Some students see it as one more thing distracting them from
writing more code, and believe the only thing that will
determine their career success is ability to write code (as you
all know, ability to write code is necessary but not
sufficient to success as an engineer).
As an interviewer, engineer and lead myself, I'd say your students that think this are pretty darn close. If I get a junior candidate that can't code, I write them off and say goodbye.
I can teach dev lifecycle to a junior, and often need to because every business I've worked at as a lead has a totally different model. I can coach them on inter-team dynamics (and often have to). I can help them with culture fit to a point (if they're willing). What I can't do is teach them to be able to reason and write code and do the engineering work I hired them for.
From the Reddit post (and from other reviews), it sounds like the students are not performing well and sinking without learning this core skill -- most didn't understand enough to code in JS, for instance. This seems like a pretty dire failure in the part of the program itself.
Do you plan on at least giving these students a chance to retake prior units without further charging them for knowledge you should have already taught them?
Certainly agreed that being able to code is necessary. I’d argue it’s necessary and not sufficient.
> Do you plan on at least giving these students a chance to retake prior units without further charging them for knowledge you should have already taught them?
Students are actually strongly encouraged to retake units at no additional cost in order to move on to the next level, and in some instances we require it.
This is actually where some of the greatest frustration comes. It would be easy to close our eyes and wave people along but we have to say at times, “You’re not quite there yet, let’s keep working at it.” That’s not what students want to hear.
But you implemented changes so that the students themselves determine whether or not they want to flex? That's what happened the last two units for me... For two build weeks I was in a team of 8 people, and in both cases only one other person showed up. There were no repercussions for those that didn't attend build week and they continued on to the next unit regardless of whether or not they were ready. You grade yourself model and you flex yourself model is horrendous. I know some auto-grading has (very) slowly been implemented in earlier units, but essentially I went through 1/3rd of the program without any feedback other than my own, with two terrible teachers that were both new to teaching.
> This is actually where some of the greatest frustration comes. It would be easy to close our eyes and wave people along but we have to say at times, “You’re not quite there yet, let’s keep working at it.” That’s not what students want to hear.
I hear that this is good feedback, but looking at sugarwater's response that seemingly matches up w/ the original critique, maybe the current situation falls short of what you're trying to do, Austen?
These may be outliers, but from my perspective, the frustrations seem valid.
It's not an outlier of an experience. My cohort really did go through 2 units with no one looking at our assessments and assignments, and we determined whether or not we passed onto the next unit. It was an organizational mess.
I think that some of the issue with allowing students to retake is that there is a lot of pressure to continue the program regardless of skill because:
A) self judgement and passing leaves the unconfident people at a severe disadvantage regardless of their skill
B) it’s not codified in the contract that this is allowed. It’s a worry that a student will be ejected if they are not performing or worth the time investment by lambda.
That can look like missing resources or scheduling delays, which do seem to happen. It seems to be a normal event for cancellation for help from a tl or a technical hiccup not to be answered for several days.
Being able to read and write code in whatever language you claim to be proficient in on your resume is just table stakes imo. Being self taught I learned the whole team based development life cycle on the job. It was stressful. But it took maybe a month or two and I was proficient at git, setting up CI/CD, writing unit tests, and debugging things to just name a few.
I laud you being willing to teach a junior dev but I just find so many places are not open to hiring juniors at all.
Because its a total waste of money -- I'd be hiring someone who does not posess the requisite skills to do the base level job. My job is to create software solutions for the company by using my skills, and lead a team of engineers to produce a better solution. The role I hire a junior engineer for is the same: a much lower requisite skill level, yes, but skill nonetheless. I am not in the business of education -- that is literally what educators like Austen are for.
While the time spent teaching a blank slate how to be an engineer might benefit the person, it is literally throwing money away from the perspective of the company because it's not what I was hired to do.
I can teach dev lifecycle to a junior, and often need to because every business I've worked at as a lead has a totally different model. I can coach them on inter-team dynamics (and often have to). I can help them with culture fit to a point (if they're willing). What I can't do is teach them to be able to reason and write code and do the engineering work I hired them for.
From the Reddit post (and from other reviews), it sounds like the students are not performing well and sinking without learning this core skill -- most didn't understand enough to code in JS, for instance. This seems like a pretty dire failure in the part of the program itself.
Do you plan on at least giving these students a chance to retake prior units without further charging them for knowledge you should have already taught them?