Oh man. I thought I was the only one, my first interaction with the interviewer was him bemoaning the fact that my degree was not from an IVY league university, right to my face.

I had the most humiliating experience of my life interviewing with AirBnb couple of years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5300104

It is interesting to see SV firms starting to act like old money finance companies back east...

Did you ever get your money back?

Yes I did eventually get all the money reimbursed. They told me it was some sort of a glitch in the receipts system :\.

I been there, getting rejected for what amounts to a CRUD job because I didn't have the right pedigree. Shake it off and move on.

From what I can tell from comment history, the GP is quite young and still in school.

While I learned a long time ago that a degree (and even a master's degree, can't speak to fresh PhDs as I've not had the opportunity to work with any) from a prestigious university is not worth the paper it's printed on as far as judging someone's ability to actually ship good code, it seems that lots of SV firms hiring people right out of college think it is.

It's foolish on the part of said firms, but the answer is to take a job at a company that's not a "unicorn" and build up experience (and proof of experience, e.g. shipped products) such that one's "pedigree" is fucking irrelevant.

Honestly, if the job was just a CRUD job, and you're fresh out of college, you don't fucking want it. You need to get out of your comfort zone if you want good experience.

I've been out of college for over 10 years and I wanted the job because it was full stack at a profitable company who treated their employees well.

Unfortunately my cs degree was from a state school and I've only worked enterprisey jobs with the current misfortune of an architect title. I still have other paths to financial success like consulting or management (hell no).

Bummer. I did not actually finish my degree and as a result ended up working at a shitty, tiny company that paid at the start < 1/4 of what recent CS grads are getting these days (I was just happy to get a job that involved programming at the time).

Fortunately the problem that the company was trying to solve was actually a bit technically challenging (though quite boring from a user facing perspective) and I was able to jump to a better startup and then a better one because I had good experience.

I've only had three jobs since college, but the ability to bring value on the very first day in all three jobs has given me a great deal of credibility, even without a CS degree, and now I'm making quite a bit more than a recent CS grad, though it took me a while to get there (I'm in my early thirties).

Titles don't matter. Make one up that suits the job you're applying for.

This guy got a job at AirBnB coming out of App Academy: http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-ii...

250k for what amounts to basically a CRUD website.

How true is this?

Happened to me too. I thought it might have been an exception or some sort of a fuck up. They called me all the way to SFO to tell me that my degree is not from elite schools so I can go home. No not in some sort of an indirect way, like right to my face. The interviewer asked me where I went to school, made a face told me 'oh not from a top university?' .