I joined Silicon Valley as a grad student at Stanford in 2007, and I've been on both sides of hiring multiple times. I'm now the recruiting committee chair for

I joined Silicon Valley as a grad student at Stanford in 2007, and I've been on both sides of hiring multiple times. I'm now the recruiting committee chair for an ambitious startup. The key to the article is: "What we may have is a 'STEM majors who have the skills that Silicon Valley prefers' shortage." For me the issue is not that schools don't teach a certain algorithm or design pattern, but it takes a lot of searching to find someone smart who is also diligent, dedicated, hard-working, and responsible. Every university should ask their students to read the short essay "A Message to Garcia" (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17195/17195-h/17195-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17195/17195-h/17195-h.htm) that tells the story of the dependable servant Garcia. The author exclaims: "By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing"