Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful?

Re:Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful? by mfukar on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @06:40AM (#1534817)

First off, I don't think the lack of a degree brands at all someone as dense or slow. Also, depending on the degree and school it's received from, the holder's persistence and/or determination can be generally deduced.

However, I would not choose to hire someone who didn't have a clue about the general area the job offer was on, regardless of what the job specifically required. I would rather try and judge her suitability from a personal interview, instead of a few lines on her resume. For technical tasks, you don't have to be a CS grad to solve them. For research and development, I'd value a formal background on CS more.

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Re:Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful? by corin_ on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @09:36AM (#1535122)

I certainly didn't mean to imply that people without a degree are dense or slow, some of the brightest people I know never got a degree.

My point was more than the percentage of people with degrees who might be considered "dense and slow" is going to be significantly lower than of people without education, and I would imagine the difference is further highlighted when the degree is from a university like Oxford.

I'd never suggest that person A who went to Oxford is smarter than person B who went to a less-popular university, or none at all, without knowing more about both people, I just think as an overall it works out that way (you don't have to get a degree to be clever, you do have to be [reasonably] clever to get a degree)

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