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> The fact that a bootcamp grad can compete for the same software engineering jobs as a Stanford CS grad is one of the very best parts of the hiring process in

> The fact that a bootcamp grad can compete for the same software engineering jobs as a Stanford CS grad is one of the very best parts of the hiring process in our industry. Are you proposing that we start using credentials as gatekeeping? But we already do use credentials as gatekeeping. There's a lot of talk about bootcamps and whatnot, but how many of these people actually get passed the resume screen when compared to a Stanford CS grad? FAANGs famously recruit from same 20 universities, and then complain about "lowering the bar" if they branch out anywhere else. We could stop gatekeeping, but it still happens.

908B64B197 6y ago
> But we already do use credentials as gatekeeping. There's a lot of talk about bootcamps and whatnot, but how many of these people actually get passed the resume screen when compared to a Stanford CS grad? At some point there's a signal to noise ratio issue here as well.
- jonathankoren 6y ago
  That's gatekeeping logic.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Most every company I know would love to exploit any high-conversion, high-quality pocket of candidates. If companies are passing on specific pockets, it’s likely from a belief that the conversion from top of funnel to successful hire is low.
    - jonathankoren 6y ago
      Companies don’t examine their efforts. They copy off of each other. How many processes are simply aped with the excuse, “Well, BigCo does this, so it must be right”? There’s plenty of excuses for gatekeeping, but the real reason is laziness. Of course, we don’t call it that, we call it a meritocracy and apply our biases as “common knowledge”, “proven”, or if we’re feeling particularly full of ourselves, a “sufficient statistic”, but never what it is: a bias, a blanket assumption, a gate. As soon as you’re relying on assumptions, it’s not a meritocracy. It’s bias promotion, ie gatekeeping.
collyw 6y ago
I have been doing this for 20 years. I used to be good at algorithmic challenges 20 years ago straight out of university - because that is a ,lot of what we did. I have these I have used "challenging" algorithmic stuff a handful of times in my careerer. Same with recursion, I have used it, but not too many times. If I do hackerrank or leetcode or something similar these days, it's pretty much luck if I will get it. If I sat down long enough I could work it out, but with a 2 hour time limit, its usually 50/50 whether the answer appears in my head in that time frame. And here's the thing. I write a lot better code than I used to. I know what is important, and it isn't clever algorithms, it's choosing the right abstraction, and keeping things maintainable. Making the code easy for the next developer to follow. For the vast majority of software roles out there this will be so much more valuable than algorithmic knowledge. Sure knowledge of computer science fundamentals is important, but I think we give it too much emphasis over what really counts. Basically these are testing for a computer scientist when the job is for a software engineer.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Fundamentally, they are using algorithms and problem solving as a proxy for IQ, because IQ tests are a minefield in the US. It would be interesting to look at the correlations between the two, as I'm not sure if that's every been done.

908B64B197 6y ago

> But we already do use credentials as gatekeeping. There's a lot of talk about bootcamps and whatnot, but how many of these people actually get passed the resume screen when compared to a Stanford CS grad? At some point there's a signal to noise ratio issue here as well.

jonathankoren 6y ago
That's gatekeeping logic.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Most every company I know would love to exploit any high-conversion, high-quality pocket of candidates. If companies are passing on specific pockets, it’s likely from a belief that the conversion from top of funnel to successful hire is low.
  - jonathankoren 6y ago
    Companies don’t examine their efforts. They copy off of each other. How many processes are simply aped with the excuse, “Well, BigCo does this, so it must be right”? There’s plenty of excuses for gatekeeping, but the real reason is laziness. Of course, we don’t call it that, we call it a meritocracy and apply our biases as “common knowledge”, “proven”, or if we’re feeling particularly full of ourselves, a “sufficient statistic”, but never what it is: a bias, a blanket assumption, a gate. As soon as you’re relying on assumptions, it’s not a meritocracy. It’s bias promotion, ie gatekeeping.

collyw 6y ago

I have been doing this for 20 years. I used to be good at algorithmic challenges 20 years ago straight out of university - because that is a ,lot of what we did. I have these I have used "challenging" algorithmic stuff a handful of times in my careerer. Same with recursion, I have used it, but not too many times. If I do hackerrank or leetcode or something similar these days, it's pretty much luck if I will get it. If I sat down long enough I could work it out, but with a 2 hour time limit, its usually 50/50 whether the answer appears in my head in that time frame. And here's the thing. I write a lot better code than I used to. I know what is important, and it isn't clever algorithms, it's choosing the right abstraction, and keeping things maintainable. Making the code easy for the next developer to follow. For the vast majority of software roles out there this will be so much more valuable than algorithmic knowledge. Sure knowledge of computer science fundamentals is important, but I think we give it too much emphasis over what really counts. Basically these are testing for a computer scientist when the job is for a software engineer.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
Fundamentally, they are using algorithms and problem solving as a proxy for IQ, because IQ tests are a minefield in the US. It would be interesting to look at the correlations between the two, as I'm not sure if that's every been done.