<story><title>Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience</title><url>https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551662427606986752</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>EdwardDiego</author><text>Is the &amp;quot;state degree&amp;quot; vs. &amp;quot;Ivy League degree&amp;quot; thing that common in US society?&lt;p&gt;I ask because I&amp;#x27;ve just joined an American company, and a person mentioned that they&amp;#x27;d been hired and given a chance to excel &amp;quot;despite only having a state degree, much to my Mom&amp;#x27;s disgust&amp;quot;, which surprised me.&lt;p&gt;In my country, there&amp;#x27;s not much difference between the respective universities in terms of &amp;#x27;prestige&amp;#x27;.</text></item><item><author>anonymoushn</author><text>Colleges are less impactful for trendy tech companies than they are for finance or whatever. I went to a no-name state school and could get into these things. If you really did an internship programming at Walgreens, it&amp;#x27;s easy enough to omit it from your resume.</text></item><item><author>majormajor</author><text>As advice for &lt;i&gt;hiring managers&lt;/i&gt; this twitter thread is very actionable: stop judging people harshly for working their way up.&lt;p&gt;As advice for &lt;i&gt;candidates&lt;/i&gt; who want to work at TrendyCo outside of what&amp;#x27;s itself a very elite &amp;quot;class&amp;quot; of people he anecdotally knows, it&amp;#x27;s not very useful: &amp;quot;try for that exciting job you want, and if you can&amp;#x27;t get it then, sure, take any job.&amp;quot; Here&amp;#x27;s the problem with that advice: &lt;i&gt;the class system is already in play before even your first job.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What colleges do you think fancy tech employers hang out at and recruit at? What internships do you think are going to get your resume past their initial screen? Things like &amp;quot;Microsoft stack, not relevant&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;low profile school&amp;quot; are already a problem for many.&lt;p&gt;(The broader problem with wanting to work at TrendyCo is that by definition &lt;i&gt;so does everyone else&lt;/i&gt; so they&amp;#x27;re going to be drowning in applications and have to resort to &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt;  stupid&amp;#x2F;arbitrary process to filter things down.)</text></item><item><author>jt2190</author><text>&amp;gt;  Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks.&lt;p&gt;But the assertion here is that too many “pivoting up” jobs are a negative indicator. (An “upper class” programmer wouldn’t spend time in the “lower” classes.)&lt;p&gt;Not saying I agree or disagree with this, but the existence of a class system in tech jobs is the OP’s central point.&lt;p&gt;Edit: The OP says it clearly:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In many ways, having no experience is better than having the wrong experience because people don&amp;#x27;t unfairly prejudge you for having the wrong experience.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;danluu&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1551665467864977408?s=21&amp;amp;t=CMXLlvgNYO6mWHRwg31QBQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;danluu&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1551665467864977408?s=21&amp;amp;t...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person.&lt;p&gt;Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with significant programming&amp;#x2F;math or other such experience.&lt;p&gt;I do a lot of mentoring of college grads. If anyone shows an interest in Big Tech I always encourage them to apply and help them get the process started. However, it is not my experience that 50% of your average (or even above average as mentoring programs tend to select for the more ambitious) CS grads are walking into something like a Big Tech ML job with no relevant experience.&lt;p&gt;Always apply if you’re curious. If nothing else, you will learn the interview process and see where you need to improve for next time. However, don’t feel bad if you don’t get the dream job right away. Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nicolas_t</author><text>Anecdotal, but as a hiring manager, I&amp;#x27;ve interacted with only one person from Harvard, he was very impressed with himself and knew how to talk but when we asked him to do a small test project (we paid him for), the work he did was really not great. He took a long time to deliver something that barely worked, didn&amp;#x27;t follow best practices&amp;#x2F;common idioms of the framework he was using (framework that he selected by himself and supposedly had 2 years of experience in). He was also extremely aggressive in salary negotiations which is fine if you can deliver (and I know people who made a lot of money by being good at salary negotiation) but less so when you can&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve worked with quite a few MIT graduates and overall they&amp;#x27;ve all been very good at what they do. So, sample size of one in the case of Harvard but I think Ivy leagues are not all created equal for a given major.</text></comment>
