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> Part of this is because of how available education is, so virtually everyone who’s applying for a tech job comes with some sort of academic education, meaning
by xyzzyz 3y ago
> Part of this is because of how available education is, so virtually everyone who’s applying for a tech job comes with some sort of academic education, meaning that they’ve proven their worth to get it.
I interviewed hundreds of people in my career, 95%+ had university degrees, and in my experience, this is a much weaker signal than you make it. Only consistent takeaway I have is people with CS degrees from elite schools are unlikely to be completely terrible, but not much beyond that: the people with these elite degrees didn’t even necessarily pass coding/algorithm interviews, and people with less elite degrees would pass or fail with no additional signal from the degree. I’ve seen many, many people with CS degrees fail at things that I wouldn’t expect someone who passed an intro programming class to fail, things like keeping track of running maximum and an index of element at which the maximum occurs.
- ken47 3y agoI’m not the kind of person to say that an elite degree is end all be all. But the kind of skill a person exhibits to get into a good college and complete a degree is not necessarily well exercised within the sprint that is a tech interview. Obtaining a degree, especially at a good school, is much more akin to running a marathon. To the extent that you need hires who can be marathon runners for your team, I’d upweight an elite degree accordingly.