4 ms·

Regarding #1; I'm curious as to how old you are? I'm wondering if the worth of the degree is relative to the age of the audience evaluating it? I've consulted

by aantix 11y ago

Regarding #1; I'm curious as to how old you are? I'm wondering if the worth of the degree is relative to the age of the audience evaluating it? I've consulted at a lot of startups in the Bay Area as a Rails engineer, and we've mostly leaned on doing a series of hands on coding exercises (e.g. Let's develop a simple TODO list in Rails). I've probably done a couple hundred interviews, and the topic of where the candidate went to school was discussed in depth once. And that was only because he was an MIT graduate, looking for a senior role position, and missed some basic model associations in our exercises. I just can't see any of my colleagues saying out loud "yeah, this kid went to Berkeley, so he must be a winner. Let's go with him."

argonaut 11y ago
This is consistent with my comment. I'm sure most Rails startups don't care as much. But 1) startups, and 2) Rails, only form a small fraction of the industry. I'm sure things are different at Google, Facebook, and infra/system/research/algorithm teams. Also, the big companies have massive university recruiting programs.
- marcus_holmes 11y ago
  Big companies (usually!) have an HR problem. HR do the recruiting, and have to fit the recruit into a company-wide HR policy pay-and-benefits grading structure. That structure takes account of education. HR also know nothing about tech (and are usually bizarrely proud of it). So they need the tech people recruiting to lay out a range of specific qualifications or experience that the recruit needs, so they can easily reduce the huge pile of CVs down to something more manageable. The combination results in a degree being required, and CV's with no degree never even make it to a review stage. It sucks, because often the best programmers are not degree-qualified. But large organisations aren't actually a meritocracy, or concerned with hiring the best people. They want the people who will fit into the large organisation and its bureaucracy nicely. A degree usually indicates at least some respect for authority, so actually it's a good qualifier.
  - mahyarm 11y ago
    Big successful tech companies don't have this problem. Eng recruiting is it's own org, who works extensively with engineers and engineering managers. Recruiters basically keep a database of engineers and contact them to get them into the typical interview funnel. Interviews are done by engineers and their managers only and then everyone gets together in a meeting soon after to give a hire/no hire. Then recruiters (and managers) attempt to close the interviewee. This has been my experience after interviewing at dozens of companies at various sizes, from small to huge.
    - marcus_holmes 11y ago
      It's the pre-interview stage that usually fails to let non-degree-qualified candidates through. The list of people that engineering get to hear about are either already doing the exact same job somewhere else, or are degree qualified. Getting into that funnel with no degree is hard.
  - x0054 11y ago
    > HR also know nothing about tech (and are usually bizarrely proud of it). This is so true in every industry. My company did work for a big HR firm that specialized in servicing the accounting industry. Every one working for that firm was aggressively ignorant about every aspect of accounting. Having known people in other HR fields, that tends to be true overall. It almost feels like they think that finding out more about the industry they are servicing would somehow lower them to the level of the "peons" they are hiring. This is anecdotal only, of course.
  - argonaut 11y ago
    I do believe the advantage/bias holds true even among engineers and engineering managers doing the interviewing.
  - sam_goody 11y ago
    I'm a former college professor. When hired, I was told that my job is to prepare the students to work in a cubicle. This is reflected in the curriculum - for example, proprietary software is taught (even where open source tools excel), because they are more likely to be found in the large corporation they are being prepared for. If you think of cubicle training as the main job of the university, it follows that large corporations would look for degrees.
ProAm 11y ago
For most jobs the school is self does not matter much, but going to and finishing school provides me a lot of information about the candidate without needing to discuss it. It's 3-4 years of life and work experience that is not directly related to programming. That is important experience to be considered when trying to hire a well rounded employee. It's not essential to have, but it helps especially if you are 21-22 years old and do not have a lot of prior work experience on your resume or CV.
wyldfire 11y ago
Where you attended school and how well you did is IMO a factor only at your first job out of school. It certainly won't outrank other interview factors, like you indicate. But a degree in general does seem to be requisite for even professionals with decades of experience.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  Depends on the industry, aerospace is known for mandating degrees.
  - RobotCaleb 11y ago
    If they are a govt/DOD contractor, there are reasons they can't hire "actual" engineers into "engineering" positions. It comes down to billing the government. I've run into this many times over the last couple years.

