Comment by Groxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Groxx | Hacker News Reader

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Well, look at it from an energy cost standpoint:

Going to class 3x per year: extremely low cost. Lost of free time. 2.6 GPA. Going to class every day: extremely high cost. Little free time. 3.x GPA (typically).

Given that semesters typically take 100+ days, you're talking a 30x increase in time spent to get a single point GPA improvement. Lame. This shows a problem with the classes and the teacher, as the teacher is apparently useless, not the student who is clearly smart enough to nearly BS a class and still get an easily passing grade.

Personally, I tend to fluctuate between 3.0 and 3.5. I do better in a lot of classes when I don't kill my brain listening to a bad teacher, and instead just read the darned book, which they test out of anyway. If going to the class is useless, and actively harmful, and you can get a good grade without going, what logic says you should go?

GPA is a laughable measurement of capability. It's much more of a measurement of boredom / lack of social skills. All my programming profs will (and have) happily write me a glowing recommendation, despite having a C average with one, and a low B with another. Of course, the C average one teaches level 450+ classes, and typically fails 50% of a class or more, so a C isn't too bad anyway.

So, why did you go to college at all rather than just studying/working on your own? Economic reasons, motivational reasons, the seal on the piece of paper with your name on it?

I agree with your logic, although my experiences were different. There were definitely classes worth skipping, but I also had classes where it was worth it to attend. YMMV, I would recommend to anyone testing the waters before deciding on a course of action.

I struggled with that question for most of my college education. The answer I eventually came up with was, "I went to college so I could meet lots of other people who were smart enough to pass the admission requirements and yet still willing to plop down $40k/year to learn things with absolutely no practical application."

Oftentimes, it's not what you know, it's who you know.

Easy. I went to college for the seal on the piece of paper, and access to people smarter than I, and tools I cannot easily access / afford (I'm also an art minor, favorites being metalwork & jewelry. Ever looked up prices for a foundry / smelting furnace?). The seal on the paper is worth a LOT of money in the long run, and access to smart people and tools lets me learn / do things I would not normally be able to.

I've always (always) had the stance that nobody can really teach anyone anything. All learning comes from the individual doing the learning, as it can easily be shut out if they simply ignore it. Thus, if you're learning, you're trying at least a little. (exceptions being made for "teaching" under torture)

People (teachers) and tools can make it significantly easier / better / faster than learning on your own from other sources, but ultimately you are the one doing the learning. The ball's in your park. I go to school / class because I see the value in it. I also slack where there is little to no value, or when I've learned all the class has to offer. To do otherwise is ludicrous, as I could be spending my time learning other things, which is significantly more valuable to me. My grade is temporary. Learning is not. Which is more important? Also, if an employer doesn't see the value in intelligence / learning, and only looks at my grades, I do not want to work there. They clearly have backwards goals compared to mine.

Grades, as pertaining to this, are not a measure of learning. They're a measure of how well you can match the test's metric, typically rote memorization of facts. Learning is connecting facts, and being capable of extending them, and that's hard to test. It also rarely requires real memorization, as you instead build off X to get to Y; you don't need to know Y, just the method, and the method could be applied in a thousand places instead of just the one Y.

One might argue that the perceived value (by employers or universities, if seeking a PhD) difference between 2.x and 3.x is greater than 30x

Potentially, though as I say at the link below, if an employer is selecting on my GPA instead of my skills ( / learning / intelligence), I'm not interested in working for them, so it's exclusively to my gain to not be employed there.

If I can't demonstrate why I would be an asset, I've failed far more severely than a low GPA would imply.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1074501

That's well and good if you can afford to be choosy about your first place of employ when you leave college. Not everyone has that luxury. My GPA and/or degree definitely helped me get my first jobs which then gave me the opportunity to build up enough experience for grades to no longer matter. Being able to demonstrate why you would be an asset doesn't do you much good if HR won't pass your application along.

I'll be choosy or I'll take a lame, more temporary job elsewhere, while I build up a codebase to improve my chances in a later application.

"afford" is a pretty vague word. It depends on your priorities. Money is pretty low on my list. Happiness is near the top. I'll be more happy in a medium-bad job that I can easily change from, than stuck for longer in a medium job that I "had" to take. What cost are you measuring? Money? Free time? Ability to travel? Proximity to Wisconsin? (good cheese is important, dammit!)

Also, I'd like to point out that if they're not hinting to HR that they're interested in skills, not GPA, they're probably nearly a place I wouldn't want to work with. And / or HR is doing a crappy job, and they're allowing HR to continue to do so, which also puts them in that category. People are important, and any business that devalues people so far makes their employee satisfaction very questionable.

I am in CS because I like it. If I really need to, I'll pick something else up and do that. What matters to me is my life, my wife, and living happily, not making as much money as I can.

Yeah I had the same ideas when I was in school, but life consistently gets in the way. I took a year off to be with my GF who was going to school on the other side of the country. The job market was an utter wasteland. Nobody was hiring. At one point I resorted to going through the phone book. After 3 months of job hunting, I had two options: stock boy at Meijers (if you're not familiar, it's like Walmart) or software engineer at a small software company with a crappy boss working on software that didn't matter to anyone. By that point I had to choose one of those jobs, I could not afford (literally, monetarily) to be picky.

I took the programming job, and although it sucked, I got a lot of experience out of that job and am a better programmer today because of it. As horrible as it was, it probably sucked less than stocking shelves at Meijer would have, and I certainly got a lot more value out of it.

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