Not quite. The question is how do you choose the most qualified candidates? As an example, a lot of emphasis is put on CS degrees. But if you've been in hiring,

Not quite. The question is how do you choose the most qualified candidates? As an example, a lot of emphasis is put on CS degrees. But if you've been in hiring, they aren't an indicator of how good someone is going to be, and interviewing candidates is hard. I can teach people who can think logically how to program. What I can't teach is having the guts to do the right thing, diligence, curiousness, willingness to learn, etc. I work for a big tech company; it is very hard to bring in people without CS degrees because of the interview process. Weirdly enough, the only place I've seen this happen is IBM, where they had a written exam based on logic questions, not programming questions (although the two are clearly related, and one was about scheduling/threading, it could be solved by somebody without knowledge of the terminology). I have never seen numbers that indicate hiring CS majors is more cost effective, better, etc, and most job ads happily say "CS or related", but then the interview just doesn't reflect that. Maybe it is slightly easier to pick from a pool of people who have prior experience, but it's lazy. I think we can do better.