Industry experience?
January 24, 2007
Manager: So how much increase in productivity did the new (expensive)tool gave you?
Developer: Well it helped me cover a lot more test cases…
Manager: I am asking how much productivity in terms of lines of code..
Developer: Hmm.. the advantage is not really the time but the quality. The old tool is like an ordinary gun while the new tool is like a shotgun. The bullet speed is the same but the shotgun did hit more.
Manager: I am asking how much productivity in terms of code.. 50% or 20%? Did I not instruct you to make a study comparing how much time did you spend writing code on the old tool and compare it with the new tool?
Developer:(Not knowing what to say)…
This is a typical manager trap. If you say it improved coding time by this much expect that your development time will decrease and will use your statement to the other developers as well.
If you say it did not improve coding time he will bug you to hell until you say that it did improve coding time.
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Rommel blogged about a plan to have a BS Software Engineering in UP and while I am all for it, I am not that comfortable on importance they are giving to industry experience(2 semesters). The problem is the industry might not be a good teacher of software engineering.
If you are an advertising student it is easy know which companies are the best. Look at the quality of the commercials and ads produced by a company and you would know. Unfortunately it is not the same with software companies. Could you walk in an office of a software company and ask them, “Can I see your code?”.
The size of the the company is also not a good indicator. The bigger a software company is, the more probable that they are still in love with the waterfall model(which we know is bad most of the time).
Another problem is authority. There is no de facto authority in software engineering. Is CMMI good because SEI recommends it? On some cases yes. But does good software companies like Google or Microsoft use it? I doubt it. But most companies like it and thinks that it is a silver bullet.
Industry experience is good if the goal is to see what is outside the academia but expecting the student to learn(software engineering) from the experience is a hit or miss thing.
January 24, 2007 at 10:17 pm
[...] ex-co-faculty member/staff/friend, Alan, is skeptical about the intent of having the proposed BSSE students undergo a 1-year internship in industry. He [...]
January 26, 2007 at 10:59 am
Students learning software engineering from companies can be one of the goals. However, there is more to learn in an internship program. One is experience. A classroom is a controlled environment. Placing them in “the outside world” allows them to work on real-life problems. A lot of our students in UP, and even in top universities in Manila and the provinces, lack this kind of exposure. Companies end up re-tooling them after graduation.