Re:Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews
by joshvm on Wednesday December 28, 2016 @05:11PM
(#13274122)
I don't buy the high socioeconomic status bit. MOOCs are hugely popular in countries like India where education is extremely competitive. I help run an international science camp for late-teenage kids. More and more we're seeing applicants who list the MOOCs that they've taken, and most often they're not from 'developed' countries.
If anything the opposite is true. MOOCs have enabled vast swathes of economically challenged people to learn from high quality video material, whereas before they were limited to textbooks.
The key is that these kids are absolutely determined. And similarly if you really want that job at one of the Big Four, you might also consider soaking up as much prep material as you could.
Having done Udacity and also taking a couple CS classes at Cornell, this doesn't surprise me at all. People who take Udacity classes are doing so voluntarily on their own time, so they are going to generally be smarter and of higher socioeconomic status.
If you look at people who take CS classes over the summer at college when they don't have to be and when there are no student loans, you're going to get a similar population.