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My grandfather was CEO of an NYSE listed company and he preferred to hire people out of college whom had lower GPAs around 3.0 then perfect students because he

My grandfather was CEO of an NYSE listed company and he preferred to hire people out of college whom had lower GPAs around 3.0 then perfect students because he thought these folks made for better team members and well rounded employees. Simply put he wanted to hire people who perused side passions and had a social life. Personally after having been in entrepreneurial circles for years it seems the most financially successful people I know had mediocre college grades if they went at all. One friend who’s net worth is over $100m dropped out of high school to became a carpenter and is now a major real estate developer.Too many people spend way to much of thier youth focused on grades. What’s important is finding what you love, learning a bit and just doing enough to get your diploma. If you want to get a masters then focus on just getting in. It’s like passing the levels in a video game. No reading to get a perfect score if you don’t need to. When you are 40 years old your college grades will likely have no bearing on your career prospects. Your social network will.

lisper 8y ago
> What’s important is finding what you love Actually, if financial success is your quality metric, then what matters is the ability to work with other people. In particular, the ability to motivate other people to work with and for you is probably the single most important skill a person can acquire (if the goal is to make money). Of course, academia not only fails to cultivate this skill, it actively tries to squash it. Convincing someone else to do your work for you is considered "cheating". In the real world, it's called "delegating."
fullshark 8y ago
Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, and definitely not everyone can be a successful one. Real estate is also a whole other ball game, and you are projecting from a group that has survivorship bias. If you want to be highly compensated labor, the best grades at the best schools are the best entry point into the social network + early career opportunities to lead to long run success.
traviswingo 8y ago
I think your grandfather was a wise man. I have frequently noticed the best employees I’ve hired are not the top students. They’re self starters, independent, and “street smart.” I actually never ask about education, simply because true intelligence doesn’t come from a classroom. The valedictorian will frequently bother me for the next task or to sign off on something, the 3.0 gpa figures it out on her own. Obviously this isn’t always the case, but it’s what I’ve observed in my mere 28 years on this earth, and happens to match my beliefs.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  If this is really the case, which I suspect it is, then university is a gigantic waste of time, and hiring practices are more like reading tea leaves rather than an "employee SLA". that 30k i spent really wasnt worth it!!
- andrewmcwatters 8y ago
  You're getting downvoted, but this is reality and it's a poor reflection on HN to see your comment shunned.
- alexbeloi 8y ago
  The valedictorian is an 'executor', and likely very good at that crushing tasks to get the job done. The self-starter is creative and malleable and likely very good at complex problems with lots of unknowns. Those people aren't interchangeable and it's preferable to have both to run smoothly. It sounds like you're speaking from a position of upper management, where you don't have the time to be managing an executor type person and you'd prefer more independent people directly under you.
- pkaye 8y ago
  Would you prefer a self starter with a 4.0 GPA or a 2.0 GPA?
  - ScottBurson 8y ago
    The self starter with a 4.0 GPA is a highly paid lawyer, or something, and is not in your applicant pool.
wenc 8y ago
There's a significant tendency on HN to unduly discount good grades. I think this is a mistaken tendency due to univariate, linear thinking. Grades are not everything, but they are not nothing. The fact is, determining a good hire requires multivariate, nonlinear thinking. Good grades can be a proxy for metaskills like discipline, cognitive ability, etc. They don't always measure these things perfectly, but the correlation is not negligible. Doesn't mean say, a 2.5 GPA isn't a good hire -- but in multivariate thinking, there has be other factors that compensate for the low GPA. Otherwise you'd be hiring a 2.5 GPA who is truly mediocre, and my experience is that the majority of 2.5 GPAs are that. Not everyone with a low GPA is pursuing other interests or passions. Also, doesn't mean that everyone with a high GPA isn't (at competitive schools, the best students tend to be active in many extra curricular activities unrelated to their majors) In the engineering/academic world, grades do matter and are highly predictive of ability. People with poorer grades often struggle a lot, and the amount of time spent on remedial training may not always pay off. We have this ideal of a genius hacker who blew off school but is a 10x coder in real life... but in reality those people are comparatively rare.
- ataturk 8y ago
  I worked my way through college and still got a 3.75 in a double major of Math and CS. My girlfriend at the time got a 4.0 at her college but had a full tuition scholarship and did it by dropping any hard math course that wasn't absolutely required. We both later got PhDs in our respective fields. I used to help her with her homework a lot. Who was more well-rounded? I challenged myself with some of the courses I took and was overloaded some of the time due to work obligations, etc. I got a "C" in one math class in my final semester. Grades tell a tiny fraction of a story about discipline and self-sacrifice.
  - wenc 8y ago
    Again, multivariate thinking is important. GPA alone doesn't predict everything, but it is one predictor in a complicated function and it may have varying sensitivities in different ranges as well as have interacting terms with other variables. One needs to factor in all the other predictors, as you alluded to in your story.
chrisseaton 8y ago
> he preferred to hire people out of college whom had lower GPAs around 3.0 then perfect students because he thought these folks made for better team members and well rounded employees. Simply put he wanted to hire people who perused side passions and had a social life. But these things are not exclusive - you can't look at someone's impressive academic achievements and assume they don't have a social life or hobbies.
wepple 8y ago
My dad was an accountant and eventually ended up having hiring responsibilities. Same deal: if you bought on someone who spent 3 years at university getting an A+ on everything, they probably didn’t spend a ton of time out meeting people and exploring the world, and thus typically less good in front of clients. Obviously lol everything, there will always be exceptions.
throwawayqdhd 8y ago
I don't think grades are important at all. But the effort and discipline that leads to good grades, especially if they're in a setting that requires self-motivation (such as college - you have mom and dad breathing down your neck in school).
