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Ask YC: Why the degree?

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Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#111

Post by attack »

diego wrote: post #45
kashif wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The most desirable companies get so many resumes that they need to filter out most of them. I used to work for a popular search engine before Google came into the picture. As an engineer I had to interview people every week. HR handed me lots of resumes from people with CS degrees from top universities for phone screening. They didn't bother with the rest unless someone was heavily recommended by a trusted source.

Do you think you were doing it the best way possible?

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#112

Post by xlnt »

xenoterracide wrote: post #110
xlnt wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The degree question is also silly, but has non-zero predictive capability. So do these. Certainly they rule out plenty of good programmers, but the issue is: do they leave plenty of good programmers, and a higher quality pool of remaining applicants? If good programmers read Rand or write blogs at a higher rate than bad programmers, then it works, even if it's frequently wrong about individual people.

Linus Torvalds - best programmer I've heard of doesn't write a blog. You still haven't told us who Ayn Rand is.

You haven't addressed the point and you can google her.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#113

Post by abstractbill »

gnaritas wrote: post #98
neilc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you said that "normal people" would read a book "long before" going to school, which I think is not true in many domains. My second point was not just that you can learn from your peers, but that there is a social environment at a school that is important, and not readily replicated in self-study. You don't learn much from your peers at a typical cooking class, but they still contribute to why many people choos…

The stats on college attendance would seem to be against you since about 70% of the population doesn't do it or doesn't finish a 4 year degree. Those are normal people. The 30% that do attend college and finish with at least a Bachelor's are the minority. Yes, school is a social environment for learning, that has value, but it's hardly the only way to obtain that. Outside of school, there are local clubs and hobbie g…

The stats on college attendance would seem to be against you since about 70% of the population doesn't do it...

In what country? Citation?

Here's some numbers from the UK: http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/faqs/showFaq.asp?l1=2&ID...

According to that, 43% of 17-30 year olds enter higher education in the UK.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#114

Post by xenoterracide »

xlnt wrote: post #112
xenoterracide wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus Torvalds - best programmer I've heard of doesn't write a blog. You still haven't told us who Ayn Rand is.

You haven't addressed the point and you can google her.

they are generic and poor filters. for example do you read person x. If person X isn't a household name (e.g. Bill Gates) Then it says nothing about them other than none ever introduced them to that person. I'm willing to bet there are a significant number of good C++ programmers that don't/can't care or know who Bjarne Stroustrup is. I had to look up the spelling of his name (although I don't consider myself a good c++ programmer).

The ability to write blogs is irrelevant here too as what we most likely care about is the ability to program. Hence, the programming test.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#115

Post by attack »

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

That's the supporting theory. The problem is that this eliminates both the majority of the unqualified applicants and a large number of the very top applicants. Suitable for a big company? Sure. For a startup or more ambitious company? Unlikely.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#116

Post by xenoterracide »

ideas101 wrote: post #5

the only degree that should matter is the quality of programming/coding a person can do - a degree certificate, which is basically a paper can not guarantee the quality of a hacker and his/her skills. The society has become way too demanding - also supply and demand is off-balance. situation in india is different than in north-america ... in USA/Canada i have seen that you can still survive without a degree but in in…

seems like every job (CS or Sys Admin) I see requires a Bachelors, here in the US which means that almost everyone else I'm competing with has one.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#117

Post by erdos2 »

gnaritas wrote: post #103
erdos2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing pretentious about 'autodidact' is the use of the word 'pretentious' to characterize a common vocabulary word.

It's not really that common, most people wouldn't know what it meant so it is a bit pretentious. Most people really would just say "self taught".

It's pretentious to say that it's pretentious; in fact, any use of the word pretentious is extremely pretentious, including this one. The use/mention distinction also breaks down for the word 'pretentious': it's not even possible to mention the word without being fatuously pretentious. This is especially true if the criterion for pretentiousness is whether "most people" would know what it is.

'Autodidact' is another matter.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#118

Post by gnaritas »

abstractbill wrote: post #113
gnaritas wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stats on college attendance would seem to be against you since about 70% of the population doesn't do it or doesn't finish a 4 year degree. Those are normal people. The 30% that do attend college and finish with at least a Bachelor's are the minority. Yes, school is a social environment for learning, that has value, but it's hardly the only way to obtain that. Outside of school, there are local clubs and hobbie g…

The stats on college attendance would seem to be against you since about 70% of the population doesn't do it... In what country? Citation? Here's some numbers from the UK: http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/faqs/showFaq.asp?l1=2&ID... According to that, 43% of 17-30 year olds enter higher education in the UK.

My apologies for the U.S. cultural assumption. See http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-550.pdf for what it's like here. I also presumed we're discussing those who finish college, not those who just enter it. What percentage actually finish college in the UK?

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#119

Post by xlnt »

xenoterracide wrote: post #114
xlnt wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't addressed the point and you can google her.

they are generic and poor filters. for example do you read person x. If person X isn't a household name (e.g. Bill Gates) Then it says nothing about them other than none ever introduced them to that person. I'm willing to bet there are a significant number of good C++ programmers that don't/can't care or know who Bjarne Stroustrup is. I had to look up the spelling of his name (although I don't consider myself a good…

Take the group of programmers who have written more than 30 blog posts about programming. X% of them are good hires, and 100-X% are bad hires.

Now take the group of programmers who have written less than 30 blog posts about programming. Y% of them are good hires, and 100-Y% are bad hires.

Is X > Y, or X == Y, or X That is the issue.

And that is the way degrees are used (when used rationally). The claim with degrees is that X is more than Y, not that most good programmers have degrees or anything else. That may be so. Then someone defended using degrees by saying there is a lack of alternative tests that are sufficiently cheap. That's not true. There are lots of cheap tests, and I have suggested 2 for which I believe X>Y is likely, and which, if studied, might turn out to have a higher X than the degree test.

Re: Ask YC: Why the degree?

#120

Post by jfornear »

xlnt wrote: post #81
yummyfajitas wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed completely. But how do you get more information cheaply? Remember, all you know is P(qualified| resume says autodidactic)= P(qualified | autodidactic) * P(autodidactic | resume says autodidactic) . The second term can easily kill you. Do you trust everything people put on their resume? On the other hand, P(degree | resume says degree) is probably close to 1, since a degree is so easy for an HR person to check.…

There are lots of other cheap filters that companies do not use. For example, "Have you read Ayn Rand?" This question may well have better predictive power than a degree. And it's not hard to verify if the person is lying about whether they've read some at all. Or, "how many blog posts do you have about programming?" Again this is easy to verify.

I actually have a friend who was asked if he has read Ayn Rand while interviewing with an insurance company.
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