[w1ntermute]

This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State - your expectations of your employees have to be so much lower.

The key is not to focus on the schools (rather than to focus extra on state schools). Instead, develop methods for identifying talent based on its own merits, regardless of where it is or what university it went to.

[jerf]

"there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent."

I find myself wondering at your definition of "2nd tier school". If you mean community colleges or something, I'd understand. But there's plenty of "tier 1 schools" for learning computer science outside of the "same five schools" in question.

I don't see a list of the five schools in question from a quick skim, but is the University of Michigan "second tier"? University of Waterloo? Any of dozens or possibly hundreds of Division I schools with high quality programs?

Let's be honest... running a fairly good undergraduate computer science program is not rocket science. It's not that hard. For all the sound and fury of the industry, it has visibly not shifted all that much in curriculum in the 20 years since I took it. I know, I look over the intern's shoulders sometimes when they do homework here and I could almost hand them my own homework solutions from 1998 as a cheat sheet. [1]

The very elitism the article is deploring is on full display when people seem to assume it's these top five schools, then a country full of drooling morons. That is not in fact how it works. It's not even close to how it works. It is offensively wrong.

[1]: This is mostly a good thing, not a complaint. The curriculum should be stable. Bits of it need to be updated here and there, but the whole is solid. AI really needs an update, though; it was long in the tooth when I took it in 1999 or so and it hasn't gotten much better at the local schools. The whole "search the solution space" is certainly a bare minimum to understand the field but almost everything has gone in a very different direction since then.

[kafkaesq]

I find myself wondering at your definition of "2nd tier school".

Any school lower on the perceived status hierarchy than the school they went to, most likely.

[eradicatethots]

All this talk of tiered schools is gross

[kafkaesq]

Yup. And yet, it's the very lifeblood of social and economic interactions, for a great many people in the U.S.

[thaumasiotes]

> or all the sound and fury of the industry, it has visibly not shifted all that much in curriculum in the 20 years since I took it. I know, I look over the intern's shoulders sometimes when they do homework here and I could almost hand them my own homework solutions from 1998 as a cheat sheet.

> The very elitism the article is deploring is on full display when people seem to assume it's these top five schools, then a country full of drooling morons. That is not in fact how it works.

The fact that assignments are similar isn't evidence that "it's these top five schools, then a country full of drooling morons" is inaccurate. Perhaps the assignments are easy, and nobody cares about the quality of the program so much as the quality of the students.

[jerf]

"Perhaps the assignments are easy, and nobody cares about the quality of the program so much as the quality of the students."

That sounds like a rationalization to justify arrogance rather than a claim you have any sort of evidence for. I'd say I've got abundant evidence to the contrary.

The Silicon Valley arrogance sure is on full display today. In another thread on the homepage we have people expressing shock and surprise that yes, there are in fact ways to put a roof over your head in Topeka for $100K.

This may sound weird to you, but I don't live in Silicon Valley because I don't want to. I didn't go to one of the elite colleges (which I most likely could have qualified for) because I didn't want to. My house is bigger, my yard is bigger, my commute is better, I like the people better, my student loans were paid off years ago and I have a realistic prospect of owning my house before I'm 40 without having had to go to Money Mustache levels of frugality, and in some ways it's easier to hire here than in the Valley. I know, I've been to the Valley many times.

But I suppose the net effect of the number of people currently getting out of SV is evaporative cooling, so SV will be left with an ever-increasing portion of the population who Truly Believe that just outside of the comforting mountains is a horde of barbarians with sloped foreheads who can't quite seem to figure out this "fire" thing. For your own sake and sanity, you might want to escape that massive filter bubble and have a look around at your options, which you may discover are nowhere near as monolithic as you think. It's always good to have an escape route, as evidenced by the many people availing themselves of it.

[eradicatethots]

Pretty awful perspective.

[kafkaesq]

The problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent.

So your implication is that the ratio of "competent" : "completely incompetent" for students coming from these schools is roughly... 2:100?

I know you can't possibly mean that. But your language clearly implies that ratio. The only question is why you're making such a bizarre implication.

I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State

Was the original article suggesting that your company hire "primarily" from Podunk State? Or simply that you probably don't want to hire near-exclusively from the Top 5?

The key is not to focus on the schools (rather than to focus extra on state schools. Instead, develop methods for identifying talent based on its own merits, regardless of where it is or what university it went to.

Which is exactly what the original article was advocating - a "completely blind, skills-first approach". In particular, it was definitely not arguing that one should "focus extra" on state schools.

