[cle]

> When I'm hiring, I see a lot of MIT/Stanford/Ivy on resumes, but I also pay as much attention to resumes from people who went to other schools, or who took some other path through their circumstances.

I agree wholeheartedly. As another datapoint, over the years I've worked with many people from "top" schools like MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Ivies, etc. Generally they have not been strong engineers. I don't really have a good understanding of why, but it's just something I've noticed.

The folks who've struggled through non-traditional routes have been stronger engineers. They may not be as strong on the theory side, but they have some intangible "street smarts" or something that makes them overall more effective. Some combination of focus, grit, scrappiness, etc.

There have been some engineers who are from top schools who do have those traits but IME they aren't as common.

[anonymouskimmer]

> I don't really have a good understanding of why, but it's just something I've noticed.

Have they ever worked at the bottom? Working at the bottom of your discipline ensures you learn basics in a non-theoretical manner.

I was once interviewed by someone who asked me a question about restriction enzyme digestion. He didn't like my answer so rephrased whatever the question was along the lines of "what's the unit defition of a restriction enzyme?". Which I answered along the lines of "One unit is the amount of enzyme that digests the substrate DNA in one hour. But you always use more enzyme.". The unit definition is theoretically true, but it's irrelevant for most bench work. You (almost) always use more enzyme because: 1) your DNA is usually not the test substrate DNA, 2) the enzyme is not fresh at the supplier where it was tested (enzymes degrade in functionality over time, even when stored properly), 3) due to stochastic effects or other mechanisms (such as denaturing) some minimal amount of DNA may remain undigested, and an extended digest or digest with additional enzyme can help maximize digestion, and 4) enzyme is cheap compared to your salary and having to redo things. I unfortunately didn't get the job. Maybe I would have if I had said the unquoted part (but still probably not, he was just one interviewer out of many).

[brazzy]

> The folks who've struggled through non-traditional routes have been stronger engineers.

My guess is because those are the people who really had the persistence and ambition to overcome obstacles and adversity.

Those who didn't have that on a "non-traditional rout" would have been much more likely to drop out, whereas someone going to a top school is more likely to have family expectations as their prime driver, which doesn't translate as well to workplace performance.

[aaabre2476]

When you've got a prestigious school on your resume you don't need to worry as much about improving your skills to get hired. They don't have to put in as much effort to be marketable to employers, so they don't in some cases.

Anecdotally, my interview/application rate went from something like 5% to more like 25% when I finished my B.S. I previously only had a C.S. associates degree and a year or so of credit at university in an unrelated program from just after high school. By the time I enrolled in the B.S. program I had ~3 years of industry experience and a promotion on my belt. None of that (including my contributions to major open source projects, and other code samples that to this day I still think are high quality) made as big of a difference for hiring managers as the scrap of paper from a university. I didn't learn a damn thing and had to pay ~$20,000 for the privilege, lost out on time with my young son, etc. It's worth it for the security of knowing you will always be able to find a job on short notice, but it's also massively frustrating. I wish there was a B.S. equivalency exam of some kind that was taken seriously.

Anyways, here are some of the advantages I see in hiring community college grads instead of or in addition to bootcamp grads, the other major way companies hire non-traditionally:

1. The students did have to put in at least a solid ~2 ish years and had to work on the fundamentals. A big one here is being able to step through code mentally, which is something we often forget has to be learned.

2. They are much more likely to actually like programming, given that they stuck with it for 2 years. I worry the shorter bootcamps sometimes aren't able to weed out highly intelligent people that nevertheless are going to end up hating the job, and that they are focused too much on front end web development that is flashier than a lot of the work many companies need done. So sometimes the candidate from a bootcamp may just like front end but hate more general programming.

3. You can't just copy code into a GitHub profile and have bootcamp instructors hold your hand through everything. If somebody with just an associates shows you code that isn't obviously some kind of brain teaser from a course exercise, you can bet they wrote it themselves without a lot of handholding. The code may suck compared to what you get from bootcamp grads, but it is significantly more representative of what the candidate will actually produce on the job.

4. I don't just hire web developers. There is no bootcamp I am aware of that teaches C programming or that goes through computer architecture and basic operating system stuff. All of that is covered by the local community colleges in their associates degree programs.