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  I didn't have mom or dad breathing down my neck in school. In fact, my dad was basically absent for my last three years while the only thing my mom cared about was how soon I would be finished so that she could stop paying. By the end of it I was working two jobs with an 18-21 credit hour course load. I wouldn't assume anything about anyone's source of motivation in college, at all.
godelmachine 8y ago
>> When you are 40 years old your college grades will likely have no bearing on your career prospects. Your social network will. True that.
majos 8y ago
I suspect that lower GPA students have higher variance but lower expectation outcomes than higher GPA students. Higher GPA students, at least when the coursework is serious, tend to be at least one of extremely bright and extremely conscientious (I would guess most are a little of the former and more of the latter). The conscientious and prudent possibly have less tolerance for or interest in risk, so they're less likely to hit a home run, but their floor is pretty high. At a more general level, I'm not fond of the common idea that people who are proficient in area x are probably deficient in area y (where area y is usually implied to be more important). It often seems to me like a face-saving technique for aficionados of area y.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
duxup 8y ago
The getting good grades system is very much a structured system as far as education goes. That's not necessarily wrong, but when you get out of school some folks when they get outside that system seem to struggle with knowing what to do. That's not to say they fail, but sometimes seem a bit off, waiting for the associated praise and looking for a similar system to fit into. Folks who weren't invested in such a system and maybe were more comfortable with the more nebulous world of life sometimes adapt a bit quicker. One company I worked for loved to bring in recent MBA grads. These kids had little work experience (IMO MBAs should not be given without something like 10 years actual work experience) outside their internships or whatever. They showed up and loved to try to introduce rigid systems for success, random rules, and / or just had no initiative outside being told what exactly to do and what would get them a good "grade" (some seemed uncomfortable with anything but academic like measurements). Granted some did just fine but it was very much the old FedEx commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gh9k9qzddA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gh9k9qzddA Give me some people who have had to make some decisions, fail and start over please.
ggg9990 8y ago
The majority of great employees don't have 4.0 GPAs, but the majority of 2.5 GPA graduates don't make great employees.
jvanderbot 8y ago
My advisor said if you were getting a 4.0, you were wasting your valuable research and development time on homework. Nobody cares much about GPA, when you could have built something amazing instead. Of course, GPA didn't improve his tenure chance as much as our R&D so, take that into consideration.
- yelloweyes 8y ago
  >Nobody cares much about GPA, when you could have built something amazing instead. That seems to imply you were 100% guaranteed to build something amazing just by not doing homework, which we all know is far from the truth.
athenot 8y ago
A strong predictor for success I've noticed in others (and in myself) is: give a shit. I.e. deeply care about what you are working on. Some individuals care so much about the field they are in that they disregard the proxy metrics that judge their level (grades, awards, titles...). For some, the strong academic path happens to perfectly match up to their pursuit of passion. Others see the academic part as a hindrance to their passion and end up equally successful. On the flip side, following some proxy metric in order to achieve passionate success doesn't work. You can't aquire passion with good grades† and dropping out of education because that's the cool thing to do ALSO doesn't buy one passionate success. Yes this reeks of survival bias, but every single successful person I know is really passionate about the field they are in. They are always thirsty to learn more and go deeper. †: as with everything, there are exceptions: individuals who are highly motivated by peer recognition. Everyone is different and we can't generalize too broadly.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Grades are not ambition. They are not chutzpah. When I was an employer what I looked for was the willingness and capacity to learn. Someone who is (book) smart isn't as important as someone who can think, see patterns, be willing to offer ideas, etc. Sadly, many of the things that are of value aren't even mentioned in school, let alone taught. As a result I'm troubled by all the talk about free / cheaper higher edu for all. That's not the answer. It might just create more (expectation) troubles than it solves.
ArtWomb 8y ago
Even Fortune 500 companies with major R&D budgets will tell you point blank they would rather a handful of decent engineers from Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, etc. Than the top student from MIT or Harvard. They are simply easier to manage in day to day operations. And perhaps more adept at handling the stress of juggling a dozen plus projects simultaneously. The corollary is that for real innovation. Your probability of a breakthrough increases by having a few geniuses at the chalkboard. But most companies aren't seeking Manhattan Project or Xerox PARC levels of radical technological advancement.
bitwize 8y ago
No. When in HS and college you have only one primary focus in life and that is to get good grades. Good grades show the world that you know how to study, how to work well with others, and how to put off the pleasures of today and work toward future goals. They may matter less when you're 40, but when you're 22 they count for everything and determine the opportunities tou have from the outset. And the experience you got knuckling down hard in school translates into valuable work skills right out of the starting gate.
tmpz22 8y ago
The most solid career path I'm familiar with is to go straight from college into a software development role at a FAANG company, then mostly coast, optionally diverge to some other highly payed role else ware, and eventually come back to the FAANG company at a higher pay grade. You'll be able to live a lavish lifestyle, be a millionaire by 30, and really not have to work that hard. To get this job you really have to have good grades. Why? Google etc. will ask for your transcripts coming out of college - anything short of a full degree and a 3.0 will likely disqualify you.
- vostok 8y ago
  That's true in the average case, but it's not true in the literal sense. I know people who did not graduate college and whose first jobs were at Facebook/Google. If you're talking about the average case then you might as well say 3.5 GPA rather than 3.0 GPA. I don't have access to any of the data so this is just speculation.

