[igodard]

Our industry is a surprisingly small pond, at the top anyway. No one would invest in the Mill based on my formal bio "College dropout; never took a CS course in his life" :-)

Instead they invest based on our technology, most of which (and eventually all) we make publicly available. You may not be able to judge it, but any potential partner has people who can. One of the things that encouraged us in our long road is that the more senior and more skilled the reviewer, the more they loved the Mill. Quotes like "This thing is the screwiest thing I've ever seen, but it would work - and I could build it".

[WhitneyLand]

I don't think many people care about a degree. It's just weird that you ask interested people to join you but seem reluctant to give details on your bio. A lot of people factor it in when deciding on joining or dealing with a startup.

[igodard]

Judge us on the tech, not on me. To be honest, if you cannot already understand what we have put out to the public well enough to know that you want to work on it, then you are probably still too junior to be really useful as we are now. We can't afford the cost of ramping people up if they are not already there.

As we grow there will be more place for beginners, but not yet. Mind, that's beginners as in concept understanding, not beginners as in age or degrees. I'm a dropout, and this year we added an intern in Tunisia who's still finishing his exams. We let people self-select, we don't try to persuade them. And we don't pay them, so only the convinced join.

In a way, at the top of engineering things work much more like they do in the arts: you are judged by your portfolio, not by your background or education.

[pc2g4d]

"Judge us on the tech, not on me." Hans Reiser and ReiserFS taught everyone that the person's bio _does_ matter for the project.

[codezero]

I don't think anything in his bio or not in his bio conveyed that he would murder his wife and go to prison for life thus abandoning the project.