<story><title>Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience</title><url>https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551662427606986752</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>EdwardDiego</author><text>Is the &amp;quot;state degree&amp;quot; vs. &amp;quot;Ivy League degree&amp;quot; thing that common in US society?&lt;p&gt;I ask because I&amp;#x27;ve just joined an American company, and a person mentioned that they&amp;#x27;d been hired and given a chance to excel &amp;quot;despite only having a state degree, much to my Mom&amp;#x27;s disgust&amp;quot;, which surprised me.&lt;p&gt;In my country, there&amp;#x27;s not much difference between the respective universities in terms of &amp;#x27;prestige&amp;#x27;.</text></item><item><author>anonymoushn</author><text>Colleges are less impactful for trendy tech companies than they are for finance or whatever. I went to a no-name state school and could get into these things. If you really did an internship programming at Walgreens, it&amp;#x27;s easy enough to omit it from your resume.</text></item><item><author>majormajor</author><text>As advice for &lt;i&gt;hiring managers&lt;/i&gt; this twitter thread is very actionable: stop judging people harshly for working their way up.&lt;p&gt;As advice for &lt;i&gt;candidates&lt;/i&gt; who want to work at TrendyCo outside of what&amp;#x27;s itself a very elite &amp;quot;class&amp;quot; of people he anecdotally knows, it&amp;#x27;s not very useful: &amp;quot;try for that exciting job you want, and if you can&amp;#x27;t get it then, sure, take any job.&amp;quot; Here&amp;#x27;s the problem with that advice: &lt;i&gt;the class system is already in play before even your first job.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What colleges do you think fancy tech employers hang out at and recruit at? What internships do you think are going to get your resume past their initial screen? Things like &amp;quot;Microsoft stack, not relevant&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;low profile school&amp;quot; are already a problem for many.&lt;p&gt;(The broader problem with wanting to work at TrendyCo is that by definition &lt;i&gt;so does everyone else&lt;/i&gt; so they&amp;#x27;re going to be drowning in applications and have to resort to &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt;  stupid&amp;#x2F;arbitrary process to filter things down.)</text></item><item><author>jt2190</author><text>&amp;gt;  Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks.&lt;p&gt;But the assertion here is that too many “pivoting up” jobs are a negative indicator. (An “upper class” programmer wouldn’t spend time in the “lower” classes.)&lt;p&gt;Not saying I agree or disagree with this, but the existence of a class system in tech jobs is the OP’s central point.&lt;p&gt;Edit: The OP says it clearly:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In many ways, having no experience is better than having the wrong experience because people don&amp;#x27;t unfairly prejudge you for having the wrong experience.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;danluu&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1551665467864977408?s=21&amp;amp;t=CMXLlvgNYO6mWHRwg31QBQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;danluu&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1551665467864977408?s=21&amp;amp;t...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person.&lt;p&gt;Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with significant programming&amp;#x2F;math or other such experience.&lt;p&gt;I do a lot of mentoring of college grads. If anyone shows an interest in Big Tech I always encourage them to apply and help them get the process started. However, it is not my experience that 50% of your average (or even above average as mentoring programs tend to select for the more ambitious) CS grads are walking into something like a Big Tech ML job with no relevant experience.&lt;p&gt;Always apply if you’re curious. If nothing else, you will learn the interview process and see where you need to improve for next time. However, don’t feel bad if you don’t get the dream job right away. Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Kon-Peki</author><text>To most people, there really isn&amp;#x27;t much of a distinction - what you accomplish is far more important than where you went to school.&lt;p&gt;To others, it is &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt;.  I know someone whose mother constantly tells her that she is a dumb failure because she didn&amp;#x27;t go to Harvard (she went to Stanford).</text></comment>