5 ms·

> Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks. But the assertion here is

by jt2190 4y ago

> Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks. But the assertion here is that too many “pivoting up” jobs are a negative indicator. (An “upper class” programmer wouldn’t spend time in the “lower” classes.) Not saying I agree or disagree with this, but the existence of a class system in tech jobs is the OP’s central point. Edit: The OP says it clearly: > In many ways, having no experience is better than having the wrong experience because people don't unfairly prejudge you for having the wrong experience. https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551665467864977408?s=21&t=CMXLlvgNYO6mWHRwg31QBQ https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551665467864977408?s=21&t...

majormajor 4y ago
As advice for hiring managers this twitter thread is very actionable: stop judging people harshly for working their way up. As advice for candidates who want to work at TrendyCo outside of what's itself a very elite "class" of people he anecdotally knows, it's not very useful: "try for that exciting job you want, and if you can't get it then, sure, take any job." Here's the problem with that advice: the class system is already in play before even your first job. What colleges do you think fancy tech employers hang out at and recruit at? What internships do you think are going to get your resume past their initial screen? Things like "Microsoft stack, not relevant" and "low profile school" are already a problem for many. (The broader problem with wanting to work at TrendyCo is that by definition so does everyone else so they're going to be drowning in applications and have to resort to some stupid/arbitrary process to filter things down.)
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  Colleges are less impactful for trendy tech companies than they are for finance or whatever. I went to a no-name state school and could get into these things. If you really did an internship programming at Walgreens, it's easy enough to omit it from your resume.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Is the "state degree" vs. "Ivy League degree" thing that common in US society? I ask because I've just joined an American company, and a person mentioned that they'd been hired and given a chance to excel "despite only having a state degree, much to my Mom's disgust", which surprised me. In my country, there's not much difference between the respective universities in terms of 'prestige'.
    - wincy 4y ago
      I mean, maybe somewhere? I’ve interacted with precisely one Harvard graduate and he was the brother in law of my CEO boss who had gone to a state school. Even the best “Ivy League Feeder” private school in my city of 2 million has maybe 2 students a year go to an Ivy League. A guy I went to school with got a 1600 on his SAT (max score nationwide college entrance test) and wasn’t accepted to Harvard in 2004. My wife grew up in New York on Long Island in a relatively good public school system with doctors engineers and lawyers children, and I don’t think any of her peers went to an Ivy League school. I’m sure somewhere there’s groups of people who expect their children to go to Ivy League but man, I’ve never met them. They don’t hang out with us normal riff raff.
      - EdwardDiego 4y ago
        Cheers, it's not something I'd ever encountered, and the other Americans in the call seemed to know what it meant.
    - Kon-Peki 4y ago
      To most people, there really isn't much of a distinction - what you accomplish is far more important than where you went to school. To others, it is everything. I know someone whose mother constantly tells her that she is a dumb failure because she didn't go to Harvard (she went to Stanford).
      - plonk 4y ago
        > I know someone whose mother constantly tells her that she is a dumb failure because she didn't go to Harvard (she went to Stanford). Sounds like the parent has some self-esteem issues she needs to offload.
EdwardDiego 4y ago
"Wrong kind of experience is worse than no experience" is an interesting concept. It implies that the people thinking like this think that people aren't mutable. With no experience, you're a tabula rasa, but once you've been carved, that's it, fixed in stone. Which may be true for some people, but I'm fairly certain that humans are known for their adaptability, their willingness to learn. At least that's why they get more skill points per level in D&D.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  Real life is not D&D.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    No, you're kidding?! Thanks for clarifying that, that explains why when I was rolling my D20 for persuasion checks in stores, they kept asking me to leave. That said, I'm glad there's no owlbears.
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > With no experience, you're a tabula rasa, but once you've been carved, that's it, fixed in stone. I mean, if you work in a company/team with bad practices, then that's likely to rub off onto you and affect your further employment prospects, because it will be hard to unlearn being okay with untestable code, no documentation and even the code itself not being self-documenting where possible, the code being not scalable, having N+1 problems and so on.
  - leaflets2 4y ago
    It can also happen that the person learns "this doesn't work well, this also doesn't, this too -- I wish we were doing everything differently!" And later, when joining a better company, s/he more deeply understands the reasons behind their good practices -- because s/he has seen the mess, without. Having seen and lived in mistakes, is life experience, can be useful. Depends on the person

