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I agree with most of this, though I don't bother checking degrees. Coding samples have way more signal unless the degree is from a premier university. So for Wa

I agree with most of this, though I don't bother checking degrees. Coding samples have way more signal unless the degree is from a premier university. So for Waterloo, MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc. I would check if there was any doubt, but for the rest of it I've honestly not seen too much value in specific universities. As for reference checks: If a reference is on a resume that I've been handed by a candidate or that candidate's agent I check it. Glowing references really highly correlate with job enthusiasm and honestly most developers don't list them anyway, so even having one that's positive without being glowing is a good signal.

bumby 4y ago
Is there evidence that the institutional prestige is a better signal? I thought there was a movement away from that because it wasn’t shown to be a particularly strong predictor.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Only speaking about recent graduates (0-2 years) and making what are obviously pretty broad generalizations... Anecdotally, there is slight correlation between university prestige and interview performance. But not enough to toss lower tier university graduates - if their resume is otherwise strong, they're worth interviewing regardless of school. The strongest signal I have as a hiring manager is a successful internship/co-op. If the candidate worked on interesting projects and can discuss the tech stack and business problem being solved, they're likely to be a good hire. The few collegiate athletes I've hired have also been top-notch. But not enough of them to claim correlation. Would be interesting to see if there's a real correlation there.
  - bumby 4y ago
    My experience is anecdotal as well, but it confirms your hunch about collegiate athletes. The have been the best performers, but it's a small sample size in my case. It would be interesting if there is a different correlation between sports (e.g., individual vs. team sports). The main complaints I've heard about the prestigious institution hires are: 1) They tend to excel well when given a problem that can be solved with a rather templated approach, but tend to struggle more with poorly defined problems 2) They tend to have higher turnover, with the speculation that they jump ship as soon as a perceived higher status opportunity arises. Meaning, they start a lot of projects but don't see them to completion I don't know if I've had enough experience with the differing groups to draw strong conclusions one way or another.
    - 3pt14159 4y ago
      My experience with the premier university grads is that they know the details really well. While a bootcamp trained dev can roll out features and tests for line of work crud APIs, they may not be able to handle the 5% of the job that requires deep knowledge of mathematics, internals, or similar type things. I don't think you need many of them on a team, but it's good to have them around to fill in where the technically strong, but less rigorously trained, may struggle.

bumby 4y ago

Is there evidence that the institutional prestige is a better signal? I thought there was a movement away from that because it wasn’t shown to be a particularly strong predictor.

alistairSH 4y ago
Only speaking about recent graduates (0-2 years) and making what are obviously pretty broad generalizations... Anecdotally, there is slight correlation between university prestige and interview performance. But not enough to toss lower tier university graduates - if their resume is otherwise strong, they're worth interviewing regardless of school. The strongest signal I have as a hiring manager is a successful internship/co-op. If the candidate worked on interesting projects and can discuss the tech stack and business problem being solved, they're likely to be a good hire. The few collegiate athletes I've hired have also been top-notch. But not enough of them to claim correlation. Would be interesting to see if there's a real correlation there.
- bumby 4y ago
  My experience is anecdotal as well, but it confirms your hunch about collegiate athletes. The have been the best performers, but it's a small sample size in my case. It would be interesting if there is a different correlation between sports (e.g., individual vs. team sports). The main complaints I've heard about the prestigious institution hires are: 1) They tend to excel well when given a problem that can be solved with a rather templated approach, but tend to struggle more with poorly defined problems 2) They tend to have higher turnover, with the speculation that they jump ship as soon as a perceived higher status opportunity arises. Meaning, they start a lot of projects but don't see them to completion I don't know if I've had enough experience with the differing groups to draw strong conclusions one way or another.
  - 3pt14159 4y ago
    My experience with the premier university grads is that they know the details really well. While a bootcamp trained dev can roll out features and tests for line of work crud APIs, they may not be able to handle the 5% of the job that requires deep knowledge of mathematics, internals, or similar type things. I don't think you need many of them on a team, but it's good to have them around to fill in where the technically strong, but less rigorously trained, may struggle.