Never once in an interview have I been asked about my education. One nice thing about software development positions is the interview process tends to be merit based.

I have mostly interviewed with small/medium businesses in Toronto, but have also done early stage interviews with Google where it was also not brought up. I declined further interviews with Google because I didn't want to move, so maybe it would have been an issue later on.

- Don't include education - I'm asked about it. Every. Single. Time.

- Include the years I attended college - Asked why I didn't finish. Every. Single. Time.

- Include college in a misleading way - I did a summer extension program for 2 years while in high school at a similar college. I list both colleges, my start year, my end year, and what my degree track was. I do not claim that I have a degree, but nearly everyone assumes I do. I'm almost never asked about it.

Any time I am asked about it I'm honest to the degree they need ("I had to take a break from school due to family issues", which is true: my family had an issue with the number of "F"s I was getting).

I've actually had managers who found out after being hired who told me "if I had known that, I wouldn't have hired you"

Ultimately I think there are a lot of industries that a degree requirement is a good thing (I really want my doctor to actually have an MD), a lot of industries where certification is sufficient (I don't particularly think an LMFT needs to have a full degree), but the vast majority of industries shouldn't require it, and filtering for that is a cop-out.

I've been at Google for a number of years. Whether I had a degree was brought up during the recruiter conversations; nobody cared.

Why only Doctors? Because human lives are involved? I assume by the same logic, Civil Engineers also need to have a degree (they build bridges and other life critical infrastructure)

There may be thousands of software products that are also life critical. Not just the obvious ones like some medical hardware control program/firmware, Air traffic control programs, Flight onboard software Self-driving car auto-pilot software etc. So I assume those would require a qualified software engineer with a degree.

But there may even be others that may not be so obvious immediately.

I have a degree and not been on the other side (not having a degree) and so cannot identify with any injustice that is perceived by folks on other side. I can certainly see somewhat equivalent when it comes to bachelors degree vs Masters/PHD as I don't have those. So I am not sure where the lines should be drawn to make it fair to everyone.

His response was "one day you might build a bridge and can kill someone."

I'm not exactly sure where I draw the line, and for me it's a lot of "I know it when I see it". I'm not suggesting any specific code here, just pointing out that there are positions all over the spectrum. I find the fact that a CID (Certified Interior Decorator) is a thing is absurd.

Maybe my requirement is that someone with an appropriate level is in the chain somewhere.

How do you feel about the fact that doctors from foreign countries need to requalify in the US with a whole ‘nother MD program here? Even if they’re from a country with as-or-more stringent requirements, and decades of experience?

“Higher education” is sometimes, in hiring, a dog-whistle for “enculturated to the US because they attended college here.”

There are plenty of countries that do have MD programs that the United States recognizes, like Canada for instance. It's a political issue more than anything. If the medical licensing boards in multiple different countries could come together for some form of agreed licensing this could easily by possible.

Are there any other countries besides Canada in that list? As far as I know, Canada- and US-educated doctors can practice anywhere in Canada or the US. Everyone else has to be "re-certified," which includes doing a residency in Canada or US. It is very competitive to get a residency placement. The results is that if you have not done a residency in the US or Canada, the rule of thumb is that it takes 10 years to get licensed to practice and you have a 10% chance of success.

In other words, the problem is not that licensing boards don't accept degrees from other countries, but that they don't accept residencies. And getting a residency spot is so competitive and such a long shot that few people can successfully do it.

I suspect the reason that AMA limit access to US markets for foreign trained doctors is because limiting the supply of doctors in the US would likely increase the average salary for current US doctors.

But this is just one of the many reasons for why medical care is so expensive in the US.

However my understanding is that almost no one gets this in software and it’s being discontinued.

I have zero problem with this. If I was a doctor on the US and moved outside of it I'd expect to requalify there. Different areas have different levels required and just because you've met the levels required in one area doesn't mean you've met them in another.

> They don’t just need to re-do the testing; they need to waste six years and another $300k of tuition to learn things they already know, before anyone will be willing to test them.

That's your actual concern. I don't think you want to get rid of requalification, just make the process quicker and less expensive. Advocate for this, then.

I feel like a lot of companies hiring software devs just filter out most of the resumes that don't mention having a Bachelors degree, simply because they can.

