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Mark Cuban writes: "As an employer I want the best prepared and qualified employees. I could care less if the source of their education was accredited by a bunc

Mark Cuban writes: "As an employer I want the best prepared and qualified employees. I could care less if the source of their education was accredited by a bunch of old men and women who think they know what is best for the world. I want people who can do the job. I want the best and brightest. Not a piece of paper." So, I suppose I could be wrong, but I would be willing to bet a great deal of money that Mark Cuban does not employ anyone in any sort of white-collar job who doesn't have a college degree from an accredited college. It's nice for Mark Cuban to say that, but the reality is if you submit your resume to Mark Cuban Enterprises, Inc. where you list your education as being from the First Internet School of Book Learnin', Mark Cuban's HR people are going to delete it offhand. They're not going to call you. They're not going to try to find out if you're the best and brightest. They're going to delete it and call the guy who has Yale on his resume. Sorry.

davyjones 14y ago
Correct. I have found blog posts where there are snippets about how they are "looking for bright and interesting minds and college degree does not matter" but when you look at their Jobs page, you have a BS Computer Science or equivalent requirement listed there.
- jey 14y ago
  It does say "BS Computer Science or equivalent" -- so they're asking for a certain level of education, which doesn't necessarily have to be in the form of a college degree.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    It is interesting that they still choose to use college-level credentials as the baseline metric though. Why not "Four years of demonstrable self-directed learning in the study, or equivalent"?
    - stdgy 14y ago
      In my mind that's not really the same thing. Universities have requirements you need to cover in order to graduate. So when a job lists a BS CS degree as a requirement, they're saying they expect you to be familiar with the core subjects of the field. Certainly not an expert in any one subject, but at least familiar. (If they want subject area experts they'll usually be advertising for MS/PhD with a focus in [blah]) Obviously this still gives the Universities a great deal of trust, with the implication that in order to receive the degree, you had to demonstrate your capability. That's a sizable question mark, even though it's what University accreditation is supposed to be for... Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there. Anyways, four years of self-directed learning won't necessarily cover the same subject matter they may expect you to be familiar with.
    - jey 14y ago
      Because a college degree is simply the most common way that bullet point is satisfied. Why use a more obscure standard to convey the requirement?
- talmand 14y ago
  How many job postings for the tech field actually make sense? Most of them are written by people who have no idea what they speak of. Shoot, most recruiters have no idea either. If the job seems interesting submit anyway and just hope to get someone who understands what's written on your resume. Can't get the job if you don't try.
bennesvig 14y ago
It's probably easier to get a response from Cuban himself than any of his HR people. Didn't he invest in a teenagers company on Shark Tank?
grannyg00se 14y ago
If that's all your resume says, then you're probably right. But there should be something on there that indicates that you can do the job otherwise you wasted your time applying. The point is that education says nothing about being able to do the job in many cases. If you are applying for an engineering position and you have MIT on your resume, that is certainly going to imply that you very likely have what it takes. But it still doesn't prove anything. On the other hand, if you have no formal education on your resume but you've built a fusion reactor in your basement, I'm pretty sure your resume wouldn't get thrown away.
- ender7 14y ago
  Unfortunately, "went to MIT" is both easily recognizable and easily verified. "Built a fusion reactor in my basement" is neither of those things. Similarly, "check out my GitHub" has many of the same problems. I'm sorry, but most employers don't have time to look you up on GitHub to crawl through all your commits. That will happen if you get past the first cut, but it won't do anything beforehand. Sure, you can put "Main developer for <some project>" on your resume. Hopefully the person who is in charge of culling applications has heard of <some project>. If they haven't, they will hopefully take the time to go look it up. Hopefully. I'm not saying that this is the way it should be, but you have to understand that the average person in charge of hiring is constantly inundated with applications. They simply don't have the time to do research on each one. As with anything, you have to find some way to stand out, but in a way that doesn't require them to visit your basement.
  - jshen 14y ago
    You didn't make a clear point, but I want to say this incase people believe you are implying otherwise. I've worked at a few of the largest companies in the world, with the classic HR dept, and they have all had numerous good programmers with nothing more than a high school diploma. I've hired a few myself. It really isn't hard to show someone that you know what you're doing.
  - Lednakashim 14y ago
    My experience says otherwise, but it requires approaching the person and bragging for minutes. Its certainly possible to do this, but not via Internet or paper applications.
flurie 14y ago
The great irony of this is that the vast majority of these free offerings from which one could conceivably cobble a degree are in STEM, and yet the numbers of students graduating with STEM degrees has been flat for decades.
watmough 14y ago
