[FlyingSideKick]

My grandfather was CEO of an NYSE listed company and he preferred to hire people out of college whom had lower GPAs around 3.0 then perfect students because he thought these folks made for better team members and well rounded employees. Simply put he wanted to hire people who perused side passions and had a social life.

Personally after having been in entrepreneurial circles for years it seems the most financially successful people I know had mediocre college grades if they went at all. One friend who’s net worth is over $100m dropped out of high school to became a carpenter and is now a major real estate developer.Too many people spend way to much of thier youth focused on grades. What’s important is finding what you love, learning a bit and just doing enough to get your diploma. If you want to get a masters then focus on just getting in. It’s like passing the levels in a video game. No reading to get a perfect score if you don’t need to.

When you are 40 years old your college grades will likely have no bearing on your career prospects. Your social network will.

[wenc]

There's a significant tendency on HN to unduly discount good grades. I think this is a mistaken tendency due to univariate, linear thinking. Grades are not everything, but they are not nothing.

The fact is, determining a good hire requires multivariate, nonlinear thinking.

Good grades can be a proxy for metaskills like discipline, cognitive ability, etc. They don't always measure these things perfectly, but the correlation is not negligible.

Doesn't mean say, a 2.5 GPA isn't a good hire -- but in multivariate thinking, there has be other factors that compensate for the low GPA. Otherwise you'd be hiring a 2.5 GPA who is truly mediocre, and my experience is that the majority of 2.5 GPAs are that. Not everyone with a low GPA is pursuing other interests or passions. Also, doesn't mean that everyone with a high GPA isn't (at competitive schools, the best students tend to be active in many extra curricular activities unrelated to their majors)

In the engineering/academic world, grades do matter and are highly predictive of ability. People with poorer grades often struggle a lot, and the amount of time spent on remedial training may not always pay off. We have this ideal of a genius hacker who blew off school but is a 10x coder in real life... but in reality those people are comparatively rare.

[drawnwren]

Yes. To go along with this, the other misstep I see frequently is the inability to differentiate between statistical distributions and the individual. Your friend dropped out of college to become a carpenter and is now worth $100m? That's incredible. I'd take fairly bad odds that the P(Salary>$!00k|Dropped out of college to become a carpenter) is lower than P(Salary>$100k|Graduated with 4.0 gpa). It would be harder to statistically analyze, but I'd take even worse odds that the fellow who dropped out of college would not be too much worse off if he had stayed and graduated with a 4.0. IMO, the cost of a high gpa is fairly low.

[sago]

The GP explicitly reverses the conditional probability

> the most financially successful people I know had mediocre college grades

is saying something about p(mediocre grades|successful) i.e. among the people I know who are successful, a surprising number had bad grades.

where the interesting question, given the chronology of the two events is, as you point out, p(successful|mediocre grades)

[jhanschoo]

Yeah, both the distribution of highly successful people and people with high academic performance are heavily skewed and the slightest decorrelation should result in the phenomenon of heuristically seeming independent.

In an ideally meritocratic world, we should see fewer Harvard grads and magnis cum laudibus occupying the top of the industries.

[WalterBright]

> the cost of a high gpa is fairly low

That's right. I started out nearly flunking out in college, and eventually graduated with honors. The difference was not busting my ass studying, but more effective time management. I had as much free time as before.

[bernardino]

I learned that being able to sit down on your desk and focus on a topic or problem set and learn through trial and error with no distractions for hours is what will determine if you get good grades or not, and it's becoming extremely hard to do so. Most of my friends resort to drugs to focus but for me, that does not prefer drugs because it makes me feel artificial, it's been tough - it's like strengthening muscles in your brain in order to focus for long periods of time and those muscles for me are weak.

[ShabbosGoy]

> Most of my friends resort to drugs to focus but for me, that does not prefer drugs because it makes me feel artificial, it's been tough - it's like strengthening muscles in your brain in order to focus for long periods of time and those muscles for me are weak.

This is desirable. People who use psychostimulants to focus are using it as a crutch.

You can train your mind to focus, it just requires a larger time investment than popping a stim.

