[StCroix]

From the article:

Unlike Mark Zuckerberg, the man responsible for acquiring the popular photo sharing app for $1 billion, Systrom received no formal engineering training.

From Systrom's bio on Instagram:

Kevin graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering—he got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google—the first of which was working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products...

Gotta love the spin.

[shalmanese]

I believe he was working as a Product Marketing Manager on Gmail and Google Reader, not an engineer.

[robk]

He was definitely a PMM. Started as an Associate PMM.

[capdiz]

Spin aside. His story would be really inspiring for folks i have met who think that for one to learn how to program, they need to go to Uni and apply for a cs degree which is bullshit.

[pagekalisedown]

The problem is that a lot of HR departments won't consider people without degrees. A Stanford degree opens a lot of doors.

This is one of the reasons I have a lot of hope in online education. When it becomes mainstream, HR departments won't be able to ignore it.

[mikecane]

>>>The problem is that a lot of HR departments won't consider people without degrees.

Aren't people who are motivated to teach themselves coding the very kind of people who would want to avoid dealing with Suit HR departments? Wouldn't they be more interested in working at a smaller firm, especially a startup, if they had to work for someone else at all?

[dpritchett]

Sure, but the fewer alternatives you have available to you the less control you have over your market rate. Ideally you'd like to be eminently qualified and command a bigco salary at a strong small firm.

[StCroix]

It is bullshit, I'm currently learning to program by following the excellent CS106A paper at Stanford, free on iTunesU. In the current online climate you can learn to code without trying to figure out how to pay a massive student loan back when you're done.

What bugged me about the spin was the comment about Systrom receiving no formal training, unlike Zuck. Zuck built Facebook with next none of the "formal training" he was supposedly getting during his short stint at Harvard. Systrom actually graduated and then went on to be exposed to some pretty big name companies in the tech world.

Good on him though, and yes, inspiring stuff.

[mikecane]

I'm curious about this. Can you basically get a Stanford education via iTunes now? And how would you convince people that you actually had one? [typo edit]