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Ask YC: Why the degree?

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Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#21

Post by aswanson »

matthewking wrote: post #15
elad wrote: post #11

Having interviewed quite a few people, I tend to think that there's a correlation between not just a degree, but also the quality of the school where it was attained, and the quality of the candidate - as measured by his/her professional knowledge and ability. That's not always true. In fact, of the two best coders I know, one didn't bother with a degree, and the other did it as an off hand, graduating after 8 years,…

If a position stated that a degree is a "nice to have, or advantage" I would certainly still send my CV and hope that it was glowing enough to counter my lack of degree, which I would hope it is through sheer commercial experience gained while everyone else was in education. But my gripe is that most employers don't even give us that chance. In a way, that has played its part in my working life that has sent me on a…

Smaller companies where productivity is measured more closely don't care that much. Big, dumb bureaucracies tend to hire based on buzzword counts on resumes and GPAs. You don't want to work at those places anyway.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#22

Post by matthewking »

mrtron wrote: post #19

"I know several people that have degree's in computer science, and none have any magical abilities that you only pickup at university." I think you are shortchanging the value of a formal education. You are forced to learn things you don't necessarily enjoy. For example, I was forced to take a few stats courses which I found extremely boring, but recently at work it was incredibly valuable. I know I thought I was a g…

I'm not meaning to take any value what so ever from a degree, and I believe that people that have them have accomplished something worthwhile.

What I am saying is that people shouldn't just dismiss people without a degree, because those of us who have a true interest in what we do, and learn, read books and experiment on our own - without being forced, or having a set syllabus to follow can become very talented developers.

If you've got to a very high level alone, I think that's a damn good accomplishment too, one that is at least comparable to a degree in itself.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#24

Post by LPTS »

mrtron wrote: post #19

"I know several people that have degree's in computer science, and none have any magical abilities that you only pickup at university." I think you are shortchanging the value of a formal education. You are forced to learn things you don't necessarily enjoy. For example, I was forced to take a few stats courses which I found extremely boring, but recently at work it was incredibly valuable. I know I thought I was a g…

I think you're shortchanging the value of being autodidactic.

The paper signifies an accomplishment that has nothing to do with actual ability. This obsession with degrees is a fetish.

Any decently self teaching person is going to wade through the boring stuff on their own anyway. That's a straw man.

In fact, you needing the pressures of deadlines and professors to get you to work, that's more indicative of you not being a great worker or being ambivalently committed to your work then anything about self teaching people. If you need to enter a codependant relationship with an institution that often calcifies mediocrity to get your work done or to wade through the boring stuff, that doesn't mean the self teaching dropout shares your problem or hasn't done the other work.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#25

Post by dmv »

matthewking wrote: post #14
nickb wrote: post #8

It all comes down to energy required to make a decision. Degree acts as a quick filter. For example, having a degree in CS does not mean that you are a good programmer but what I, as an employer, know about a person with a degree is that they possess a certain level of knowledge and they have also proven themselves and have shown that they can focus and accomplish something. If you think about it, those two things I…

Agreed, people with a degree have shown a commitment to a goal, and achieved it. That's definitely +1 to them, but as for the basic level of understanding, doesn't that become less effective as a gauge when candidates have 2-3 years of commercial experience?

You've mentioned "2-3 years of commercial experience", as if that indicated anything. What most of the interviewers are getting to is that, on paper, almost anyone looks good. Look at the discussions regarding 'The Dead Sea effect' (http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...).

To get your degree from a school indicates that you demonstrated some abilities in a selective and competitive environment. The quality of the school tends to imply the level of quality vetting -- to get into MIT is more competitve than ITT. The name on the commercial experience reflects a similar vetting process -- a development job at Apple is more difficult to obtain and maintain than one at a local utility company. Arguably, a job at a notable startup is probably another strong indicator (on the idea that a startup can't waste time on inferior talent); but I wouldn't consider job upgrades at an unknown startup to indicate much (ie, everyone here could be a CTO or lead developer for their own startup... does two years of being a lead developer for a team of one to three, selected by company seniority, tell you anything about technical leadership ability?).

It is all just borrowing collective intelligence -- using the wisdom of previous crowds to give off quality indicators.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#26

Post by LPTS »

pistoriusp wrote: post #12

I'm in the exact same boat, I don't have a degree - I must admit, I worked at a company that hired people with/ without degrees and the programmers that I could relate best with were the ones who had degrees. I've been thinking about getting a degree, but between working a full time job and doing a startup I just don't have the time, I have however bought myself two excellent books, which I'm hoping to fill the gaps…

"Web developers who don't have degrees aren't exposed to the fundamentals and fancy algorithms that are beaten in to you in CS courses."

That's not true. First of people without degrees can be dropouts, having learned it in school before dropping out. Second, people can self teach that stuff too.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#27

Post by maxklein »

pg wrote: post #23

Their goal is not to be perfect judges in individual cases. A crude first pass works fine for them as long as it leaves a lot of good people. http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html

Don't self link, that's called spamming.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#28

Post by kurtosis »

I used to do web-apps for a hosting company to earn money to help pay for school. (I think earning a degree was worth every cent BTW) None of the coders there had a degree and they were all very good at making everything work. This was a team of 2-3 people on a codebase of 50,000 lines of PHP / MySQL - The owners of the company also didn't have a degree and they seemed to prefer hiring people without one.

The other posters who have spoke of a degree as a filter which lowers the cost of interviewing are correct. I can think of two occasions over the 1.5 yrs that I worked there where they hired people who didn't have a clue what they were doing. This was obvious immediately and they had to be ruthless about firing them. I don't know if requiring a degree would have made this nastiness less likely, but these mistakes have a significant cost for both the employer and the employee.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#29

Post by maxklein »

I used to think that a computer science degree was not useful. However, can you answer the following questions:

1. How would you program a compiler for a new DSL? 2. What is stdcall? How does it relate to the stack? 3. How many registers does a 486 have? What is a register? 4. How does ethernet work? 5. What is the most efficient way to break a project down into tasks and milestones when dealing with a large team? 6. If you break a computer which you bought, but has not yet been delivered, who is liable? 7. How would you mathematically model a computer controlled temperature controller system?

I know the answers to those questions because I learnt them along the way as I got my degree. I have a wide spectrum of knowledge which is not directly useful to programming, but is useful to me as general knowledge.

When you learn by yourself, you tend to learn enough to do what you need to get done. In school you learn things that are not immediately obvious that you need them.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#30

Post by kashif »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #10

>For all the company knows, I (and countless others) could be the best developers they'd ever meet. And yet we're automatically excluded from even applying. The game is about probability, not possibility. The assumption is: P(qualified | degree) > P(qualified | no degree) That's probably reasonable, since schools do filter out at least some idiots. To find a candidate, one must interview roughly 1/P candidates. If in…

That assumption will only allow you to pick based on a relative standard not an absolute one. Also, a degree being an eligibility criteria makes no sense. If you want to hire well then you should be willing to meet any relevant candidate. So in effect, with a degree being a REQUIREMENT you are actually lowering the pool of people who will apply and hence reducing your probability not increasing it.
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