by aantix 11y ago

argonaut 11y ago

This is consistent with my comment. I'm sure most Rails startups don't care as much. But 1) startups, and 2) Rails, only form a small fraction of the industry. I'm sure things are different at Google, Facebook, and infra/system/research/algorithm teams. Also, the big companies have massive university recruiting programs.

marcus_holmes 11y ago
Big companies (usually!) have an HR problem. HR do the recruiting, and have to fit the recruit into a company-wide HR policy pay-and-benefits grading structure. That structure takes account of education. HR also know nothing about tech (and are usually bizarrely proud of it). So they need the tech people recruiting to lay out a range of specific qualifications or experience that the recruit needs, so they can easily reduce the huge pile of CVs down to something more manageable. The combination results in a degree being required, and CV's with no degree never even make it to a review stage. It sucks, because often the best programmers are not degree-qualified. But large organisations aren't actually a meritocracy, or concerned with hiring the best people. They want the people who will fit into the large organisation and its bureaucracy nicely. A degree usually indicates at least some respect for authority, so actually it's a good qualifier.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  Big successful tech companies don't have this problem. Eng recruiting is it's own org, who works extensively with engineers and engineering managers. Recruiters basically keep a database of engineers and contact them to get them into the typical interview funnel. Interviews are done by engineers and their managers only and then everyone gets together in a meeting soon after to give a hire/no hire. Then recruiters (and managers) attempt to close the interviewee. This has been my experience after interviewing at dozens of companies at various sizes, from small to huge.
  - marcus_holmes 11y ago
    It's the pre-interview stage that usually fails to let non-degree-qualified candidates through. The list of people that engineering get to hear about are either already doing the exact same job somewhere else, or are degree qualified. Getting into that funnel with no degree is hard.
- x0054 11y ago
  > HR also know nothing about tech (and are usually bizarrely proud of it). This is so true in every industry. My company did work for a big HR firm that specialized in servicing the accounting industry. Every one working for that firm was aggressively ignorant about every aspect of accounting. Having known people in other HR fields, that tends to be true overall. It almost feels like they think that finding out more about the industry they are servicing would somehow lower them to the level of the "peons" they are hiring. This is anecdotal only, of course.
- argonaut 11y ago
  I do believe the advantage/bias holds true even among engineers and engineering managers doing the interviewing.
- sam_goody 11y ago
  I'm a former college professor. When hired, I was told that my job is to prepare the students to work in a cubicle. This is reflected in the curriculum - for example, proprietary software is taught (even where open source tools excel), because they are more likely to be found in the large corporation they are being prepared for. If you think of cubicle training as the main job of the university, it follows that large corporations would look for degrees.

ProAm 11y ago

For most jobs the school is self does not matter much, but going to and finishing school provides me a lot of information about the candidate without needing to discuss it. It's 3-4 years of life and work experience that is not directly related to programming. That is important experience to be considered when trying to hire a well rounded employee. It's not essential to have, but it helps especially if you are 21-22 years old and do not have a lot of prior work experience on your resume or CV.

wyldfire 11y ago

Where you attended school and how well you did is IMO a factor only at your first job out of school. It certainly won't outrank other interview factors, like you indicate. But a degree in general does seem to be requisite for even professionals with decades of experience.

mixmastamyk 11y ago
Depends on the industry, aerospace is known for mandating degrees.
- RobotCaleb 11y ago
  If they are a govt/DOD contractor, there are reasons they can't hire "actual" engineers into "engineering" positions. It comes down to billing the government. I've run into this many times over the last couple years.