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This is a fantastic initiative, and like a lot of businesses built by Xavier Niel, I hope it leads to positive changes in the industry. This said, what I would

This is a fantastic initiative, and like a lot of businesses built by Xavier Niel, I hope it leads to positive changes in the industry. This said, what I would be worried about with this system is how long it will take for the employment market to adapt to this/those schools. When it comes to jobs, French companies, especially large ones, have a really strong bias towards applicants from well known and somewhat elitist public schools, no matter how efficient those might actually be at their jobs. Unlike the US, France doesn't really have a strong and major software industry competing for raw programming talent, so developers have nowhere near the salary, status, or lifestyle they could expect in places like SV or NY. Very few companies have a real incentive to hire a great programmer over a good one, which might reduce the efficiency of a school that focuses on training very good developers without giving them the access to the prestige of the (also free) traditional public schools. It will be interesting to see how salaries and career paths available to programmers trained at École 42 will compare with those hired after they graduate from École Centrale Paris. Nevertheless, I look forward to hire from this talent pool.

yodsanklai 11y ago
> French companies, especially large ones, have a really strong bias towards applicants from well known and somewhat elitist public schools, Not only French companies, but also banks, hedge funds, companies like Google and so on... I was saying that in an other comment, but recently Google Paris organized a programming contest. All teams in the top ten came from top schools (mainly ENS, but also ECP and X) whereas 42 performed extremely poorly. There's a reason why employers are biased towards elite schools.
- patrickaljord 11y ago
  42 performed poorly because it's only been in existence for a year so they have no graduates yet. Only people who've been learning for a year. Time will tell if this school will produce great coders.
  - p4bl0 11y ago
    The people participating in the Google hashcode contest for any school do not have graduated from that school yet.
- uniclaude 11y ago
  That's good to know, and I welcome the data point, but I'm fairly doubtful of the relevance of this Google contest. Way too many factors enter in consideration (did the best programmers of x and y school enter? did they prepare the same way? did they take it seriously? ...). Does this provide real proof that the model on which 42 is based is wrong? Moreover, how well does a score in this programming contest correlates to real world performance? From experience, the strengths of school networks is a much stronger reason why employers are biased towards elite schools. Please note that I'm not saying elite schools aren't good (it's a pool I hired and will hire from), I'm just welcoming the initiative and wondering how it will pan out.

yodsanklai 11y ago

> French companies, especially large ones, have a really strong bias towards applicants from well known and somewhat elitist public schools, Not only French companies, but also banks, hedge funds, companies like Google and so on... I was saying that in an other comment, but recently Google Paris organized a programming contest. All teams in the top ten came from top schools (mainly ENS, but also ECP and X) whereas 42 performed extremely poorly. There's a reason why employers are biased towards elite schools.

patrickaljord 11y ago
42 performed poorly because it's only been in existence for a year so they have no graduates yet. Only people who've been learning for a year. Time will tell if this school will produce great coders.
- p4bl0 11y ago
  The people participating in the Google hashcode contest for any school do not have graduated from that school yet.
uniclaude 11y ago
That's good to know, and I welcome the data point, but I'm fairly doubtful of the relevance of this Google contest. Way too many factors enter in consideration (did the best programmers of x and y school enter? did they prepare the same way? did they take it seriously? ...). Does this provide real proof that the model on which 42 is based is wrong? Moreover, how well does a score in this programming contest correlates to real world performance? From experience, the strengths of school networks is a much stronger reason why employers are biased towards elite schools. Please note that I'm not saying elite schools aren't good (it's a pool I hired and will hire from), I'm just welcoming the initiative and wondering how it will pan out.