3 ms·

I'm trying to think of what the phrase means to me: "We only hire people with demonstrable (1) CS knowledge equivalent to a BS CS from a top5 school (2) a trac

by fizx 15y ago

I'm trying to think of what the phrase means to me: "We only hire people with demonstrable (1) CS knowledge equivalent to a BS CS from a top5 school (2) a track record of productivity exceeding their peers in a challenging environment (name-brand internet co, vc-backed startup, etc)" There are places that set the bar that high for some of their engineering groups (rarely all groups). I wonder what percentile this corresponds to. Clarification edit: "CS knowledge equivalent" doesn't require actual degree.

anonymoushn 15y ago
"A BS CS from a top5 school" is not to be taken as a sign that the candidate can code his or her way out of a paper bag or solve trivial problems he or she has not encountered before.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  I hear that. I've been doing a lot of interviewing lately and the typical caliber of your CS graduate is, um, abysmal, regardless of school. One particularly alarming trend I've noticed: if you have a masters or PhD in CS as a straight-shot (i.e., no years working in between), odds are you have no idea how to code, and no amount of extremely advanced theoretical CS knowledge is going to save you when you can't put together a for loop in less than 5 minutes. The worst part is that some of them seem to have been under the expectation that their advanced degree would allow them to skip ahead on the track, and the best we're willing to give them is a junior position not much better than what we'd give to a fresh undergrad with no experience. Being insanely smart is not at all correlated with being insanely capable, it would seem.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    Being insanely smart is not at all correlated with being insanely capable, it would seem. Sometimes, both seem to be correlated with being insane, strangely enough. But seriously, all that's needed is about 50 tidbits of knowledge that could be given in one longish presentation, PLUS the ability to synthesize information and act on 2nd and 3rd order implications of the knowledge. I once met a coder who had a PhD in Mathematics, and fancied herself a good Object Oriented coder. However, the module that she wrote had nothing but long class-side methods, entirely consisting of loops with multi-variable iterating indexes, recursively calling cut-and-paste slightly modified versions of themselves. (No, I am not making this up!) And, get this -- the multi-variable iteration, could be replaced with a short, simple loop putting judiciously written Objects into a Dictionary and taking them out again. (This was objectively demonstrated twice!)
  - dkersten 15y ago
    IMHO once you have an undergraduate degree, experience is more valuable than more qualifications (at least, for the first few years - I imagine that a few years of experience and then an advanced qualification would be more valuable again?)

by fizx 15y ago

anonymoushn 15y ago

"A BS CS from a top5 school" is not to be taken as a sign that the candidate can code his or her way out of a paper bag or solve trivial problems he or she has not encountered before.

potatolicious 15y ago
I hear that. I've been doing a lot of interviewing lately and the typical caliber of your CS graduate is, um, abysmal, regardless of school. One particularly alarming trend I've noticed: if you have a masters or PhD in CS as a straight-shot (i.e., no years working in between), odds are you have no idea how to code, and no amount of extremely advanced theoretical CS knowledge is going to save you when you can't put together a for loop in less than 5 minutes. The worst part is that some of them seem to have been under the expectation that their advanced degree would allow them to skip ahead on the track, and the best we're willing to give them is a junior position not much better than what we'd give to a fresh undergrad with no experience. Being insanely smart is not at all correlated with being insanely capable, it would seem.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  Being insanely smart is not at all correlated with being insanely capable, it would seem. Sometimes, both seem to be correlated with being insane, strangely enough. But seriously, all that's needed is about 50 tidbits of knowledge that could be given in one longish presentation, PLUS the ability to synthesize information and act on 2nd and 3rd order implications of the knowledge. I once met a coder who had a PhD in Mathematics, and fancied herself a good Object Oriented coder. However, the module that she wrote had nothing but long class-side methods, entirely consisting of loops with multi-variable iterating indexes, recursively calling cut-and-paste slightly modified versions of themselves. (No, I am not making this up!) And, get this -- the multi-variable iteration, could be replaced with a short, simple loop putting judiciously written Objects into a Dictionary and taking them out again. (This was objectively demonstrated twice!)
- dkersten 15y ago
  IMHO once you have an undergraduate degree, experience is more valuable than more qualifications (at least, for the first few years - I imagine that a few years of experience and then an advanced qualification would be more valuable again?)