So many correlation and causation errors all over the place.
Maybe so, but please don't post shallow dismissals to HN. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Does it matter where you go to college?
61–67 of 67 posts
Re: Does it matter where you go to college?
#62>In other words, if Mike and Drew have the same SAT scores and apply to the same colleges, but Mike gets into Harvard and Drew doesn’t, they can still expect to earn the same income throughout their careers.
I've read that SATs are heavily g-loaded.
In such a case, your success being correlated with the SAT is obvious, as IQ being positively correlated with income is well-accepted in psychometrics.
So yes, you can be successful without going to a good school, but mostly because you're relatively intelligent.
Re: Does it matter where you go to college?
#63My anectodal experience tells me no. I went to a CUNY (NYC system college) school with a 99% acceptance rate and sub 20% graduation rate. It was more important that I lived in New York than that I went to this specific school. I was able to find internships which got me into the industry, network with folks from different industries, and generally have a lot of opportunities available to me. Also, I graduated in 4 ye…
Second this. My experience as well and I think it is a common route, just not the one you hear about much.
Re: Does it matter where you go to college?
#64It matters especially if you're not from the US. You could've gone to the best university in your country, but if it's not a top institution in the US or a handful of others (ETH and a few more in top positions according to Qs Rankings) I feel like most big names in tech won't even look at your resume. Anedoctal example, but I graduated with a decent mark from the top CS department in my country (106/110) as an UG, I…
You could have a Github portfolio that has one or two personal projects that demonstrates a proficiency in the language/framework needed at the company you're applying? I've interviewed plenty of people in SF - candidates from top tier universities like MIT. And have passed on them. They simply lacked a proficiency in doing the basics (Rails in this case). There's so many opportunity to be had by just showing very sp…
You don't hire top grads from MIT to do grunt programming work sorry.
Re: Does it matter where you go to college?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't speak for the "big names" but as someone who has done tech hiring for multiple SMBs, having a website that shows off your abilities absolutely makes a difference. I don't care if you hand coded the website or it's a bunch of articles on Medium. Showing that you know what you're talking about and can explain it well in English (or the company's language of choice), puts you at the top of my list of people I wa…
Thanks for your input, I definitely want to set it up asap so that I can start blogging about stuff I'm interested in or ramblings I want to go on about after tackling some of the bigger assignments.
As a follow up to this I wanted to give some additional thoughts on how to make your site more valuable for getting hired as a software dev at the kind of SMBs that I've worked for.
1) Keep your personal items separate from your technical. If I'm looking to hire you to do something technical I really don't care about your kids t-ball game, the latest recipe you made, or pretty much anything that doesn't have to do with technology. Non-software related tech is fine as long as it's not most of the content. 2) There needs to be more than just code in your software related posts. If the post is 90% code I have no way to know if you actually know what it does or if you wrote it. 3) Provide links to working demos of the concepts if possible. Public repos with instructions for setting up and running it are almost as good. 4) Please no videocasts. Text is so much easier to consume and scan through. I'm not going to watch a bunch of 30min videos of you explaining a concept. I will read an in-depth article from beginning to end. 5) If you have side projects you work on in your spare time, please make it a prominent part of your site. Even more than in-depth articles, this is what shows me you can build working software which is the single most important thing I care about when hiring to fill software positions.
Just a few items that might help you out depending on what sort of company you're looking to land a job with.
Re: Does it matter where you go to college?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could have a Github portfolio that has one or two personal projects that demonstrates a proficiency in the language/framework needed at the company you're applying? I've interviewed plenty of people in SF - candidates from top tier universities like MIT. And have passed on them. They simply lacked a proficiency in doing the basics (Rails in this case). There's so many opportunity to be had by just showing very sp…
You don't hire top grads from MIT to do grunt programming work sorry.
Then they shouldn't apply for "grunt programming" positions.
Re: Does it matter where you go to college?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
But is your experience typical or exceptional?
It's atypical but I think it provides a completely different model about how to think about college. A lot of parents are stressing out about how to pay for college and for good reason, but I think you can derive 80% of the value of going to college for 20% of the cost. For one: I don't think most families can pay the extra fees associated w/ going to an out of state school. Second: most states have at least one soli…
How do you get the right internship experience if the right companies don't recruit from your school?