The first mistake here is submitting a resume. You need to be calling your contacts at Mark Cuban and saying, "Yeah, I'm in good shape here, but I'm willing to look at other things."
malandrew 14y ago
TBH, I have never really looked at the education section on a résumé when hiring unless the person is an existing graduate. After a few years of work experience, all that really matters is the last 3-5 years. You could pretty much omit everything before that, because just the last 3-5 years is usually enough to figure out the caliber of work a candidate may have been doing before that. If all résumés only included the last 3-5 years of an employees life whether or not that includes their education, would it really be worth that much less as a factor using in the decision to interview or hire?
mkramlich 14y ago
Fuck college. It's not the only way to learn, to meet people, or to show your expertise, capabilities and accomplishments anymore. We have this thing called the Internet now. Write a book. Put a PDF online. Record a video of yourself giving an intelligent speech or showing some useful talent. Put it on YouTube. Write software. Put on GitHub. Answer technical questions well on StackExchange (or whatever for your particular industry/field.) Apply your supposed skills and talents on something tangible then put it on the web and be findable. Fuck 4-6 years of your life and $100k in debt. Fuck all that.
- lordlicorice 14y ago
  It's hard to overstate the value of a university education... Why are you so vehement? Never went to college?
  - webwright 14y ago
    I have a 4 year degree and I think it's hard to understate its value. I wish I'd spent that 4 years doing different things... I almost certainly would have learned more (and the things I learned would have been more useful). And it wouldn't have cost $120k.
    - overgryphon 14y ago
      That experience isn't applicable to everyone. Mine invaluable and cost less than 15k. College is what you make of it.
  - ArmstrongRSBC 14y ago
    The cost of a college education is an overstatement of its value. How many recent grads outside of engineering do you know? Now how many of them are gainfully employed? Now how much did they pay for school and how much pay and experience did they miss out on by not working for the time they were in school? I just went through the post graduate job cycle along with a huge batch of my peers and any of us will be the first to tell you that college is broke. The only reason I am employed is because of projects I put together myself, online, outside of the scope of a university education. If you are looking to meet girls and learn how to drink to excess by all means college is a great place to do it. Otherwise college education in the liberal arts is a complete waste.
gavanwoolery 14y ago
False. Many of the Mavericks players do not have college degrees.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- sp332 14y ago
  Mavericks players are not in white collar jobs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-collar_worker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-collar_worker
vladd 14y ago
Today the same institutions provide education and certify skills. If nothing else, it's an obvious conflict of interests that's tolerated only because historically there was no other practical way around it. The war for talent and the online classes will soon disrupt that - you'll be able to give interviews/tests in a 2-day examination and get a paper saying what you really know (like SAT is for pupils). And when that link fails, when you can get a certificate in 3 days as opposed to 3 years, when you can study interactive online courses with top-notch content at your own rhythm as opposed to a 4-year outdated programs, then it will happen: certification will be independent and traditional universities will have serious disruption in their tuition prices and budgets. What will not happen is the demise of high-end education and student loans. The senate & president won't let it fall; US needs to keep itself competitive, especially versus EU where most states heavily subsidize education from taxes. The society and the police can't afford uneducated children.
- WalterBright 14y ago
  > 4-year outdated programs A good STEM program teaches you how to think, and that never gets outdated. Colleges offer a smorgasbord of courses to take. If you select courses for the easiest route to a degree, you won't be that employable. If you select courses that will give you the best foundation for your chosen career, that'll do much better. For example, although I got a degree in engineering, I made sure I also took a class in business accounting. (That class has paid off well for me.)
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    If you select courses for the easiest route to a degree, you won't be that employable. I've never seen evidence that specific courses matter much for employment post college. Do you have data on this?
    - aplusbi 14y ago
      I don't think Walter Bright meant that listing the courses you took on your resume is going to make you more (or less) employable. I think the point was that taking difficult classes will better prepare your for work. I slightly disagree with this position, difficult doesn't mean better (depending on your definition of better). For example, I would have been better served to take a class on databases rather than a class on computational geometry.
shioyama 14y ago
20 years ago, if you had told people that the world's most widely-read source of general knowledge would go out of print and be replaced by a website editable by anyone, anywhere, people would have said you were crazy. But that did happen. Yale may not "go out of print", but I don't find it hard to imagine new online schools competing and winning in the battle to redefine education.
maigret 14y ago
At least some data seems to agree with you http://www.businessinsider.com/busted-hypocritical-peter-thiel-demands-you-have-a-college-education-to-work-at-his-new-hedge-fund-2012-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/busted-hypocritical-peter-thi...

