Oh sure it is. I didn't graduate, I dropped out during a recession, did some time in the military, came back out and taught myself the necessities to code full time. It took years, but along the way through interviews and cohorts I've learned a lot about academics in tech.
Academics love to talk about their universities When people give talks in tech they often share a bit about themselves. I like to talk about things in tech that interest me, what I do in my spare time, and where I'm from. Academics always spend a significant amount of time, and will even visually timeline, where they went to school, how long it took them, what clubs they were in, etc. These are the same kind of people who put x-Googler, x-Lyft, x-Uber all over their Twitter bio. To this degree the author is right, this information is junk but also comes up when I interview people who think that'll appeal to me. Spoiler alert, it doesn't and talking to me about your school inside or outside of an interview is a total waste of my and others time.
What you call an unusual resume is a great rhetorical note. What's unusual to you? I've only heard that term when I interviewed at Facebook for an SRE position. They want people who can write OS level code and be a systems engineer. They, somehow, identified that academics don't usually perform very well in these jobs and look for "unusual resumes". I'd love to know the etymology of this rhetoric but I'd bet it's some bullshit. There are no unusual resumes in tech, just ones you don't understand, and that says more about you than it does me that you think it's unusual.
"Hot startup" is another red flag. I worked at a lot of startups because tech firms either low balled me or would give me algorithm problems that I was still learning that I'd go on to, again, never use. The "hot startup" is a myth. All startups are hot because the friction of flying through the atmosphere while trying attach rockets to this dismally close to the ground vehicle will always be high. If you don't see your startup as hot, then it's not a start up, it's just a small business. To me, work is work. I want to know about the salt of what you did there.
The fact that we keep referring to tech interviews with this language like "grinder" is a giant red flag. I don't think I need to spend extra energy expounding on this, it sucks. I'd love to see a day where instead of allowing academics to gatekeep we instead put the onus on them to teach within these companies rather than exclude. The people who advocate these high standards are rarely helping others get to them, it's a game of self-interest.
The fact that you can couple "low status" and "no college degree" is the final nail in the coffin of this little thread. I'm not low status for not having a degree or cutting my teeth at more traditional businesses. I did so because people like you spent time developing tests so that all that learning I had to do took place in my off time or OJT at those traditional businesses. You did that, and your "low status" comment explains exactly why.
A couple of my own stories, just from my current job:
- I was trying to help some colleagues solve a statistical problem when I was an SRE. It could more or less be solved by looking at the data in the form of a distribution. When I showed people how this worked on a graph and how we could implement it in code I was repeatedly asked where I got my masters. When I reminded them I'm a dropout they almost didn't believe me. They thought it was a joke. It was a really weird thing for me to see people laugh at.
- I used to work on Kubernetes and I went to a conference that was centric to such. I met up with some colleagues. They all drink, I don't, and they did what drinking dudes do. They got honest. It was mostly harmless stuff, but at some point people were talking about college. I clearly didn't have anything to share. College wasn't really a great time for me plus there's the obvious part that I didn't even finish. I informed them when someone probed me, likely trying to include me in the conversation, and when they found out they responded, "You don't look like a drop out". I laughed, but just examine the audacity of such a statement.
These people aren't bad, but recognizing the misalignment here will absolutely let us turn big corners in tech.
This probably comes off kinda salty, but I'm not. I made it, I work in big tech and I have lots of fun. I spend my time teaching people and trying to empower engineers as they come up the ranks. Some day I imagine big tech won't want me anymore and I'll retire. Hopefully then I can spend my days working in open source or small device work. Maybe it'll just be wood working though ;)