He didn't understand that he was just hiring the lowest common denominator because he wouldn't run a workplace that people wanted to stay in. I've long wondered how many exceptional people he's cast off because they didn't fit his employment profile of "no hope, minimum wage."

My own personal anecdotal evidence is contrary; I had to get a college degree before anyone would give me so much as a callback (and the one time I got more than that, it ended with a pathetic offer - with the justification given that "You don't have a college degree"). All of this despite having years of proven open source contributions.

I wonder how experience in open source maps to professional experience. My impression is that employers seem to value professional experience much more.

I've had a similar experience to you in terms of not having a college degree, but after I worked for a few years employers stopped caring.

Out of curiosity, what does your github look like? I know you said you have a lot of open source contributions, but what about personal projects on your github?

So I got my degree. Suddenly, the interviewers - some of them the same as before - changed their positions to not considering me in spite of having the qualifications, but because I had no experience.

So before it was experience but no degree, then it was degree but no experience. It's been about eight years since I gave up trying to find work appropriate to my training.

I've yet to see a correlation between the two.

>A growing body of research suggests general cognitive ability may be the best predictor of job performance.

Of course there are other factors as well, but IQ is one of the biggest factors and it's taboo to even mention it.

1. I could try and attack the evidence, by linking studies such as http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... which found that conscientiousness is better correlated with grades (a proxy for job performance) than SAT score (a proxy for IQ), but that's not a very strong claim considering all the proxy measures involved (and it still does show that IQ matters).

2. I could attack the article you linked: "employers are more interested in employees' social skills than their cognitive ability" seems correct, in that communication is a key difficulty in jobs at large organization, much more than any individual's cognitive capacity. One could claim it's better at a large org to "satisfice" for IQ while optimizing for social skill. "Emotional Intelligence" vs "Cognitive Ability" as linked later in the article also doesn't seem to capture a sufficiently broad space of factors. And what is "culture fit" about, then?

3. We could talk about the taboo on discussing IQ. I could discuss my experience talking with supporters of "human bio-diversity", geneticists who seemed quite interested in discussing correlations between "various socio-cultural factors" and IQ, mostly with the intent of riling up people, or playing a contrarian position. Many people have a weak understanding of IQ and genetics, and end up drawing incorrect and occasionally repugnant conclusions based on the data (typically due to a lack of understanding that, across generations, genetics are malleable, IQ is malleable, etc).

"Some people use the data badly" isn't a strong argument against mainstreaming discussion of IQ. A stronger argument might be that individuals like to feel ownership over their own lives. Telling people that "IQ, which is determined mostly genetically, is the largest factor in your job performance (read: life success)" chips away at the common knowledge that an individual has significant personal agency, which is important as a philosophical basis behind various facets of western culture. Scott Alexander at Slate Star Codex tries to synthesize the two sides (one side wants to mainstream IQ, the other feels their self-narrative is threatened, hence the synthesis that it doesn't matter so much on an individual level) here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-w... but not everyone finds his arguments compelling.

All this isn't to say I agree or disagree that there should be a taboo -- I personally don't have a stance, but would prefer not to hire based on the metric -- but I did want to share some reasons that an objector might give against making it an acceptable measure.

I'm not going to suggest that there's absolutely no bias in the IQ tests themselves, but we've come a long way with them, and they're certainly going to be less biased than the average human who is hiring. Your IQ has no race or gender.

I also did not claim that the IQ test itself was biased. I'm not quite certain which of my claims you're responding to.

If IQ isn't the only thing a college degree is a proxy for, that just means we'd need to offer companies even more than just IQ test if we want to remove the college degree requirement.

>A growing body of research suggests general cognitive ability may be the best predictor of job performance.

A college degree shows an ability to complete a specific course of discipline. It does not really even indicate aptitude in the discipline. Just the ability to follow through and complete the requirements. I suppose it shows a minimum level of aptitude in that you didn't give up hope and quit.

ASVAB doesn't indicate the ability to follow through with anything. It tries to hint at aptitude in a wide range of disciplines. It purports to provide your relative capabilities and interest in many topics.

That is why the military relies on ASVAB. They don't need to know your level of stick-to-it-ness or discipline. They will beat that into you or drum you out very quickly. They are more interested in where among hundreds of specialties you are most likely to fit.

