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> One thing I actually really like about the big tech companies is they will ignore low grades if you interview well. The question is, are you getting an inter

> One thing I actually really like about the big tech companies is they will ignore low grades if you interview well. The question is, are you getting an interview if you have low grades?

mips_avatar 4y ago
For Microsoft and Google the answer was yes. Which was kind of funny because those were my top two choices.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  This was almost 20 years ago, but both MS and Google recruiters took my resume but told me I wasn't getting a callback with my GPA.
clnq 4y ago
Generally yes. I've been interviewing people in tech for about half a decade, and it never occurred to me to ask about their grades. It is irrelevant compared to testing how well the applicants know what they need to know for work. Besides, partially thanks to grade inflation and partially due to arbitrary syllabi, universities grade students very unreliably. I can imagine a scenario where a recruiter or an interviewer would bother to work out what grades mean in one or two local universities if they recruit most of their employees from there. But in large tech companies that recruit regionally or globally, there is simply no way I, as an interviewer, will spend the time investigating how some professor in a college or university I have never heard about tends to grade their students and on what subject matter. Just think about how ridiculous that sounds. The universities do not prepare people for work in tech anyways. There are tremendous practical knowledge gaps fresh graduates have compared to anyone who has been in tech for barely a year. A dropout candidate genuinely interested in the practicalities of work in their tech segment will easily outperform a 4.0 GPA BSc graduate who fails to engage with the subject matter. More and more candidates are skipping BSc degrees and instead spending time building their portfolios targeting specific companies (using the appropriate frameworks, programming languages, and tools). They tend to be good hires and often want to prove themselves more than university grads. This works out for the team (the employee shows more engagement with work and more effort) and the employee (higher work satisfaction). I am not saying that a university degree or your GPA is meaningless. I am sure some companies care about the latter, and many still care about the former. But compared to actual know-how, just undergrad degrees and 4.0 GPAs do not stand a chance.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  You don't sound like "Big Tech", where HR prevents the interviewers from making hiring decisions.
  - kevinventullo 4y ago
    That is not true at either Meta or Google. Final hiring decisions are made by either hiring managers directly or by a committee of senior engineers/managers if the interviewee is not placing directly into a team. HR is there to make sure you’re not making biased decisions against protected classes or to flag if the candidate said something inappropriate in an interview or something, but they have no say in evaluating the candidate’s ability to actually perform the job. That evaluation is based almost entirely on the interview feedback; once a candidate is in the interview loop, grades make very little difference.

> One thing I actually really like about the big tech companies is they will ignore low grades if you interview well. The question is, are you getting an interview if you have low grades?

mips_avatar 4y ago

For Microsoft and Google the answer was yes. Which was kind of funny because those were my top two choices.

aidenn0 4y ago
This was almost 20 years ago, but both MS and Google recruiters took my resume but told me I wasn't getting a callback with my GPA.

clnq 4y ago

Generally yes. I've been interviewing people in tech for about half a decade, and it never occurred to me to ask about their grades. It is irrelevant compared to testing how well the applicants know what they need to know for work. Besides, partially thanks to grade inflation and partially due to arbitrary syllabi, universities grade students very unreliably. I can imagine a scenario where a recruiter or an interviewer would bother to work out what grades mean in one or two local universities if they recruit most of their employees from there. But in large tech companies that recruit regionally or globally, there is simply no way I, as an interviewer, will spend the time investigating how some professor in a college or university I have never heard about tends to grade their students and on what subject matter. Just think about how ridiculous that sounds. The universities do not prepare people for work in tech anyways. There are tremendous practical knowledge gaps fresh graduates have compared to anyone who has been in tech for barely a year. A dropout candidate genuinely interested in the practicalities of work in their tech segment will easily outperform a 4.0 GPA BSc graduate who fails to engage with the subject matter. More and more candidates are skipping BSc degrees and instead spending time building their portfolios targeting specific companies (using the appropriate frameworks, programming languages, and tools). They tend to be good hires and often want to prove themselves more than university grads. This works out for the team (the employee shows more engagement with work and more effort) and the employee (higher work satisfaction). I am not saying that a university degree or your GPA is meaningless. I am sure some companies care about the latter, and many still care about the former. But compared to actual know-how, just undergrad degrees and 4.0 GPAs do not stand a chance.

hgsgm 4y ago
You don't sound like "Big Tech", where HR prevents the interviewers from making hiring decisions.
- kevinventullo 4y ago
  That is not true at either Meta or Google. Final hiring decisions are made by either hiring managers directly or by a committee of senior engineers/managers if the interviewee is not placing directly into a team. HR is there to make sure you’re not making biased decisions against protected classes or to flag if the candidate said something inappropriate in an interview or something, but they have no say in evaluating the candidate’s ability to actually perform the job. That evaluation is based almost entirely on the interview feedback; once a candidate is in the interview loop, grades make very little difference.