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Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

While I can't speak about investors, I personally know of one highly-respected niche company that seriously favors candidates who have one of the "big 4" on their resume (AmaMagaGooBookSoft or whatever they're calling it these days). Ironically enough, a widely-recognized position at a major tech company unfortunately can be a stepping stone that gets you in the door at a place you actually want to work long-term. People are generally really bad at hiring.

It's kind of funny that a position at one of those companies is now the new mark of prestige instead of a college degree or something. Shows how far the university has fallen.

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> Shows how far the university has fallen.

Does it? Unless things have changed, graduates of elite universities are disproportionately represented at the AppAmaGooBookSoft companies. It seems more accurate to say that those companies play a similar role to HBS and Yale Law.

>While I can't speak about investors, I personally know of one highly-respected niche company that seriously favors candidates who have one of the "big 4" on their resume (AmaMagaGooBookSoft or whatever they're calling it these days).

Is it Valve?

... yes, lol.

I wonder why, since Valve's way of working is very different from the way big companies traditionally work

When was that ever the case?

Even back before Google existed, having MS on your resume would open doors at software companies.

Google has always been a gold star.

But it isn't instead of universities, it is as well as. Stanford/MIT/etc will have the same effect.

The weird thing is not that working at big-name companies is impressive, it's that it's essentially a pre-requisite for some employers. The promise of higher education is that it will prepare you to take the best jobs in the industry. It's supposed to be the primary credential. That something is becoming the critical factor in employment means that universities are losing and/or have lost their status as the baseline qualification.

Maybe it shows how little I know, but I think Valve and other companies who do this are doing themselves a disservice by basically using Google's recruiting department as a passthrough (and, as an autodidact programmer, I feel essentially the same about people who put it all on educational pedigree -- this isn't an endorsement of the baseline credential, just an acknowledgement that what constitutes it is shifting). It feels like an admission that they don't know how to hire, so they're effectively offloading that responsibility onto companies whom they believe have thorough vetting processes.

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