by jt2190 4y ago

majormajor 4y ago

As advice for hiring managers this twitter thread is very actionable: stop judging people harshly for working their way up. As advice for candidates who want to work at TrendyCo outside of what's itself a very elite "class" of people he anecdotally knows, it's not very useful: "try for that exciting job you want, and if you can't get it then, sure, take any job." Here's the problem with that advice: the class system is already in play before even your first job. What colleges do you think fancy tech employers hang out at and recruit at? What internships do you think are going to get your resume past their initial screen? Things like "Microsoft stack, not relevant" and "low profile school" are already a problem for many. (The broader problem with wanting to work at TrendyCo is that by definition so does everyone else so they're going to be drowning in applications and have to resort to some stupid/arbitrary process to filter things down.)

anonymoushn 4y ago
Colleges are less impactful for trendy tech companies than they are for finance or whatever. I went to a no-name state school and could get into these things. If you really did an internship programming at Walgreens, it's easy enough to omit it from your resume.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  Is the "state degree" vs. "Ivy League degree" thing that common in US society? I ask because I've just joined an American company, and a person mentioned that they'd been hired and given a chance to excel "despite only having a state degree, much to my Mom's disgust", which surprised me. In my country, there's not much difference between the respective universities in terms of 'prestige'.
  - wincy 4y ago
    I mean, maybe somewhere? I’ve interacted with precisely one Harvard graduate and he was the brother in law of my CEO boss who had gone to a state school. Even the best “Ivy League Feeder” private school in my city of 2 million has maybe 2 students a year go to an Ivy League. A guy I went to school with got a 1600 on his SAT (max score nationwide college entrance test) and wasn’t accepted to Harvard in 2004. My wife grew up in New York on Long Island in a relatively good public school system with doctors engineers and lawyers children, and I don’t think any of her peers went to an Ivy League school. I’m sure somewhere there’s groups of people who expect their children to go to Ivy League but man, I’ve never met them. They don’t hang out with us normal riff raff.
    - EdwardDiego 4y ago
      Cheers, it's not something I'd ever encountered, and the other Americans in the call seemed to know what it meant.
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    To most people, there really isn't much of a distinction - what you accomplish is far more important than where you went to school. To others, it is everything. I know someone whose mother constantly tells her that she is a dumb failure because she didn't go to Harvard (she went to Stanford).
    - plonk 4y ago
      > I know someone whose mother constantly tells her that she is a dumb failure because she didn't go to Harvard (she went to Stanford). Sounds like the parent has some self-esteem issues she needs to offload.

EdwardDiego 4y ago

"Wrong kind of experience is worse than no experience" is an interesting concept. It implies that the people thinking like this think that people aren't mutable. With no experience, you're a tabula rasa, but once you've been carved, that's it, fixed in stone. Which may be true for some people, but I'm fairly certain that humans are known for their adaptability, their willingness to learn. At least that's why they get more skill points per level in D&D.

wiseowise 4y ago
Real life is not D&D.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  No, you're kidding?! Thanks for clarifying that, that explains why when I was rolling my D20 for persuasion checks in stores, they kept asking me to leave. That said, I'm glad there's no owlbears.
KronisLV 4y ago
> With no experience, you're a tabula rasa, but once you've been carved, that's it, fixed in stone. I mean, if you work in a company/team with bad practices, then that's likely to rub off onto you and affect your further employment prospects, because it will be hard to unlearn being okay with untestable code, no documentation and even the code itself not being self-documenting where possible, the code being not scalable, having N+1 problems and so on.
- leaflets2 4y ago
  It can also happen that the person learns "this doesn't work well, this also doesn't, this too -- I wish we were doing everything differently!" And later, when joining a better company, s/he more deeply understands the reasons behind their good practices -- because s/he has seen the mess, without. Having seen and lived in mistakes, is life experience, can be useful. Depends on the person