5 ms·

They discriminate employment based on what school you go to, or at least they did circa 2013

by peterhadlaw 2y ago

55555 2y ago
Don't all companies do this? That's why the name of the school you went to is on your resume.
pquki4 2y ago
Even so, probably not nearly as much as McKinsey
tourist2d 2y ago
I imagine they also "discriminate" on skills and previous jobs you have too..
SkipperCat 2y ago
Its mostly done as a way to filter job applications into a smaller set. When Google was the 'hottest' job prospect (many years ago) they needed a way to reduce the set of applicants down to a number where hiring managers could handle the load. Setting criteria such as having an Ivy League degree or a CS degrees with GPA over 3.8 was a logical way to achieve this goal. That being said, if you went to a community college but also had 10+ years experience at one of their competitors (eg: DE Shaw, 2Sig, Citadel, etc), you'd almost be guaranteed an interview. But once again, thats another very small set of applicants.
- znpy 2y ago
  > Setting criteria such as having an Ivy League degree or a CS degrees with GPA over 3.8 was a logical way to achieve this goal. It wasn't a "logical way", it was an "easy way". That's classist at the very least.
  - SkipperCat 2y ago
    To a certain extent, you are correct. However, companies like Jane Street need to filter and doing so based on colleges is the most efficient when other factors are all equal. Top tier colleges strive to base their admittance on performance and strive to be racially and culturally diverse. This gives Jane Street the ability to say they filter on the same criteria. I'm all ears if you have a better system that is more efficient. I'd also add that I went to a State college and my resume would have been tossed if I applied as a starting engineer too.
    - gadders 2y ago
      >>and strive to be racially and culturally diverse But not socio-economically.
    - iknownthing 2y ago
      I'd say just go with GPA.
    - tombert 2y ago
      I kind of agree, but I do wonder if that’s largely confirmation bias though; they hire the best engineers they can find from an Ivy League, don’t bother even looking at decent state school people, then the Ivy League engineers they hire do well and they assume it must because they went to an Ivy League school. I know that fancy colleges like to say that they strive to base admittance on performance, and I believe that’s true to an extent, but it certainly seems like they make an exception for students who come from a lot of money. I’ve mentioned this before but think about any politician that you think is un utter moron, and there’s still a reasonably good chance that they went to an Ivy League because they come from a rich family. And it annoys me that people act like Ivy League schools are the only ones that accept based on performance. I applied to a bunch of state schools as a teenager and I got declined by a bunch of them. We can wax philosophical about why I was declined but I doubt it was personal, just that they probably didn’t think I would perform well based on some metric.
  - lupire 2y ago
    You seem to be conflating "logical" with "moral".
  - eddieroger 2y ago
    It makes logical sense - if they look over their staff and search for commonalities amongst successful employees, and trends like school or CS degree and GPA stand out, then it's logical to assume that will predict further success and thin the pool. It's a jerk move, sure, but it can be both.
- vintermann 2y ago
  > they needed a way to reduce the set of applicants down to a number where hiring managers could handle the load The question is what other attributes you "accidentally" filter by if you filter by school prestige. Even if you do bias your pool to individually better candidates on average, you may bias it in a lot of other ways. If the purpose of the filtering is to reduce the pool to a size where humans with common sense can make sensible calls, then that CC graduate with 10+ years of competitor experience would likely be filtered out before common sense could suggest he might be good anyway.
  - SkipperCat 2y ago
    They're smart enough to know how create filters that don't miss people with competitors experience on their CVs. In fact, they actively seek those people out on LinkedIn and anywhere else they can find them. HFT jobs are high value / high comp jobs, so Jane Street and their cohorts put a lot of effort into recruiting. This includes their resume intake system, internships with desirable colleges and professional outreach.
- boppo1 2y ago
  Who is the 'hot' employer now? OpenAI?
pasc1878 2y ago
So do most popular companies. they get many applicants for a job. So you have to filter those applications. One way is to recruit from known places where they have already got people from as they know it worked. Typically those universities also filtered on how good you were and so the average quality is higher from those. Obviously there will be exceptions but not work spending time to find them. Recruitment costs a lot in time and money.
kettleballroll 2y ago
I come from a very small provincial university, but they still reached out to me 2018, so I don't think so. (I bombed their interview and didn't get an offer, though).
- tombert 2y ago
  In 2016 I was still a dropout and they did an interview with me. I also bombed it. I have applied about a dozen times since then after getting my degree from WGU and they haven’t gotten back to me; I almost wonder if not putting any college experience on the resume was a blind spot for their filter.
  - moneywoes 2y ago
    How did you find WGU? Has it helped?
    - tombert 2y ago
      Sort of a difficult question to answer if I'm being honest, because I'm kind of a strange outlier case. I was a dropout for almost a decade, but managed to find work at big corporations somehow [1], and the entire time I was pretty obsessed with learning CS theory; partly because I liked it and partly because it made interviews easier. By the time I had decided to finish school and enroll in WGU, I already had roughly a bachelors' degree of education in CS anyway. And that's not just a pseudo-intellectual assertion on my end, I finished all my classes in a single term, most classes were completed in a week. I don't think it's helped my job prospects much; I had already had senior level positions at Apple and Jet.com/Walmart Labs by the time I went back to school, and I suspect that they look better on my resume than a bachelors in CS from WGU. (If you're curious, the reason I went back at all was so I would be qualified for a PhD program, which as far as I can tell universally requires at least a bachelors, and usually a masters, so I just wanted to check off a box. I'm not 100% sure why I wanted a PhD; I think my brain had fetishized professorships and CS research) So it's tough to answer directly. I think for someone starting out today a degree from WGU is better than no degree, and I think the education they gave was "just fine". If you're ok with not working in Wall Street, it's enough to get you to the interview phase. If your goal is to work in Wall Street or to become a lawyer, it's probably better holding off until you can get into a "brand name" school. I'm happy enough in my current position and they don't really care where I went to school, but I do believe that they had a firm requirement for a bachelors (I don't bother checking), and I like my current gig so it's probably worth it. [1] I dropped out in 2012, which turned out to be just about the best time to drop out. It seems like everyone on earth suddenly had a smartphone and there was a shortage of engineers as a result.
gadders 2y ago
They might as well say "middle class and above applicants only". You can't claim to have diversity if everyone did the same courses in the same schools.
strikelaserclaw 2y ago
A) usually if you're fresh out of school they filter on your school name because the average MIT cs grad is most likely better than the average cs grad from university of kentucky. B) if you have work experience, they filter on where you worked because the average google engineer / HFT engineer is probably better than your average engineer who works at missouri national bank. C) if you've done something great that everyone knows about (like being the author of popular libraries, inventing tools that people use), then you can most likely bypass filters A and B if you can get in touch with a human recruiter (shouldn't be too hard). For prestigious smaller companies which gets a lot of applicants, there is no easy way to reduce the pool without doing A and B. It is unfair and what college you go to might depend on circumstances beyond your control but if you have high ability regardless of what school you went to, you would eventually do B or C and get into the prestigious company. If you don't have high ability and will never do either B or C, then they did the right thing filtering out your resume. In the real world, it doesn't make sense for a company to discriminate against a candidate with higher ability just because they went to the wrong school (unless the company makes money from appearances like law firms, consulting firms or is corrupt and entrenched).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ecshafer 2y ago
I don't think so. I had interviews there graduating from a SUNY school, and I got a fair shake at it I think, just did pass the interview.
justsocrateasin 2y ago
Not true anymore. I went to a shitty state school with no FAANg on my resume, and had a Jane Street recruiter slide into my DMs last year.

