> interviewing over and over has a non-negligible cost I would say, specifically in the US where this type of question is asked, it is negligible compared to a

> interviewing over and over has a non-negligible cost I would say, specifically in the US where this type of question is asked, it is negligible compared to a dev's yearly salary. What one should consider is the time spent interviewing all candidates versus the cost of making a bad hire and doing it all over again. The only thing you're limiting when interviewing fewer people is the short-term cost of "hours spent doing interviews". That's a myopic metric. Another thing I didn't mention in my list is churn or employee retention. Another aspect is if your domain/application might be more appealing to someone who doesn't have a degree and might stay interested and on board longer. > A serious CS degree provides a better signal to noise ratio. For one, noise is subjective. And in filtering out the noise, you're filtering out outliers - both good and bad. Even assuming you're right, that would only mainly apply to juniors. > And should cover most of the points you listed as potentially required to program anyways. The question is if you're selecting for the right criteria, since some of my points can only be arrived at through experience and general maturity. The simple fact is: an education is only one aspect of someone's CV, a start and a depreciating asset over time. There is no sense in ignoring the candidate's job experience, general life path, public repos, etc.