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andrew_v4

Two personal counterexamples, whether right or wrong:

Management consulting

- you want to be perceived as hiring the best

- project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people

- looking for demonstrated desire to jump through the hoops and do the marginal work that makes you the "top"

Software Engineering

- some overlap with the reasons above

- adds to the moat: if they're happy working for FAANG et al, competitors are priced out of getting the best

- the economics of many technologies are now defined by whether they can return enough to pay people competitively vs big tech. E.g. there are lots of cool deep learning applications that are tougher to try when you need to pay 300k / year for someone really good to run with them

- I'm interested in the sibling post referencing moneyball, this would be very cool to see applied to software engineers

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I'd argue that:

a) You don't need really good unless you're doing cutting edge work at massive scales. There's lots of deep learning talent floating around that is good but not aligned with the FAANG interview process.

b) If you interview process is a clone of FAANG then, well, you're not going to have a good time. See previous point and also you probably don't need a FAANG interview process unless you're at FAANG scale.

c) If the company has other issues then, again, you're not going to have a good time but that's not due to how much you're paying but everything else.

FAANG doesn’t have a single interview process - it’s pretty different at Apple Netflix Google as far as I know. Are there shared features they’re thought to have?

When I interviewed at all the local big tech companies the interviews were fairly similar down to asking identical questions sometimes. Very heavy on leetcode, some system design and a single behavioral interview. Generally looking for the same things in each interview across companies.

They weren't identical but much much closer to each other than the interviews I got from startups.

> Management consulting - you want to be perceived as hiring the best

This is not really a problem when all four of the companies in your industry use the same short list of universities for hiring. The reality would be even less of a problem with a broader selection of universities but the system works fine for the companies involved.

> Software Engineering ... - the economics of many technologies are now defined by whether they can return enough to pay people competitively vs big tech. E.g. there are lots of cool deep learning applications that are tougher to try when you need to pay 300k / year for someone really good to run with them

Why the hell are you insisting on someone really good to even start? The pool of people in any given domain with even hobbyist level expertise in ML/DL/AI and some domain knowledge is not usually shallow but non-existent.

> project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people

Don't you need the team to be versatile instead of individuals?

You can combine versatile individuals in versatile teams.

> you want to be perceived as hiring the best

Only idiots perceive that consultancies hire "the best" - the best are off doing other things.

> project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people

No, you need a load of dimwits you can throw at a project and make some apparent effect.

They literally hire the people with the best grades and test scores from the top universities. Idk how much better you can get than that.

It's well considered by a lot of people in the industry that a prospective's grades and even which school they went to aren't a good predictor of skill.

Unless you have them actually work with you for a month, they're certainly the best predicators available for new grads with no portfolios right?

FWIW, the most effective colleagues I've worked with all scored really high on standardized tests. They're a great predictor imo

The best programmers I know didn't go to college. It's been my experience that degrees and standardized test don't tell you jack about how well someone will do a job.

I bet if you gave them a standardized test (even any IQ test), they would crush it

Most likely due to Berkson’s paradox. Short NBA players are just as good as tall NBA players but that doesn’t mean height isn’t good in basketball.

for startups, new grads with good portfolios and ok grades > new grads with good grades and ok portfolios

likewise, new grads with a story of upward trajectory & energy > new grads who coast on what their parents/school setup

the bet being made is they'll put in the hard work and achieve the personal growth to progress quickly, and they'll roll with the uncertainties of startups. grades do hint at the hard work, and youth suggests dealing with uncertainty, but not as well as succeeding at difficult and fuzzily-defined projects. if they've done that before, better chance they'll do it again.

outside of startups, priorities change. big orgs need people who won't risk the cash cow. consultancies need people with better credentials than their customers. etc.

The best programmers I know never had a portfolio.

What? The best programmers you know got that way without accumulating a body of work?

Different people have different ways of learning and working. Some people build a bunch of stuff. Others build toys, others may just focus on their primary jobs and don't have a portfolio of things they can share.

All of those qualify as a body of work. The last one isn’t a body of work you can share but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

You are the one who said body of work, the other person said portfolio. Stuff that you can't share isn't a portfolio.

most students don't work on classified fbi projects, see in the thread on some of the projects I've seen undergrads involved in that are more demonstrative than grades. a project portfolio is just a cv section that focuses on the projects and your involvement, and hopefully ways for the interviewer to see it and the code, but even descriptions and screenshots go far for the interview conversation.

most good cs programs have significant project components, and students not putting in their project time there are often doing so elsewhere.

if not, they may have the potential to be good at projects, but tbd. without other strong signals, probably fewer startups are in a good position to take that bet.

also, going beyond students, the top programmers I've worked with have a history of great public and private projects - papers, $100B companies, top frameworks, launched top products, record breaking results, news articles around their impact, etc. The main exceptions are 'lifer at apple' types and 'works at secret bank', but most hop jobs enough that it's not an issue. A top group I see that really struggle a lot are 'lifer at secret gov agency x', which gets many of them stuck in the defense contractor round door.

we may have different experiences for what top means and what they help achieve. Who is this silent majority of top 1% programmers that don't have any referenceable projects? And more to the point, top intern candidates?