They discriminate employment based on what school you go to, or at least they did circa 2013

55555 2y ago

Don't all companies do this? That's why the name of the school you went to is on your resume.

pquki4 2y ago

Even so, probably not nearly as much as McKinsey

tourist2d 2y ago

I imagine they also "discriminate" on skills and previous jobs you have too..

SkipperCat 2y ago

Its mostly done as a way to filter job applications into a smaller set. When Google was the 'hottest' job prospect (many years ago) they needed a way to reduce the set of applicants down to a number where hiring managers could handle the load. Setting criteria such as having an Ivy League degree or a CS degrees with GPA over 3.8 was a logical way to achieve this goal. That being said, if you went to a community college but also had 10+ years experience at one of their competitors (eg: DE Shaw, 2Sig, Citadel, etc), you'd almost be guaranteed an interview. But once again, thats another very small set of applicants.

znpy 2y ago
> Setting criteria such as having an Ivy League degree or a CS degrees with GPA over 3.8 was a logical way to achieve this goal. It wasn't a "logical way", it was an "easy way". That's classist at the very least.
- SkipperCat 2y ago
  To a certain extent, you are correct. However, companies like Jane Street need to filter and doing so based on colleges is the most efficient when other factors are all equal. Top tier colleges strive to base their admittance on performance and strive to be racially and culturally diverse. This gives Jane Street the ability to say they filter on the same criteria. I'm all ears if you have a better system that is more efficient. I'd also add that I went to a State college and my resume would have been tossed if I applied as a starting engineer too.
  - gadders 2y ago
    >>and strive to be racially and culturally diverse But not socio-economically.
  - iknownthing 2y ago
    I'd say just go with GPA.
  - tombert 2y ago
    I kind of agree, but I do wonder if that’s largely confirmation bias though; they hire the best engineers they can find from an Ivy League, don’t bother even looking at decent state school people, then the Ivy League engineers they hire do well and they assume it must because they went to an Ivy League school. I know that fancy colleges like to say that they strive to base admittance on performance, and I believe that’s true to an extent, but it certainly seems like they make an exception for students who come from a lot of money. I’ve mentioned this before but think about any politician that you think is un utter moron, and there’s still a reasonably good chance that they went to an Ivy League because they come from a rich family. And it annoys me that people act like Ivy League schools are the only ones that accept based on performance. I applied to a bunch of state schools as a teenager and I got declined by a bunch of them. We can wax philosophical about why I was declined but I doubt it was personal, just that they probably didn’t think I would perform well based on some metric.
- lupire 2y ago
  You seem to be conflating "logical" with "moral".
- eddieroger 2y ago
  It makes logical sense - if they look over their staff and search for commonalities amongst successful employees, and trends like school or CS degree and GPA stand out, then it's logical to assume that will predict further success and thin the pool. It's a jerk move, sure, but it can be both.
vintermann 2y ago
> they needed a way to reduce the set of applicants down to a number where hiring managers could handle the load The question is what other attributes you "accidentally" filter by if you filter by school prestige. Even if you do bias your pool to individually better candidates on average, you may bias it in a lot of other ways. If the purpose of the filtering is to reduce the pool to a size where humans with common sense can make sensible calls, then that CC graduate with 10+ years of competitor experience would likely be filtered out before common sense could suggest he might be good anyway.
- SkipperCat 2y ago
  They're smart enough to know how create filters that don't miss people with competitors experience on their CVs. In fact, they actively seek those people out on LinkedIn and anywhere else they can find them. HFT jobs are high value / high comp jobs, so Jane Street and their cohorts put a lot of effort into recruiting. This includes their resume intake system, internships with desirable colleges and professional outreach.
boppo1 2y ago
Who is the 'hot' employer now? OpenAI?

