5 ms·

For example, employers have little patience with candidates who didn’t pick the most prestigious possible college or job, but were swayed by other consideration

by lacker 6y ago

For example, employers have little patience with candidates who didn’t pick the most prestigious possible college or job, but were swayed by other considerations. I don't think this is true, at least in the tech industry. Based on my time involved in recruiting at Google and Facebook, the elite tech employers are quite happy to hire candidates who have an unusual resume, as long as something stands out that prevents their resume from being thrown out in the first place. For example, someone who worked at a low-status job for four years out of college, then worked at a hot startup for one year. Or someone with no college degree who spent time working in "low-status" tech roles but has one popular GitHub project. You have to go through the standard "tech interview" grinder, but it's very possible to succeed at that without having a high-status resume. Indeed, the great benefit of having such an onerous interview process is that it provides an opportunity for people with unimpressive resumes to stand out as an impressive candidate.

JacKTrocinskI 6y ago
I’m sure Harvard and Yale say the same thing when accepting applicants to their university. I think the thing to consider is how prestige gives an applicant a considerable amount of more sway in an interview process. Also, I worked with a person that moved on to working at Google after working in our project and that individual was considered to be a very poor programmer unfortunately.
watwut 6y ago
> as long as something stands out that prevents their resume from being thrown out in the first place This could be characterized as "little patience".
sbierwagen 6y ago
Are Google and Facebook prestigious employers? Separately, do software developers routinely interact with customers in the same way that entry level consulting firm employees do?
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I don't know what the definition of "prestigious" is, but Google and Facebook employees earn more money (gross and per hour) and have a better quality of life (at home and at work) than consulting firm employees.
  - sbierwagen 6y ago
    Is money prestige? A first year Google employee has a higher salary than the Pope. Does he have more prestige?
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      The purpose of comparing compensation (and compensation per hour, and mortality/morbidity risk, and volatility of future income) between two people is to evaluate their standard and security of living. Therefore, I don't understand the purpose of comparing the nominal pay of someone that might earn modest cash income, but has untold assets and personnel at their disposal.
    - goldenManatee 6y ago
      Prestige: Holy See, Bishop of Rome, Saint Peter’s Rock, old Emperor of Holy Roman Empire. Contacts of world leaders and decision makers at disposal. Doing pretty good but not as prestigious as the Pope: the tech working class.
      - Der_Einzige 6y ago
        Not much of a "working class" in places like Microsoft, Intel or Google where half of your comp is the extremely good WLB. Come on, it's an open secret that a significant minority at these companies do the minimum amount of work possible to keep their jobs. Usual this minimum amount of work is around the realm of one or two hours.
    - Infinitesimus 6y ago
      Salary is a poor proxy for financial power. The Pope has access to centuries of catholic church wealth and all the doors that open for you. Working class people are not in the same league. Within a given class of people, access to money is a decent proxy but it doesn't scale across groups.
disgruntledphd2 6y ago
The biases are encoded by the recruiters at these companies. I worked at one for five years, and the recruiters often refused to look at candidates who didn't come from top schools (whatever the fuck those are). I also remember trying to hire a really brilliant candidate and when our director heard about her, the only thing he cared about was what school she had gone to. Fortunately for her, she'd gone to Oxford. A few years later my boss had a big fight with recruiting and hired candidates on the basis of experience and ability. They were some of the most successful candidates we had ever brought in, and would never have been looked at by the standard recruiting loop. So, ime the same status games play out in tech companies.
leto_ii 6y ago
> someone who worked at a low-status job for four years out of college, then worked at a hot startup for one year. Or someone with no college degree who spent time working in "low-status" tech roles but has one popular GitHub project. The parts about "hot" startups and popular GitHub projects do sound a lot like prestige to me. Incidentally I have worked for quite some time at a "hot" startup (in Europe) and I can tell you that its "hotness" was in no way justified by tech fundamentals - it was mostly fueled by great sales and marketing. GitHub popularity is also not necessarily related to fundamentals - remember things like the isEven, isOdd etc. packages?
- lacker 6y ago
  Well, yes, but the point is that tech recruiters are very willing to look at people who have done 3 low-status things, and 1 high-status thing. The article complains about recruiters who insist that resumes reject any sign of low status. If your resume has nothing interesting on it at all, then it's going to be hard to get an initial phone screen at a tech company, because there are so many resumes just like it.
kodah 6y ago
> I don't think this is true, at least in the tech industry. Based on my time involved in recruiting at Google and Facebook, the elite tech employers are quite happy to hire candidates who have an unusual resume Oh sure it is. I didn't graduate, I dropped out during a recession, did some time in the military, came back out and taught myself the necessities to code full time. It took years, but along the way through interviews and cohorts I've learned a lot about academics in tech. Academics love to talk about their universities When people give talks in tech they often share a bit about themselves. I like to talk about things in tech that interest me, what I do in my spare time, and where I'm from. Academics always spend a significant amount of time, and will even visually timeline, where they went to school, how long it took them, what clubs they were in, etc. These are the same kind of people who put x-Googler, x-Lyft, x-Uber all over their Twitter bio. To this degree the author is right, this information is junk but also comes up when I interview people who think that'll appeal to me. Spoiler alert, it doesn't and talking to me about your school inside or outside of an interview is a total waste of my and others time. What you call an unusual resume is a great rhetorical note. What's unusual to you? I've only heard that term when I interviewed at Facebook for an SRE position. They want people who can write OS level code and be a systems engineer. They, somehow, identified that academics don't usually perform very well in these jobs and look for "unusual resumes". I'd love to know the etymology of this rhetoric but I'd bet it's some bullshit. There are no unusual resumes in tech, just ones you don't understand, and that says more about you than it does me that you think it's unusual. "Hot startup" is another red flag. I worked at a lot of startups because tech firms either low balled me or would give me algorithm problems that I was still learning that I'd go on to, again, never use. The "hot startup" is a myth. All startups are hot because the friction of flying through the atmosphere while trying attach rockets to this dismally close to the ground vehicle will always be high. If you don't see your startup as hot, then it's not a start up, it's just a small business. To me, work is work. I want to know about the salt of what you did there. The fact that we keep referring to tech interviews with this language like "grinder" is a giant red flag. I don't think I need to spend extra energy expounding on this, it sucks. I'd love to see a day where instead of allowing academics to gatekeep we instead put the onus on them to teach within these companies rather than exclude. The people who advocate these high standards are rarely helping others get to them, it's a game of self-interest. The fact that you can couple "low status" and "no college degree" is the final nail in the coffin of this little thread. I'm not low status for not having a degree or cutting my teeth at more traditional businesses. I did so because people like you spent time developing tests so that all that learning I had to do took place in my off time or OJT at those traditional businesses. You did that, and your "low status" comment explains exactly why. A couple of my own stories, just from my current job: - I was trying to help some colleagues solve a statistical problem when I was an SRE. It could more or less be solved by looking at the data in the form of a distribution. When I showed people how this worked on a graph and how we could implement it in code I was repeatedly asked where I got my masters. When I reminded them I'm a dropout they almost didn't believe me. They thought it was a joke. It was a really weird thing for me to see people laugh at. - I used to work on Kubernetes and I went to a conference that was centric to such. I met up with some colleagues. They all drink, I don't, and they did what drinking dudes do. They got honest. It was mostly harmless stuff, but at some point people were talking about college. I clearly didn't have anything to share. College wasn't really a great time for me plus there's the obvious part that I didn't even finish. I informed them when someone probed me, likely trying to include me in the conversation, and when they found out they responded, "You don't look like a drop out". I laughed, but just examine the audacity of such a statement. These people aren't bad, but recognizing the misalignment here will absolutely let us turn big corners in tech. This probably comes off kinda salty, but I'm not. I made it, I work in big tech and I have lots of fun. I spend my time teaching people and trying to empower engineers as they come up the ranks. Some day I imagine big tech won't want me anymore and I'll retire. Hopefully then I can spend my days working in open source or small device work. Maybe it'll just be wood working though ;)