[bernardino]

Definitely! I should have started earlier in regard to training my mind to focus. Being in college, it seems I don't have the upper hand because so. It's all good though - I sort of argue that taking psycho-stimulants means you are entangled in that toxic cultural thinking of always going and being in the noise. I suppose then there's something sweet about failing a course without using psycho-stimulants.

[tikhonj]

> In the engineering/academic world, grades do matter and are highly predictive of ability. People with poorer grades often struggle a lot.

This is a purely empirical question to which you seem to have simply assumed an answer. While there are difficulties to studying this question empirically there have been solid studies to this effect.

I've seen a few solid survey papers on personnel selection methods; a solid example is Schmidt and Hunter (1998). Schmidt and a couple of others published an updated version of the survey as a working paper in 2016[1], which has a clear section on GPA:

> The validity value for grade point average (GPA) in Table 1 is for college and graduate level grade point averages. No estimates are available for high school grade point average, which may have validity higher than the .34 in Table 1. Apparently most of the validity of GPA is captured by GMA, because the incremental validity of GPA is negligible (less than .01). GPA has not been studied in relation to training performance, where its validity might be expected to be higher than the .34 for job performance, because of the strong resemblance between training programs and classroom demands.

(GMA in this context is a "general mental ability test"—basically an IQ test.)

This observation does not lend much credence to the idea that grades are "highly predictive of ability" or that people with low grades "often struggle a lot".

[1]: https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/articles/2016-100%20Yrs%20...

[sannee]

> This observation does not lend much credence to the idea that grades are "highly predictive of ability" or that people with low grades "often struggle a lot".

The paper does not seem to control for differences between colleges. It's unsurprising that the predictive value of, say, 3.8 GPA would massively differ between individual schools.

[xyzzyz]

Apparently most of the validity of GPA is captured by GMA, because the incremental validity of GPA is negligible (less than .01).

Just because GPA is basically a worse IQ test doesn’t mean that it’s useless. In fact, if you assume that IQ tests are useful in hiring, this actually makes GPA more useful, since US employers can freely use GPA in hiring, while use of IQ is significantly more complicated.

[dragonwriter]

> In fact, if you assume that IQ tests are useful in hiring, this actually makes GPA more useful, since US employers can freely use GPA in hiring, while use of IQ is significantly more complicated.

Except that's not at all true of the underlying legal standard, and if GPA is essentially an IQ test, it is illegal in the exact same conditions as IQ tests, and any temporary advantage attend from the fact that plaintiff's lawyers haven't yet recognized that GPA is factually nearly identical to an IQ test, and some employer is going to get a big surprise when they first do realize that.

[ChrisLomont]

>it is illegal in the exact same conditions as IQ tests

And IQ tests are legal to give during hiring, in just about any form, if that result correlates to useful for that job. Since we're talking about jobs where IQ/GPA may well correlate to candidate quality for that position, this is not an issue.

You have to first show there is no correlation between GPA or IQ and job performance to claim it's not legal.

[dragonwriter]

> And IQ tests are legal to give during hiring, in just about any form, if that result correlates to useful for that job

No, “correlates to useful” is not the standard; there also needs to not be a less discriminatory alternative available.

> You have to first show there is no correlation between GPA or IQ and job performance to claim it's not legal.

No, you don't: business necessity is an affirmative defense to disparate impact discrimination claims; once the unequal impact is proven, the challenged employer is required to prove the link to job performance. If they succeed, the challenging party has the burden of showing the existence of a less discriminatory alternative.

[xyzzyz]

That’s the theory; in practice hardly anyone does IQ tests, while employers asking for GPA is an extremely common occurrence. What matters for them is not what is legal, but how likely something is going to cause you legal problems.

[joeax]

I was once asked to take an IQ test for a software developer job. I believe it was more of a formality, and they wouldn't tell us our score. I'm not sure it was legal or not, and I was glad to do it.

That being said, in my 20-year career I've never been asked for my GPA. Not once.

[joeax]

> In the engineering/academic world, grades do matter and are highly predictive of ability.

Can you cite some research studies that conclusively show this to be the case?

