[peterkshultz]

The students you really want working for you are those who went through the rigor of a theoretical CS curriculum while also indulging a more practical skill set. Such a skill set can be honed at hackathons, for example.

It mustn't be forgotten that a theoretical curriculum teaches discipline to learn just about anything--if you can learn complexity theory and algorithmic proofs, chances are you can learn to create a CRUD API.