The article made me think about my own recent process getting hired at a startup. We certainly have mostly degreed and credentialed employees but we have at least one senior member who dropped out of college to co-found the company. I think a mix of both types is the right approach. To quote FAKEGRIMLOCK: THIS LAW 9: FIRST BATMAN, THEN ROBIN.
Defaulting to hire on credentials will put you out of business
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Re: Defaulting to hire on credentials will put you out of business
#12Worked pretty well for Google, no?
While reading "In the Plex", one fact stood out: nearly all of their early hires were well-respected CS figures from 1st grade universities. Not only you had to be smart, but you had to have good grades from a good school to get hired by Google early. The only exception I could find was Salar Kamangar. At least that was my impression from reading the book.
Re: Defaulting to hire on credentials will put you out of business
#13Worked pretty well for Google, no? While reading "In the Plex", one fact stood out: nearly all of their early hires were well-respected CS figures from 1st grade universities. Not only you had to be smart, but you had to have good grades from a good school to get hired by Google early. The only exception I could find was Salar Kamangar. At least that was my impression from reading the book.
Isn't the early Google work a good definition of a Hard Problem, though?
[Startup X] does not need a CMU PhD to build the latest Node app. The domain is blocked at my office so I can't read the article, but I'd argue that spending the extra money on "10x" talent does nothing but shorten your runway.
Re: Defaulting to hire on credentials will put you out of business
#14Worked pretty well for Google, no? While reading "In the Plex", one fact stood out: nearly all of their early hires were well-respected CS figures from 1st grade universities. Not only you had to be smart, but you had to have good grades from a good school to get hired by Google early. The only exception I could find was Salar Kamangar. At least that was my impression from reading the book.
Not necessarily. While you seem to recount the history as I remember it, it has been said on here many times that Google did not maintain those policies. Perhaps they ultimately saw the same risks in continuing down that path?
Re: Defaulting to hire on credentials will put you out of business
#15Interesting stuff. Personally I'm from the camp of people who don't put a lot of stock in credentials. I wouldn't go so far as to say they carry no weight, but I certainly don't weight them particularly heavily, especially if I have anything else whatsoever to go on. And to the extent that I do care about, say, a college degree, I definitely am not of the mindset that "You have to have gone to an Ivy League school, o…
As for the Bay Area, I've consistently been impressed by Cal Poly SLO guys I've met.
Their education is so much more practical and real-world-ready than my Ivy League engineering education (which was largely theoretical in nature).
Re: Defaulting to hire on credentials will put you out of business
#16Worked pretty well for Google, no? While reading "In the Plex", one fact stood out: nearly all of their early hires were well-respected CS figures from 1st grade universities. Not only you had to be smart, but you had to have good grades from a good school to get hired by Google early. The only exception I could find was Salar Kamangar. At least that was my impression from reading the book.
Quora has done the same, yet their results speak for themselves.
(Brilliant people for sure, but that hasn't saved them from a suspect business model)
Re: Defaulting to hire on credentials will put you out of business
#17Here's the thing: for the typical job listing, there are dozens, or hundreds, of applicants. Maybe more.
You do not have the time to do a full-fledged investigation of every one of them, or bring them all in for a lengthy interview. You just don't. You need some filter to reduce the number to something more manageable, and degree/school is a straightforward way to do it.
Also recognize that 99% of jobs, even technical jobs, do not require (1) a one-in-a-million technical skill which is (2) easy to identify and measure.
Is filtering by degree flawed? Absolutely. But that's an academic argument. The question managers face is: what's a better way, subject to real limitations of time and resources?
Last but not least: in my experience, most jobs require navigating some amount of bureaucracy and difficult people. Someone completely unwilling or unable to make these "compromises" probably would be better working for himself, and not within an organization.
Re: Defaulting to hire on credentials will put you out of business
#18Interesting stuff. Personally I'm from the camp of people who don't put a lot of stock in credentials. I wouldn't go so far as to say they carry no weight, but I certainly don't weight them particularly heavily, especially if I have anything else whatsoever to go on. And to the extent that I do care about, say, a college degree, I definitely am not of the mindset that "You have to have gone to an Ivy League school, o…
Are you hiring? I'm in your neck of the woods, looking for new opportunities, and your problem space looks interesting.
Re: Defaulting to hire on credentials will put you out of business
#19I didn't go to college, though I grew up in a college town and eventually even worked for a while as the college's lead web developer. I've been developing software professionally for customers and clients since I was 14 (currently 25; so, for 11 years). Once, when I was applying for a job, I ran into someone with the same perspective as Bryan Caplan's from this article. I had made it through a few interviews and tes…
I received a similar lecture from a former employer, except it was by email, after I had handed in my resignation.
He wanted to make it quite known that I wasn't qualified to work in the industry (even though I worked for him in the industry just fine for several years and I was the one leaving the job on my own accord?) and that I wouldn't be able to find another job without a degree. Even though I deep down knew everything he was saying was not really based in any reality, the things he said were actually pretty hurtful at the time.
I had no trouble walking into another job that provided far more interesting work, and paid considerably more, for people who showed a much greater appreciation for us to be able to work together. I still don't know what the purpose of that email was. Sad to see me go, I guess?
Re: Defaulting to hire on credentials will put you out of business
#20HR departments are largely the problem. Even if you have a savvy, dynamic, progressive team in a large company - looking for coding/sales/marketing savants - HR will typically not even pass candidates resumes if they don't have a BA/BS etc.
I'm always amazed how much HR filters before it even gets to the relevant manager who actually needs the hire (and knows what he/she needs from them).