I don't know what standards are like in the U.S., but at least where I went to university a good 30% (of those who were in the top 20% of the highly selective entrance exam) ended up getting kicked out because they didn't pass enough courses in their first or second year.

Yes, for some people it was an inability to concentrate, but I also know a few who put in more than the minimum hours but for some reason it just didn't 'click'.

I don't know if the US is suffering from grade inflation which lets through people who should have been failed, or if you are just in a bubble of people who are successful, but what you describe is nothing like what I experienced.

>The ASVAB measures cognitive ability like other common IQ test, but it dependent upon the individual’s previous education for successful scores. It removes the individual attention received in common IQ test, but gathers much of the same information.

Also, don’t actually call it an IQ test. Get a third party that tests IQ and then issues a branded certification named after the IQ tier you fall into. Like CompTIA certifications: you could be a holder of a “FooTesting Genius Certification”, and employers could ask for that.

You know, like a college degree. Except shorter.

Sadly, many of them acquired lots of debt, and not much else. I advise any young people I get to talk with about post high school education to not jump head first into a degree program. Life won't pass you by if you take a year or two to formulate a plan.

So taking a year or two to figure out how to be an adult is not the worst approach to take.

If more people decide to delay or seek alternatives to college, the higher ed bubble will burst. Universities will not be able to afford the administrative staff they are carrying if enrollments decline.

A year spent figuring out how to be an adult would indeed be helpful. Unfortunately, for students who are still immature and sheltered at 18, an additional year spent having their lives completely managed by their parents seems more likely.

I applaud you for this. There's often so much pressure from every single direction around a young adult to attend college including internal pressure. After having been the first from my immediate family and older to graduate I feel I am also the first in my family to have an opinion or advice worth giving to another person in that position.

The thing I always say is that it's almost worse to go to college with no plan or "track" to graduating and your goals. Maybe you need a year after high school to figure out your direction as you work a job or two to earn some tuition and spending money before you embark on your educational crusade.

I'm not sure if my personal feelings and abilities apply to many other folks but after K-12 (public schooling) and voluntarily enrolling in university (~4 more years of education) I have a really hard time willingly singing myself up to learn anything new in a "traditional US Public education environment" for lack of better words / explanation. So my advice is to get a plan together, make sure you are motivated and mentally prepared to work hard toward your goal, and make sure you get it done in the time you set aside for yourself. From my POV I don't think I could ever willingly mentally allow myself to go back into student mode. Learning is on my time, to my tastes and liking now. But that feeling only started to come into my life after I was able to get my bachelor's degree. That said, what I mean here is: If you are going to go through all the trouble of going to college you might as well take it extremely seriously. Treat it like it's your job, your #1 priority. Everything comes after your education. It doesn't mean you can't have fun or you can't live your life but it does mean that you should be treating your education seriously and more importantly you should be understanding that you are paying A LOT of money to be there. You aren't going to conjure up all the mental fortitude and courage to re-motivate yourself to go back to school once you've mustered up the strength and courage to quit the first time. Don't give yourself a chance to "get back to it" unless you truly have no other chance / better route to take.

I LOVE LEARNING but I DO NOT LOVE the US's curriculum and standardized test-based education system. Having worked with kids (5-10y/o) for over a decade and having gone through everything they are preparing to go through (university, a degree, and the hunt to obtain the start to their career) I can see many of the issues that plague the education system, I see oh-so-many ways that it's failing or coming up entirely too short for our youth, and sadly enough I'm also realizing how simple it sounds to say, "We need to fix the education system." but also how incredibly difficult it is to actually change this system.

Now we are at this pinnacle of an education decision where it seems to feel like we are teetering on a two-decision contest that's been randomly and seemingly created from the system in place which will decide, somewhat, the future of education:

The current and traditional system, which we have in place now, demands we all work hard and achieve to the highest degree in order to attend a good college / university where we will work hard and achieve to the highest degree in order to obtain a great job where we'll work hard and attempt to achieve to the highest degree.

In primary school you work hard and learn the foundations and basics in order to get successfully get to intermediate school. In intermediate school you work hard and gain new tools to apply to your future work you must do to prepare for your future which takes place in high school. In high school you work hard, continue building on your foundation, add new tools, sharpen existing tools and you learn ways to combine tools together, and ultimately you start preparing and applying elsewhere to continue your education in university / college.

