[hackerlight]

> In an ideal world, there would be plenty of time and resources to learn the personality and skills of each applicant, as an individual human being.

I question this. There is signalling value in a degree, but it's more about providing HR and the hiring manager with reputation cover in case the candidate is a failure. "They were from $SCHOOL, it couldn't have been predicted." Another part is signalling value not to your employer, but to the employer's clients. If you're in law or consulting, the value of an elite degree is more to show the client that your firm's high billing rates are justified. A third factor is that some firms are like clubs, where a de facto caste system exists and people from lesser schools are discriminated against. It's morally wrong, but it happens in many of the elite firms and startups.

It takes only a few seconds to legitimately scan through the non-college achievements in order to get a feel for a candidate's true potential. So it should not a real blocker to anyone who is serious about hiring the best people.

[p_j_w]

>I question this. There is signalling value in a degree, but it's more about providing HR and the hiring manager with reputation cover in case the candidate is a failure. "They were from $SCHOOL, it couldn't have been predicted."

I've been part of the hiring process at multiple companies over the course of a decade now, both at large companies and small ones, and not once has anything like this ever happened. A degree in the field has only ever been used as a filter at the start of the process, and in the small number of times there was a bad hire, no one ever used the candidates degree as an excuse because there was no need to: no one blamed anyone for the fact that a shitty employee was hired.