3 ms·

I think the cornerstone of this discussion centers around what, where and how non-university educated developers can excel. Everyone seems to have a certain im

by doktrin 14y ago

I think the cornerstone of this discussion centers around what, where and how non-university educated developers can excel. Everyone seems to have a certain implicit sense that, sure enough, a CS education isn't crucial to work in certain sub-sets of software development. Likewise, it's well understood that such a foundation is necessary in others. > For example, if you're doing anything with machine learning, you might want people who understand statistics. Oh, and if you're designing aircraft, you might want someone who's studied aeronautical engineering Exec, of course, is neither doing cutting edge work in machine learning nor designing aircraft. Neither, if we are honest, are most startups or software companies hiring developers (including those who emphasize & prefer pedigree). The question being posed (continuously) is : To what degree is being self-taught (or, non-university taught) a hindrance in positions that do not explicitly call for it? If it's not a major hindrance, then is limiting the hiring pool in fact irrational? I do not see this being answered adequately and directly. More often than not, we default to pointing out edge cases where a university education in CS/robotics/engineering/bio-engineering/what have you is necessary to perform the basic job functions. This isn't particularly productive. Data should resolve discussions, not corner cases or anecdotes. Is there anything actionable or quantifiable that we can work with, or will this discussion inevitably lead down the path of opinion?

pyre 14y ago
Without the "University Degree" filter, you end up with a lot more candidates that claim to be self-taught. If you're only looking at a handful of candidates, applying the filter might not make sense, but if you're looking at 1000 candidates, trimming it down by even 25% is probably pretty productive.
lmg643 14y ago
off topic, but i can't help but note the irony of a company that claims to not care about credentials, but under the "meet our execs" section shows a helper who is a BA graduate of claremont mckenna. https://iamexec.com/meet_our_execs https://iamexec.com/meet_our_execs the company may not care about credentials for hiring, but for marketing purposes at least they are creating the illusion that their menial helpers are in fact credentialed. further off topic - it's a little depressing to me to see the "high tech" cradle of silicon valley creating a service to organize menial labor. wow, house cleaning online is sexy? i must be dreaming, is it 1999 again?
- justin 14y ago
  One of the biggest problems in the US right now is employment and job creation. If we can create a system by which people work for each other incrementally more because of a new hiring interface, then maybe we are doing some part to address that. Perhaps not as sexy as creating Facebook, but our customers are growing in number, like the service, and you can extrapolate how this might be used by a broader audience outside of Silicon Valley. Regarding listing one of our Exec's degrees: credentialing clearly matters to people outside the company (customers), and there's little we can do to immediately change that. When we talk about credentialing not mattering for hiring, it's for core team employees (people who build the product), for which there are generally other metrics we can evaluate on.
  - lmg643 14y ago
    appreciate you responding to my somewhat snarky comment. for the record, while i appreciate that facebook's concurrent user and database/data challenges are complex problems, the actual product itself isn't that sexy to me in terms of what the user gets for all that effort (i'm thinking about the news feed, photo storage, etc.) But i don't use much on the site so maybe i'm missing out. i think robots picking artichokes would be cool in terms of both high tech and reducing the dependency on exploitative labor conditions. but moving robots and object recognition are tough problems, and when there's other "low hanging fruit" (excuse the pun) to be found in other startups the technically difficult stuff can get pushed off. exec may also have longer life as a viable business than facebook. it fills a need that won't go away, whereas facebook has a major risk of having the fad end, or alienating users through ever-increasing invasion into people's personal data driven by the need to justify a ridiculous valuation. only risk i see to exec is what happens to your quality labor pool if the job market tightened, but that doesn't seem like a big risk for a while. with 8+ million people dropping out of the labor force over the last four years, there's a lot of slack to pick up. i agree that credentials are not necessarily indicative of on-the-job effectiveness. alternative and cheaper ways to hire people, like using programming tests (we use them at my company), are tricky and can risk running into discrimination lawsuits if they are not directly job related, esp at bigger companies. however, for some reason using tests to filter people out is considered OK if it is done through a university, and then employers hire on the back end, which leads me to think that it is partly employer laziness and partly fear of liability that keeps the credentialing system intact.

by doktrin 14y ago

pyre 14y ago

Without the "University Degree" filter, you end up with a lot more candidates that claim to be self-taught. If you're only looking at a handful of candidates, applying the filter might not make sense, but if you're looking at 1000 candidates, trimming it down by even 25% is probably pretty productive.

lmg643 14y ago

off topic, but i can't help but note the irony of a company that claims to not care about credentials, but under the "meet our execs" section shows a helper who is a BA graduate of claremont mckenna. https://iamexec.com/meet_our_execs https://iamexec.com/meet_our_execs the company may not care about credentials for hiring, but for marketing purposes at least they are creating the illusion that their menial helpers are in fact credentialed. further off topic - it's a little depressing to me to see the "high tech" cradle of silicon valley creating a service to organize menial labor. wow, house cleaning online is sexy? i must be dreaming, is it 1999 again?

justin 14y ago
One of the biggest problems in the US right now is employment and job creation. If we can create a system by which people work for each other incrementally more because of a new hiring interface, then maybe we are doing some part to address that. Perhaps not as sexy as creating Facebook, but our customers are growing in number, like the service, and you can extrapolate how this might be used by a broader audience outside of Silicon Valley. Regarding listing one of our Exec's degrees: credentialing clearly matters to people outside the company (customers), and there's little we can do to immediately change that. When we talk about credentialing not mattering for hiring, it's for core team employees (people who build the product), for which there are generally other metrics we can evaluate on.
- lmg643 14y ago
  appreciate you responding to my somewhat snarky comment. for the record, while i appreciate that facebook's concurrent user and database/data challenges are complex problems, the actual product itself isn't that sexy to me in terms of what the user gets for all that effort (i'm thinking about the news feed, photo storage, etc.) But i don't use much on the site so maybe i'm missing out. i think robots picking artichokes would be cool in terms of both high tech and reducing the dependency on exploitative labor conditions. but moving robots and object recognition are tough problems, and when there's other "low hanging fruit" (excuse the pun) to be found in other startups the technically difficult stuff can get pushed off. exec may also have longer life as a viable business than facebook. it fills a need that won't go away, whereas facebook has a major risk of having the fad end, or alienating users through ever-increasing invasion into people's personal data driven by the need to justify a ridiculous valuation. only risk i see to exec is what happens to your quality labor pool if the job market tightened, but that doesn't seem like a big risk for a while. with 8+ million people dropping out of the labor force over the last four years, there's a lot of slack to pick up. i agree that credentials are not necessarily indicative of on-the-job effectiveness. alternative and cheaper ways to hire people, like using programming tests (we use them at my company), are tricky and can risk running into discrimination lawsuits if they are not directly job related, esp at bigger companies. however, for some reason using tests to filter people out is considered OK if it is done through a university, and then employers hire on the back end, which leads me to think that it is partly employer laziness and partly fear of liability that keeps the credentialing system intact.