"What is wrong in the culture / education of engineering that people have to be taught this after they start working?"
I wonder how many universities make their engineers or developers actually build something for an outside or even internal customer.
Strangely, vocational folks deal with customers quite a bit in learning and learn to think in those terms. Nothing like having to redo the doors on a cabinet or rerun some plumping to make you think first.
"I wonder how many universities make their engineers or developers actually build something for an outside or even internal customer."
Why would a university do any such thing?
University is the place and time to learn things that no business has the time or skills to teach you. Serving customers is exactly what you should learn at work.
> I wonder how many universities make their engineers or developers actually build something for an outside or even internal customer.
For my final year full-year Software Engineering project with 16 team members we built and delivered a software product for an external customer - a big name Software company you've heard of.
It was an awesome project, working so closely and directly with the external end customer.
I took an experimental class last semester where we teamed up with a design student to build a website for a local non-profit/small company. The technical aspects of the class were less than satisfying but taking a product through the entire life cycle (even though it was a small project) was a great learning experience.
I'm pretty sure they made it a full on elective class next semester.
> I wonder how many universities make their engineers or developers actually build something for an outside or even internal customer.
Don't most?
At my alma mater, students in either Telecommunications or Comp Sci majors were required to do a capstone project their final semester for an outside client/customer. They made a big deal about the demo day for it and it was always a cool event. Considering my school was a large public school that isn't known specifically for its computer science/IT, it seems strange that more schools don't do this. It seems like most CS friends from other schools had the same experience as well.
It's really too bad if some people don't get a chance to do this. There are countless things during that project that were good learning experiences, but they would have been awful if it had happened when I actually had a real job. I can definitely say that project determined a lot of my future plans.
I wonder how many universities make their engineers or developers actually build something for an outside or even internal customer.
Strangely, vocational folks deal with customers quite a bit in learning and learn to think in those terms. Nothing like having to redo the doors on a cabinet or rerun some plumping to make you think first.