I'd like to counter by saying that companies like Google have largely ignored GPA as a measure of aptitude. From the article (link below):

"Google doesn't even ask for GPA or test scores from candidates anymore, unless someone's a year or two out of school, because they don't correlate at all with success at the company. Even for new grads, the correlation is slight, the company has found."

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-google-hires-people-2013-...

[Para2016]

You want him to cite a trial or study and you have a business insider article to counter him..?

[sheepmullet]

> I'd like to counter by saying that companies like Google have largely ignored GPA as a measure of aptitude.

I think you have misinterpreted the situation.

What it's actually showing is once you have restricted the pool of applicants to the top 10% of the field GPA does not matter within the restricted subset.

I can't think of anyone I know that could do well in the Google interview process but could not get good grades.

[lsc]

>I can't think of anyone I know that could do well in the Google interview process but could not get good grades.

To get good grades, you must be able to do rote work on time. I did really poorly in high school, because if you don't do one thing, and you do brilliantly on the next thing? That averages to a failure. Doesn't matter how brilliant that next thing was. For me? This means I barely cleared 2.0 in high school, and didn't seriously pursue college. But in industry, I seem to do pretty okay. My experience is that if I finish between 2/3 and 3/4 of what I start? I get a positive performance review and a raise. They even talk about it; like "if you are accomplishing all of your goals, you probably aren't being ambitious enough when setting those goals."

(I mean, I've been in industry since 1997, and my impression is that breaking in was a lot easier then than it is now... and it did take me a long time to work up to the point where I could get a job at a top-tier tech company, and even now, I'm a SysAdmin and not a SWE, (I have worked SWE type jobs at less prestigious companies... but here? I'm a SysAdmin.) I would be a better employee, with better job prospects if I had the personality and follow through to get a degree, no question.)

My experience with those interviews (at least for a more senior position) is that they test knowledge of whatever specialty you are dealing with and to a lesser extent, intelligence and problem solving ability. The former, of course, can (and should be) studied for; the latter, less so.

I'm sure intelligence and problem solving ability also help (and to some extent, are required) in academia, but if you aren't the sort of person who does 'good enough' work every time on time, you aren't going to get good grades, as far as I can tell, even if you are brilliant. That sort of plodding follow-through is not tested at all in interviews, and while it's a positive attribute to have as an employee, from experience, it won't kill your career if you are lacking it.

[joeax]

The article states that they don't even ask at all, so you cannot assume that the "restricted subset" has all high GPA candidates. Within that subset could be high school dropouts who are math and/or CS geniuses, for all we know.

> I can't think of anyone I know that could do well in the Google interview process but could not get good grades.

There's a lot of reasons people don't get good grades that has little correlation to their ability. People get bogged down by life, develop entrepreneurial interests outside of school, or have little interest in academics. I've met people who are brilliant software engineers and couldn't or wouldn't complete a semester of school.

[electricslpnsld]

> I can't think of anyone I know that could do well in the Google interview process but could not get good grades.

In most of the Google offices the percentage of employees with PhDs is hirer than the percentage of employees with a bachelor's alone (Seattle and NYC look like the only office where BS holders are the majority). While Google might not be explicitly selecting for GPA alone, academic achievement seems correlated with employment at Google.

[1] https://hackerlife.co/company/google/san-francisco-bay-area-...

[aswanson]

Sample bias.

[eganist]

> We have this ideal of a genius hacker who blew off school but is a 10x coder in real life... but in reality those people are comparatively rare.

I had exactly one of these guys. The reason I hired him was because he demonstrated mid-flight during a code review interview an immense capability to apply newly learned knowledge. I gave him a few (code) classes despite his background up until that point being nothing more than infrastructure-scripting, let him know he could ask absolutely any questions he wished, and would be scored on findings after he confirms he's completed the review.

Killed it. He was a bit rough around the edges in terms of social skills but I'd hire him again given the opportunity and given what he'd produced for me. He got picked up by a rather large firm in the Austin area whose name fits the pattern "A _ _ _ e"

Other hires aside from him were of the good-grades, great-work variety, but he was the exception who produced great work without that background.

