Comment by kafkaesq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kafkaesq | Hacker News Reader

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The problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent.

So your implication is that the ratio of "competent" : "completely incompetent" for students coming from these schools is roughly... 2:100?

I know you can't possibly mean that. But your language clearly implies that ratio. The only question is why you're making such a bizarre implication.

I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State

Was the original article suggesting that your company hire "primarily" from Podunk State? Or simply that you probably don't want to hire near-exclusively from the Top 5?

The key is not to focus on the schools (rather than to focus extra on state schools. Instead, develop methods for identifying talent based on its own merits, regardless of where it is or what university it went to.

Which is exactly what the original article was advocating - a "completely blind, skills-first approach". In particular, it was definitely not arguing that one should "focus extra" on state schools.

> So your implication is that the ratio of "competent" : "completely incompetent" for students coming from these schools is roughly... 2:100?

the parent can be correct with a ratio closer to 1:10 or 1:20, assuming the top schools churn out many more students than 2nd/3rd tier schools. Which is certainly the case depending on how to define 2nd/3rd tier.

For ex parent's observation is probably spot on if you're comparing MIT/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley to an arbitrarily chosen regional state campus. But is more absurd if you're comparing those places to Michigan/Wisconsin/North Carolina/Washington/...

> Which is exactly what the original article was advocating

To be clear, the original article is a long-form advertisement for a product. What the article is advocating is giving interviewing.io money :)

For ex parent's observation is probably spot on if you're comparing MIT/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley to an arbitrarily chosen regional state campus.

I'll readily concur that students from top-tier schools are on average better than students from Podunk schools.

But (based on a wide sampling of data points) I don't see anything like a 1:100 ratio of "better", by any metric.

> But I don't see anything like a 1:100 ratio of "better", by any metric... So again, while it's not like school "tier" doesn't matter - this 1:100 ratio is just silly.

I think you misunderstood my point. Parent's observation may be accurate because of a combination of quality disparity and disparities in raw numbers.

The elite CS programs are relatively large compared to many Podunk States. So it's not just that there's a modest 1:10 or 1:20 or 1:5 or whatever quality ratio, but also that Podunk State graduates 20 or 30 students a year while the elite schools are churning out hundreds. So there's a 1:10 quality ratio but still a 1:100 yield ratio. Or whatever.

Again, inaccurate for the large state flagships, but very believable for the regional comprehensives.

(This isn't idle speculation. My observation is that larger schools tend to get more attention from recruiters, even setting aside quality, and I think this numbers game has something to do with it.)

Or whatever.

Exactly - it's the "whatever" part I'm having trouble working with.

I'm seeing the basic point about population samples you're making. But even so, both logically and numbers-wise, the original commenter's argument was just extremely handwavy. Which is, how to put this nicely... strange, coming from someone dissing an entire class of people (Podunk U graduates) as not just lacking rigor... but 99% likely to be, in their words, "completely incompetent".

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