunch of Spaniards.  Assuming this did in fact take place in the US, why the hell would an internal expense report system need to be developed in Spanish and English?  Is it that hard to submit expense reports in English? 

    Hello?  Learn English or get the fuck outta here.  If this in fact did not take place in the US, then they were correct by coding English into it because it is obviously far superior. 
     

  • gl (unregistered) in reply to chrismcb

    chrismcb:
    Dude... I love how he translatated the variable names! He put all of the rest of us, who only translate the UI strings to shame. I guess thats what the early bird does, extra translating...

     Yes, the early bird can run the source for a LOT more pages through an online translator.

  • mnature (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.

     

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

    I learned quite a bit in college.  However, there are two things I learned that have helped out in many of the decisions I have had to make throughout the years.

    The first one I learned in chemistry class:  Hot glass looks exactly like cold glass.

    The second one I learned through taking a calculus class:  Never ever take a math class that starts at 7:30 in the morning.

     

  • (cs) in reply to JamesKilton

    JamesKilton:

    Personally, I understand internationalization, but do not know how to implement it properly.

     

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization#Methods

     

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