[ThrustVectoring]

Yeah, compensating factors are a must. If you have a screening function that correlates with both ability to do the job and GPA independently, though, then conditional on passing the screen, the better candidates have a lower GPA. You've essentially got a noisy test for the sum of ability + GPA, so if the sum is high and they have a low GPA, the source of passing the combined test has to come from higher ability.

This process comes up in other similar contexts. SAT scores are not generally correlated between Math and Verbal, but if you screen based off "incoming Freshman to a particular college", an inverse correlation comes up. This is because admittance is based off the sum of the scores - too high and they go to a better college, too low and they get rejected.

[thaumasiotes]

> SAT scores are not generally correlated between Math and Verbal, but if you screen based off "incoming Freshman to a particular college", an inverse correlation comes up. This is because admittance is based off the sum of the scores

Your second point is correct, but your background is wrong; SAT math and verbal scores in the general population are strongly positively correlated, not uncorrelated.

[ThrustVectoring]

Right, lots of tests end up correlated with the general intelligence factor.

[drb91]

But a low gpa isn’t inherently meaningful at all. What do you mean “make up for” a low gpa when you shouldn’t be hiring around gpa in the first place? Like it’s not some debt to be paid; it just means they attended class sometime in the past. Just discount it entirely. What’s the worst that could happen?

[wenc]

This is why I mentioned nonlinear thinking.

If you imagine a multivariate nonlinear function (I don't believe there exists a definitive function, this is just a framework to help us reason more rigorously) representing the performance of a hire, there will be ranges where the function is insensitive to the x (e.g. say GPAs between 1.0-2.0). If you discount x entirely, you're throwing out the baby with the bath water because the signal might be meaningful in other ranges.

[drb91]

So what would you call the meaning of the low GPA? It is clearly meaningful to you. How would you describe the candidates you’re rejecting with this heuristic? It could mean anything from “i can’t read” to “i dropped out to form a business”.

I don’t see any value for the gpa beyond preparing students for performance reviews and identifying whether or not they give a shit about the material. And why would they? High Schools teach few real life skills and a lot of bad habits. Even in college, you’ll learn more (in some cases) by skipping class and building things.

Without context, gpa is not a meaningful metric

[mcny]

This is basically what a strategic advisor (sic) for ETS told me was the official position of the corporation.

He said ETS does not recommend that schools and employers use test scores as a (edit: SOLE) way to decide whether or not to admit/hire someone. What I heard was ETS is aware that schools and employers do this and wants to cover its behind.

[fucking_tragedy]

> What’s the worst that could happen?

Having to confront the cognitive dissonance that their youth was spent chasing numbers that have little to no bearing on their present or future.

[optimuspaul]

I have never asked or cared what grades anyone ever got. I don't think that there is any correlation between grades and real world performance. I am in the software engineering space though and I think that there is a lot of room for creativity. Having rigor in academic engineering isn't always useful and I've found actually prevents you from getting things to the good enough stage.

I totally agree that "determining a good hire requires multivariate". Maybe grades are a proxy for other meta skills, but I think evaluating those skills directly are a better indicator.

[tomc1985]

Other, more traditional careers place a bigger emphasis on grades as a matter of course. I don't think one just reduce it down to number of variables held in one's head whilst contemplating. All a high GPA should tell you is that the person successfully input things that the academic system accepted as an 'A', or whatever the score might be.

Good grades can be proxy for all those things you describe, and they can also be proxy for corner-cutting, systems-gaming, cheating, laziness, and other chicanery. I graduated sub-3.0 and, at least in my suburban, not-top-tier city environment, I seem to run circles around most of the technology-practicing clowns 'round here -- and it seems their muggle-ness transcends particular bands of GPA scores.

An "A" tells me you're either a cheater, a systems-gamer, or a schmuck.

[SamReidHughes]

Or you can just easily get an A, because you enjoy doing a few fun programming assignments and learn the things taught in class.

[hahnpv]

As an aerospace engineer, grades matter for your first job, maybe, then no one cares. After that, they are looking at your professional success/experience. Personal experience, having graduated with a ~ 2.5 GPA myself. Employers #2, 3 and 4 haven't asked about educational experience beyond formality, and are more interested in post-education body of work.