[throwawayjava]

> So your implication is that the ratio of "competent" : "completely incompetent" for students coming from these schools is roughly... 2:100?

the parent can be correct with a ratio closer to 1:10 or 1:20, assuming the top schools churn out many more students than 2nd/3rd tier schools. Which is certainly the case depending on how to define 2nd/3rd tier.

For ex parent's observation is probably spot on if you're comparing MIT/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley to an arbitrarily chosen regional state campus. But is more absurd if you're comparing those places to Michigan/Wisconsin/North Carolina/Washington/...

> Which is exactly what the original article was advocating

To be clear, the original article is a long-form advertisement for a product. What the article is advocating is giving interviewing.io money :)

[kafkaesq]

For ex parent's observation is probably spot on if you're comparing MIT/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley to an arbitrarily chosen regional state campus.

I'll readily concur that students from top-tier schools are on average better than students from Podunk schools.

But (based on a wide sampling of data points) I don't see anything like a 1:100 ratio of "better", by any metric.

[throwawayjava]

> But I don't see anything like a 1:100 ratio of "better", by any metric... So again, while it's not like school "tier" doesn't matter - this 1:100 ratio is just silly.

I think you misunderstood my point. Parent's observation may be accurate because of a combination of quality disparity and disparities in raw numbers.

The elite CS programs are relatively large compared to many Podunk States. So it's not just that there's a modest 1:10 or 1:20 or 1:5 or whatever quality ratio, but also that Podunk State graduates 20 or 30 students a year while the elite schools are churning out hundreds. So there's a 1:10 quality ratio but still a 1:100 yield ratio. Or whatever.

Again, inaccurate for the large state flagships, but very believable for the regional comprehensives.

(This isn't idle speculation. My observation is that larger schools tend to get more attention from recruiters, even setting aside quality, and I think this numbers game has something to do with it.)

[kafkaesq]

Or whatever.

Exactly - it's the "whatever" part I'm having trouble working with.

I'm seeing the basic point about population samples you're making. But even so, both logically and numbers-wise, the original commenter's argument was just extremely handwavy. Which is, how to put this nicely... strange, coming from someone dissing an entire class of people (Podunk U graduates) as not just lacking rigor... but 99% likely to be, in their words, "completely incompetent".

[leeny]

That's why we're really proud of what we do at interviewing.io. All students have to go through a series of practice interviews, so by the time they talk to companies, we know they're great, and so far, most of the students we've presented have gotten offers, independently of their backgrounds.

With our model, we free up companies from having to worry about exactly what you described because we incur the vetting.

[kamaal]

>>All students have to go through a series of practice interviews

Interviewing is supposed to be hiring people who work everyday, to do everyday jobs.

If people have to practice to clear your interviews. You are either hiring the wrong people, or people who want to get in to only game the interview. In both the instances you are hiring the wrong people.

Put in other words if even ordinary perfectly qualified candidates have to practice to clear a company's interview. The company is likely asking wrong questions.

[jasode]

> With our model, we free up companies from having to worry about exactly what you described because we incur the vetting.

I looked at your webpage & FAQ for employers. (https://interviewing.io/employers)

Can you say how much your service costs?

[leeny]

Shoot me an email. [e-mail]

This is our first season doing university stuff, so pricing is flexible.

[rhizome]

Do I understand correctly that on the candidate side the person can go through a sequence of interviews without the possibility of actually meeting a hiring company? Also that you only work with students?

[jmcgough]

The people using Interviewing.io are typically using it as a means of practicing interviews in a low-pressure setting. Their goal isn't to get offers from companies, but if it leads to that, I'm sure they don't mind.

Also, they don't just work with students. I've used them, and I've worked professionally for several years.

[leeny]

We have 2 pools: a practice pool and then a pool where you get guaranteed interviews with employers. If you do well in practice, you can book real interviews with any number of top companies who've come to trust in the quality of our users.

This goes for both senior engineers, and more recently, students.

[deskamess]

Do you have stats on how many of your customers are in their 30's and 40's? I would think that demographic would find practicing very useful since they have been out of touch with algorithms for a while.

[leeny]

Median interviewing.io user currently has 6 years of experience (we don't ask people their ages).

[stale2002]

Interviewing.io is mostly for interview practice. You pair with other people on the platform and interview each other.

Of course, all "practice" interview companies make their money by referring their top users to companies and getting the referral fee.

[fleitz]

As one of those kids to never went to school, I'm going to agree with you. Most people can't program, however, better schools are only slightly better in outputting people who can.

I find fizzbuzz and other coding challenges much more effective in hiring.

