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"Palo Alto-based Stanford University ... and MIT have historically been the primary talent pools for the tech industry" This is far from true. If you look at t
by Upvoter33 6y ago
"Palo Alto-based Stanford University ... and MIT have historically been the primary talent pools for the tech industry"
This is far from true. If you look at the total workforce in tech, the majority is by far from much larger, public schools, like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, etc., etc. MIT and Stanford have had amazing great people, but they are far from the "primary" source of talent.
(yes, a bit of an aside, but it rankles)
- curiousllama 6y agoAgreed - University of Maryland is a huge tech feeder to public sector orgs, believe it or not.
- vmception 6y agoAll the DC area computer science programs feed right into the NSA and defense. Which is funny because Silicon Valley companies won't think candidates from those schools are that interesting, while simultaneously thinking that the intelligence and defense has better programmers. People are people.
- Shebanator 6y agoWho in Silicon Valley thinks that? I've never heard anyone say it in my 30+ years here (until now).
- pb7 6y agoVery odd statement indeed. I have never heard anything even remotely corroborating this. In fact (highly anecdotally, take it as entertainment at best), I have read that public opinion holds NSA's technical capabilities in high esteem but in reality, the talent is vastly below that of the top consumer tech companies because most tech employees would never contribute to the type of work the government does.
- tdfx 6y ago> most tech employees would never contribute to the type of work the government does I don't even think it's ideological. The reason the defense industry lacks top tier talent is because it's quite literally the most stifling and frustrating place to work possible. You're mired in endless bureaucracy, incompetent management, arcane rules and regulations surrounding secrecy, and some of the world's least flexible working arrangements. It ends up being a great place for people who want to punch a clock and get a reliable paycheck, but a deadend for anyone trying to make their mark.
- i_am_proteus 6y agoGovernment service also pays substantially less than SV.
- p1esk 6y agoI thought the dominant public opinion is government agencies are staffed with mediocre engineers. Not even because of any moral concerns, just because of bureaucracy and low pay.
- chillacy 6y agoI learned from Snowden's book that the real way to make money working for the government is to quit and become a contractor.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pb7 6y agoAgreed, but we still think of the CIA and NSA on a technical level as being capable of unparalleled surveillance, crypto cracking, and other general hackery and engineering to maintain its power. Perhaps that's part of the propaganda. With that said, I imagine much of that is possible with backdoors to mass consumer data like Facebook which is actually collected via ingenious (but unethical) talent in Silicon Valley.
- vmception 6y agoAllow me to rephrase, people believe the NSA has superior technology with mystical capabilities. Who do you think that develops that stuff, where do those people come from?
- djKianoosh 6y agocontractors
- vmception 6y agowho are also heavily consolidated in certain markets, who also recruit from the same state schools that Big Tech can't figure out even exist
- bumby 6y agoTo be fair, I think the general opinion is they are created by private contractors with government oversight
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- microcolonel 6y agoSilicon Valley really loves some formal education it seems. Both of my Si Valley interviews, where they were willing to fly me out and accommodate me, involved an older gentleman having a sit-down with me about university, and how I should have gone.
- novok 6y agoI think the more accurate perception is they have relatively unlimited budget and interest in attacking computer security, along with special powers like doing basically secret illegal shit that make them difficult to beat in security matters. Not that any specific set of their employees are super geniuses. While SV still has to run a profitable business while trying to care about security.
- vmception 6y agoYes, that is the reality Along with sovereign immunity to CFAA and other laws
- Zhenya 6y agoIn order of ranking and total enrollment (sourced from us news) 1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3,130 2 Stanford University 3,444 ' 3 University of California--Berkeley 2,337 4 California Institute of Technology 536 5 Carnegie Mellon University 4,112 6 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor 3,247 7 Purdue University--West Lafayette 3,428 8 Georgia Institute of Technology 4,252 9 University of California--San Diego (Jacobs) 3,141 10 University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign 3,736 https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/eng-rankings https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering...
- jkqwzsoo 6y agoThese are graduate school enrollment numbers. Without breaking down CS/EE versus most other engineering disciplines, are MS/PhDs the "primary" talent source for the tech industry? For comparison, GATech claims 61% of their students get engineering degrees and an enrollment of 14,142, thus ~8,626 undergraduate engineering students. https://coe.gatech.edu/about/facts-rankings https://coe.gatech.edu/about/facts-rankings Other school's engineering enrollment: UT Austin claims 6,003 undergraduate and 2,101 graduate. https://www.engr.utexas.edu/about/facts-and-rankings/program-enrollments-and-degrees https://www.engr.utexas.edu/about/facts-and-rankings/program... Berkeley claims 3,746 undergraduates and 2,357 graduates. https://engineering.berkeley.edu/about/facts-and-figures/ https://engineering.berkeley.edu/about/facts-and-figures/ MIT claims 2,451 undergraduates. https://engineering.mit.edu/about/facts-and-figures/ https://engineering.mit.edu/about/facts-and-figures/ Stanford claims 1570 undergraduate and 3603 graduate. https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment-statistics/enrollment-statistics-2018-19/school-engineering-enrollment-2018-19 https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment-statistic... I think the parent comment is correct to say there are many larger engineering schools than MIT and Stanford.
