Sure - I'm not disagreeing. In the same way that you don't have to start rich to end up being rich. I'm just saying you will likely have a more difficult time getting to the destination.

If someone spent as much time going to a university as teaching themselves how to program and contributing to an open source project they’d be able to apply to most places.

I’d actually argue there is more value in being a well known open source contributor than where you went to school in our industry.

There are way more candidates that went to X great university than have contributed to X great open source project.

I tend to agree, though our industry is much less pedigree obsessed than most. A degree from a top CS program will get you an interview at a FANG, but a degree from a top law school (I'm talking really top, like top 5) will largely get you a job at a big firm. Similar situation for top MBA programs.

I wish I had a cite, but I remember reading a while back a study that concluded it doesn't matter where you go to college - provided you major in STEM. I suppose the corollary is that it does matter quite a bit if you don't major in STEM.

This, as an aside, might explain why the most elite students in the US (unlike internationally) still eschew engineering and hard science in favor of economics, humanities, law, and other non-STEM fields. If you're at Harvard, why not study the thing where the Harvard pedigree actually gets you ahead? A CS degree from Harvard may land you that google interview, but if you're applying for an SWE position, you still need to be able to write snappy tight code a the whiteboard to find all matching subtrees in a binary tree. Law school interviews seem to be more general and conversational (this is anecdotal, but based on quite a few close friends who went this route) - law firms don't subject their candidates to a detailed re-hash of their 1L civil procedure exam.

That said, our industry is so obsessed with technical interview exams that I'd say neither degree nor open source projects is especially important, beyond what it takes to get you into the door. After that, you really do need very sharp whiteboard coding skills, and if you have them, it doesn't really matter if you went to SJSU or MIT.

I don't love interview coding exams, but I actually do like the fact that high tech is less obsessed with where you got your degree (or whether it was a math, CS, other related fields), provided it was from a program that teaches the proper curriculum. And I am genuinely relieved that we haven't empowered some NGO to decide what degree is required and where it can be earned, the sort of thing that allows law schools to put a $150,000 degree between smart people and the practice of law (backed with the force of criminal and civil sanctions). That last bit about SJSU wasn't meant as any sort of dig art all, there are lots of very talented people at that school, the curriculum is proper and rigorous, and their tech graduates have a much better crack at joining top tech companies than a 3rd tier law school grad would have at a big firm job (whether a big law job is any sort of prize to covet is a different matter, of course!)

The problem is that bias is introduced heavily in the technical interview process still. It's still very flawed.

A classic example of this is that people read the resume before they enter the room to interview someone. They see the person went to their alma-matter (let's say MIT/Stanford). They will have a bias - whatever way it swings. (I've seen it go both ways - people hating on their alma and some loving it) It will completely color the way they give hints, the way they evaluate the candidate, and much more. If they went to a less competitive school, they might nitpick every thing the candidate does to confirm their belief that less competitive school candidates are garbage. Whereas if the candidate went to a very competitive school, they might overlook the candidates mistakes by saying, "oh, it happens - but they're clearly very smart, they went to that competitive school."

Whether you like it or not, I've seen top 10 schools overrepresented within the bay area wildly. One could say that it's because those who went to those competitive schools are more likely to be competitive and strive to work at the most prestigious companies but that alone cannot explain just how wide this division is.

That’s a good thesis. I have no idea if it was true for me, and if course one data point isn’t terribly useful. My impression during my interview at google and amazon was that the interviewers were indifferent to what school I’d gone to, and my guess is that if I’d stopped in the middle of my whiteboard session and asked them where I’d gone to college, they wouldn’t have been able to answer (Berkeley in my case).

I also think you have overestimated the probability that interviewers read the resume. My interviewers at most jobs were at best faintly aware of the projects, degrees, and jobs I’d held. They tend to come in with their own agenda. I’ve mentioned things in it during interviews and it seems pretty clear they are trying to feign awareness if the contents of the resume or cover letter.

In spite of that anecdote, I think there’s a good chance your thesis has some merit. I certainly don’t want to defend the technical interview as it is currently practiced.

> If someone spent as much time going to a university as teaching themselves how to program and contributing to an open source project they’d be able to apply to most places

That's irresponsibly false. Just because you want something to be true, don't repeat it as if it were a fact.

I actually agree with it. For all of the criticisms tech receives for being elite and sexist--they are actually quite open to diversity of background.

Forget about top schools for a second--there are plenty of people at top companies who did not even attend university at all. Compare that to the management consultant industry where one's school is practically the beginning and end of their resume.

Of course the reason most students don't contribute to FOSS is that it's hard. Very few just-out-of-high-schoolers could really make inroads to contributing. Colleges and universities are helping hands that guide them to where they need to go.

Most top CEOs didn't go to IVY league schools at least for their BS

https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/new-data-shows-that...

Are you saying I have less value because I didn’t get into a top school? I went to a mid ranked state school and transferred credits from CC.

Based on how this thread is going, you seem to be projecting a lot of insecurity of what school you went to? Literally the words were "you will likely have a more difficult time being successful if you did not get a degree from a top school". Those words do not intrinsically say that someone who did not get a degree from a top school has less value.

It does not say that someone who did not go to a top school performs more poorly. It does not say that those who did not graduate from a top school are not good enough. All it says is that from a relative starting point, if you graduate from e.g. Harvard, you are more likely to be successful than if you did not.

My nitpicks with this premise are: is success defined in financial terms? Is it in position (CEO vs engineer)? What is the empirical evidence that graduating from a top school confers greater success (I think that there is such data, but citing it would be nice). There's enough stuff here to talk about that I am somewhat flabbergasted that you took this as a personal affront and misconstrue what's actually being talked about.

> It does not say that those who did not graduate from a top school are not good enough. All it says is that from a relative starting point, if you graduate from e.g. Harvard, you are more likely to be successful than if you did not.

These seem like they’re saying the same thing. If people like me were considered “good enough” OP wouldn’t have said that to begin with and CC to state school would have been fine

Nope. Saying you're likely to have a more difficult time getting to prestigious places than someone who graduated from Stanford/(insert top school).

That’s.. saying the same thing.

How are you even defining prestigious? Am I incapable of doing so? Please explain.

Prestigious would be - FAANG/Uber-adjacent/whatever-competitive-admission-company.

You might work at Amazon - that's fine - congrats. I'm saying that it's /more difficult/ to get there on average than if you had gone to Stanford. You're more likely to get overlooked for another candidate who has all the same credentials you do but went to Stanford instead of generic school.

Just because you did it does not mean that it's a completely level playing field.

You will have a harder time because half the value in a degree is the easy HR filtering. HR isn't willing to spend a lot of time to find the needle in the haystack. They are always on the lookout for heuristics that have no false positives and a degree from a top school is a pretty good heuristic.

He may not be saying so, but the recruiters at Google are.

I work at Amazon. Is OP implying that is not good enough or something?

It's not elite. Doesn't carry same weight. Tech is also less "pedigree" driven. You would definitely have a hard time in Business tacks without elite schools.

In what sense does it not carry the same weight?

Also no one had NCSU as their "Dream" school when they apply to college. That's reserved for an elite few. This perpetuates into a brand when people graduate. There is a certain bar of candidates that companies expect from these schools. Not to say someone at other schools can't meet the bar. But it's easier for HR to just start with the top 10

> Also no one had NCSU as their "Dream" school when they apply to college.

Are you sure? Where exactly did you go?

Try get into I-Banking (Big 4) without a big school.