It takes me a while to get there, but this post is about being evaluated based on your own efforts versus things out of your control, one of the benefits of working in computer science.
The quest for 4.0
Growing up with an Asian mother, grades were always very important. If you have heard the joke that a ‘B-‘ is an Asian ‘F,’ it’s true. I’m really not kidding; as sure as my family used the dishwasher as a dishrack (it wasn’t even plugged in) I thought the standard for most kids was to bring home an A grade with only an occasional B+ if you struggled with a particular subject.
I’m not a nosy person and my friends didn’t really talk about it, so I had no idea what kind of grades my classmates were pulling. I just didn’t think about it. It genuinely came as a surprise to me when my friends and I were called into the office senior year and told that we were graduating in the top ten. First of all, I hadn’t even known that was a thing and, second, that I had done well enough to place fourth.
It was quite a revelation to discover that, unbeknownst to me, my friends had been planning their schedules and strategically taking TA assignments to keep form diluting their weighted GPAs. It was even a little disappointing to learn that if I hadn’t taken extra Spanish and Stagecraft classes for fun I might have scored second place. As a result, when I entered college I set a goal for myself to graduate with a 4.0. Unfortunately, I majored in an Arts degree.
Arts vs Science
Arts degrees get a lot of flack and usually aren’t considered as rigorous as Science degrees. I’ve now completed one of each, and I’m here to tell you that in a lot of ways my first degree was much more difficult especially in terms of getting a perfect score. I do want to clarify, though, that the degree was from a prestigious university so my experience may differ from a degree at a less rigorous college.
Here is the big difference: science degrees usually involve a lot of math, etc. where there is a correct answer. The grading is objective–either right or wrong. Art degrees are 99.99% subjective. With an easy professor this is great. Some of them will give you an A just because they are too lazy to read it. Others use a clear rubric with specific, useful feedback. But inevitably you get a crazy professor or, worse, a masters student teaching for a grade.
Crazy professors involve weird traditions into their subjective grading. One professor I had as never gave an A on a essay; the highest you could hope for was a B+. That was his actual rule in his syllabus. Others, especially masters students, do this: “A-, Great Job!” and when asked for feedback just say “Oh, the essay was good, but I give an A- because it can always be better.”
This isn’t a big deal in the big picture, but if your goal is a 4.0, it’s disastrous. If a teacher only gives an ‘A-‘ for every large assignment, an A- is only 3.7 on a 4.0 scale and just one of them puts you permanently at 3.8-3.9 with no chance for recovery.
A science degree, or at least a computer science degree, is much easier to score perfectly on. The concepts may be more complex and you have to learn advanced Calculus, but as long as you know the answer getting that ‘A’ is 100% under your control and not at the whim of some grad student.
Teaching and Evaluations
Why am I ranting about grades? Because this principle transfers to the work force and is one of the primary reasons I changed my career.
I spent some years working as a teacher for secondary education. In the same way that grades mattered to me as a child, my job performance matters to me. It also matters because it plays a roll in keeping your job, getting another one, and getting a raise. As a teacher you are evaluated mainly by the following: 1) How your students perform on standardized tests, 2) How many students fail your class, 3) Four 5-minute classroom visits by your administrator each year.
The funny thing is that recent studies in education are showing that what a teacher does has very little impact on a student’s academic success. As it turns out, when talking about external factors, a student’s success is roughly 30% having two parents at home, 10% having food at home, 10% having a home, 30% school environment/neighborhood, 20% how often they come to school. Teachers are known to have a high impact on individual students or classes of students, but actually a single teacher rarely makes a radical change to a student’s overall academic trajectory.
In practice, if a teacher teaches an AP class their evaluation is naturally higher than other teachers because high performing students are moved into their class and low performing students are moved out of it. Additionally, a teacher can spend hours preparing state-of-the-art instruction on a daily basis and not see a huge change in student performance because a) the students don’t show up to class or b) external factors (hunger, drugs, bullying, instability) are literally preventing the students’ brains from functioning enough to absorb the information. This is not to say that teachers are not necessary or that what they do has no impact on their success, but it is a fact that a great portion of their perceived job performance is often based on factors outside of their control.
Metrics and Logistics
The jobs I’ve had after (and a couple between) my years of teaching really showed me the difference when working a technical job. Although any job evaluation has subjective elements, technical positions have quite a lot of objective data to support how well you do your job.
While working in logistics, there were metrics containing easily measurable and observable numbers reflecting how many tasks I accomplished on a daily basis, the kind and difficulty level of those tasks, the number of errors associated with tasks I completed, etc. In computer science you can measure lines of code written, number of features contributed to, code reviews performed, bugs fixed. There can be situations where one’s effort isn’t accurately reflected in the numbers, but over a large data set when you do good work it is reflected in the numbers.
While working those kind of jobs there were frequent raises and promotion opportunities for me. I barely had to ask for them–they came naturally when my numbers told the company how much I was worth. In teaching, I was making just $1500 less than someone else who had been there 15+ years longer. And this doesn’t just apply to teaching; there are plenty of jobs where added effort doesn’t translate into increased return or better evaluations.
This is a great advantage for working in a technical field. Measurable outcomes are a powerful leverage in pushing a career forward. I wouldn’t trade my years of cultivating young minds and I sincerely believe teaching is an honorable and worthwhile career that does good in the world. The impact of a good teacher on a young life is immeasurable–but that is precisely why it is usually undervalued. Crafting new software, on the other hand, is easily monetized, measured, and recognized. Fixing a bug and running a program without any errors: instant gratification.
The world of 1’s and 0’s is different from more subjective realms (not better or worse–different) and I feel that it’s important to recognize that. Firstly, because when you do you can use it to your advantage to know your value and to advocate for yourself. Second, I hope that by recognizing how they are different we can see how they are the same and hopefully find a way to reconcile the two so that perhaps the undervalued can be better measured, appreciated, and, preferably, compensated.
