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This is a great point about CS grads. Maybe in the past, you could just take a degree at face value: "oh you graduated from Stanford with an A average, you must
by mprovost 5y ago
This is a great point about CS grads. Maybe in the past, you could just take a degree at face value: "oh you graduated from Stanford with an A average, you must know how to code, here's a job". But nobody trusts any university to produce capable developers, so you have to test everyone with crazy interviews. So then what's the point of going to a top CS school and why can they keep charging so much tuition?
- jedmeyers 5y ago> why can they keep charging so much tuition Because everyone keeps paying so much tuition. Why does _everyone_ can afford to pay so much is another question worth exploring.
- nowherebeen 5y agoBecause like it or not, people pay for branding. It’s an ego thing or a correlation thing (in the past).
- gmadsen 5y agoI doubt there exists a 4.0 gpa standford cs grad that is incapable of coding. It is more than just branding. Standford is harder and you learn more skills that a run of the mill state school. MIT moreso, no one is skating under the radar at MIT
- mywittyname 5y agoI can't imagine someone getting a 4.0 at a crappy state school not being able to code without cheating.
- mprovost 5y agoSo would you be comfortable hiring a 4.0 grad from Stanford/MIT without doing a coding interview? Just based on their transcript. Does anyone do this anymore?
- gmadsen 5y agoI would be comfortable skipping the standard algo/DS leetcode style coding interview questions. I'd probably want to see something more open ended, like a system arch/design if possible
- danaris 5y agoSkating under the radar? Probably not. Paying someone else the equivalent of a (low) full-time salary to take your courses for you? Probably.
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- nowherebeen 5y ago> standford > Standford If you can't even spell it... I don't think you should assume anything about Stanford...
- gmadsen 5y agoI suppose some people care more than others about spelling, I wrote this comment in a few seconds and didn't double check for errors. My comment wasn't so much assumptions as it was my reinforced opinion over the last decade talking to students and faculty
- SomeCallMeTim 5y ago> no one is skating under the radar at MIT Funny you should say that. A past CEO I worked with was a CS grad from MIT. He would laugh about the fact that "he could code, but no one would want to use the code he wrote." I've also heard another anecdote about an MIT grad who had excellent grades but who somehow couldn't get any work done on a relatively straightforward project. So yeah, even MIT graduates CS students who aren't the best at code. CS being "Computer Science" means they need to understand the theory, but even an MIT grad isn't guaranteed to be capable and talented in writing code in practice. If there were a "software engineering" major (or certification?) which, among other things, required the student to write nontrivial code, and it was judged by experts, including using subjective design criteria, then maybe we could start using that degree or certification to prove that, at least at the time of the tests, that person could code. But the devil is in the details even then...
- 908B64B197 5y agoYou still can. Some schools have great signal to noise ratio, and you can be pretty confident when hiring. It's not just reputation. Some school (Poly in Montreal is a good example - but other do it as well) requires all student to complete a paid internship in their field of study to graduate. So you know if you hire someone from there that they are able to code professionally.