3 ms·

Against Credentialism

7 points by barry-cotter 5y ago

gillesjacobs 5y ago
The utility of credentialism for professional positions lies in the cost of required skill assessment Vs. the size of the talent pool. You can afford a fast filter like a college degree if you have a surplus of candidates. Especially if it generally is good indicator of cognitive ability, which OP admits it probably is. A small pool of talent for niche requirements, will require significant adjustment and resources in assessing each individual that applies. Some of the most hardworking people where I worked had a completed degree. Filtering people because they do not have X degree of Y years of experience is not right morally, but this is understandably done out of practical concerns. Nobody likes it but talent acquisition is expensive enough as it is.
native_samples 5y ago
A lot of these discussions conflate credentials with degrees. The pushback against credentialism is usually motivated by the real and perceived problems of academia rather than all possible credentials. The tech industry has prospered, in my view, partly due to lack of credentialism. There's a perception that the big tech firms all needed top degrees to work at but when I was there, that definitely wasn't the case except maybe in sales, where basically anyone could do the work and so degrees were just being used as an arbitrary filter but a lottery could probably have worked just as well. In the actual tech jobs it wasn't important. Now degrees are being rapidly discredited by the constant drumbeat of stories about stupidity and extremism on campus, and in particular the pre-selection value of a degree is being erased (in America) by affirmative action. If you get an applicant from a "top" university are you getting a diligent and smart worker or are you getting some crazed activist who can't do mental arithmetic but satisfied some victim quota? You can't know so, gotta interview them carefully and take big risks anyway. At which point the signalling value has been eroded by quite a bit.

7 points by barry-cotter 5y ago

The utility of credentialism for professional positions lies in the cost of required skill assessment Vs. the size of the talent pool. You can afford a fast filter like a college degree if you have a surplus of candidates. Especially if it generally is good indicator of cognitive ability, which OP admits it probably is. A small pool of talent for niche requirements, will require significant adjustment and resources in assessing each individual that applies. Some of the most hardworking people where I worked had a completed degree. Filtering people because they do not have X degree of Y years of experience is not right morally, but this is understandably done out of practical concerns. Nobody likes it but talent acquisition is expensive enough as it is.

native_samples 5y ago

A lot of these discussions conflate credentials with degrees. The pushback against credentialism is usually motivated by the real and perceived problems of academia rather than all possible credentials. The tech industry has prospered, in my view, partly due to lack of credentialism. There's a perception that the big tech firms all needed top degrees to work at but when I was there, that definitely wasn't the case except maybe in sales, where basically anyone could do the work and so degrees were just being used as an arbitrary filter but a lottery could probably have worked just as well. In the actual tech jobs it wasn't important. Now degrees are being rapidly discredited by the constant drumbeat of stories about stupidity and extremism on campus, and in particular the pre-selection value of a degree is being erased (in America) by affirmative action. If you get an applicant from a "top" university are you getting a diligent and smart worker or are you getting some crazed activist who can't do mental arithmetic but satisfied some victim quota? You can't know so, gotta interview them carefully and take big risks anyway. At which point the signalling value has been eroded by quite a bit.