- wudabear 6y agoAlso Berkeley has two CS programs. One in the school of engineering, the other in Letters and Sciences. https://eecs.berkeley.edu/academics/undergraduate/eecs-cs-comparison-chart https://eecs.berkeley.edu/academics/undergraduate/eecs-cs-co...
- ericmay 6y agoYep. A lot of the Big Ten schools along with universities like Washington, Texas, Florida, etc. have been the drivers in overall production of engineers. I think what they probably meant talent pools for some companies in the tech industry, or something similar.
- Barrin92 6y agoNot to mention the extremely large foreign born workforce who usually also obtain significant education at home.
- akhilcacharya 6y agoYeah, it's honestly insulting copy, and ignores other North American schools like Waterloo that make up a disproportionate part of big tech.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Upvoter33 6y ago(should have included all the great Canadian universities in the list too, my apologies ... not that I included all the great US universities)
- k4tz 6y agoYou said "much larger [than Stanford/MIT], public schools", which definitely includes the top Canadian universities, so you're good
- 908B64B197 6y agoI had to lookup the school. Maybe it's better known in some regional markets? It's behind a few names I was familiar with in Canada. [0] [0] https://cwur.org/2019-2020.php https://cwur.org/2019-2020.php
- mav3rick 6y agoNCSU isn't on this list regardless.
- akhilcacharya 6y agoCan you be explicit about your point? It sounds like a complete non sequitur
- jchiu1106 6y agoAnd CMU
- agotterer 6y agoI came to the comments say the same thing. I’ve hired and worked with many engineers and the overwhelming majority did not attend MIT or Stanford. Some of the best didn’t attend college at all!
- Avicebron 6y agoIn your experience how do you filter candidates without a degree? Portfolio? Do you review their code?
- garmaine 6y agoIsn’t that how you review all candidates?
- maxmalysh 6y agoI filter based on experience. Previous jobs, roles, projects. Degree is a weak predictor and I consider it mostly for candidates with less than 3 years of experience.
- Avicebron 6y agoI guess my question transitions over to: If a candidate has less than 3 years experience and no degree, where does that fall on your radar? Genuinely curious as it falls into the "need experience to get experience" job meme many people find initially.
- sieabahlpark 6y agoHe's saying their experience speaks for itself after the 3 year mark. Before that you'd be required for a degree. So it's "employment risk for others, but not for me". Kind of backward from the original premise that was stated. I've vetted no degree people with their side projects and how many were actually completed rather than just thought experiments. "Can this person show the drive to finish something when someone isn't telling them to do that?" The complexity of said project and whether they have had an internship. For someone to get higher than the low bar is to have a proven record of relevant contributions to projects of their own or open source. No "modify some docs" commits but actual end to end features.
- sharadov 6y agoLaughable, because a large number of tech workers in SV are from India, and a large percentage get their undergrad degrees in India, most come here for Masters degrees, but a majority go to engineering schools all over the US.
- teleforce 6y agoThis. Anecdotally one Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) senior Professor told me that normally the best achievers of their undergraduate students go to US for work or further studies after graduation, the middle achievers work in India and the bottom achievers mostly continue their study at IIT with India govt's sponsorship. According to him even the bottom achievers are actually still good students since they graduated from IIT. Since there are currently 23 IITs, the numbers that go to US (and SV) every year can be very significant. The long term effect of this phenomenon can be observed from the increasing number of US (and SV) tech companies CEOs are from India education background.
- foobiekr 6y agoThey are the leading bodies for taking credit for it, however.
- dontbenebby 6y ago> the majority is by far from much larger, public schools, like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, etc. These schools are very good btw. Berkeley is tied with Stanford for example, UI #5, Washington #6, UT is #10. Conversely Harvard is ranked #15, but that's the things about rankings: they're often used to prune out people who don't "know someone", and when the metrics do not match someone's perceived "elite" status, they are ignored. All of the schools you mention are attended by elites and commoners, produce talented people and untalented people, jerks and kind folks, and all the permutations of that. I just wish we'd focus more on competent and kind, and less on connections or wealth - companies that do this will prosper IMHO, and companies that rant about "meritocracy" will wither as they drive away half the population. Women are just as capable of coding well - creating a toxic culture is reducing your talent pool by half, something people obsessed with "facts and logic" should think more about. Insisting on "elite" schools when the good ones are public will also harm you long term if you're doing more cutting edge stuff.