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Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

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Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#231

Post by taurath »

scarface_74 wrote: post #226
taurath wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just conjecture without evidence. You have a degree so you’ve never experienced being turned down for not having one.

It’s not “conjecture” that today’s job market is worse for CS grads than it has been at any time since I graduated and you need every competitive advantage you can get. Doors aren’t going to open for you because you got a degree from WGU, Devry or some no name state college.

I can't tell whether this is intentionally or unintentionally hilarious because you add an additional conjecture with no evidence immediately afterwards. My experience would lead me to think that any accredited degree vs no degree would be an advantage, but I don't present it as fact, as you just did.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#232

Post by riehwvfbk »

tptacek wrote: post #204
riehwvfbk wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that reason was legal precedent: it's illegal to administer an IQ test as a condition of employment. So they administer a disguised IQ test in the form of Leetcode questions instead.

No it isn't. Plenty of big companies administer IQ tests as a condition of employment.

I guess there are military aptitude tests. And I am curious about which big companies administer an undisguised IQ test to applicants.

It appears that an IQ test can be administered if it can be argued that a certain score is required to do the job, and the test is not simply a way to discriminate. It sounds like a court case waiting to happen though: how does one prove what score is required? Easier if your defense is "we never administered an IQ test, tour honor".

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#233

Post by riehwvfbk »

hayst4ck wrote: post #121
riehwvfbk wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that reason was legal precedent: it's illegal to administer an IQ test as a condition of employment. So they administer a disguised IQ test in the form of Leetcode questions instead.

Huh? They used to ask brain teaser like questions, not anything that I would consider to actually be an IQ test or really even all that close to one in a legal way.

That is exactly what I said.

The whole point is to have a test that is correlated with IQ, and does not look like an IQ test in a legal way.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#234

Post by tptacek »

riehwvfbk wrote: post #232
tptacek wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. Plenty of big companies administer IQ tests as a condition of employment.

I guess there are military aptitude tests. And I am curious about which big companies administer an undisguised IQ test to applicants. It appears that an IQ test can be administered if it can be argued that a certain score is required to do the job, and the test is not simply a way to discriminate. It sounds like a court case waiting to happen though: how does one prove what score is required? Easier if your defense…

For knowledge work jobs there's no defense required. Again: gigantic, risk-averse corporations, household names, do IQ tests (or equivalent tests) for some of their positions. The Wonderlic company exists specifically to market these tests for job search programs.

The reason everyone doesn't test IQ is that it's not very useful, not that it's legally risky.

People think it is because there's an subtext that everybody would hire straight off IQ scores if they could, which supports a (frankly gross) biological essentialist argument a lot of edgy nerds are fond of. But the whole argument is fractally mythological.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#235

Post by kasekopf99 »

As someone who has to make hiring decisions based on 100s of resumes, I look at degrees as allowing me to "fast forward" a step. If I'm looking for coding expertise, I can look for degrees where a university has effectively "checked the box" for me. It doesn't mean that someone without a degree is any less skilled. It just means that a third party is giving me more confidence in the skills I'm looking for.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#236

Post by fuzztester »

scarface_74 wrote: post #227
platevoltage wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear that. My 3 months with Akamai felt like the absolute best case scenario for big corporations. It was pretty good, but I am just not wired up for the corporate cringe that comes with any organization like this.

(yes I’m throwing up in my mouth while responding) From the thousand-foot view, I actually saw a dynamic environment where operating within a matrixed organization and aligning cross-functional stakeholders were essential levers for driving scalable outcomes. While enterprise-level ecosystems inevitably present change management challenges, I found that viewing the experience through a lens of strategic growth and op…

ha ha, nicely done.

that's MBAspeak for those who don't recognise it.

been more than once in such bigcos that used it, heard the talk, e.g."we gotta get our messaging right", "don't rock the boat", "our culture / mission / vision / values", brainwashing-type promotional videos created by the corporate communications department being played, while everyone nods and beams fixed plastic smiles, as though it's a national anthem being played.

so i can recognise it.

MBAspeak is a descendant of Newspeak.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#237

Post by fuzztester »

david_guda wrote: post #145
RamblingCTO wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%! I learned so much at a really high rate, I'll never ever have the time and focus to do that again, most probably. It felt really good to dig deep

That, and some subjects are really hard to learn at home/at job. Learning Linear algebra at home would be really hard, but learning some new programming language would work fine.

why is learning linear algebra at home hard?

no knowledge of this area, hence asking.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#240

Post by Spooky23 »

platevoltage wrote: post #219
taurath wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly it - I have been thrown out 3x with a referral because no degree. Almost all of these were Java shops doing absolutely fuck all in terms of innovation while having an engineering team of hundreds - it seems like the majority of coding roles are these design pattern and degree checkboxes with the slowest, most “enterprise” apps imaginable.

I have an unrelated question. I'm not a Java dev, so I don't really get this, but I keep hearing it. I've heard, and maybe this is an exaggeration, that "scrappy innovative startup types" avoid candidates with only long term Java experience, because that tends to show a dispassion for programming. Is there truth to that? Do Java devs learn Java in college, and just do Java from then on without expanding their knowled…

Lots of enterprise Java gigs are basically cobol 2.0. One client I had… the code was literally cobol that was translated to Java.

Very inflexible and formulaic coding that doesn’t tend to build up the person. If you stay a long time at a Java shop, make it clear you weren’t in that type of role.

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