8 ms·

You can be perfectly successful without a degree from a top school.

by yuliyp 7y ago

bradlys 7y ago
Sure - I'm not disagreeing. In the same way that you don't have to start rich to end up being rich. I'm just saying you will likely have a more difficult time getting to the destination.
- almost_usual 7y ago
  If someone spent as much time going to a university as teaching themselves how to program and contributing to an open source project they’d be able to apply to most places. I’d actually argue there is more value in being a well known open source contributor than where you went to school in our industry. There are way more candidates that went to X great university than have contributed to X great open source project.
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    > If someone spent as much time going to a university as teaching themselves how to program and contributing to an open source project they’d be able to apply to most places That's irresponsibly false. Just because you want something to be true, don't repeat it as if it were a fact.
    - Gunax 7y ago
      I actually agree with it. For all of the criticisms tech receives for being elite and sexist--they are actually quite open to diversity of background. Forget about top schools for a second--there are plenty of people at top companies who did not even attend university at all. Compare that to the management consultant industry where one's school is practically the beginning and end of their resume. Of course the reason most students don't contribute to FOSS is that it's hard. Very few just-out-of-high-schoolers could really make inroads to contributing. Colleges and universities are helping hands that guide them to where they need to go.
  - geebee 7y ago
    I tend to agree, though our industry is much less pedigree obsessed than most. A degree from a top CS program will get you an interview at a FANG, but a degree from a top law school (I'm talking really top, like top 5) will largely get you a job at a big firm. Similar situation for top MBA programs. I wish I had a cite, but I remember reading a while back a study that concluded it doesn't matter where you go to college - provided you major in STEM. I suppose the corollary is that it does matter quite a bit if you don't major in STEM. This, as an aside, might explain why the most elite students in the US (unlike internationally) still eschew engineering and hard science in favor of economics, humanities, law, and other non-STEM fields. If you're at Harvard, why not study the thing where the Harvard pedigree actually gets you ahead? A CS degree from Harvard may land you that google interview, but if you're applying for an SWE position, you still need to be able to write snappy tight code a the whiteboard to find all matching subtrees in a binary tree. Law school interviews seem to be more general and conversational (this is anecdotal, but based on quite a few close friends who went this route) - law firms don't subject their candidates to a detailed re-hash of their 1L civil procedure exam. That said, our industry is so obsessed with technical interview exams that I'd say neither degree nor open source projects is especially important, beyond what it takes to get you into the door. After that, you really do need very sharp whiteboard coding skills, and if you have them, it doesn't really matter if you went to SJSU or MIT. I don't love interview coding exams, but I actually do like the fact that high tech is less obsessed with where you got your degree (or whether it was a math, CS, other related fields), provided it was from a program that teaches the proper curriculum. And I am genuinely relieved that we haven't empowered some NGO to decide what degree is required and where it can be earned, the sort of thing that allows law schools to put a $150,000 degree between smart people and the practice of law (backed with the force of criminal and civil sanctions). That last bit about SJSU wasn't meant as any sort of dig art all, there are lots of very talented people at that school, the curriculum is proper and rigorous, and their tech graduates have a much better crack at joining top tech companies than a 3rd tier law school grad would have at a big firm job (whether a big law job is any sort of prize to covet is a different matter, of course!)
    - bradlys 7y ago
      The problem is that bias is introduced heavily in the technical interview process still. It's still very flawed. A classic example of this is that people read the resume before they enter the room to interview someone. They see the person went to their alma-matter (let's say MIT/Stanford). They will have a bias - whatever way it swings. (I've seen it go both ways - people hating on their alma and some loving it) It will completely color the way they give hints, the way they evaluate the candidate, and much more. If they went to a less competitive school, they might nitpick every thing the candidate does to confirm their belief that less competitive school candidates are garbage. Whereas if the candidate went to a very competitive school, they might overlook the candidates mistakes by saying, "oh, it happens - but they're clearly very smart, they went to that competitive school." Whether you like it or not, I've seen top 10 schools overrepresented within the bay area wildly. One could say that it's because those who went to those competitive schools are more likely to be competitive and strive to work at the most prestigious companies but that alone cannot explain just how wide this division is.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  Are you saying I have less value because I didn’t get into a top school? I went to a mid ranked state school and transferred credits from CC.
  - bradlys 7y ago
    Nope. Saying you're likely to have a more difficult time getting to prestigious places than someone who graduated from Stanford/(insert top school).
    - akhilcacharya 7y ago
      That’s.. saying the same thing. How are you even defining prestigious? Am I incapable of doing so? Please explain.
      - bradlys 7y ago
        Prestigious would be - FAANG/Uber-adjacent/whatever-competitive-admission-company. You might work at Amazon - that's fine - congrats. I'm saying that it's /more difficult/ to get there on average than if you had gone to Stanford. You're more likely to get overlooked for another candidate who has all the same credentials you do but went to Stanford instead of generic school. Just because you did it does not mean that it's a completely level playing field.
  - imtringued 7y ago
    You will have a harder time because half the value in a degree is the easy HR filtering. HR isn't willing to spend a lot of time to find the needle in the haystack. They are always on the lookout for heuristics that have no false positives and a degree from a top school is a pretty good heuristic.
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    He may not be saying so, but the recruiters at Google are.
    - 7y ago
- jswizzy 7y ago
  Most top CEOs didn't go to IVY league schools at least for their BS https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/new-data-shows-that-going-to-an-ivy-league-school-is-no-longer-a-requirement-for-fortune-100-ceos https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/new-data-shows-that...