lisper 8y ago

> What’s important is finding what you love Actually, if financial success is your quality metric, then what matters is the ability to work with other people. In particular, the ability to motivate other people to work with and for you is probably the single most important skill a person can acquire (if the goal is to make money). Of course, academia not only fails to cultivate this skill, it actively tries to squash it. Convincing someone else to do your work for you is considered "cheating". In the real world, it's called "delegating."

fullshark 8y ago

Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, and definitely not everyone can be a successful one. Real estate is also a whole other ball game, and you are projecting from a group that has survivorship bias. If you want to be highly compensated labor, the best grades at the best schools are the best entry point into the social network + early career opportunities to lead to long run success.

traviswingo 8y ago

I think your grandfather was a wise man. I have frequently noticed the best employees I’ve hired are not the top students. They’re self starters, independent, and “street smart.” I actually never ask about education, simply because true intelligence doesn’t come from a classroom. The valedictorian will frequently bother me for the next task or to sign off on something, the 3.0 gpa figures it out on her own. Obviously this isn’t always the case, but it’s what I’ve observed in my mere 28 years on this earth, and happens to match my beliefs.

anoncoward111 8y ago
If this is really the case, which I suspect it is, then university is a gigantic waste of time, and hiring practices are more like reading tea leaves rather than an "employee SLA". that 30k i spent really wasnt worth it!!
andrewmcwatters 8y ago
You're getting downvoted, but this is reality and it's a poor reflection on HN to see your comment shunned.
alexbeloi 8y ago
The valedictorian is an 'executor', and likely very good at that crushing tasks to get the job done. The self-starter is creative and malleable and likely very good at complex problems with lots of unknowns. Those people aren't interchangeable and it's preferable to have both to run smoothly. It sounds like you're speaking from a position of upper management, where you don't have the time to be managing an executor type person and you'd prefer more independent people directly under you.
pkaye 8y ago
Would you prefer a self starter with a 4.0 GPA or a 2.0 GPA?
- ScottBurson 8y ago
  The self starter with a 4.0 GPA is a highly paid lawyer, or something, and is not in your applicant pool.

