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Udacity isn't a brand yet. Someday something like it or it will be. Then it won't matter. I respect people who are resourceful and get stuff done. If you choos

by noahc 15y ago

Udacity isn't a brand yet. Someday something like it or it will be. Then it won't matter. I respect people who are resourceful and get stuff done. If you choose to go to college and wait out the great recession, I'll look down on you no matter if you went to MIT or Stanford. If you went to college for business or technology and you didn't produce anything during your time at college, you'll have a hard time convincing me to hire you. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches up to my way of thinking.

TruthElixirX 15y ago
That sounds like an awful way of thinking.
- noahc 15y ago
  Why is that? You're not adding much to this conversation just by saying "That's an awful way of thinking." Why is it so awful that I realize that technology and business can be learned much faster, much cheaper, and more indepth by actually doing them than going to school for them? Why is it so awful that I value someone figuring out a better way to spend a recession than in school learning something that may or may not help them and for most of them puts in solidly in debt with few options after graduation.
  - pork 15y ago
    I can't speak to business, but I can about technology. When you're "on the job", you don't have extended periods of time where you have the luxury of studying a complicated topic in depth. Many tech jobs also don't give you the luxury of breadth, but rather are guided by an overarching practical purpose -- to get the "job" done. Your generalization of the knowledge one gains by doing a degree is much too broad.
    - noahc 15y ago
      Those things are all mostly true. But, Here's what I'm saying is that you can spend 2 - 4 years going to school to learn about big 0, or red-black trees or whatever. That's fine. Or you could spend 2 - 4 years hacking 3/4 to 1/2 time and hanging out on HN and building cool projects and learning about those things as you go. I will ALWAYS pick the second person after those 2 - 4 years. Always.
      - vecter 15y ago
        It depends on what you're doing. If you're writing java/python/ruby plumbing, sure some practical experience is great. If you're job is to improve PageRank, I'd rather much take the person with a strong theoretical background linear algebra, probability, machine learning, and algorithms. That person is more than smart enough to learn the coding on the job.
        achompas 15y ago
        Seriously. It's unbelievable how people on HN have noahc's attitude. Look, if you want to build a Rails app, go build the app and post it on HN afterwards. If you want to (1) develop an incremental optimization algorithm, (2) push the boundaries of appsec, (3) revolutionize mobile software UI at a handset manufacturer, (4) or research cryptographic algorithms for the NSA, well, you need school. Period.
      - elemeno 15y ago
        Here's the dirty little secret that people like you overlook - spending four years hacking around and hanging out on HN will teach you nothing about Big O notation and how to analyse it or about advanced data structures. What it will teach you is plenty about chasing low hanging fruit and very little about tackling big and difficult problems. Sure, someone who's very driven will learn the same amount regardless - mostly by reading all the same books that someone who's gone to school will have read. But most people are not that driven. Most people are happy to hack around building webapps on the back of other people's libraries and then deluding themselves into thinking that gluing together a bunch of libraries and adding a pretty frontend counts as a significant achievement. Frankly, with your attitude you're doomed to hire the mediocre while the people with the brain and skills to do any form of non trivial analysis go elsewhere - as they well should.
zheng 15y ago
This is just as poor of an attitude as the people who only care about the degree. Like anything else a potential employee has done, a degree (especially from a good school) adds something that you can't capture using any other metric.
- noahc 15y ago
  What does the degree add exactly, particularly in regard to something that can't be measured by another metric? I can't think of any key indicator of why I would want to hire someone that can't be demonstrated in some other way besides a degree.
ericbrunstad 15y ago
My education at Carnegie Mellon has made me a vastly better programmer because it has given me an extensive understanding of how the machine works. This allows me to implement code that actually does things, such as memory allocators, rather than just piecing together code that other people wrote. Also, it has taught me how to prove things about code I write so I can ensure, for example, that integer overflow will not allow an attacker to cause the system calls in my kernel to overwrite kernel memory or memory belonging to another process. Things like these validate the importance of obtaining a top CS education.
lightcatcher 15y ago
"I respect people who are resourceful and get stuff done." Does getting a college degree not count as getting stuff done? Would you rather someone list every single problem set, proof, project, etc that they have done? I can vouch that a degree from some schools requires much more work/time/resourcefulness than making a couple of cool projects on github. Also, as a technologist, my ultimate goal is to push things forward. Think SpaceX, Google, Intel, or even something smaller like Lytro or projects like Google's autonomous vehicles. These technology beneath these things (cheap manufacturing, PageRank, integrated circuits, etc) isn't invented by the people who make CRUD webapps; its made by those who master a field and have some insight to vastly improve their domain. That's what changes things. Note, mentioning Apple or Facebook might seem like a counterpoint to my statement. I would argue Apple has pushed design forward in the same way Intel has pushed the semiconductor business forward. However, Facebook seemed to have no extraordinary technology at its core, but just capitalized on a hole in the market so much that it actually has changed how society functions. Also, I'm not at all discounting the hustlers who get stuff done, by I think to really change things, one must be a hustler (or know one) and also have extraordinary technology.
- noahc 15y ago
  I don't doubt that a degree can take much more time or work. In fact I'm sure it probably does, which is all the more reason to NOT go that route. That's awesome that you want to push things forward. We need that, but what I'm saying is that nothing is going to help you except down right resourcefulness. You're going to have to go deep and master something to do that, sure. Five years ago, I think you would have been right. The resources to get started weren't there. Today it's all changed and now resourcefulness gets you so much further than it ever has before.
achompas 15y ago
I've replied below a few times, but I need to respond directly to this comment: It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches up to my way of thinking. What's so special about this way of thinking? Do you really believe in the existence of brilliant MIT or Stanford grads who have produced nothing during their 4 years in school? Further, do you believe these hypothetical underachievers are getting hired by Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel, or any other excellent company? You're populating this thread with straw men and false dichotomies. The two spectra you're talking about -- autodidactism versus traditional education, and real-world experience versus theory -- are not mutually exclusive. There are students with strong theoretical training who hack on projects at AT&T Labs over the summer, and there are autodidacts who take night classes at their local university or college. Please stop spouting off about "people who get stuff done," or these pseudo-sheeple you've dreamt up who go to Caltech, get degrees, then do nothing. Everyone gets stuff done in one area or another.
- noahc 15y ago
  I don't think we really disagree that much. I admit that last phrase was a bit over the top. But, I do believe that long term industrial education will slowly die out. Probably a lot slower than I think. There's nothing that special about my thinking really. Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel, etc all hire the best. I don't know THAT much about their hiring policy or practice, but there are people just by sheer numbers (on either side of spectra) who are more than qualified. In fact you can go to college and get stuff done. It's one of the best ways to go because you can use loans and scholarships to fund yourself getting stuff done. It's the degree so much that I don't care about. And to be really honest, it's probably easier to get stuff done in the right college setting than it is to get it done almost anywhere else in the world. All I'm really saying is that I have a strong preference for self learners and people who have done more than get a degree. Am I missing something?

