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This can cut both ways. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done well in 1-2 rounds of software interviews, to then be told the company suspects my compensatio

by mlthoughts2018 8y ago

This can cut both ways. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done well in 1-2 rounds of software interviews, to then be told the company suspects my compensation requirements are outside their budget (even when we have not spoken about compensation at all at that point), and it’s almost surely down to the degree programs I went through. If you sincerely get into elite programs by merit and demonstrated talent, and you do not come from a wealthy family, then elite institutions don’t help you much at all. I’ve never once had doors open because of my degrees, but certainly have had doors closed presumably because people form a pre-conceived opinion about me or believe the degree prices me out of the market. I’ve experienced similar things when I’ve shared my Stack Overflow profile during interviews. I am very highly ranked in a number of relevant technology tags, but this has not once helped me in any way, yet it has seemed like a liability. Meanwhile, I know plenty of great engineers from a variety of “non-elite” schools, and they have never expressed having this problem. They express just having a pretty normal success rate with job applications and being evaluated for their skill and experience, and never sensing that their degrees have any significant effect on anything. Being a “success outlier” often just puts a target on your back. People will write you off as elitist, coming from a wealthy family, getting places in life through favoritism, and never stop to meet you and see what kind of person you are or question their assumptions.

gamblor956 8y ago
In Los Angeles they're giving junior developers straight out of bootcamp $75k because they need programmers so badly they're willing to hire anyone who can turn on a computer. I'm told companies are even more desperate to hire programmers in the Bay Area and NYC. Hell, even I'm getting coding job offers and I haven't programmed professionally in a decade. Where are you (geographically) that having an elite degree in a heavily in-demand field is keeping you from getting offers?
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  You’ve been very badly misinformed about the prevalence of software jobs. In fact, companies generally apply extremely difficult filters before hiring engineers and go to great lengths to keep engineering headcount as low as they can. Nobody is handing out tons of jobs to people out of bootcamps with no previous formal training. The recruiter spam you are receiving for coding jobs that don’t apply to you is not evidence of much besides the widely known inefficiency of tech recruiters. They’ll spam out recruitment emails to just about anyone, but ultimately won’t actually present you for the roles. In general in tech there is a huge, huge surplus of applicants (especially in my field of machine learning). My personal perspective after running a few teams inside bigger companies and dealing with corporate recruiting is that occasional hires from bootcamps and things exists mostly to suppress wages for other applicants. Companies are deeply resistant to paying market wages, and sometimes see that as a way around it. The “scarcity” in tech hiring is a total fiction.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    In fact, companies generally apply extremely difficult filters before hiring engineers and go to great lengths to keep engineering headcount as low as they can. Nobody is handing out tons of jobs to people out of bootcamps with no previous formal training. I know both these statements to be categorically false because I know a number of recent bootcamp "graduates" in the LA that were offered jobs straight out of graduation. As in, pretty much all of them. Most of these guys wouldn't have cut it as junior programmers before the "scarcity crisis" but right now they're making $75k/year coding React apps. The recruiter spam you are receiving for coding jobs that don’t apply to you is not evidence of much besides the widely known inefficiency of tech recruiters. They’ll spam out recruitment emails to just about anyone, but ultimately won’t actually present you for the roles. The coding jobs do apply to me, in the sense that they're for roles I would have qualified for and possibly considered back when I was still coding. Moreover, they aren't "recruiter spam," they're contacts from when I used to program. In general in tech there is a huge, huge surplus of applicants (especially in my field of machine learning). Ah. This is the problem. We're both talking about different fields, so our experiences are going to be different. For developers, there's a scarcity crisis and a lot of companies (though not all) will hire almost anyone. For ML, it appears there's the opposite--possibly because ML was oversold to graduates as the next big thing.
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      For general developers, the surplus of candidates is even more extreme than machine learning. The growth of bootcamps is more about suppressing wages. For example, $75k for a junior position, fresh out of a CS undergrad program, is a low salary for a major urban area like LA... like 30-50k too low. They can only do this because the market’s flooded.

gamblor956 8y ago

In Los Angeles they're giving junior developers straight out of bootcamp $75k because they need programmers so badly they're willing to hire anyone who can turn on a computer. I'm told companies are even more desperate to hire programmers in the Bay Area and NYC. Hell, even I'm getting coding job offers and I haven't programmed professionally in a decade. Where are you (geographically) that having an elite degree in a heavily in-demand field is keeping you from getting offers?

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
You’ve been very badly misinformed about the prevalence of software jobs. In fact, companies generally apply extremely difficult filters before hiring engineers and go to great lengths to keep engineering headcount as low as they can. Nobody is handing out tons of jobs to people out of bootcamps with no previous formal training. The recruiter spam you are receiving for coding jobs that don’t apply to you is not evidence of much besides the widely known inefficiency of tech recruiters. They’ll spam out recruitment emails to just about anyone, but ultimately won’t actually present you for the roles. In general in tech there is a huge, huge surplus of applicants (especially in my field of machine learning). My personal perspective after running a few teams inside bigger companies and dealing with corporate recruiting is that occasional hires from bootcamps and things exists mostly to suppress wages for other applicants. Companies are deeply resistant to paying market wages, and sometimes see that as a way around it. The “scarcity” in tech hiring is a total fiction.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  In fact, companies generally apply extremely difficult filters before hiring engineers and go to great lengths to keep engineering headcount as low as they can. Nobody is handing out tons of jobs to people out of bootcamps with no previous formal training. I know both these statements to be categorically false because I know a number of recent bootcamp "graduates" in the LA that were offered jobs straight out of graduation. As in, pretty much all of them. Most of these guys wouldn't have cut it as junior programmers before the "scarcity crisis" but right now they're making $75k/year coding React apps. The recruiter spam you are receiving for coding jobs that don’t apply to you is not evidence of much besides the widely known inefficiency of tech recruiters. They’ll spam out recruitment emails to just about anyone, but ultimately won’t actually present you for the roles. The coding jobs do apply to me, in the sense that they're for roles I would have qualified for and possibly considered back when I was still coding. Moreover, they aren't "recruiter spam," they're contacts from when I used to program. In general in tech there is a huge, huge surplus of applicants (especially in my field of machine learning). Ah. This is the problem. We're both talking about different fields, so our experiences are going to be different. For developers, there's a scarcity crisis and a lot of companies (though not all) will hire almost anyone. For ML, it appears there's the opposite--possibly because ML was oversold to graduates as the next big thing.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    For general developers, the surplus of candidates is even more extreme than machine learning. The growth of bootcamps is more about suppressing wages. For example, $75k for a junior position, fresh out of a CS undergrad program, is a low salary for a major urban area like LA... like 30-50k too low. They can only do this because the market’s flooded.