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Except that Google is fairly infamous for having educational background as one of their primary criteria. There are theories that close knit groups tend to over

by uola 10y ago

Except that Google is fairly infamous for having educational background as one of their primary criteria. There are theories that close knit groups tend to overestimate their own diversity since they are more sensitive to differences among themselves e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity

nostrademons 10y ago
Like in many cases, perception lags reality. Google was already starting to broaden out past Ivy League candidates when I was hired (2008), and it's been almost 8 years since then. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't source enough candidates from just the top schools to fill the open positions; they're at 66,000 employees now. SRE actually seemed one of the more educationally diverse organizations while I was there - it's a field where skills are easily measured and passion for the job you do tends to result in better performance than educational background. Search Quality was still overweight Stanford/Berkeley/MIT/IIT/etc at the time, as was Research and X. Chrome and Apps had a wide variety of backgrounds, including a number of really good people without college degrees. Ironically, the departments that seemed to have the biggest Ivy-League bias were AdSales and HR; when there are few objective ways of judging candidates, more weight gets placed on educational pedigree.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  When there are few objective ways of judging candidates, more weight gets placed on educational pedigree. About as sad as a statement of a company's (or in this case, a specific department's) culture as one could make.
JeremyBanks 10y ago
In my experience being hired at Google without a degree, and later talking to folks involved in hiring, education is not a huge factor in most cases these days. If you're at the start of your career and don't have any significant experience then it can make a big difference, but otherwise it's usually more of a supporting factor.
- uola 10y ago
  My point wasn't necessarily that you can't get hired at Google, but that it's fairly well-documented that Google during the first decade or so of its existence explicitly favored candidates from elite school. That culture isn't something you just change overnight. I put no judgement in that fact, just that it's unlikely to produce relativly more diversity, non-conformity or original thinking compared to other hiring methodologies. Edit: From Eric Schmidt himself: > A few of the rules we had were: we didn’t want to hire your friends, we didn’t want to hire people from “lesser universities,” we only wanted to hire people with very high GPA’s. The constant problem was somebody was a good employee, had someone they had worked with, who was very loyal, but not from a great university, did not have a high GPA. We would not hire these people. It was controversial. We relaxed it a bit now, but the fact of the matter is it got us to the point of where we are today. They got us these intelligent generalists from top Universities. https://medium.com/cs183c-blitzscaling-class-collection/class-8-notes-essay-reid-hoffman-john-lilly-chris-yeh-and-allen-blue-s-cs183c-technology-84ebbbaf6fa7 https://medium.com/cs183c-blitzscaling-class-collection/clas... and Marissa Mayer: > "Even though the actress Gwyneth Paltrow had created a best-selling cookbook and popular lifestyle blog, Mayer, who habitually asked deputies where they attended college, balked at hiring her as a contributing editor for Yahoo Food. According to one executive, Mayer disapproved of the fact that Paltrow did not graduate college." http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa-mayer-tried-to-be-steve-jobs.html?ref=magazine&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-whe...
  - bertiewhykovich 10y ago
    Silicon Valley is an ouroboros, but the snake's some guy and the tail is his own dick.
  - kafkaesq 10y ago
    The fact of the matter is it got us to the point of where we are today. And -- how can you possibly know that, Eric? Are you saying because B follows A, that A caused B to happen? Maybe the early Google succeed despite the now-discredited filtering processes it used in its early years. According to one executive, Mayer disapproved of the fact that Paltrow did not graduate college. But this quote is just exquisite. Presumably she filters picks for her bookshelf (including, most especially, cooking and lifestyle books) based on a hard floor for the authors' educational backgrounds, also. And of course the movie she watches, with respect to the pedigrees of their actors, likewise.

by uola 10y ago

nostrademons 10y ago

Like in many cases, perception lags reality. Google was already starting to broaden out past Ivy League candidates when I was hired (2008), and it's been almost 8 years since then. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't source enough candidates from just the top schools to fill the open positions; they're at 66,000 employees now. SRE actually seemed one of the more educationally diverse organizations while I was there - it's a field where skills are easily measured and passion for the job you do tends to result in better performance than educational background. Search Quality was still overweight Stanford/Berkeley/MIT/IIT/etc at the time, as was Research and X. Chrome and Apps had a wide variety of backgrounds, including a number of really good people without college degrees. Ironically, the departments that seemed to have the biggest Ivy-League bias were AdSales and HR; when there are few objective ways of judging candidates, more weight gets placed on educational pedigree.

kafkaesq 10y ago
When there are few objective ways of judging candidates, more weight gets placed on educational pedigree. About as sad as a statement of a company's (or in this case, a specific department's) culture as one could make.

JeremyBanks 10y ago

In my experience being hired at Google without a degree, and later talking to folks involved in hiring, education is not a huge factor in most cases these days. If you're at the start of your career and don't have any significant experience then it can make a big difference, but otherwise it's usually more of a supporting factor.

uola 10y ago
My point wasn't necessarily that you can't get hired at Google, but that it's fairly well-documented that Google during the first decade or so of its existence explicitly favored candidates from elite school. That culture isn't something you just change overnight. I put no judgement in that fact, just that it's unlikely to produce relativly more diversity, non-conformity or original thinking compared to other hiring methodologies. Edit: From Eric Schmidt himself: > A few of the rules we had were: we didn’t want to hire your friends, we didn’t want to hire people from “lesser universities,” we only wanted to hire people with very high GPA’s. The constant problem was somebody was a good employee, had someone they had worked with, who was very loyal, but not from a great university, did not have a high GPA. We would not hire these people. It was controversial. We relaxed it a bit now, but the fact of the matter is it got us to the point of where we are today. They got us these intelligent generalists from top Universities. https://medium.com/cs183c-blitzscaling-class-collection/class-8-notes-essay-reid-hoffman-john-lilly-chris-yeh-and-allen-blue-s-cs183c-technology-84ebbbaf6fa7 https://medium.com/cs183c-blitzscaling-class-collection/clas... and Marissa Mayer: > "Even though the actress Gwyneth Paltrow had created a best-selling cookbook and popular lifestyle blog, Mayer, who habitually asked deputies where they attended college, balked at hiring her as a contributing editor for Yahoo Food. According to one executive, Mayer disapproved of the fact that Paltrow did not graduate college." http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa-mayer-tried-to-be-steve-jobs.html?ref=magazine&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-whe...
- bertiewhykovich 10y ago
  Silicon Valley is an ouroboros, but the snake's some guy and the tail is his own dick.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  The fact of the matter is it got us to the point of where we are today. And -- how can you possibly know that, Eric? Are you saying because B follows A, that A caused B to happen? Maybe the early Google succeed despite the now-discredited filtering processes it used in its early years. According to one executive, Mayer disapproved of the fact that Paltrow did not graduate college. But this quote is just exquisite. Presumably she filters picks for her bookshelf (including, most especially, cooking and lifestyle books) based on a hard floor for the authors' educational backgrounds, also. And of course the movie she watches, with respect to the pedigrees of their actors, likewise.