<story><title>We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)</title><url>http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway444010</author><text>&amp;gt; When I&amp;#x27;ve compared notes with folks who attended schools like Utah and Boise State, their education is basically the same as mine.&lt;p&gt;I work at one of the well-known tech companies, and what I’ve noticed among most software engineers and data scientists is that they don’t really care about your background as long as you can do the work. Which is really nice; whenever I interview candidates, I don’t notice much correlation between the school they attended and their interview performance.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;However&lt;/i&gt;, the pure research division at this company is totally different. There appears to be a very heavy emphasis placed on the school attended. I was a bit miffed one day because I overheard one of the AI researchers saying “everyone knows there is a huge difference in caliber between the students that attended Stanford and Berkeley for CS and those that attended Georgia Tech”. As someone who attended GT and has a research background, this rubbed me the wrong way. There were also a few disparaging comments about the South in general. Even if there is a difference between the schools (at the graduate level), I would imagine the Bell curves can’t be &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; far apart from each other. It’s not like 90% of the students that attended Stanford are brighter than 90% that attended CMU.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ritchiea</author><text>A professor in my social circle has taught at various schools across North America including Harvard, University of Toronto and a few prominent USA state schools. He says in his experience there&amp;#x27;s no difference between the intellect and quality of work he sees at the schools he&amp;#x27;s taught at but the Harvard students are more ambitious and more entitled.&lt;p&gt;In my own personal experience Harvard, Princeton, Stanford types often carry an elitism that they need to justify the work they put in to get to that school and the amount the school prestige means to their own self worth.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s also a classic OpEd from I believe the Harvard Crimson from a Harvard admin officer saying Harvard could admit sufficiently qualified students from it&amp;#x27;s applicants several times over the actual count of its freshman class. So basically you have to have rich parents or be lucky not just be qualified. The elitism exists nonetheless and it&amp;#x27;s a fraud.</text></comment>
<story><title>We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)</title><url>http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway444010</author><text>&amp;gt; When I&amp;#x27;ve compared notes with folks who attended schools like Utah and Boise State, their education is basically the same as mine.&lt;p&gt;I work at one of the well-known tech companies, and what I’ve noticed among most software engineers and data scientists is that they don’t really care about your background as long as you can do the work. Which is really nice; whenever I interview candidates, I don’t notice much correlation between the school they attended and their interview performance.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;However&lt;/i&gt;, the pure research division at this company is totally different. There appears to be a very heavy emphasis placed on the school attended. I was a bit miffed one day because I overheard one of the AI researchers saying “everyone knows there is a huge difference in caliber between the students that attended Stanford and Berkeley for CS and those that attended Georgia Tech”. As someone who attended GT and has a research background, this rubbed me the wrong way. There were also a few disparaging comments about the South in general. Even if there is a difference between the schools (at the graduate level), I would imagine the Bell curves can’t be &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; far apart from each other. It’s not like 90% of the students that attended Stanford are brighter than 90% that attended CMU.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>maxk42</author><text>&amp;gt; I don’t notice much correlation between the school they attended and their interview performance.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve noticed one: About half the best engineers I&amp;#x27;ve hired over the years have no degree at all.  For the other half, there&amp;#x27;s no correlation between school and performance.</text></comment>