[bmarkovic]

> In the engineering/academic world, grades do matter and are highly predictive of ability.

Or rather, they would matter if:

- Various different schools used the same standard for grading so that grades could be even compared across candidates

- There were companies that actually care about GPA when hiring, I've never encountered one

[vonseel]

> in multivariate thinking, there has be other factors that compensate for the low GPA.

And the fact that it’s hard for a company to determine what those factors are is a problem in itself. Was the student immature at time of college (partied too much, disinterested in academics/chosen subjects are two problems that come to mind)? Did he work a full/part-time job while taking classes? Did he have a child? Did she care for someone else’s child or a younger sibling? Catch my drift?

Overall, I agree with most of what you are saying, but I also agree with the previous post. You seem eloquent and well-spoken, in fact it’s a bit off-putting.

> The fact is, determining a good hire requires multivariate, nonlinear thinking.

I understand your argument, but this colorful language only weakens your argument, unless you’re writing a paper for class. In conversation, you’d be better off rephrasing in a less formal manner.

[ataturk]

I worked my way through college and still got a 3.75 in a double major of Math and CS. My girlfriend at the time got a 4.0 at her college but had a full tuition scholarship and did it by dropping any hard math course that wasn't absolutely required. We both later got PhDs in our respective fields. I used to help her with her homework a lot.

Who was more well-rounded? I challenged myself with some of the courses I took and was overloaded some of the time due to work obligations, etc. I got a "C" in one math class in my final semester. Grades tell a tiny fraction of a story about discipline and self-sacrifice.

[wenc]

Again, multivariate thinking is important. GPA alone doesn't predict everything, but it is one predictor in a complicated function and it may have varying sensitivities in different ranges as well as have interacting terms with other variables.

One needs to factor in all the other predictors, as you alluded to in your story.

[mrkstu]

The question is how do you reliably gather a rich dataset that encompasses those variables. It is an un-solved problem vs shortcuts like GPA and prestige of their attended institutions.

[fullshark]

Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, and definitely not everyone can be a successful one. Real estate is also a whole other ball game, and you are projecting from a group that has survivorship bias.

If you want to be highly compensated labor, the best grades at the best schools are the best entry point into the social network + early career opportunities to lead to long run success.

[athenot]

A strong predictor for success I've noticed in others (and in myself) is: give a shit.

I.e. deeply care about what you are working on. Some individuals care so much about the field they are in that they disregard the proxy metrics that judge their level (grades, awards, titles...). For some, the strong academic path happens to perfectly match up to their pursuit of passion. Others see the academic part as a hindrance to their passion and end up equally successful.

On the flip side, following some proxy metric in order to achieve passionate success doesn't work. You can't aquire passion with good grades† and dropping out of education because that's the cool thing to do ALSO doesn't buy one passionate success.

Yes this reeks of survival bias, but every single successful person I know is really passionate about the field they are in. They are always thirsty to learn more and go deeper.

†: as with everything, there are exceptions: individuals who are highly motivated by peer recognition. Everyone is different and we can't generalize too broadly.

[chrisseaton]

> he preferred to hire people out of college whom had lower GPAs around 3.0 then perfect students because he thought these folks made for better team members and well rounded employees. Simply put he wanted to hire people who perused side passions and had a social life.

But these things are not exclusive - you can't look at someone's impressive academic achievements and assume they don't have a social life or hobbies.

[lisper]

> What’s important is finding what you love

Actually, if financial success is your quality metric, then what matters is the ability to work with other people. In particular, the ability to motivate other people to work with and for you is probably the single most important skill a person can acquire (if the goal is to make money). Of course, academia not only fails to cultivate this skill, it actively tries to squash it. Convincing someone else to do your work for you is considered "cheating". In the real world, it's called "delegating."

[majos]

I suspect that lower GPA students have higher variance but lower expectation outcomes than higher GPA students. Higher GPA students, at least when the coursework is serious, tend to be at least one of extremely bright and extremely conscientious (I would guess most are a little of the former and more of the latter).

