| > Signaling doesn't buy you much. At least in engineering, because a technical interview will sort out whether or not you actually demonstrate basic programming skills very quick. Doesn't everyone complain about how technical interviews only measure how well the candidate is prepared for technical interviews? With that in mind, I'd argue that the willingness to prepare for a technical interview has become just another signal. Also you go against your argument just after: > My first company that hired me out of college got a much better deal waiting for me to complete my senior year. Yes, each year isn't worth the same. This makes sense. Senior year was my capstone -- building valuable communication skills in a team environment. Firms can not measure soft skills accurately, so this returns right back into the value of the college degree as a signal. You get points for attending a school which provided a teamwork-oriented final course. It's your final grade that matters, not what you learned in that course. You might have developed better skills than the rest of the cohort, but it's meaningless if you didn't get a better grade then them. Everyone would rightfully assume that the others have better developed skills than you, because that's what the current system is able to measure. One final unrelated point: > Would you pay 50% the price for a half-finished version of Microsoft Word? Probably not. It'd be far less useful of a piece of software. The utility of added features is diminishing. It'd be worth a lot more than half, or Microsoft would just keep on piling features and raise the price quadratically (or with some power above one). |
Many do. I used to believe that was because they had never sat on the other side of the table and seen how many people were just trying to bluff their way through without the ability to do anything.
Now, I am much more bitterly cynical.