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Comment by mkl95 | Hacker News Reader

Lately I have worked with many junior / mid level guys who studied CS in college. Meaning they graduated at some point in the last 3 to 5 years. All of them struggle with basic communication and tasks that involve working with other humans. It's like they spent all those years in some cave with no exposure whatsoever to the real world.

I get that the goal of a CS degree is not to prepare you for the software industry, but it's the main goal of most CS students. I can see why college degrees are not as attractive as they used to.

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I can say the same for those in humanities and the opposite for those in CS, anecdotally. The thing about CS is it has a clearly defined path that kids can prepare for. Expectations and conventions are known ahead of time and can be studied and learned (leetcode, code review, requirements gathering, sprint planning, etc.) A history major has no idea what conventions they will need to be ready for in the work force.

General communication and writing skills aren't unique to the humanities.

Would you be willing to elaborate on what you've seen a bit? I'm on the last semester of my CS degree now and have definitely seen a lot of similar effects as a result of Zoom courses and general isolation during COVID lockdowns. There's generally less willingness to reach out to people than there used to be, and people seem to prefer dividing up tasks and working independently over collaborative work (e.g. each person in a group project having a "role" rather than working jointly on a large segment). There's also a general preference towards working at home without any external interaction whatsoever and a lack of willingness to form study groups. As I start moving into the job application phase of things, I can definitely see how these traits can be seen as off-putting to hiring managers, and I'd like to avoid falling into similar traps. Is there anything else you've noticed that would be worth avoiding?

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