Viewing profile — rdr

agreed, university reputation matters a lot less nowadays than it did in the previous generation ... nowadays anyone with a good idea can start up a tech company and get rich. nobo…

ad hominem arguments detract from this discussion, i think :) plus, the blogger is still a student, so of course he's not going to have much in terms of real-world accomplishments.…

yep i agree. it's not like you just got the job cuz your father owned the company or something outright nepotistic

ah nice, yeah it seems like internships during college is a good first step since the barrier to entry is a bit lower ... from there you can start building your network

thanks for the quick reply! so how did you get your FIRST job then? it seems easier to bootstrap once you've made connections at your Nth job to go to the (N+1)th job, but how do y…

Hi, it seems like many hacker jobs are obtained via personal connections (either directly or indirectly), and that hit rates on applying online to job posts are pretty low (especia…

"note: most students at top phd programs didn't go to major name brand undergrad programs... they went to small (not well known) schools and accomplished meaningful research that w…

have you personally seen cases where you were discriminated against but an MIT grad was given preferential treatment? or is that just a general sentiment you're conveying?

that's probably the most healthy attitude ;) i suppose it's harder when you are around people from name-brand colleges, no? if nobody around you went to a name-brand college, then …

all of these name-brand colleges are private, so if the state has a role in all of this, it's quite indirect, right? of course the government has a role in accredidation, grants, l…

what do you mean by "thanks to state support"? please clarify, thanks.

I saw an interesting comment in the thread for the post for "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=645000) that prompted me to flip the bit …

really? isn't the startup community supposed to be more anti-establishment and not worry about paper credentials as much as, say, a large corporation or government organization?

thanks for the quick reply! i'm curious about your statement about "skill commensurate with the name brand of your degree" ... does that imply that certain people are held to a hig…

Hackers are some of the most meritocratic and egalitarian people I know, but sometimes I sense a sort of backlash against our peers who went to so-called 'name-brand' colleges by t…

could you please provide some examples of logical flaws or careless conclusions that the author has made in this particular story? i just read the article, but sorry i still don't …

completely agree, I don't see why this post is specific to R&D ... seems like it's a useful question to ask of any candidate who has to write code, but the essence of R&D seems to …

agreed, oftentimes hacking on a problem for a long time enables you to discover another more interesting (or practical) problem whose need wouldn't have arisen if you weren't worki…

cool, thanks for the quick reply. i was also gonna ask whether parts of your thesis were available online in the forms of research papers or PDF dissertation, but i guess i can rea…

I'm a big fan of your technical essays, so I recently became curious about what you did your Ph.D. on, but a quick Google search didn't turn up anything helpful. (sorry if this que…