It's hard to do but showing actual code from your codebase with an actual real bug is a much better indicator of whether someone will be successful than anything else.

[PeterisP]

Although educating people can be done in any decent school (or no school at all) better schools do a better job of filtering people, i.e. the key tasks of ensuring that (a) that the less capable people don't get a degree from you, either because they're pushed to drop out or you filter them out during the application process, and (b) that the top cohort of capable people actually apply to your school (in many schools, their degree is an uncertain but strong indicator that you weren't good enough to get into a better school).

[tdb7893]

I've worked with great engineers and most of them have degrees from state schools. I've found the biggest difference between the large tech companies and other places from having talked to people is that the big places have a lot more money to blow on stuff.

[chk_ur_autism]

I'm not sure I understand your argument here. If we cut through the clutter, you're essentially advocating that you hire people on an individual basis and shouldn't weight at all what school they come from. No?

[Avshalom]

No, they are advocating hiring from the big 5 and then saying that it's just a coincidence that all the employees they've hired on 'on [their] own merit' are from there.

[unethical_ban]

FYI OP posted alongside you in their own words. What I got from it is "No shit Harvard is better than UPhoenix South Campus" but if we came up with a good way to measure skills and learning capacity independent of rote programming quizzes/etc., hiring from a lower tier school would be less risky.

I know someone who dropped out and is now making plenty of money at a software development gig. I also know CS grads who can't think about anything outside their little realm to save their lives. Point is: some schools legit don't filter well for learning capacity.

[wolco]

Harvard is no MIT. One generally goes to harvard because they are rich vs smart. You may be surprised by the quality of UPhoenix grads. One has to be motivated to be a UPhoenix grad while other things are more important at Harvard.

[matthewrobertso]

Where does GP advocate for this? As I read it, he is saying that there are some potential bad hires from lower tier schools that should be avoided. I don't think this involves 5 schools or GP's hiring history.

[Avshalom]

They said that there 100 bad hires for every good hire while by omission claiming that every Stanford hire is a good hire... But also that you should definitely be hiring talent 'on it's own merit'.

I feel pretty comfortable with my interpretation.

[wlesieutre]

The argument is that if you're hiring a student from Stanford you can assume some baseline level of competence (only approximately true, I'd bet). If you're hiring from elsewhere, maybe you have to interview 10 people to find someone with similar knowledge/skill/misc. It's a bigger time investment in the hiring search, and gauging technical skill in a job interview is still an unsolved problem.

If you find an efficient + effective way to compare all the applicants, that would make it easier to put everyone on the same footing regardless of school. But that's hard to do and it's easy to be risk averse and just hire the Harvard grad.

A Harvard grad presumably costs you more, but they keep doing it that way because 1) it's simple, and 2) if you try to hire more broadly but misjudge and make a bad hire, that's potentially much more expensive.

[notyourday]

You are building a CRUD application. You need him or her being +7 on 0 to +100 scale. You are saying that you only start at those who are +70.

[sidlls]

Forget CRUD applications. Most of the work at most companies, including the usual Big Ones, simply isn't that complicated for anyone with just about any technical degree. On your scale most of it, almost all of it, tops out at like 50-60.

These companies set the bar at 70+ for a number of reasons. Their own egos ("I only work with 'the best' so therefore I'm also 'the best' and don't want to water that down"), status signalling for the companies, to keep bright young talent from starting a competitor, etc.

[maxsilver]

Good luck convincing Google (or Netflix / Amazon / Microsoft / any other major company) that anything they do is 'just a CRUD application'. Even when it's true, they'll never admit it.

[brlewis]

All computation can be described as CRUD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine#Informal_descri...

[SomeStupidPoint]

It's pretty easy to make a bag of garbage; it's non-trivial to make 100M bags of garbage.

Even if they're making CRUD apps, making tons of high-availability CRUD apps that work against dozens of services your team doesn't own that can serve huge fractions of the globe requires non-trivial coordination and skill. (Not that all those companies do is CRUD apps, but even if.)

I'm not sure it's as jard as those companies make it out to be -- but it's not "just CRUD apps", it's the logistics of CRUD apps spanning the globe.

Source: work at one of those companies.

[beamatronic]

It's CRUD but at web scale!

[wlesieutre]

Are CRUD projects really the most guilty of only hiring from "elite" schools?

Sure, there are software jobs where you're setting up wordpress blogs, but there are plenty that require you to think about algorithms and how your database actually works in order to do them well.

[wolco]

It is the same groupthink as no one ever got fired for buying IBM.

[w1ntermute]

Yes, this is exactly what I meant.

[eradicatethots]

Your name.. pretty messed up.