Blame

This month was off to a bad start with another brand new experience – group academic dishonesty. In my Software Engineering course, we had been randomly assigned to groups as part of an “extreme programming” exercise, which would require us to schedule a time we were all available to collaborate as a group and then talk through some answers to questions about our experience. Most groups had two people, but mine had three, so, knowing it could be difficult to synchronize 3 schedules, I tried to coordinate a time for us to get together as soon as groups were assigned.

First I reached out over Canvas, our university’s online classroom system, but didn’t get a response over the next couple days. Next I tried e-mailing both partners directly (even though Canvas notifies users through e-mail when they receive messages), and I only heard back from one partner, who said they and the other partner both had jobs but would be free later that week and she would let me know. I did not hear from her again until the assignment was due.

On the day of the night the assignment was due, I suddenly received e-mail notifications for many messages being sent back-and-forth over Microsoft Teams. When I logged in, the mystery third group member I had never heard from let us know they had put together the entire report and just wanted us to review it and give feedback. I hoped I was just misunderstanding them because of the language barrier, but when I opened the report it was clear they intended to lie about the entire activity and turn in a falsified report. I immediately took screenshots of the conversation on Teams and downloaded the original report and reported it to my professor as well as OSU’s academic integrity office.

The fallout was interesting. I was given full points, but asked to do a makeup assignment about “The Responsibility Process”. I’m not sure what happened to my group members, but the third group member messaged me the next week, angry and asking if I was trying to ruin their degree. I can’t fathom the reasoning there – let alone trying to blame me for their weakness. You ruined your degree the moment you thought turning in a falsified assignment was acceptable. Maybe they cheated because of their weakness – did they not understand the report? Maybe they blamed me because of their weakness – it’s easier than trying to improve if you don’t have the strength to be better.

Degree? Professional Experience? What Does It All Mean?

Degrees are difficult enough for me to take seriously. Why do most people need someone to hold their hand and tell them which paragraphs to read in a prescribed book? There’s merit in access to resources requiring significant investment, like the chemistry or engineering labs, but even if you pretend that can only be found at a university, regular occurrences like the above story would surely make companies question the merit of a degree as a minimum requirement for job candidates. Yet the majority of job postings list a computer science degree as a minimum requirement.

On top of that, job listings usually have a requirement for some arbitrary number of years of “professional experience”. I had long believed it to be irrelevant considering my unimpressive experiences with “professional” developers, but I was being turned down so frequently I started to think maybe there was something to it – after all, despite my almost decade of personal programming experience and committment to staying on top of the latest technology and practices, I had 0 years first-hand professional experience. By the time I was accepted for a role, I was desperate to take any position – even as a junior – despite believing I had senior level competence. All I’ve learned is that I was right.

I’ve worked with people who have degrees in computer science and multiple years of professional experience. Neither guarantee quality, nor are even regularly indicative. One developer needed me to explain what a PR was, and considering how long they’d been working there, I had to wonder what exactly they had been doing for so many months.

I have benefitted from this professional experience, though: I finally have a point of comparison for myself against other developers in industry; I now know my worth. I don’t take degrees or “professional exerience” as a reliable prediction of competence, but I can’t change the fact that most people consider it a convenient filter for job candidates as well as a banner to follow. I will continue, as always, to engage with others without making Appeal to Authority Falacies, but for the simpletons who need it, I am looking forward to having that magical piece of paper to waive around.