davyjones 14y ago

Correct. I have found blog posts where there are snippets about how they are "looking for bright and interesting minds and college degree does not matter" but when you look at their Jobs page, you have a BS Computer Science or equivalent requirement listed there.

jey 14y ago
It does say "BS Computer Science or equivalent" -- so they're asking for a certain level of education, which doesn't necessarily have to be in the form of a college degree.
- randomdata 14y ago
  It is interesting that they still choose to use college-level credentials as the baseline metric though. Why not "Four years of demonstrable self-directed learning in the study, or equivalent"?
  - stdgy 14y ago
    In my mind that's not really the same thing. Universities have requirements you need to cover in order to graduate. So when a job lists a BS CS degree as a requirement, they're saying they expect you to be familiar with the core subjects of the field. Certainly not an expert in any one subject, but at least familiar. (If they want subject area experts they'll usually be advertising for MS/PhD with a focus in [blah]) Obviously this still gives the Universities a great deal of trust, with the implication that in order to receive the degree, you had to demonstrate your capability. That's a sizable question mark, even though it's what University accreditation is supposed to be for... Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there. Anyways, four years of self-directed learning won't necessarily cover the same subject matter they may expect you to be familiar with.
  - jey 14y ago
    Because a college degree is simply the most common way that bullet point is satisfied. Why use a more obscure standard to convey the requirement?
talmand 14y ago
How many job postings for the tech field actually make sense? Most of them are written by people who have no idea what they speak of. Shoot, most recruiters have no idea either. If the job seems interesting submit anyway and just hope to get someone who understands what's written on your resume. Can't get the job if you don't try.

bennesvig 14y ago

It's probably easier to get a response from Cuban himself than any of his HR people. Didn't he invest in a teenagers company on Shark Tank?

grannyg00se 14y ago

If that's all your resume says, then you're probably right. But there should be something on there that indicates that you can do the job otherwise you wasted your time applying. The point is that education says nothing about being able to do the job in many cases. If you are applying for an engineering position and you have MIT on your resume, that is certainly going to imply that you very likely have what it takes. But it still doesn't prove anything. On the other hand, if you have no formal education on your resume but you've built a fusion reactor in your basement, I'm pretty sure your resume wouldn't get thrown away.

ender7 14y ago
Unfortunately, "went to MIT" is both easily recognizable and easily verified. "Built a fusion reactor in my basement" is neither of those things. Similarly, "check out my GitHub" has many of the same problems. I'm sorry, but most employers don't have time to look you up on GitHub to crawl through all your commits. That will happen if you get past the first cut, but it won't do anything beforehand. Sure, you can put "Main developer for <some project>" on your resume. Hopefully the person who is in charge of culling applications has heard of <some project>. If they haven't, they will hopefully take the time to go look it up. Hopefully. I'm not saying that this is the way it should be, but you have to understand that the average person in charge of hiring is constantly inundated with applications. They simply don't have the time to do research on each one. As with anything, you have to find some way to stand out, but in a way that doesn't require them to visit your basement.
- jshen 14y ago
  You didn't make a clear point, but I want to say this incase people believe you are implying otherwise. I've worked at a few of the largest companies in the world, with the classic HR dept, and they have all had numerous good programmers with nothing more than a high school diploma. I've hired a few myself. It really isn't hard to show someone that you know what you're doing.
- Lednakashim 14y ago
  My experience says otherwise, but it requires approaching the person and bragging for minutes. Its certainly possible to do this, but not via Internet or paper applications.

flurie 14y ago

The great irony of this is that the vast majority of these free offerings from which one could conceivably cobble a degree are in STEM, and yet the numbers of students graduating with STEM degrees has been flat for decades.

watmough 14y ago

The first mistake here is submitting a resume. You need to be calling your contacts at Mark Cuban and saying, "Yeah, I'm in good shape here, but I'm willing to look at other things."