by lacker 6y ago

JacKTrocinskI 6y ago

I’m sure Harvard and Yale say the same thing when accepting applicants to their university. I think the thing to consider is how prestige gives an applicant a considerable amount of more sway in an interview process. Also, I worked with a person that moved on to working at Google after working in our project and that individual was considered to be a very poor programmer unfortunately.

watwut 6y ago

> as long as something stands out that prevents their resume from being thrown out in the first place This could be characterized as "little patience".

sbierwagen 6y ago

Are Google and Facebook prestigious employers? Separately, do software developers routinely interact with customers in the same way that entry level consulting firm employees do?

lotsofpulp 6y ago
I don't know what the definition of "prestigious" is, but Google and Facebook employees earn more money (gross and per hour) and have a better quality of life (at home and at work) than consulting firm employees.
- sbierwagen 6y ago
  Is money prestige? A first year Google employee has a higher salary than the Pope. Does he have more prestige?
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    The purpose of comparing compensation (and compensation per hour, and mortality/morbidity risk, and volatility of future income) between two people is to evaluate their standard and security of living. Therefore, I don't understand the purpose of comparing the nominal pay of someone that might earn modest cash income, but has untold assets and personnel at their disposal.
  - goldenManatee 6y ago
    Prestige: Holy See, Bishop of Rome, Saint Peter’s Rock, old Emperor of Holy Roman Empire. Contacts of world leaders and decision makers at disposal. Doing pretty good but not as prestigious as the Pope: the tech working class.
    - Der_Einzige 6y ago
      Not much of a "working class" in places like Microsoft, Intel or Google where half of your comp is the extremely good WLB. Come on, it's an open secret that a significant minority at these companies do the minimum amount of work possible to keep their jobs. Usual this minimum amount of work is around the realm of one or two hours.
  - Infinitesimus 6y ago
    Salary is a poor proxy for financial power. The Pope has access to centuries of catholic church wealth and all the doors that open for you. Working class people are not in the same league. Within a given class of people, access to money is a decent proxy but it doesn't scale across groups.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago

