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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.

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.
  - chrisseaton 11y ago
    This is desperately cynical and I'm struggling to picture an academic being told that. What did you teach, what was the university and what field were you in?
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 11y ago
      I've seen the same (from the student perspective). This philosophy applies to a lot of mid-tier public schools whose major selling point to students is "job marketability". For certain departments an amount of prestige is owed not just to the research you put out, but how many students you successfully place in jobs in the field. I studied geography at a mid tier public school and this school of thought was pretty prevalent. The professors used open source software in their research but when I learned statistics it was IBM SPSS and GIS was all ESRI and MapInfo. The department even hand curates a list of alumni and their current employers for marketability to future students.
  - dilemma 11y ago
    > If you think of cubicle training as the main job of the university, it follows that large corporations would look for degrees. If you read The History of Education (1920)[0] which outlines how the American and the Preussian system of education it is based on was created and on what basis, you'll see that this is exactly true. Education has never, ever been about exploration, or knowledge for its own sake. It has always been about increasing productivity for businesses, and tax revenue for government. [0] https://archive.org/stream/briefhistoryofed00cubbuoft/briefhistoryofed00cubbuoft_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/briefhistoryofed00cubbuoft/briefh...
- nata79 11y ago
  > It sucks, because often the best programmers are not degree-qualified. I've worked with very good programers that don't have a degree. But, learning the basis to become a good software engineer, is just a lot easier following formal training (like going to University). I find it hard to believe that most competent programmers will not have a degree. Again, having a degree is not necessary to be a good software engineer. But it's a lot easier to be a good software engineer if you have a degree.
  - agentultra 11y ago
    Most computer science curriculum I know of are far from engineering curriculum. Few students seem to retain any knowledge of predicate calculi or how to apply them to software specifications.
    - nata79 11y ago
      Perhaps. My curriculum (and of most other universities in my country) thought me the basis of OOP, Databases, Software Requirements, Development Processes, Distributed Systems, etc... All these concepts map directly to my day to day to job. Having learned this at college, made my life a lot easier after entering the market. And I still think that holds true after 10 years of professional experience.

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.
- chrisseaton 11y ago
  This is desperately cynical and I'm struggling to picture an academic being told that. What did you teach, what was the university and what field were you in?
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 11y ago
    I've seen the same (from the student perspective). This philosophy applies to a lot of mid-tier public schools whose major selling point to students is "job marketability". For certain departments an amount of prestige is owed not just to the research you put out, but how many students you successfully place in jobs in the field. I studied geography at a mid tier public school and this school of thought was pretty prevalent. The professors used open source software in their research but when I learned statistics it was IBM SPSS and GIS was all ESRI and MapInfo. The department even hand curates a list of alumni and their current employers for marketability to future students.
- dilemma 11y ago
  > If you think of cubicle training as the main job of the university, it follows that large corporations would look for degrees. If you read The History of Education (1920)[0] which outlines how the American and the Preussian system of education it is based on was created and on what basis, you'll see that this is exactly true. Education has never, ever been about exploration, or knowledge for its own sake. It has always been about increasing productivity for businesses, and tax revenue for government. [0] https://archive.org/stream/briefhistoryofed00cubbuoft/briefhistoryofed00cubbuoft_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/briefhistoryofed00cubbuoft/briefh...
nata79 11y ago
> It sucks, because often the best programmers are not degree-qualified. I've worked with very good programers that don't have a degree. But, learning the basis to become a good software engineer, is just a lot easier following formal training (like going to University). I find it hard to believe that most competent programmers will not have a degree. Again, having a degree is not necessary to be a good software engineer. But it's a lot easier to be a good software engineer if you have a degree.
- agentultra 11y ago
  Most computer science curriculum I know of are far from engineering curriculum. Few students seem to retain any knowledge of predicate calculi or how to apply them to software specifications.
  - nata79 11y ago
    Perhaps. My curriculum (and of most other universities in my country) thought me the basis of OOP, Databases, Software Requirements, Development Processes, Distributed Systems, etc... All these concepts map directly to my day to day to job. Having learned this at college, made my life a lot easier after entering the market. And I still think that holds true after 10 years of professional experience.