malandrew 14y ago

TBH, I have never really looked at the education section on a résumé when hiring unless the person is an existing graduate. After a few years of work experience, all that really matters is the last 3-5 years. You could pretty much omit everything before that, because just the last 3-5 years is usually enough to figure out the caliber of work a candidate may have been doing before that. If all résumés only included the last 3-5 years of an employees life whether or not that includes their education, would it really be worth that much less as a factor using in the decision to interview or hire?

mkramlich 14y ago

Fuck college. It's not the only way to learn, to meet people, or to show your expertise, capabilities and accomplishments anymore. We have this thing called the Internet now. Write a book. Put a PDF online. Record a video of yourself giving an intelligent speech or showing some useful talent. Put it on YouTube. Write software. Put on GitHub. Answer technical questions well on StackExchange (or whatever for your particular industry/field.) Apply your supposed skills and talents on something tangible then put it on the web and be findable. Fuck 4-6 years of your life and $100k in debt. Fuck all that.

lordlicorice 14y ago
It's hard to overstate the value of a university education... Why are you so vehement? Never went to college?
- webwright 14y ago
  I have a 4 year degree and I think it's hard to understate its value. I wish I'd spent that 4 years doing different things... I almost certainly would have learned more (and the things I learned would have been more useful). And it wouldn't have cost $120k.
  - overgryphon 14y ago
    That experience isn't applicable to everyone. Mine invaluable and cost less than 15k. College is what you make of it.
- ArmstrongRSBC 14y ago
  The cost of a college education is an overstatement of its value. How many recent grads outside of engineering do you know? Now how many of them are gainfully employed? Now how much did they pay for school and how much pay and experience did they miss out on by not working for the time they were in school? I just went through the post graduate job cycle along with a huge batch of my peers and any of us will be the first to tell you that college is broke. The only reason I am employed is because of projects I put together myself, online, outside of the scope of a university education. If you are looking to meet girls and learn how to drink to excess by all means college is a great place to do it. Otherwise college education in the liberal arts is a complete waste.

gavanwoolery 14y ago

False. Many of the Mavericks players do not have college degrees.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
sp332 14y ago
Mavericks players are not in white collar jobs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-collar_worker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-collar_worker

vladd 14y ago

Today the same institutions provide education and certify skills. If nothing else, it's an obvious conflict of interests that's tolerated only because historically there was no other practical way around it. The war for talent and the online classes will soon disrupt that - you'll be able to give interviews/tests in a 2-day examination and get a paper saying what you really know (like SAT is for pupils). And when that link fails, when you can get a certificate in 3 days as opposed to 3 years, when you can study interactive online courses with top-notch content at your own rhythm as opposed to a 4-year outdated programs, then it will happen: certification will be independent and traditional universities will have serious disruption in their tuition prices and budgets. What will not happen is the demise of high-end education and student loans. The senate & president won't let it fall; US needs to keep itself competitive, especially versus EU where most states heavily subsidize education from taxes. The society and the police can't afford uneducated children.

WalterBright 14y ago
> 4-year outdated programs A good STEM program teaches you how to think, and that never gets outdated. Colleges offer a smorgasbord of courses to take. If you select courses for the easiest route to a degree, you won't be that employable. If you select courses that will give you the best foundation for your chosen career, that'll do much better. For example, although I got a degree in engineering, I made sure I also took a class in business accounting. (That class has paid off well for me.)
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  If you select courses for the easiest route to a degree, you won't be that employable. I've never seen evidence that specific courses matter much for employment post college. Do you have data on this?
  - aplusbi 14y ago
    I don't think Walter Bright meant that listing the courses you took on your resume is going to make you more (or less) employable. I think the point was that taking difficult classes will better prepare your for work. I slightly disagree with this position, difficult doesn't mean better (depending on your definition of better). For example, I would have been better served to take a class on databases rather than a class on computational geometry.

shioyama 14y ago

20 years ago, if you had told people that the world's most widely-read source of general knowledge would go out of print and be replaced by a website editable by anyone, anywhere, people would have said you were crazy. But that did happen. Yale may not "go out of print", but I don't find it hard to imagine new online schools competing and winning in the battle to redefine education.

maigret 14y ago

At least some data seems to agree with you http://www.businessinsider.com/busted-hypocritical-peter-thiel-demands-you-have-a-college-education-to-work-at-his-new-hedge-fund-2012-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/busted-hypocritical-peter-thi...