this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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As a software engineer I just tell people I'm not the IT guy. I make the things the IT guy uses
Even though I could fix their problem. I just don't want to
As someone in the IT administrating department, i feel like the new wave of software engineers have a frighteningly low understanding of the system they're developing on. It appears as they are making plain code monkeys these days
How is your impression on this?
Not the OP but been in IT for a while. The current generation entering the workforce have been using tech since birth but do not seem to understand or care how it actually works. They are generally poor troubleshooters and seem hesitant to ask for help. I figure pandemic lockdowns and remote learning made this worse.
Please don't generalise us like this. I'm currently in second semester and working for my company, working on a codebase. I very much care for how my stuff works, and I also know a fair bit I think. I troubleshoot as a hobby and am passionate.
I build and support new servers/racks to startups who throw money at new system hardware first, but no money to hire an IT to manage it. I've had too many awkward/frustrating interactions with software developers, data scientists, and even "CTO's" (of their 5-20 person company) to suggest they hire someone more familiar with system hardware to locally configure and support their new systems if any issues arises- an IT person...
I'm sure you are one of the good ones, but I agree with OP that next wave of software developers (and data scientists) aren't great with system hardware.
They are not great it because they have been raised on infrastructure that is composed of terrafom'd fargate + s3 + rds stacks. If they are a little more complex , logs get tossed into cloud watch, terraform interacts with route53 and ACM to get dns + certs.
At no point do they learn how/why stuff works the way it does, just that you can drop this chunk of teraform from chatgpt into your projects repo and now your using https.
I worked for several years in IT fields from help desk to sysadmin. I'm now a Sr. Software Engineer.
I somewhat disagree. With containerization like Docker our system is pretty simple. However, there are lot more bootcamp developers that learned to code in 12 weeks which are going to know a lot less than those with a Bachelors or higher in the field.
It all comes down to passion. If they love the subject then they'll dig through the weeds to uncover the dirt. If they're not, then it doesn't matter what education they have, they'll only know what they've been directly taught. The number of engineers I've interviewed who have masters degrees and barely understand the stack they work in is shocking.
Honestly I get the same feeling. When I was in school from my CS degree a few years ago I noticed how everyone in my classes didn't know much about how computers communicate with one and another at a low level, amongst other things. My theory is that most people when learning to code nowadays, learn just that and only that. But I suspect with the rise in popularity of high level languages over the past decade(s) is the root cause
The rise in pay and demand is the root cause. I've been trying to hire an engineer for a month and a half now and nobody knows anything about servers, computers, or protocols. They went through some boot camp or got a CS degree, but aren't passionate about the subject, so they've never looked under the hood. They know what they were taught, and that's it. Eventually I'll be forced to just hire someone, because it appears that everyone who is passionate is already employed.
Well that's not great.
I admit, as an IT grease monkey myself, stuff like this about the incoming generation of coders usually foretells that support will need to work harder.
I know not all coders are like this, I've met a lot of very competent and capable coders, but if the younger generation that's graduating into development know very little about the platform, it tells me that college's are not doing the whole job, and there's going to be a lot of underskilled developers getting into making production code very soon and likely on an ongoing basis.... Which just means the IT support folk, whether sysadmin, network admin, or otherwise, will need to do a lot of work forklifting their skills up to par any time someone goes from college into the workforce.
Not great stuff.
That’s because the new generation are mostly bootcamp grads with an art degree
Working as a software engineer developing for the IT team, I understand the system I'm developing on, but not the system I'm developing.
Jira customfields give me nightmares.
Over the years it gets tiring, it doesn't help that there's a huge technological illiteracy issue even though we depend on it and use it every waking moment.
Yes! I always call it tech debt. It fits because, I’m constantly bailing out bankrupt users that are too big to fail. Solve Literacy , solve debt , then I can go back to making things