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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 adverti

by 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).

randomdata 14y ago
Ultimately, it boils down to filtering by reputation. The data says that most jobs are acquired through existing connections before it is ever advertised to the public, but in those outlier cases, a degree gives a nod to you from a known credible source. In the world of social networks and artificial intelligence, it is interesting that nothing has come up to provide better recommendations. Perhaps because it's not really needed in the software industry at this point (at least if you believe there is a shortage of talent), so it is not noticed as a problem by the programmers who are capable of making such a system a reality.
- zenlikethat 14y ago
  I've seen a poster around here who is involved with a startup (can't think of the name, sorry) that is working on a problem like that. Amalgating prospective hires and ranking them based on various assets of problem solving, contributions to Github, technical experience, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to find this sector increasimgly revisited in years to come. I've recently come to experience that programmers without much experience, no matter how well-intentioned, sometimes just stomp around doing far more damage than good on projects.
dredmorbius 14y ago
This is where having a solid referral network and a good technical pre-screening process help. The screen would be a quiz, puzzle, or other technical challenge which can root out the obviously unqualified (and possibly net you some viral buzz), while being easy for an HR drone to administer. They don't need to verify the code, just that it produces the correct result. Mind that "correct result" should be sufficiently qualified (e.g.: parsing /etc/passwd for valid user accounts will vary somewhat by 'Nix system and Linux distro). College degree does make for a useful filter. It's not the only one. For a company which is deluged in qualified candidates, the problem isn't making the exact correct hire, but in eliminating obvious misfits quickly. Now, I'd also hope that they'd make exceptions for personal referrals who lack a college degree. Also: college is itself a place to seed referral networks. Again, not the only one, but there.
- overgryphon 14y ago
  The only people who are going to bother solving your puzzles are the ones who are desperate for a job- not the people you want. Qualified candidates have lots of opportunities at places that respect their time, and don't pretend an easily googleable problem is an indication of performance.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    Doesn't have to be something horridly complex. Just enough to show basic competency. A shell one-liner, a brief function in a programming language, some basic domain knowledge. Those people you request send a code sample or their Github profile. You've already knocked off about 75-90% of the applicant pool.

by ender7 14y ago

randomdata 14y ago

Ultimately, it boils down to filtering by reputation. The data says that most jobs are acquired through existing connections before it is ever advertised to the public, but in those outlier cases, a degree gives a nod to you from a known credible source. In the world of social networks and artificial intelligence, it is interesting that nothing has come up to provide better recommendations. Perhaps because it's not really needed in the software industry at this point (at least if you believe there is a shortage of talent), so it is not noticed as a problem by the programmers who are capable of making such a system a reality.

zenlikethat 14y ago
I've seen a poster around here who is involved with a startup (can't think of the name, sorry) that is working on a problem like that. Amalgating prospective hires and ranking them based on various assets of problem solving, contributions to Github, technical experience, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to find this sector increasimgly revisited in years to come. I've recently come to experience that programmers without much experience, no matter how well-intentioned, sometimes just stomp around doing far more damage than good on projects.

dredmorbius 14y ago

This is where having a solid referral network and a good technical pre-screening process help. The screen would be a quiz, puzzle, or other technical challenge which can root out the obviously unqualified (and possibly net you some viral buzz), while being easy for an HR drone to administer. They don't need to verify the code, just that it produces the correct result. Mind that "correct result" should be sufficiently qualified (e.g.: parsing /etc/passwd for valid user accounts will vary somewhat by 'Nix system and Linux distro). College degree does make for a useful filter. It's not the only one. For a company which is deluged in qualified candidates, the problem isn't making the exact correct hire, but in eliminating obvious misfits quickly. Now, I'd also hope that they'd make exceptions for personal referrals who lack a college degree. Also: college is itself a place to seed referral networks. Again, not the only one, but there.

overgryphon 14y ago
The only people who are going to bother solving your puzzles are the ones who are desperate for a job- not the people you want. Qualified candidates have lots of opportunities at places that respect their time, and don't pretend an easily googleable problem is an indication of performance.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Doesn't have to be something horridly complex. Just enough to show basic competency. A shell one-liner, a brief function in a programming language, some basic domain knowledge. Those people you request send a code sample or their Github profile. You've already knocked off about 75-90% of the applicant pool.