Oh well, the local community college classes were only like $15 per credit hour for high school seniors (paid by the high school), so I started college as a sophomore. Gotta take the good with the bad I guess.

One of the beautiful things about softwars tech is that it has offered people opportunities to self-teach and build a portfolio of their own credentials, by their own determination. This has given ordinary people the opportunity to build things that benefit others.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have privileged rich kids attending Harvard, many of whom go on to work in finance or consulting, and who knows what they produce that is useful in the world.

I would really love to see the idea that we need to open up on the limitations of world-class educations and credentials become part of the mainstream discussion.

There is almost no reason the first two years of, which are often filled with gen-ed requirements often taught in laughably huge lecture halls by uninterested staff, not be open to everyone in the world. We need a new model that promotes this--Harvard classes should be open to everyone and that includes the tests and credits as well.

And why not? The War on Poverty in America has spent trillions of dollars with little to nothing to show for it in terms of reducing poverty. Of all this money spent, one of the first things I would have done would have been to ensure everyone has the greatest opportunities available to them. There's no good reason to hold them hostage, unless you care about profit or prestige more than increasing opportunity and reducing inequality.

Urgh, this a hundred times over. I get a form e-mail every six months or so from a Google recruiter that says something along the lines of "sorry we missed each other! Find a slot in the attached Google Calendar for us to set up a call"

...no. That attitude straight off the bat makes me not want to go anywhere near the process of applying for a job at Google.

UMF has one of the best teaching programs in the country. They even have a CS path that is judged well.

Maybe recruiting at the small State universities is a potential edge?

You get great talent that big tech companies won’t interview!

No insult intended, I would rather they benefit and not you.

Nobody is making the big money that elite engineers make though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball

I don't know what the deal is with some recruiters--I mean, in general. I attended a recruiting event from the US gov near graduation, approached one booth and introduced myself. A friend came over and inquired about a job to which she said "oh, well that's for the creme de la creme" and turned away without asking him anything about himself!? I found that incredibly rude.

Geeze, I wish I had her psychic powers /s.

Personally I think it has to do with the problems of giving people power and authority over others...

(I guess there's always the wheelbarrow of money, but they don't really even do that anymore, at least here in Boston.)

I don’t know if I’ll ever try applying to Google again, especially after landing at one of their largest competitors & the company investing heavily in the area I am working in.

I would have thought that googles Hr would have a better proccess

1. They're only interested in new grads, so experienced people are treated funny; they're outliers.

2. They're only interested in top schools, which act as a pre-filter. Anyone interviewed is probably a good hire anyway, so it doesn't matter whether your process is goofy.

3. We are talking Google. Anyone under the age of 30 is slobbering all over themselves to work for them.

Keep this up for a few generations and their hiring process is permanently wacky.

Think of all the extra brainwashing needed.

It's way cheaper to start with a kernel than expand from there.

edit: to clarify what happens, every 6 months it's a new recruiter, and they always ping me multiple times until I respond and tell them what I've told all of them, and they usually (with 1 exception so far) keep pinging the same way.

The early part of the recruitment process is basically a process to get possibly qualified candidates to interview. What it's good for: if you ever want try interviewing at Google again, you can get an interview. I wouldn't expect anything more from it than that; it's pretty impersonal. :-)

Of course they shouldn't. (I know plenty of people at Google, I've gone through the process a few times, I have an idea.) But...that doesn't mean it doesn't happen and that it isn't cultural.