I think if school attended influences on the job performance, that's a failure of the hiring/interview process. It is fine if school attended influences intervi

I think if school attended influences on the job performance, that's a failure of the hiring/interview process. It is fine if school attended influences interview performance, but if it influences it too strongly that may allude to a failure of recruitment/screening process (failing to look at other indicators of performance, e.g., open source contributors, code samples, etc...) I think when hiring (or vice-versa, making a choice of people I will work with) I look for some evidence that they've done something they're "not supposed to" have done. Growing up in a slum and yet attending Berkeley/Stanford/MIT/IIT Madras is such evidence -- higher education _is_ an equalizer -- but growing up in a wealthy suburb, going to a great prep school, and then and attending a top-tier school is insufficient. Real open source contributions, serious undergrad research (even if done at an obscure liberal arts college), writing your own screen replacement "just because", building and open-sourcing an impressive piece of infrastructure at a previous job, are other examples of such evidence.