[Wilya]

There is no talent shortage. There is a shortage of Berkeley/Stanford/MIT grads.

Just look at the difference between grads of those school, who basically get money thrown at them, and the rest of graduates, who have a hard time finding a job at all.

[jiggy2011]

I noticed this too, whenever I read anything about American Universities (I'm in the UK) for CS it always seems to be one of those 3 especially when it's related to startups.

Is it the case that a CS degree is somehow considered second rate if it is not from one of these universities? Is it a prestige thing or do all the other universities suck for CS?

Obviously we have similar in the UK to an extent with Oxford/Cambridge etc but CS degrees from most universities are well enough respected.

I've done some of the online classes from these 3 universities as well as watched youtube videos from some lectures. For the most part they don't strike me as being especially more difficult than what I did for my CS undergrad (in most cases the difficulty level seems about the same).

[fghh45sdfhr3]

There is no talent shortage. There is a shortage of Berkeley/Stanford/MIT grads.

Funny.

The part of me that flatters myself tends to think of geeks as more logical and individualistic. And less likely to follow a clique. And less likely to be biased in such silly ways like preferring someone just because they came from your university.

But reality keeps reminding me that nope, intellectuals can be just as stupidly cliquey and biased as anyone.

[vonmoltke]

I know someone who just graduated cum laude with a BS from UIUC who is having trouble.

[jmj42]

...and UIUC has one of the top CS programs in the country (on many lists it's the #1 CS program at a public university). Around here (I live near uiuc) Bill Gates is famous for declaring that MS hires more UIUC grads than any other single University in the world.

Honestly, the idea that someone can make it through the CS program at UIUC, and end up shunned because he/she didn't graduate form MIT, is a perfect example of what's wrong with hiring practices these days.