wenc 8y ago

There's a significant tendency on HN to unduly discount good grades. I think this is a mistaken tendency due to univariate, linear thinking. Grades are not everything, but they are not nothing. The fact is, determining a good hire requires multivariate, nonlinear thinking. Good grades can be a proxy for metaskills like discipline, cognitive ability, etc. They don't always measure these things perfectly, but the correlation is not negligible. Doesn't mean say, a 2.5 GPA isn't a good hire -- but in multivariate thinking, there has be other factors that compensate for the low GPA. Otherwise you'd be hiring a 2.5 GPA who is truly mediocre, and my experience is that the majority of 2.5 GPAs are that. Not everyone with a low GPA is pursuing other interests or passions. Also, doesn't mean that everyone with a high GPA isn't (at competitive schools, the best students tend to be active in many extra curricular activities unrelated to their majors) In the engineering/academic world, grades do matter and are highly predictive of ability. People with poorer grades often struggle a lot, and the amount of time spent on remedial training may not always pay off. We have this ideal of a genius hacker who blew off school but is a 10x coder in real life... but in reality those people are comparatively rare.

ataturk 8y ago
I worked my way through college and still got a 3.75 in a double major of Math and CS. My girlfriend at the time got a 4.0 at her college but had a full tuition scholarship and did it by dropping any hard math course that wasn't absolutely required. We both later got PhDs in our respective fields. I used to help her with her homework a lot. Who was more well-rounded? I challenged myself with some of the courses I took and was overloaded some of the time due to work obligations, etc. I got a "C" in one math class in my final semester. Grades tell a tiny fraction of a story about discipline and self-sacrifice.
- wenc 8y ago
  Again, multivariate thinking is important. GPA alone doesn't predict everything, but it is one predictor in a complicated function and it may have varying sensitivities in different ranges as well as have interacting terms with other variables. One needs to factor in all the other predictors, as you alluded to in your story.

chrisseaton 8y ago

> he preferred to hire people out of college whom had lower GPAs around 3.0 then perfect students because he thought these folks made for better team members and well rounded employees. Simply put he wanted to hire people who perused side passions and had a social life. But these things are not exclusive - you can't look at someone's impressive academic achievements and assume they don't have a social life or hobbies.

wepple 8y ago

My dad was an accountant and eventually ended up having hiring responsibilities. Same deal: if you bought on someone who spent 3 years at university getting an A+ on everything, they probably didn’t spend a ton of time out meeting people and exploring the world, and thus typically less good in front of clients. Obviously lol everything, there will always be exceptions.

throwawayqdhd 8y ago

I don't think grades are important at all. But the effort and discipline that leads to good grades, especially if they're in a setting that requires self-motivation (such as college - you have mom and dad breathing down your neck in school).

jschwartzi 8y ago
I didn't have mom or dad breathing down my neck in school. In fact, my dad was basically absent for my last three years while the only thing my mom cared about was how soon I would be finished so that she could stop paying. By the end of it I was working two jobs with an 18-21 credit hour course load. I wouldn't assume anything about anyone's source of motivation in college, at all.

godelmachine 8y ago

>> When you are 40 years old your college grades will likely have no bearing on your career prospects. Your social network will. True that.

majos 8y ago

I suspect that lower GPA students have higher variance but lower expectation outcomes than higher GPA students. Higher GPA students, at least when the coursework is serious, tend to be at least one of extremely bright and extremely conscientious (I would guess most are a little of the former and more of the latter). The conscientious and prudent possibly have less tolerance for or interest in risk, so they're less likely to hit a home run, but their floor is pretty high. At a more general level, I'm not fond of the common idea that people who are proficient in area x are probably deficient in area y (where area y is usually implied to be more important). It often seems to me like a face-saving technique for aficionados of area y.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