The conscientious and prudent possibly have less tolerance for or interest in risk, so they're less likely to hit a home run, but their floor is pretty high.

At a more general level, I'm not fond of the common idea that people who are proficient in area x are probably deficient in area y (where area y is usually implied to be more important). It often seems to me like a face-saving technique for aficionados of area y.

[ggg9990]

The majority of great employees don't have 4.0 GPAs, but the majority of 2.5 GPA graduates don't make great employees.

[traviswingo]

I think your grandfather was a wise man. I have frequently noticed the best employees I’ve hired are not the top students. They’re self starters, independent, and “street smart.” I actually never ask about education, simply because true intelligence doesn’t come from a classroom.

The valedictorian will frequently bother me for the next task or to sign off on something, the 3.0 gpa figures it out on her own. Obviously this isn’t always the case, but it’s what I’ve observed in my mere 28 years on this earth, and happens to match my beliefs.

[lev99]

I think 2.9-3.3 is the ideal range. I pass on anything less than a 2.5 or more than a 3.7 unless there is something else in their resume that makes up for it.

GPA signals a lot about a candidate.

If they graduate with a low GPA it means they are okay staying with a path of life they are not succeeding in. I'd prefer if they dropped out and did something nonacademic, because that signals they noticed something wasn't for them and searched for a better fit.

If they graduate with a very high GPA it signals they are a perfectionist, that they do well in highly structured settings, that they are obsessive about stats, and that they highly value authority.

A 3.0 with a good attitude and success in life outside of academia signals that they can identify important metrics of success and complete them, but are not obsessive about them. It signals that they do not take authority too seriously (parents are often the largest motivators for people with very high gpas). The goal is to determine how the 2.9-3.3 spent their extra time not chasing stats, and if those experiences will bring anything to the team. I look for things like internships, team sports, volunteer work, part time work, clubs, and awards.

[enraged_camel]

We hired someone like this, thinking their “street smarts” would give them an edge and make them a good employee.

What happened instead is that they struggled with discipline. They were late to client meetings, they missed important deadlines (rest of us had to pick up the slack), you name it. They were indeed street smart and stood out in terms of creativity, but their lack of what is typically called “work ethics” (which no doubt contributed to their average GPA) prevented them from meeting their obligations.

So yeah, GPA isn’t everything but it can be a really good signal for qualities necessary to succeed in professional work.

[dempseye]

Sounds like this person was wrong for that role and would have done well in a position where they had more latitude to play to their strengths. Horses for courses.

[alexbeloi]

The valedictorian is an 'executor', and likely very good at that crushing tasks to get the job done. The self-starter is creative and malleable and likely very good at complex problems with lots of unknowns.

Those people aren't interchangeable and it's preferable to have both to run smoothly. It sounds like you're speaking from a position of upper management, where you don't have the time to be managing an executor type person and you'd prefer more independent people directly under you.

[praneshp]

As a former low GPA student, I thank you.

> I have frequently noticed the best employees I’ve hired are not the top students > I actually never ask about education

How do you know they are not the top students? Just from chatting over lunch, etc?

[anoncoward111]

If this is really the case, which I suspect it is, then university is a gigantic waste of time, and hiring practices are more like reading tea leaves rather than an "employee SLA".

that 30k i spent really wasnt worth it!!

[pkaye]

Would you prefer a self starter with a 4.0 GPA or a 2.0 GPA?

[ScottBurson]

The self starter with a 4.0 GPA is a highly paid lawyer, or something, and is not in your applicant pool.

[pkaye]

In that case what makes you think any self starter will be in your applicant pool?

[SimbaOnSteroids]

I've gotta learn how large software projects come together somewhere.

[andrewmcwatters]

You're getting downvoted, but this is reality and it's a poor reflection on HN to see your comment shunned.

[ArtWomb]

Even Fortune 500 companies with major R&D budgets will tell you point blank they would rather a handful of decent engineers from Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, etc. Than the top student from MIT or Harvard.

They are simply easier to manage in day to day operations. And perhaps more adept at handling the stress of juggling a dozen plus projects simultaneously.

