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Comment by vgoh1 | Hacker News Reader

I grew up poor, and out of (mechanical) engineering college new a grand total of zero engineers. I would still be unemployed to this day if this type of hiring were the norm (although it is not entirely uncommon). I can also say, that the engineers that we have had come through our organization based on referrals have not been the best quality. They tend to be engineers that are generally likeable, but not very good. Referrals are probably the way with the least friction to hire someone, so any time the way with the least friction is not being used as much, you have to wonder why.

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> out of (mechanical) engineering college new a grand total of zero engineers

How did you manage to do an engineering degree and not get to know any other engineers?

I made friends in college by sharing a dorm and by hanging out on campus. Later I made friends through friends, but those were the essential starting points.

If you're poor, there's a good chance you're not staying in the (often very expensive) dorms, and that you don't have much time to hang out on campus because you have a job. I can imagine this kind of thing making it much harder to make friends.

Bingo. I made exactly zero connections while at university. Why? I had a kid young. We both worked to make things float. I did not go to school events, study groups, etc. Once, to finish a group project, we went to a kid's room in a dorm. Literally the only time I was ever in a dorm. My very limited social time was spent with existing friends.

It happens all the time. Most students make friends with students in their own year. This doesn’t help when looking for jobs.

I’d wager that most students don’t really network.

Not OP...but I had plenty of group assignments. The ones I liked, I maintained as friends. I'd imagine if someone graduated without knowing other engineers, the school didn't value group assignments, their teammates all stunk and weren't worth keeping, or they were the one no one else wanted to keep in touch with.

My university also had plenty of student organizations that were engineering related where you can find people of common interest, if you wanted to. ACM, Top Coder, Society of Women Engineer, Society of Automotive Engineers, Robotics (my school participated in DARPA challenges, FIRST robotics mentoring...) etc...If you wanted to be around similar peers, you could chose to. Or, you could chose not to and be the typical geek that goes to class, not talk to anyone, go back home and stare at your computer.

I was fortunate to also join non-engineering organizations, with whom the majority of my friends are today. I'm glad I didn't, because that expose me to a lot of different types of people, values, etc.

Anyways - I am not sure the value of networking with other college students from a professional stand point anyways. Having been in industry for 10 years, with each of my company having hired college grads...if a new college hire on my team says 'hey, this person is good'...I'd interview them, and still give the standard interview. If a colleague with many years of experience says 'this person is good', I would trust their professional judgement more and would maybe interview more on behavioral.

The simple answer for me is that at my university (and most others), dormitory assignments aren't done by major. So all of my good friends ended up having essentially random majors. None were in my CS program. This was probably for the best anyway, as CS was obnoxiously male-dominated and if most of my friends had come from my major it'd just end up being a bunch of dudes.

But you must have gone to lectures, labs, seminars, tutor sessions, project groups, etc with your peers? How did you not form any connections outside of where you lived?

You aren't really talking with fellow students during class. You have to go out of your way to meet them. And project groups were relatively rare in the classes I was taking. I went to all my classes, etc., but I just didn't end up making friends with fellow CS people. I don't know what to tell you, but this isn't exactly a rare occurrence. Cohabitating with people and spending leisure hours together is a much better way to make friends.

Anyway, to use an analogy, plenty of people don't make friends at work; they have entirely separate friend groups of people they know socially. This is widespread and there's nothing wrong with it. The same kind of logic applies there too.

I have nothing to add except that this was my experience too. Of the hundred or so people in my year of my course, i am still in touch with (1) the guy who also joined the science fiction society when i did, (2) the girl who ended up doing a PhD at the same institute as me after we graduated, and (3) the girl i dated after we got chatting after practical sessions.

I'm still in touch with a couple of dozen people from the science fiction society, though!

But the question wasn't about making friends even - it was just knowing acquaintances.

I guess my uni experience must have been different to other people's then if we can't relate to each other's experiences.

We were in four-person tutor groups in the first year, then each year we did a four-person project with a different set of people, I knew tens of people from working in the lab, and when you add up all these people's internships that's a lot of companies you know can ask for a direct contact to ask about hiring instead of sending your resume into the anonymous website process.

The only people I've kept in touch with since college are my friends. I'm 11 years out now and I don't even remember the vast majority of the names of the other people. Maybe a year out of college I could've still found a way to connect with some of those people, but it's long gone now. I don't remember the vast majority of them and I'm sure it's mutual.

I did have a four year long multidisciplinary research project that consisted of nine people. I saw them on at least a weekly basis for four years. I only kept in touch with one of them post-graduation (we became friends for a bit), but even that has since faded away.

I just don't see much value in having acquaintances that you aren't actually friends with. I hate it when people that I'm otherwise not in contact with reach out to me out of the blue because they need something from me, like a referral. I'm not willing to offer a good referral to anyone that I haven't worked closely with, or that I'm at least friendly enough to know their work ethic. And because I hate it when people do this to me, I also don't turn around and do it to them.

Why should a referral from some random acquaintance count so highly, anyway? I'd much sooner trust an interview loop than "Oh, I went to school with them a decade ago; beyond that I couldn't tell you much of anything about them."

Anyway, I didn't apply to my current job and I didn't reach out through friends; they recruited me.

>"Oh, I went to school with them a decade ago; beyond that I couldn't tell you much of anything about them."

Why would you be relying on referrals from people you went to school with 10 years ago instead of more recent coworkers? (Unless you haven't worked for 10 years.)

>I did have a four year long multidisciplinary research project that consisted of nine people. I saw them on at least a weekly basis for four years.

Sounds like any one of those 8 people would have been in a great position to vouch for you 11 years ago.

The context of this discussion was making connections in university. I have made way more connections through industry than I did at school, but that's a different situation entirely.

I realize that. My point still stands. Whether you made connections or not during college, you shouldn't be asking for or giving referrals to people you knew in school 10 years ago but don't know very much about.

Yeah, and I'm not.

But you're using that example as a straw man to attack the article's concept.

>Why should a referral from some random acquaintance count so highly, anyway? I'd much sooner trust an interview loop than "Oh, I went to school with them a decade ago; beyond that I couldn't tell you much of anything about them."

That's an intentionally weak example. You shouldn't trust that referral, and no one would argue that you should.

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