I was self-taught in both terms of computer science when programming books were the staples and DIY computers when they came in beige boxes. I would trek to a C

I was self-taught in both terms of computer science when programming books were the staples and DIY computers when they came in beige boxes. I would trek to a Computer Literacy Bookshop north of downtown San Jose to acquire DOS and interrupt call reference manuals. College prep over-achiever high school but avoided the heard intent on swarming Boston, Berkeley, and Palo Alto. Instead, did UC Davis where there was UNIX flavors and Linux. Was CS before transferring to CS&E (EE/CS equivalent). The intro networking course 3rd project was to write a forking caching forward HTTP/0.9 proxy. There was little-to-no grade inflation and it was sink or swim because they were itching to compete with Ivys and PacNN on fundamentals of rigorous undergrad program and vying for interesting research, especially in computer graphics and infosec. Prior to this, I had a high school job as an assistant manager at a retail software store before going into sysadmin consulting. Engineering systems thinking and discipline comes from practice and experience of doing difficult things. Brand Name degrees have a bad rep now in a post-Theranos world where there's the easy ramp to capital and support based on pedigree tick boxes, which doesn't necessarily translate into hack and hustle. There's another phenomenon where people who come from well-off backgrounds are often under pressure to go well beyond ordinary expectations of education and job performance to avoid the perception of riding pedigree and upbringing. I look for engineers who mildly obsess over correctness, remove tech debt and net LoC, weigh the tradeoffs with discretion, express continuous curiosity, and bonus points if they're partially extroverted and easy-going. I've worked with engineers in title who fell into their positions via a transition from IT roles, but sometimes engineering ingenuity and curiosity are missing and that's a bit disappointing.