[ilyt]

> Unfortunately, most software engineers haven't been to art school and have no formal training in how to give and receive useful feedback.

I'd imagine no training in normal education is the problem here, not not being to art school...

[jodoherty]

Most normal education tends to skew towards the didactic all the way through your undergraduate studies, especially with the math and hard sciences (which includes most CS students).

That is to say, an instructor disseminates organized knowledge to the student. The student may be asked to communicate that knowledge back to prove mastery, but there's not as much emphasis on students giving each other critical feedback. Even when there is, it usually has a minor impact on your academic progress or grades.

As such, there's no incentive to learn how to give good feedback or make use of peer feedback.

Art school tends to be unique in that it cannot be taught that way. You spend years giving and receiving daily critiques and incorporating them into your growth.

The commonly accepted peer review processes we use in today's software engineering field involve giving and receiving feedback on your peers' work at a frequency that the vast majority of people simply have never experienced before.

Few people are naturally good at it, and few companies invest time into training anyone on how to do it well.