The biases are encoded by the recruiters at these companies. I worked at one for five years, and the recruiters often refused to look at candidates who didn't come from top schools (whatever the fuck those are). I also remember trying to hire a really brilliant candidate and when our director heard about her, the only thing he cared about was what school she had gone to. Fortunately for her, she'd gone to Oxford. A few years later my boss had a big fight with recruiting and hired candidates on the basis of experience and ability. They were some of the most successful candidates we had ever brought in, and would never have been looked at by the standard recruiting loop. So, ime the same status games play out in tech companies.

leto_ii 6y ago

> someone who worked at a low-status job for four years out of college, then worked at a hot startup for one year. Or someone with no college degree who spent time working in "low-status" tech roles but has one popular GitHub project. The parts about "hot" startups and popular GitHub projects do sound a lot like prestige to me. Incidentally I have worked for quite some time at a "hot" startup (in Europe) and I can tell you that its "hotness" was in no way justified by tech fundamentals - it was mostly fueled by great sales and marketing. GitHub popularity is also not necessarily related to fundamentals - remember things like the isEven, isOdd etc. packages?

lacker 6y ago
Well, yes, but the point is that tech recruiters are very willing to look at people who have done 3 low-status things, and 1 high-status thing. The article complains about recruiters who insist that resumes reject any sign of low status. If your resume has nothing interesting on it at all, then it's going to be hard to get an initial phone screen at a tech company, because there are so many resumes just like it.

kodah 6y ago

> I don't think this is true, at least in the tech industry. Based on my time involved in recruiting at Google and Facebook, the elite tech employers are quite happy to hire candidates who have an unusual resume Oh sure it is. I didn't graduate, I dropped out during a recession, did some time in the military, came back out and taught myself the necessities to code full time. It took years, but along the way through interviews and cohorts I've learned a lot about academics in tech. Academics love to talk about their universities When people give talks in tech they often share a bit about themselves. I like to talk about things in tech that interest me, what I do in my spare time, and where I'm from. Academics always spend a significant amount of time, and will even visually timeline, where they went to school, how long it took them, what clubs they were in, etc. These are the same kind of people who put x-Googler, x-Lyft, x-Uber all over their Twitter bio. To this degree the author is right, this information is junk but also comes up when I interview people who think that'll appeal to me. Spoiler alert, it doesn't and talking to me about your school inside or outside of an interview is a total waste of my and others time. What you call an unusual resume is a great rhetorical note. What's unusual to you? I've only heard that term when I interviewed at Facebook for an SRE position. They want people who can write OS level code and be a systems engineer. They, somehow, identified that academics don't usually perform very well in these jobs and look for "unusual resumes". I'd love to know the etymology of this rhetoric but I'd bet it's some bullshit. There are no unusual resumes in tech, just ones you don't understand, and that says more about you than it does me that you think it's unusual. "Hot startup" is another red flag. I worked at a lot of startups because tech firms either low balled me or would give me algorithm problems that I was still learning that I'd go on to, again, never use. The "hot startup" is a myth. All startups are hot because the friction of flying through the atmosphere while trying attach rockets to this dismally close to the ground vehicle will always be high. If you don't see your startup as hot, then it's not a start up, it's just a small business. To me, work is work. I want to know about the salt of what you did there. The fact that we keep referring to tech interviews with this language like "grinder" is a giant red flag. I don't think I need to spend extra energy expounding on this, it sucks. I'd love to see a day where instead of allowing academics to gatekeep we instead put the onus on them to teach within these companies rather than exclude. The people who advocate these high standards are rarely helping others get to them, it's a game of self-interest. The fact that you can couple "low status" and "no college degree" is the final nail in the coffin of this little thread. I'm not low status for not having a degree or cutting my teeth at more traditional businesses. I did so because people like you spent time developing tests so that all that learning I had to do took place in my off time or OJT at those traditional businesses. You did that, and your "low status" comment explains exactly why. A couple of my own stories, just from my current job: - I was trying to help some colleagues solve a statistical problem when I was an SRE. It could more or less be solved by looking at the data in the form of a distribution. When I showed people how this worked on a graph and how we could implement it in code I was repeatedly asked where I got my masters. When I reminded them I'm a dropout they almost didn't believe me. They thought it was a joke. It was a really weird thing for me to see people laugh at. - I used to work on Kubernetes and I went to a conference that was centric to such. I met up with some colleagues. They all drink, I don't, and they did what drinking dudes do. They got honest. It was mostly harmless stuff, but at some point people were talking about college. I clearly didn't have anything to share. College wasn't really a great time for me plus there's the obvious part that I didn't even finish. I informed them when someone probed me, likely trying to include me in the conversation, and when they found out they responded, "You don't look like a drop out". I laughed, but just examine the audacity of such a statement. These people aren't bad, but recognizing the misalignment here will absolutely let us turn big corners in tech. This probably comes off kinda salty, but I'm not. I made it, I work in big tech and I have lots of fun. I spend my time teaching people and trying to empower engineers as they come up the ranks. Some day I imagine big tech won't want me anymore and I'll retire. Hopefully then I can spend my days working in open source or small device work. Maybe it'll just be wood working though ;)