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Indeed, it seems like virtually everybody supports education reform. Of course we differ on the details. ;-) Private sector does play a role to some extent beca

Indeed, it seems like virtually everybody supports education reform. Of course we differ on the details. ;-) Private sector does play a role to some extent because they decide who they want to hire. They could stop requiring degrees, or define some other measure of educational attainment. If it would improve profit, they'd be rushing to try it. Meanwhile, a familiar refrain on HN is "hiring is broken." I'm not a software developer, but companies have made an effort to hire self taught programmers who don't have college degrees. That seems like a good thing. But of course demand has its ups and downs, and we might be in a "down" period right now. I'm thinking out loud here because I don't have an easy answer. For myself, I don't regret my education.

mike_hearn 1y ago
Yes, the software industry shows the way. It's possible because you can rapidly test programming skills in an interview room. Many other office jobs allow this in theory, but in practice hiring managers are inexperienced and don't know how to design rigorous interview processes. There's also a lot of ideology in the mix, some people think skills based hiring is immoral. Still, private sector hiring is often more flexible than it looks. The stated requirements are just a way to filter out applications, but the hiring for important roles is done using networks. In the past I designed the hiring process at a fintech startup selling into banking and insurance; a common refrain from our customers was "we just can't build a team of your quality". I hadn't done anything special there, just applied normal tech industry hiring processes, but those were hardly known amongst our customer base. I actually had one guy asked me in wild-eyed amazement, "is it really true you ask candidates to do the work in the interview itself?!?". A lot of the hiring-is-broken crowd are upset because they got rejected, possibly as a false negative. That really sucks, I'd hate it too if I had experienced that. But it's a view based on personal experience, not on a cold-eyed evaluation of results vs other industries that use different hiring processes. There's a reason that we have a notion of a 'tech company' even though all companies use technology, and there's a reason other industries are scared of them. A lot boils down to different cultural approaches of hiring.

mike_hearn 1y ago

Yes, the software industry shows the way. It's possible because you can rapidly test programming skills in an interview room. Many other office jobs allow this in theory, but in practice hiring managers are inexperienced and don't know how to design rigorous interview processes. There's also a lot of ideology in the mix, some people think skills based hiring is immoral. Still, private sector hiring is often more flexible than it looks. The stated requirements are just a way to filter out applications, but the hiring for important roles is done using networks. In the past I designed the hiring process at a fintech startup selling into banking and insurance; a common refrain from our customers was "we just can't build a team of your quality". I hadn't done anything special there, just applied normal tech industry hiring processes, but those were hardly known amongst our customer base. I actually had one guy asked me in wild-eyed amazement, "is it really true you ask candidates to do the work in the interview itself?!?". A lot of the hiring-is-broken crowd are upset because they got rejected, possibly as a false negative. That really sucks, I'd hate it too if I had experienced that. But it's a view based on personal experience, not on a cold-eyed evaluation of results vs other industries that use different hiring processes. There's a reason that we have a notion of a 'tech company' even though all companies use technology, and there's a reason other industries are scared of them. A lot boils down to different cultural approaches of hiring.