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After Credentials

paulgraham.com

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Re: After Credentials

#81

Post by pg »

meredydd wrote: post #61
pg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit's a unique case because their initial user base (like News.YC's) consisted of other YC founders. And since they couldn't afford any form of promotion that cost money, news of the site spread mainly from those users.

I'm finding it difficult to square your assertion that Reddit is "unique" in this respect with the assertion that it's the web that's "making marketing and distribution free". The only way that web marketing is "free" is if product awareness spreads between customers, or is pushed through the founders' personal contacts. Wouldn't this imply that we could expect this phenomenon - the initial user base being in some wa…

I meant only that Reddit's connection to YC was unique.

Awareness of Reddit did spread between users.

Re: After Credentials

#82

Post by quantumhobbit »

mthg wrote: post #51
retyred wrote: post #16

sadly i think college credentials in the US have lost their luster because its always a let-down. without a doubt there is only one school that i have never met a single retard from: caltech. cmu is a close second. every other school has let me down by graduating some goof who i have interviewed or worked with. never again will i get uptight or impressed by stanford, mit or the ivies. my attitude is that i do not car…

I agree with this sentiment entirely. I went to a public magnet high school with SAT scores averaging around 1480 and at least half our graduating class every year ends up in an ivy / mit / stanford. I'd say more than half of those who made it to the top tier got in from legacy / extracurriculars / obsessive dedication to good grades and making teachers happy as opposed to genuine intelligence and love of learning. A…

"This is all strictly re: undergrads of course. I've never seen a single retard get admitted to a top-tier PhD program in science or engineering."

That's not the case as I've witnessed it. I won't directly name names, but I am thinking about a school that is ranked number 4 for graduate engineering on U.S. News.

Re: After Credentials

#83

Post by jpcx01 »

aaronsw wrote: post #38

The left likes credentials? The right doesn't like intergenerational transmission of income? These aren't any left or right I recognize. Who is PG thinking of?

I can give an immediate example. The left wholeheartedly supports Teacher Unions who are fundamentally opposed to merit pay, prefering seniority and tenure.

Re: After Credentials

#84

Post by netcan »

alexandros wrote: post #15

Paul seems to be hitting on the optimization by proxy issues seen in many areas, even in pagerank. Google looks not for quality of a page but for indicators of that quality, namely inbound links by quality websites. Similarly exams and credentials do the same. If you can write about these books, you know literature. If you got a degree there, you must be very capable. And in the first generation it works. However, as…

How would you run a cram school for YC?

Say you were given 19 yr olds at the end of Year 1 of Uni. You have 2-3 years part time. How would you get them in? Activities? Interview coaching? Resume building? Portfolio building? Specialised learning?

Re: After Credentials

#85

Post by helveticaman »

A question:

I'm in Stanford but I want to be in a start up when I'm done. Should I give up on good grades and a degree in favor of learning more (i.e. not let my schooling get in the way of my education)?

Re: After Credentials

#86

Post by jpcx01 »

CatDancer wrote: post #32

Aha, that explains why resumes are so useless: a resume is a listing of credentials.

I've transitioned my resume to be more of a portfolio list and abilities description with a 2 liner for school graduated.

Any company that respects a traditional resume is a company I don't want to work for.

Re: After Credentials

#87

Post by jpcx01 »

davidw wrote: post #6
edw519 wrote: post #5

One could easily amend this to include "After Perceptions". As a young geek, I was often passed over because I didn't look like I could do the job. It started with little league and continued on through high school and into the work place. I even quit one of my better jobs because a slicker looking but far less talented peer was promoted into what should have been my job. No more. As a mild mannered adult geek, I sti…

> until I open my mouth and show them On a complete tangent, this is one of the perks of living in a foreign country if you speak the language well - instant recognition that you have mastered their language, and that you must therefore not be a complete moron. The downside of this in Europe, for me, has been moving about 4 hours away (absolutely nothing in the US, in terms of distance) and completely losing this adv…

Seems like there are more efficient ways of proving your intelligence than moving to country with a language that you don't speak natively. But if you do it for other reasons, I guess its worth using to your advantage.

Re: After Credentials

#88

Post by pg »

aaronsw wrote: post #38

The left likes credentials? The right doesn't like intergenerational transmission of income? These aren't any left or right I recognize. Who is PG thinking of?

I didn't say either of these things.

I said that the left has to fall back on credentials (the wording of which implies they don't like them).

And while the right may not like estate taxes, I don't think anyone on the right (unless there are any ancien regime fans left) favors the use of that wealth to buy position. At most they'd probably concede the possibility is an unfortunate consequence of not taxing people twice.

Re: After Credentials

#89

Post by wheels »

gruseom wrote: post #12
davidw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> until I open my mouth and show them On a complete tangent, this is one of the perks of living in a foreign country if you speak the language well - instant recognition that you have mastered their language, and that you must therefore not be a complete moron. The downside of this in Europe, for me, has been moving about 4 hours away (absolutely nothing in the US, in terms of distance) and completely losing this adv…

You'll have to start over. That's not such a bad thing. So, Italian before, what now? It's good to still have a bit of an accent. I knew an American who had mastered Russian to the extent that he was indistinguishable from a native speaker. There were, however, glitches that would show up in his speech - an occasional wrong phrase or something. Because he spoke perfectly otherwise, Russians sometimes thought he was a…

Agree on the accent point. I knew a Dutch girl who'd lived in the US from the ages from 5 to 11, so she spoke English with an American accent ... but with the vocabulary of an 11-year-old. If she'd garbled the language just a wee bit she'd have been impressively good; as it was, she just sounded dumb.

But I'll agree with David that being an American that speaks the local language can be quite a novelty in Europe. I'm in the same boat. :-)

Re: After Credentials

#90

Post by mstoehr »

bayam wrote: post #66

Ask someone who works at Google if there was ever a time when in the company's history when a Stanford or Berkeley degree wasn't a major advantage in the hiring process. Even at a small startup, you're probably going to have more faith in an unknown from Stanford than an unknown from Western Kentucky U. Paul's essay is interesting, but I don't think any of recent academic / sociological studies would confirm his conc…

I've definitely seen evidence that the school one goes to correlates with success, but are you sure that the causality flows in the direction: academic credential --> success? It seems plausible at least that if the parent is wealthy, seeing to it that their kid is well-educated is a good way of signaling that their kid is decent material, it's a costly signal so only the wealthiest of parents will probably be able to afford it. And since the kids of wealthier parents tend to do better, the education signal, by some accident ends up being used a great deal to gauge future success.

I actually think that it used to just be a straightforward signal of wealth, but these days we don't want to admit that that's the case, we instead want to justify it as producing some useful economic product.

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