You can be perfectly successful without a degree from a top school.

by yuliyp 7y ago

You can be perfectly successful without a degree from a top school.

Sure - I'm not disagreeing. In the same way that you don't have to start rich to end up being rich. I'm just saying you will likely have a more difficult time getting to the destination.

almost_usual 7y ago
If someone spent as much time going to a university as teaching themselves how to program and contributing to an open source project they’d be able to apply to most places. I’d actually argue there is more value in being a well known open source contributor than where you went to school in our industry. There are way more candidates that went to X great university than have contributed to X great open source project.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > If someone spent as much time going to a university as teaching themselves how to program and contributing to an open source project they’d be able to apply to most places That's irresponsibly false. Just because you want something to be true, don't repeat it as if it were a fact.
  - Gunax 7y ago
    I actually agree with it. For all of the criticisms tech receives for being elite and sexist--they are actually quite open to diversity of background. Forget about top schools for a second--there are plenty of people at top companies who did not even attend university at all. Compare that to the management consultant industry where one's school is practically the beginning and end of their resume. Of course the reason most students don't contribute to FOSS is that it's hard. Very few just-out-of-high-schoolers could really make inroads to contributing. Colleges and universities are helping hands that guide them to where they need to go.
- geebee 7y ago
  I tend to agree, though our industry is much less pedigree obsessed than most. A degree from a top CS program will get you an interview at a FANG, but a degree from a top law school (I'm talking really top, like top 5) will largely get you a job at a big firm. Similar situation for top MBA programs. I wish I had a cite, but I remember reading a while back a study that concluded it doesn't matter where you go to college - provided you major in STEM. I suppose the corollary is that it does matter quite a bit if you don't major in STEM. This, as an aside, might explain why the most elite students in the US (unlike internationally) still eschew engineering and hard science in favor of economics, humanities, law, and other non-STEM fields. If you're at Harvard, why not study the thing where the Harvard pedigree actually gets you ahead? A CS degree from Harvard may land you that google interview, but if you're applying for an SWE position, you still need to be able to write snappy tight code a the whiteboard to find all matching subtrees in a binary tree. Law school interviews seem to be more general and conversational (this is anecdotal, but based on quite a few close friends who went this route) - law firms don't subject their candidates to a detailed re-hash of their 1L civil procedure exam. That said, our industry is so obsessed with technical interview exams that I'd say neither degree nor open source projects is especially important, beyond what it takes to get you into the door. After that, you really do need very sharp whiteboard coding skills, and if you have them, it doesn't really matter if you went to SJSU or MIT. I don't love interview coding exams, but I actually do like the fact that high tech is less obsessed with where you got your degree (or whether it was a math, CS, other related fields), provided it was from a program that teaches the proper curriculum. And I am genuinely relieved that we haven't empowered some NGO to decide what degree is required and where it can be earned, the sort of thing that allows law schools to put a $150,000 degree between smart people and the practice of law (backed with the force of criminal and civil sanctions). That last bit about SJSU wasn't meant as any sort of dig art all, there are lots of very talented people at that school, the curriculum is proper and rigorous, and their tech graduates have a much better crack at joining top tech companies than a 3rd tier law school grad would have at a big firm job (whether a big law job is any sort of prize to covet is a different matter, of course!)
  - bradlys 7y ago
    The problem is that bias is introduced heavily in the technical interview process still. It's still very flawed. A classic example of this is that people read the resume before they enter the room to interview someone. They see the person went to their alma-matter (let's say MIT/Stanford). They will have a bias - whatever way it swings. (I've seen it go both ways - people hating on their alma and some loving it) It will completely color the way they give hints, the way they evaluate the candidate, and much more. If they went to a less competitive school, they might nitpick every thing the candidate does to confirm their belief that less competitive school candidates are garbage. Whereas if the candidate went to a very competitive school, they might overlook the candidates mistakes by saying, "oh, it happens - but they're clearly very smart, they went to that competitive school." Whether you like it or not, I've seen top 10 schools overrepresented within the bay area wildly. One could say that it's because those who went to those competitive schools are more likely to be competitive and strive to work at the most prestigious companies but that alone cannot explain just how wide this division is.
akhilcacharya 7y ago
Are you saying I have less value because I didn’t get into a top school? I went to a mid ranked state school and transferred credits from CC.
- bradlys 7y ago
  Nope. Saying you're likely to have a more difficult time getting to prestigious places than someone who graduated from Stanford/(insert top school).
  - akhilcacharya 7y ago
    That’s.. saying the same thing. How are you even defining prestigious? Am I incapable of doing so? Please explain.
    - bradlys 7y ago
      Prestigious would be - FAANG/Uber-adjacent/whatever-competitive-admission-company. You might work at Amazon - that's fine - congrats. I'm saying that it's /more difficult/ to get there on average than if you had gone to Stanford. You're more likely to get overlooked for another candidate who has all the same credentials you do but went to Stanford instead of generic school. Just because you did it does not mean that it's a completely level playing field.
- imtringued 7y ago
  You will have a harder time because half the value in a degree is the easy HR filtering. HR isn't willing to spend a lot of time to find the needle in the haystack. They are always on the lookout for heuristics that have no false positives and a degree from a top school is a pretty good heuristic.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  He may not be saying so, but the recruiters at Google are.
  - 7y ago
jswizzy 7y ago
Most top CEOs didn't go to IVY league schools at least for their BS https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/new-data-shows-that-going-to-an-ivy-league-school-is-no-longer-a-requirement-for-fortune-100-ceos https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/new-data-shows-that...