I don't remember a single teacher or single talk specifically dedicated toward building a future / career path that had anything to do with going immediately into working after high school. Everything was always pointing towards that next step in your education. If you had a question a teacher couldn't answer about why you must study a certain subject or certain annoying portion of an obscure subject you will most likely be met with something along the lines of needing to know it for the next level of schooling or college.

So that's our current system which we now know is not optimal. We may have known before but now we have evidence in a bunch of different ways and formats that prove that things should be done a bit differently.

Now, what's the other way I envision education teetering if it doesn't teeter toward things staying the same, traditionally? While it may sound 1984'ish I think with our rapidly growing technology that time and energy could be much better spent treating students like prospects, unknown quantities, or "living tools" as they go through their education, find out what they enjoy and excel at, and ultimately where they can create value for society that also compensates them appropriately.

In the same way that an auto manufacturer is looking to save as much money as it can moving into the future one adjustment they might decide on making is standardizing their line of automobiles they manufacture and sell. A semi-recent iteration of this situation that comes to mind is a system where by many automobiles of different classes, shapes, sizes, and marketing segments all share many parts. If Ford has 10 automobile models they make and sell. The idea with the system is to have as few unique parts overall as possible. Having all 10 of the models share as many parts as possible creates many avenues for saving and efficiency overall. Beyond that when Ford hires new talent, unless they are working on the very specific and unique portions of the 10 models, the unique parts that separate the 10 models and make them "unique", that new hire will be working on one of the parts that the 10 models share. If you train the new hire to work on Model 1's drive train you've also successfully trained them to work on the drive train of Model 1 through 10th's drive train as well, since they share as many parts under the cosmetic outer plastic shell as they can, to save money and simplify, as much as possible, their complex assembly line.

Now I imagine the other way society could treat education teetering away from tradition toward a new way has to look towards the past in order to succeed any way. They may have to travel to the time where the industrial revolution helped kick start a much needed economical boom here in the US. Sure conditions were terrible and they hadn't thought of every single issue and situation that may have cropped up but at the heart of the issue, the inner kernel? The assembly line was a key to unlocking an entirely new and higher level of ability to create and achieve than humans had ever known prior.

Then it'd be time to find out the best ways, using technology and standardized testing, to provide our youth an education that allows them the flexibility to fit into many different jobs and markets across the entire work force. Using traditional standardized tests and tests that test things other than mental fortitude, which schools are already known to do through Physical Education, educators and students can be exposed to and educated early about different types of careers and specific jobs within them.

The idea is that the education system helps society fill and plug holes in the work force using the potential future work force to do so. What I'm trying to avoid is what happened to my brother. Someone caught in the crossfire of the "YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO GO TO COLLEGE TO SUCCEED!" and the "YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO HAVE A MASTERS DEGREE TO DO ANY WORK IN EDUCATION!". There is no reason, in 2018 where we have so much technology and know how, that so many people should be sinking $100,000's into student loans for degrees that indicate that a graduating student has achieved to a level where they create a specific high level of value in a given subject.

That's all great and good, sure, but when society already knows (whether it's said or not) that there is no special or greater need for workers / employees with that degree or set of skills people like my brother are stuck stringing together part time jobs, squandering his time and previous energy he's put forth, and slowly but surely driving himself crazy and he stares at reoccurring student loan bills coupled with rejections from places he's applied to (if he get's any sort of reply at all).

I'm not sure if it's positive and I'd love to know / see / hear someone else's findings on the specific topic but if I'm a high school junior / senior RIGHT NOW and VISUAL BASIC PROGRAMMING (just bare with me, just making an example here) is INSANELY IN DEMAND right now and the market just can't stop throwing brief cases full of cash at VB DEV's, strike while the iron's hot! There is NO guarantee that by the time I graduate university with a degree in Computer Science that Visual Basic will still be hot and in demand in the market.

In fact I think, knowing what I've known over my short career, that an individual planning their future and skill set based on only that little bit of information would be very lucky to find work that allows them to live comfortably and such as they continue through life -- hopefully able to live their life in peace WHILE paying back those student loans.

Wow, that was long winded, but obviously you can tell I've spent a lot of time an energy giving thought to this specific topic. It's a hard one to find a place to let loose about everything I'm thinking about so I'm sorry for letting it all go here!

