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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

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.
- kamaal 14y ago
  >>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. In that case they shouldn't look too surprised if they end up hiring wrong people. Or they end up hiring a person with a lot of paper degrees but can't move a coin on the table. Because you ultimately get what your truly ask for. You asked for degrees, you got it. Why is this so surprising? Ask for innovation, creativity, hard work and productivity and you will get it. If you want to hire such people, you may to have to visit their basement or look at their github logs. If you can't do that you shouldn't complain you can't hire such people. People often ask why do great hackers, nerds and other geeks don't gel so well large heavy bureaucratic corporates. Its because the rewards vs performance incentives are all badly messed up. More often than not somebody who has a degree from X college, with Y GPA gets the money. We recently hired a guy straight out of college, extremely good marks on paper. He seems to know every other data structure and algorithm in the book. But doesn't last more than couple of hours. On the other hand, I've known people from ordinary background with medium exposure, able to last through tough deadlines and crisis situations with enthusiasm. The latter people make far more better hires than the previous ones. Your degrees are of no use if you can't perform. That fact doesn't change.
  - andrewflnr 14y ago
    In that case they shouldn't look too surprised if they end up hiring wrong people. They shouldn't, but they probably will anyway. I think you have to assume that lots of companies will be stupid and work with them or work around them.
  - ender7 14y ago
    Yeah, I'm not arguing that a degree is a good indicator of performance. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the person in charge of hiring. If you advertise a well-paid tech position, you will probably get thousands of applications. You can't read them all in elaborate detail. You can't visit everyone's Github. You just don't have time. So how do you cull? Just randomly select 10% and go with that? What if you happen to pick all the bad ones? That's not going to work. Industry experience? That's easy to fake and also doesn't really mean anything. Contact their previous employers? Those interviews are notoriously inaccurate and also way too time-consuming. If they graduate from a good college, that's possibly a good sign (but possibly not! easy to get a CS degree and have no work ethic). If their resume lists a bunch of personal projects and GitHub links, that's possibly a good sign (but possibly not! easy to push random crap to GitHub that no one will use). I'm afraid it all comes down to time. Either you hire an army of extremely well-trained HR people who are all capable of evaluating code quality and project performance (in which case, why aren't they off programming themselves?) or you come up with some heuristic for culling applications that doesn't take an inordinate amount of time. It's harder than it sounds, and that's why employers fall back on do-you-have-a-degree - because it sits at the sweet spot of sort-of-predictive and easy-to-cull. Or they end up asking their current employees who to hire, which means they hire their friends (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
- tsotha 14y ago
  >Unfortunately, "went to MIT" is both easily recognizable and easily verified. Most people miss the point on why this is important. MIT doesn't teach its undergrads anything they couldn't learn at the local state school for a fraction of the price. But you have to be really smart to get in to MIT. That's what employers care about - not what you did when you were there, but that you got in. The root of the problem is Griggs v Duke Power. This problem isn't going to go away until companies can give IQ tests again without the legal peril, because otherwise employers don't have much to go on besides where you went to school.
  - gaius 14y ago
    MIT doesn't teach its undergrads anything they couldn't learn at the local state school I think it's more subtle than that. If you start with people who are very good at learning (which is all you can know about them at college entry time) then you can teach them more in 4 years than you can the "average" person. So the MIT guys probably really do learn more. The question is of course the extent to which that translates to on-the-job performance, as good learner doesn't imply good doer.
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    MIT doesn't teach its undergrads anything they couldn't learn at the local state school for a fraction of the price. As a matter of fact, yes, UMass Amherst is quite competitive with MIT in STEM departments. Thanks for noticing.
- rsheridan6 14y ago
  Then there would seem to be an opportunity there to automate some of that work. Imagine an algorithm that could give an estimate of the impact factor of an open source project (sort of like the impact factor of an academic journal) and of a particular developer's contributions. You'd end up with a score kind of like karma at HN or reddit, which could be used by lazy HR departments to make the first cut. It could probably be gamed, but somebody's going to scrutinize you more closely for the second cut so gaming it might not be advantageous.
toemetoch 14y ago
The point is that education says nothing about being able to do the job in many cases. I work with students for development projects. We don't get to pick them, they pick the projects we propose. Here's a question that tells us in seconds whether we're going to have a tough project with a lot of pussyfooting or one that'll go mad with ideas: Do you have tech-related hobbies? Most barely have a few hobbies but some are pretty much involved in every electronics/software niche they come across.
- jeffbarr 14y ago
  Agreed! You want to find the people who care enough about technology (of whatever type) to invest their own time and resources in it. I've met too many so-called professionals who see development as their job, and see no reason whatsoever to do it for recreation. The only "no" answer that I ever respected in this regard was "Hobbies? I am working two jobs to get through school. I have no time to do anything but work and study."
  - gaius 14y ago
    Not agreed. Professional means you do it for money! Again I ask, how many professional doctors do surgery after hours at home for fun? Not many...
- gaius 14y ago
  I wonder how many accountants, lawyers and doctors have "hobby" projects in their respective fields. And whether they get asked that in interviews.
  - toemetoch 14y ago
    That's actually a very good question. Your average lawyer/doctor/accountant ends up in a very predictable career, just like your average engineer. People who end up in politics tend to have a degree in law or finance and debating as a hobby. For jobs in politics, that's the kind of folk they look for, not just the "I have the right degree so hire me" types. Look at doctors who work in non-profits abroad: you'll find people with a very active engagement in social groups in their youth (I know a few in that profession) .

