It looks like education has increasingly become the focus of the business environment, which is aware of the necessity of some future employees who should be as well prepared and as competitive as possible. The meeting of the HR group of the Cluj IT Cluster, in which I took part this summer, also included, among other important subjects, the poor level of preparation of the students. This fact is generally established by those who are working in the domain. The answer of the universities’ representatives has justified this actuality by drawing the attention to the reduced amount of time dedicated by the students to study, since most of them are already employed from the 2nd year. A perfectly valid point of view if we think about the fact that, after eight hours of work, it is not likely even for a very good student to be able to also learn something for school. Beyond the rhetoric of explanations and justifications come from both directions, it is advisable that an understanding be reached, an agreement meant to dilute this crises situation a bit. Maybe now it is the time to take into consideration a unified approach of the companies in Cluj, which should only have an internship during the summer holidays, and the hiring should happen only after graduation. Moreover, the synchronization with a private scholarship system, I think, would offer the chance of developing some exceptional generations in this field. Two events that unfolded this month in Cluj and which I took part in, give us the hope that this gap between the expectancies of the business environment and the degree of preparation of the employees will be significantly reduced. I am talking about Academy+Plus, a program that enjoyed for its inauguration the presence of the Ambassador of France to Romania, Francois Saint-Paul, and of other local and national official people. The program of the Academy, taken up from the School 42, which is one of the biggest private school of Informatics in France, proposes a three year study program that would train programmers very well in respect to the team work. The second program is dedicated only to students. Called IT Brainiacs, held and organized by Telenav in collaboration with Apex Edu, this program will unfold as a mentorship on the period of one school year. We wish them good luck and we are glad to see more and more private initiatives in this domain!
This month, the magazine has proposed the generic theme of communication. Articles such as: Client communication – A tough game to play, Communication within a start-up, ShareCluj – Technical journal or How can an outsourcing company become a trustworthy partner, all develop this vast theme. In the startup area, we present a first article of a series entitled Startup Files, the startups registered in the How To Web Startup Spotlight competition, the French project on the IndieGoGo – the Bionic Bird. The Agile concept is discussed by Alexandru Bolboaca in the article called “Why Agile?”. We offer a technical approach dedicated to programmers in the articles: Java vs. Objective-C, Puppet based Automation or JavaFX Visual Components.
We hope we have aroused your interest and we invite you to read the Today Software Magazine online on weekly bases, as we are going to publish new articles within a few days of each other.
by Mircea Vădan
by Călin Lupo