duxup 8y ago

The getting good grades system is very much a structured system as far as education goes. That's not necessarily wrong, but when you get out of school some folks when they get outside that system seem to struggle with knowing what to do. That's not to say they fail, but sometimes seem a bit off, waiting for the associated praise and looking for a similar system to fit into. Folks who weren't invested in such a system and maybe were more comfortable with the more nebulous world of life sometimes adapt a bit quicker. One company I worked for loved to bring in recent MBA grads. These kids had little work experience (IMO MBAs should not be given without something like 10 years actual work experience) outside their internships or whatever. They showed up and loved to try to introduce rigid systems for success, random rules, and / or just had no initiative outside being told what exactly to do and what would get them a good "grade" (some seemed uncomfortable with anything but academic like measurements). Granted some did just fine but it was very much the old FedEx commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gh9k9qzddA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gh9k9qzddA Give me some people who have had to make some decisions, fail and start over please.

ggg9990 8y ago

The majority of great employees don't have 4.0 GPAs, but the majority of 2.5 GPA graduates don't make great employees.

jvanderbot 8y ago

My advisor said if you were getting a 4.0, you were wasting your valuable research and development time on homework. Nobody cares much about GPA, when you could have built something amazing instead. Of course, GPA didn't improve his tenure chance as much as our R&D so, take that into consideration.

yelloweyes 8y ago
>Nobody cares much about GPA, when you could have built something amazing instead. That seems to imply you were 100% guaranteed to build something amazing just by not doing homework, which we all know is far from the truth.

athenot 8y ago

A strong predictor for success I've noticed in others (and in myself) is: give a shit. I.e. deeply care about what you are working on. Some individuals care so much about the field they are in that they disregard the proxy metrics that judge their level (grades, awards, titles...). For some, the strong academic path happens to perfectly match up to their pursuit of passion. Others see the academic part as a hindrance to their passion and end up equally successful. On the flip side, following some proxy metric in order to achieve passionate success doesn't work. You can't aquire passion with good grades† and dropping out of education because that's the cool thing to do ALSO doesn't buy one passionate success. Yes this reeks of survival bias, but every single successful person I know is really passionate about the field they are in. They are always thirsty to learn more and go deeper. †: as with everything, there are exceptions: individuals who are highly motivated by peer recognition. Everyone is different and we can't generalize too broadly.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Grades are not ambition. They are not chutzpah. When I was an employer what I looked for was the willingness and capacity to learn. Someone who is (book) smart isn't as important as someone who can think, see patterns, be willing to offer ideas, etc. Sadly, many of the things that are of value aren't even mentioned in school, let alone taught. As a result I'm troubled by all the talk about free / cheaper higher edu for all. That's not the answer. It might just create more (expectation) troubles than it solves.

ArtWomb 8y ago

Even Fortune 500 companies with major R&D budgets will tell you point blank they would rather a handful of decent engineers from Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, etc. Than the top student from MIT or Harvard. They are simply easier to manage in day to day operations. And perhaps more adept at handling the stress of juggling a dozen plus projects simultaneously. The corollary is that for real innovation. Your probability of a breakthrough increases by having a few geniuses at the chalkboard. But most companies aren't seeking Manhattan Project or Xerox PARC levels of radical technological advancement.

bitwize 8y ago

No. When in HS and college you have only one primary focus in life and that is to get good grades. Good grades show the world that you know how to study, how to work well with others, and how to put off the pleasures of today and work toward future goals. They may matter less when you're 40, but when you're 22 they count for everything and determine the opportunities tou have from the outset. And the experience you got knuckling down hard in school translates into valuable work skills right out of the starting gate.

tmpz22 8y ago

The most solid career path I'm familiar with is to go straight from college into a software development role at a FAANG company, then mostly coast, optionally diverge to some other highly payed role else ware, and eventually come back to the FAANG company at a higher pay grade. You'll be able to live a lavish lifestyle, be a millionaire by 30, and really not have to work that hard. To get this job you really have to have good grades. Why? Google etc. will ask for your transcripts coming out of college - anything short of a full degree and a 3.0 will likely disqualify you.

vostok 8y ago
That's true in the average case, but it's not true in the literal sense. I know people who did not graduate college and whose first jobs were at Facebook/Google. If you're talking about the average case then you might as well say 3.5 GPA rather than 3.0 GPA. I don't have access to any of the data so this is just speculation.