The corollary is that for real innovation. Your probability of a breakthrough increases by having a few geniuses at the chalkboard. But most companies aren't seeking Manhattan Project or Xerox PARC levels of radical technological advancement.

[duxup]

The getting good grades system is very much a structured system as far as education goes. That's not necessarily wrong, but when you get out of school some folks when they get outside that system seem to struggle with knowing what to do. That's not to say they fail, but sometimes seem a bit off, waiting for the associated praise and looking for a similar system to fit into. Folks who weren't invested in such a system and maybe were more comfortable with the more nebulous world of life sometimes adapt a bit quicker.

One company I worked for loved to bring in recent MBA grads. These kids had little work experience (IMO MBAs should not be given without something like 10 years actual work experience) outside their internships or whatever. They showed up and loved to try to introduce rigid systems for success, random rules, and / or just had no initiative outside being told what exactly to do and what would get them a good "grade" (some seemed uncomfortable with anything but academic like measurements).

Granted some did just fine but it was very much the old FedEx commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gh9k9qzddA

Give me some people who have had to make some decisions, fail and start over please.

[godelmachine]

>> When you are 40 years old your college grades will likely have no bearing on your career prospects. Your social network will.

True that.

[jvanderbot]

My advisor said if you were getting a 4.0, you were wasting your valuable research and development time on homework. Nobody cares much about GPA, when you could have built something amazing instead.

Of course, GPA didn't improve his tenure chance as much as our R&D so, take that into consideration.

[yelloweyes]

>Nobody cares much about GPA, when you could have built something amazing instead.

That seems to imply you were 100% guaranteed to build something amazing just by not doing homework, which we all know is far from the truth.

[tmpz22]

The most solid career path I'm familiar with is to go straight from college into a software development role at a FAANG company, then mostly coast, optionally diverge to some other highly payed role else ware, and eventually come back to the FAANG company at a higher pay grade. You'll be able to live a lavish lifestyle, be a millionaire by 30, and really not have to work that hard.

To get this job you really have to have good grades. Why? Google etc. will ask for your transcripts coming out of college - anything short of a full degree and a 3.0 will likely disqualify you.

[vostok]

That's true in the average case, but it's not true in the literal sense. I know people who did not graduate college and whose first jobs were at Facebook/Google.

If you're talking about the average case then you might as well say 3.5 GPA rather than 3.0 GPA. I don't have access to any of the data so this is just speculation.

[wepple]

My dad was an accountant and eventually ended up having hiring responsibilities. Same deal: if you bought on someone who spent 3 years at university getting an A+ on everything, they probably didn’t spend a ton of time out meeting people and exploring the world, and thus typically less good in front of clients. Obviously lol everything, there will always be exceptions.

[bitwize]

No.

When in HS and college you have only one primary focus in life and that is to get good grades. Good grades show the world that you know how to study, how to work well with others, and how to put off the pleasures of today and work toward future goals. They may matter less when you're 40, but when you're 22 they count for everything and determine the opportunities tou have from the outset. And the experience you got knuckling down hard in school translates into valuable work skills right out of the starting gate.

[chiefalchemist]

Grades are not ambition. They are not chutzpah.

When I was an employer what I looked for was the willingness and capacity to learn. Someone who is (book) smart isn't as important as someone who can think, see patterns, be willing to offer ideas, etc.

Sadly, many of the things that are of value aren't even mentioned in school, let alone taught. As a result I'm troubled by all the talk about free / cheaper higher edu for all. That's not the answer. It might just create more (expectation) troubles than it solves.

[throwawayqdhd]

I don't think grades are important at all. But the effort and discipline that leads to good grades, especially if they're in a setting that requires self-motivation (such as college - you have mom and dad breathing down your neck in school).

[jschwartzi]

I didn't have mom or dad breathing down my neck in school. In fact, my dad was basically absent for my last three years while the only thing my mom cared about was how soon I would be finished so that she could stop paying. By the end of it I was working two jobs with an 18-21 credit hour course load.

I wouldn't assume anything about anyone's source of motivation in college, at all.