pasc1878 2y ago

So do most popular companies. they get many applicants for a job. So you have to filter those applications. One way is to recruit from known places where they have already got people from as they know it worked. Typically those universities also filtered on how good you were and so the average quality is higher from those. Obviously there will be exceptions but not work spending time to find them. Recruitment costs a lot in time and money.

kettleballroll 2y ago

I come from a very small provincial university, but they still reached out to me 2018, so I don't think so. (I bombed their interview and didn't get an offer, though).

tombert 2y ago
In 2016 I was still a dropout and they did an interview with me. I also bombed it. I have applied about a dozen times since then after getting my degree from WGU and they haven’t gotten back to me; I almost wonder if not putting any college experience on the resume was a blind spot for their filter.
- moneywoes 2y ago
  How did you find WGU? Has it helped?
  - tombert 2y ago
    Sort of a difficult question to answer if I'm being honest, because I'm kind of a strange outlier case. I was a dropout for almost a decade, but managed to find work at big corporations somehow [1], and the entire time I was pretty obsessed with learning CS theory; partly because I liked it and partly because it made interviews easier. By the time I had decided to finish school and enroll in WGU, I already had roughly a bachelors' degree of education in CS anyway. And that's not just a pseudo-intellectual assertion on my end, I finished all my classes in a single term, most classes were completed in a week. I don't think it's helped my job prospects much; I had already had senior level positions at Apple and Jet.com/Walmart Labs by the time I went back to school, and I suspect that they look better on my resume than a bachelors in CS from WGU. (If you're curious, the reason I went back at all was so I would be qualified for a PhD program, which as far as I can tell universally requires at least a bachelors, and usually a masters, so I just wanted to check off a box. I'm not 100% sure why I wanted a PhD; I think my brain had fetishized professorships and CS research) So it's tough to answer directly. I think for someone starting out today a degree from WGU is better than no degree, and I think the education they gave was "just fine". If you're ok with not working in Wall Street, it's enough to get you to the interview phase. If your goal is to work in Wall Street or to become a lawyer, it's probably better holding off until you can get into a "brand name" school. I'm happy enough in my current position and they don't really care where I went to school, but I do believe that they had a firm requirement for a bachelors (I don't bother checking), and I like my current gig so it's probably worth it. [1] I dropped out in 2012, which turned out to be just about the best time to drop out. It seems like everyone on earth suddenly had a smartphone and there was a shortage of engineers as a result.

gadders 2y ago

They might as well say "middle class and above applicants only". You can't claim to have diversity if everyone did the same courses in the same schools.

strikelaserclaw 2y ago

A) usually if you're fresh out of school they filter on your school name because the average MIT cs grad is most likely better than the average cs grad from university of kentucky. B) if you have work experience, they filter on where you worked because the average google engineer / HFT engineer is probably better than your average engineer who works at missouri national bank. C) if you've done something great that everyone knows about (like being the author of popular libraries, inventing tools that people use), then you can most likely bypass filters A and B if you can get in touch with a human recruiter (shouldn't be too hard). For prestigious smaller companies which gets a lot of applicants, there is no easy way to reduce the pool without doing A and B. It is unfair and what college you go to might depend on circumstances beyond your control but if you have high ability regardless of what school you went to, you would eventually do B or C and get into the prestigious company. If you don't have high ability and will never do either B or C, then they did the right thing filtering out your resume. In the real world, it doesn't make sense for a company to discriminate against a candidate with higher ability just because they went to the wrong school (unless the company makes money from appearances like law firms, consulting firms or is corrupt and entrenched).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ecshafer 2y ago

I don't think so. I had interviews there graduating from a SUNY school, and I got a fair shake at it I think, just did pass the interview.

justsocrateasin 2y ago

Not true anymore. I went to a shitty state school with no FAANg on my resume, and had a Jane Street recruiter slide into my DMs last year.