by noahc 15y ago

TruthElixirX 15y ago

That sounds like an awful way of thinking.

noahc 15y ago
Why is that? You're not adding much to this conversation just by saying "That's an awful way of thinking." Why is it so awful that I realize that technology and business can be learned much faster, much cheaper, and more indepth by actually doing them than going to school for them? Why is it so awful that I value someone figuring out a better way to spend a recession than in school learning something that may or may not help them and for most of them puts in solidly in debt with few options after graduation.
- pork 15y ago
  I can't speak to business, but I can about technology. When you're "on the job", you don't have extended periods of time where you have the luxury of studying a complicated topic in depth. Many tech jobs also don't give you the luxury of breadth, but rather are guided by an overarching practical purpose -- to get the "job" done. Your generalization of the knowledge one gains by doing a degree is much too broad.
  - noahc 15y ago
    Those things are all mostly true. But, Here's what I'm saying is that you can spend 2 - 4 years going to school to learn about big 0, or red-black trees or whatever. That's fine. Or you could spend 2 - 4 years hacking 3/4 to 1/2 time and hanging out on HN and building cool projects and learning about those things as you go. I will ALWAYS pick the second person after those 2 - 4 years. Always.
    - vecter 15y ago
      It depends on what you're doing. If you're writing java/python/ruby plumbing, sure some practical experience is great. If you're job is to improve PageRank, I'd rather much take the person with a strong theoretical background linear algebra, probability, machine learning, and algorithms. That person is more than smart enough to learn the coding on the job.
      - achompas 15y ago
        Seriously. It's unbelievable how people on HN have noahc's attitude. Look, if you want to build a Rails app, go build the app and post it on HN afterwards. If you want to (1) develop an incremental optimization algorithm, (2) push the boundaries of appsec, (3) revolutionize mobile software UI at a handset manufacturer, (4) or research cryptographic algorithms for the NSA, well, you need school. Period.
    - elemeno 15y ago
      Here's the dirty little secret that people like you overlook - spending four years hacking around and hanging out on HN will teach you nothing about Big O notation and how to analyse it or about advanced data structures. What it will teach you is plenty about chasing low hanging fruit and very little about tackling big and difficult problems. Sure, someone who's very driven will learn the same amount regardless - mostly by reading all the same books that someone who's gone to school will have read. But most people are not that driven. Most people are happy to hack around building webapps on the back of other people's libraries and then deluding themselves into thinking that gluing together a bunch of libraries and adding a pretty frontend counts as a significant achievement. Frankly, with your attitude you're doomed to hire the mediocre while the people with the brain and skills to do any form of non trivial analysis go elsewhere - as they well should.