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.
kamaal 14y ago
>>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. In that case they shouldn't look too surprised if they end up hiring wrong people. Or they end up hiring a person with a lot of paper degrees but can't move a coin on the table. Because you ultimately get what your truly ask for. You asked for degrees, you got it. Why is this so surprising? Ask for innovation, creativity, hard work and productivity and you will get it. If you want to hire such people, you may to have to visit their basement or look at their github logs. If you can't do that you shouldn't complain you can't hire such people. People often ask why do great hackers, nerds and other geeks don't gel so well large heavy bureaucratic corporates. Its because the rewards vs performance incentives are all badly messed up. More often than not somebody who has a degree from X college, with Y GPA gets the money. We recently hired a guy straight out of college, extremely good marks on paper. He seems to know every other data structure and algorithm in the book. But doesn't last more than couple of hours. On the other hand, I've known people from ordinary background with medium exposure, able to last through tough deadlines and crisis situations with enthusiasm. The latter people make far more better hires than the previous ones. Your degrees are of no use if you can't perform. That fact doesn't change.
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  In that case they shouldn't look too surprised if they end up hiring wrong people. They shouldn't, but they probably will anyway. I think you have to assume that lots of companies will be stupid and work with them or work around them.
- ender7 14y ago
  Yeah, I'm not arguing that a degree is a good indicator of performance. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the person in charge of hiring. If you advertise a well-paid tech position, you will probably get thousands of applications. You can't read them all in elaborate detail. You can't visit everyone's Github. You just don't have time. So how do you cull? Just randomly select 10% and go with that? What if you happen to pick all the bad ones? That's not going to work. Industry experience? That's easy to fake and also doesn't really mean anything. Contact their previous employers? Those interviews are notoriously inaccurate and also way too time-consuming. If they graduate from a good college, that's possibly a good sign (but possibly not! easy to get a CS degree and have no work ethic). If their resume lists a bunch of personal projects and GitHub links, that's possibly a good sign (but possibly not! easy to push random crap to GitHub that no one will use). I'm afraid it all comes down to time. Either you hire an army of extremely well-trained HR people who are all capable of evaluating code quality and project performance (in which case, why aren't they off programming themselves?) or you come up with some heuristic for culling applications that doesn't take an inordinate amount of time. It's harder than it sounds, and that's why employers fall back on do-you-have-a-degree - because it sits at the sweet spot of sort-of-predictive and easy-to-cull. Or they end up asking their current employees who to hire, which means they hire their friends (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
tsotha 14y ago
>Unfortunately, "went to MIT" is both easily recognizable and easily verified. Most people miss the point on why this is important. MIT doesn't teach its undergrads anything they couldn't learn at the local state school for a fraction of the price. But you have to be really smart to get in to MIT. That's what employers care about - not what you did when you were there, but that you got in. The root of the problem is Griggs v Duke Power. This problem isn't going to go away until companies can give IQ tests again without the legal peril, because otherwise employers don't have much to go on besides where you went to school.
- gaius 14y ago
  MIT doesn't teach its undergrads anything they couldn't learn at the local state school I think it's more subtle than that. If you start with people who are very good at learning (which is all you can know about them at college entry time) then you can teach them more in 4 years than you can the "average" person. So the MIT guys probably really do learn more. The question is of course the extent to which that translates to on-the-job performance, as good learner doesn't imply good doer.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  MIT doesn't teach its undergrads anything they couldn't learn at the local state school for a fraction of the price. As a matter of fact, yes, UMass Amherst is quite competitive with MIT in STEM departments. Thanks for noticing.
rsheridan6 14y ago
Then there would seem to be an opportunity there to automate some of that work. Imagine an algorithm that could give an estimate of the impact factor of an open source project (sort of like the impact factor of an academic journal) and of a particular developer's contributions. You'd end up with a score kind of like karma at HN or reddit, which could be used by lazy HR departments to make the first cut. It could probably be gamed, but somebody's going to scrutinize you more closely for the second cut so gaming it might not be advantageous.

toemetoch 14y ago

The point is that education says nothing about being able to do the job in many cases. I work with students for development projects. We don't get to pick them, they pick the projects we propose. Here's a question that tells us in seconds whether we're going to have a tough project with a lot of pussyfooting or one that'll go mad with ideas: Do you have tech-related hobbies? Most barely have a few hobbies but some are pretty much involved in every electronics/software niche they come across.

jeffbarr 14y ago
Agreed! You want to find the people who care enough about technology (of whatever type) to invest their own time and resources in it. I've met too many so-called professionals who see development as their job, and see no reason whatsoever to do it for recreation. The only "no" answer that I ever respected in this regard was "Hobbies? I am working two jobs to get through school. I have no time to do anything but work and study."
- gaius 14y ago
  Not agreed. Professional means you do it for money! Again I ask, how many professional doctors do surgery after hours at home for fun? Not many...
gaius 14y ago
I wonder how many accountants, lawyers and doctors have "hobby" projects in their respective fields. And whether they get asked that in interviews.
- toemetoch 14y ago
  That's actually a very good question. Your average lawyer/doctor/accountant ends up in a very predictable career, just like your average engineer. People who end up in politics tend to have a degree in law or finance and debating as a hobby. For jobs in politics, that's the kind of folk they look for, not just the "I have the right degree so hire me" types. Look at doctors who work in non-profits abroad: you'll find people with a very active engagement in social groups in their youth (I know a few in that profession) .