Just the exercise would be useful, but even more so some feedback. But then that raises the question, who is equipped to give that feedback? Should an educator tell someone else's kid that maybe they need a backup plan in case the astronaut thing doesn't pan out?

When I was young my father stuck me in front of a publication from the bureau of labor statistics that gave the long term outlook for every occupation they track. It was really great advice that every kid should see (they also ought to make a more kid friendly version, it can be very dry). The big picture stuff was pretty spot on, and it lets you know some hard truths like some jobs will require living in a major city, food service has plenty of openings available but low pay, that kind of thing. It helps you get realistic, even for dream-type jobs like actor or astronaut.

This is more of the kind of thing I wish kids were shown.

Not only show them and teach them skills they'll need the very second they graduate high school, god forbid they are on their own or have no family to rely on. How are we expecting newly graduated 18 year olds to be true participating adults in our society when education teaches them nothing of value?

At least if public schools took a more vocational approach and showed students career tracks with all sorts of options and branches for people with a given set of skills they could at least tuck that information in the back of their mind, they'd know their options and they'd likely gravitate toward working towards the things that they feel they are best suited for.

When they aren't sure that's when teachers, guidance counselors, professionals in different markets (who come in and do assemblies / talks) and parents come into play to help guide a student who isn't quite sure. It's not easy for a pre-adult to decide their career but what I'm really saying and really wanting to see is at least some more emphasis on reminding those kids that life's not all about college. More important that college is creating a comfortable life for yourself and potentially your family and to do that you need to learn how to create value for an employee or society (if you start your own business) before you graduate. Not many companies want to hire people to pay and train them if they have no skills and experience and things like that are becoming more and more rare outside of the trades -- and even then a lot of the artisans and tradespeople seem like a closed off wall if not the type of career most students have been "brain washed" (for lack of a better / less devious word) that blue collar service jobs are below them.

Maybe work study programs for all high school juniors (16/17) and seniors (17/18) in different sorts of service and white collar jobs to give them an idea of how a business works with both blue and white collar workers forming together in a company to make products or offer services. Something to give those students some insight into the way things really are.

That is why you should never take career advice from someone who ended up as a careers adviser....

For a HS counselor, that would mean they also work as a career counselor outside to tell people whether or what jobs to change to, or to stay at their current one.

I wouldn't apply that to core education, as there are no e.g. professional adders, but you get the the picture.

I could go on, but that's a topic for another day, I guess.

[1] a retired or former practicioner would suffice here too

This one - I still remember her name but I won't doxx her obv - I happen to know had gone from school to university to teacher training to my school. She had never been outside the education system in her entire life. But her job was to advise 16- and 18-year olds on how to set themselves up for career success...

(I think she also taught Home Ec or some similar fluffy subject)

> ...They weren't wrong. The sheer number of people who have had their resumes ignored simply because they don't have a degree of some sort attests to that.

This doesn't imply that having any degree would have gotten their resumes looked at, or secured them an interview.

These may or may not be the best jobs but it's not an uncommon requirement and they are typically better in some dimension than openings that require a HS diploma only (at least within the same organization).

My first degree is in Mech Eng, I think there are very few people in that field without a relevant degree. Computing is the exception, not the rule!

In fact, it's probably true that the highest-paid, highest-skill jobs have the most genuine need for college degrees. And for the rest, virtue signaling is a real thing: if you have more applicants than jobs, you set up high filters to winnow the pool.

If you find that filtering for people who are left-handed improves the average quality of your candidates, then yes.

But of course, a college degree is not even remotely as arbitrary as you're suggesting.

I'm not saying it's "fair", I'm just saying there are rational reasons to do it.

I got my first programming gig, sans degree, with my portfolio. My boss commented that my website, and descriptions of my projects, is what got me the interview.

Coming from graphic design, a portfolio is par for the course. But, I think some programmers will overlook the need for one. And no, I don't think Github projects serve as the same thing. A supplement? Yes. But, a proper site for your work can do wonders.

As an artist, you can almost always point to something, and say: I did this. I designed that. I am credited on a blockbuster film.

As a programmer, you can almost always talk a hot game about how you did something, but you can rarely tie that to proof.

Are you saying that's the hiring manager's problem, not mine?