zheng 15y ago

This is just as poor of an attitude as the people who only care about the degree. Like anything else a potential employee has done, a degree (especially from a good school) adds something that you can't capture using any other metric.

noahc 15y ago
What does the degree add exactly, particularly in regard to something that can't be measured by another metric? I can't think of any key indicator of why I would want to hire someone that can't be demonstrated in some other way besides a degree.

ericbrunstad 15y ago

My education at Carnegie Mellon has made me a vastly better programmer because it has given me an extensive understanding of how the machine works. This allows me to implement code that actually does things, such as memory allocators, rather than just piecing together code that other people wrote. Also, it has taught me how to prove things about code I write so I can ensure, for example, that integer overflow will not allow an attacker to cause the system calls in my kernel to overwrite kernel memory or memory belonging to another process. Things like these validate the importance of obtaining a top CS education.

lightcatcher 15y ago

"I respect people who are resourceful and get stuff done." Does getting a college degree not count as getting stuff done? Would you rather someone list every single problem set, proof, project, etc that they have done? I can vouch that a degree from some schools requires much more work/time/resourcefulness than making a couple of cool projects on github. Also, as a technologist, my ultimate goal is to push things forward. Think SpaceX, Google, Intel, or even something smaller like Lytro or projects like Google's autonomous vehicles. These technology beneath these things (cheap manufacturing, PageRank, integrated circuits, etc) isn't invented by the people who make CRUD webapps; its made by those who master a field and have some insight to vastly improve their domain. That's what changes things. Note, mentioning Apple or Facebook might seem like a counterpoint to my statement. I would argue Apple has pushed design forward in the same way Intel has pushed the semiconductor business forward. However, Facebook seemed to have no extraordinary technology at its core, but just capitalized on a hole in the market so much that it actually has changed how society functions. Also, I'm not at all discounting the hustlers who get stuff done, by I think to really change things, one must be a hustler (or know one) and also have extraordinary technology.

noahc 15y ago
I don't doubt that a degree can take much more time or work. In fact I'm sure it probably does, which is all the more reason to NOT go that route. That's awesome that you want to push things forward. We need that, but what I'm saying is that nothing is going to help you except down right resourcefulness. You're going to have to go deep and master something to do that, sure. Five years ago, I think you would have been right. The resources to get started weren't there. Today it's all changed and now resourcefulness gets you so much further than it ever has before.

achompas 15y ago

I've replied below a few times, but I need to respond directly to this comment: It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches up to my way of thinking. What's so special about this way of thinking? Do you really believe in the existence of brilliant MIT or Stanford grads who have produced nothing during their 4 years in school? Further, do you believe these hypothetical underachievers are getting hired by Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel, or any other excellent company? You're populating this thread with straw men and false dichotomies. The two spectra you're talking about -- autodidactism versus traditional education, and real-world experience versus theory -- are not mutually exclusive. There are students with strong theoretical training who hack on projects at AT&T Labs over the summer, and there are autodidacts who take night classes at their local university or college. Please stop spouting off about "people who get stuff done," or these pseudo-sheeple you've dreamt up who go to Caltech, get degrees, then do nothing. Everyone gets stuff done in one area or another.

noahc 15y ago
I don't think we really disagree that much. I admit that last phrase was a bit over the top. But, I do believe that long term industrial education will slowly die out. Probably a lot slower than I think. There's nothing that special about my thinking really. Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel, etc all hire the best. I don't know THAT much about their hiring policy or practice, but there are people just by sheer numbers (on either side of spectra) who are more than qualified. In fact you can go to college and get stuff done. It's one of the best ways to go because you can use loans and scholarships to fund yourself getting stuff done. It's the degree so much that I don't care about. And to be really honest, it's probably easier to get stuff done in the right college setting than it is to get it done almost anywhere else in the world. All I'm really saying is that I have a strong preference for self learners and people who have done more than get a degree. Am I missing something?