Posted: Mar 10, 2012 7:41 pm
VazScep wrote:A friend of mine recently posted a joke on Google+ talking about what CS-literate programming bosses are looking for in their employees. Having a phd was considered a strike against youstalidon wrote:Yeah, as I said... it depends on how CS-literate your boss turns up to be. Perhaps it's better now than it used to be. The 'industry' in the US seemed to suck pretty much, hence Dilbert.
I've been told that programming managers can be complete shite, often having been pulled in from projects unrelated to IT. Last time I got a job offer through an agency, I was told how great it was going to be working under the management of expert programmers. The agent said he'd recently put a bunch of applicants into positions where the management didn't let employees talk to one another, or as he assumed "distract one another."
Then there is that whole "mythical man-month" of managerial incompetence. This project will take 10 man-months. Okay, I'll set 20 people on it, and we'll be done in a fortnight!
Yup. Big IT companies tend to treat programmers as monkeys. I think your best bet would be to land a job on a company that takes programmers seriously, and those tend to be the ones run by programmers. Probably something like Joel's Fog Creek Software.
If you want a terribly contrasting view of CS Academia vs the 'Industry', check http://www.dbdebunk.com/about.html . I don't recommend reading too much of Pascal's diatribes in one sitting though, it might turn you into a suicide bomber for the cause of Truth.