Many of the best programmers I know never went to school for programming.

portfolios = projects they can reference

if they don't have impressive projects.. maybe not so good?

when i think of the best cs ugrads i've known, and would be great at startups:

* cool projects outside of classes, especially self-initiated, like doing their own startups

* cool libraries or algs that got popular or, not quite as good, published

* hardcore mode attempts at class projects, e.g., well beyond extra mile for OS's + graphics, or took grad-level courses for the same (=> w/ accompanying projecs), or new to CS and are proud at winning some class competitions despite that

it changes outside of cs

>if they don't have impressive projects.. maybe not so good?

lol, you realize that for I'd say almost all projects the interesting part/core is small % of the whole, meanwhile the rest is just boring code that needs to be done?

ofc it's not the nicest thing that you arent completing your side projects and just doing the interesting stuff, but you may have experience in industry, so you know how to do that boring ass stuff anyway

Interestingness helps but not the point

Startup conditions are chaotic and every new person takes management + training overhead. Internship applicants who have well-done and challenging projects have shown the energy, self-management, know-how, & self-learning to get projects done in mini-versions of these conditions. So every hour spent on them goes a lot further, and both sides benefit more.

Conversely, if someone can't get their projects done, the projects are too low quality for where it matters, or their skill are on too-different of a thing, at best, it's non-evidence. So you'll have to fall back to evaluating weaker signals like grades. At worst, lacking or failing at projects is a red flag that they'll struggle on the adult-sized projects as well.

For 'interestingness', probably more relevant is 'tied to the mission', but I think being youthful covers 80% of that for intern-level folks.

Failure to figure out fit may mean everyone loses. Interns are more about recruitment pipeline for companies, and I'm not sure that's the wisest way to solve that for a lot of startups if that's the goal. Likewise, startups not ready to invest in their interns (management overhead, training, etc.), or fail to screen for a good match in skills, can easily be a bad experience and opportunity cost for the students, who may have had a more pleasant, productive, and rewarding experience at a more mature company.

I'll speak from perspective of average CS in E. Europe

people who were the best at my year were mostly focused on jobs / real world software development and just wanted to get degree, so just pass the exams and projects effortlessly

but I've been studying at weekends, so I may be biased.

Is the school thing a strictly American phenomenon? In New Zealand for instance all that tends to matter is which city/town you want to live in and whether the institution offers the field you want to major in (medicine for example is only offered by Otago IIRC).

I've only been asked for grades once in the previous 12 years where at which point I withdrew my application.

In some cases, school is a legal way to discriminate. The top tier companies incorporate recruiting into their culture.

If you recruit at Brown, you’re going to get a different candidate than some CUNY school. They all tested well in high school or have parents with good networks, and they tend to look and quack alike.

"Culture fit" is just another way to discriminate a candidate based on race, age, or gender.

HR from my company has explicitly told all interviewers not to use "culture fit" as a reason to disqualify a candidate presumably to avoid potential lawsuits.

Yes, America has more school inequality than other countries (although it’s not the only one, Oxford and Tokyo U also exist). Part of this is because they’re so good they suppress top international schools from forming in other countries. But also they teach in English and I assume it’s harder for international students to attend a French or Chinese school.

You can get a lot better than that, and you actually reference it in a later comment -- you see how well they perform on an actual task. It's true that high standardized test scores and IQ test scores often come along with high performers, but it's at best a necessary but not sufficient condition. That's like saying the only thing you need to make great wine is good grapes. Plenty of awful wine has been made from excellent grapes.

> Idk how much better you can get than that.

Don't hire recent grads.

That is not an accurate description of management consulting companies hiring process. If you wants to know more look at Lauren Rivera‘s research. It’s about practically nothing else except professional firm’s hiring practices. It is not based on “top schools” as defined academically. and It is based on a certain set of two schools which are very good, and having at least reasonable grades. So what they look for is a certain minimum of grades and class markers. Getting a First will not get you much of anything over a 2:1 in hiring undergrads. Better to be on the crew team or fencing.

I'm interested, do you have any particular studies in mind?

Article

Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms Lauren A. Rivera

This article presents culture as a vehicle of labor market sorting. Providing a case study of hiring in elite professional service firms, I investigate the often suggested but heretofore empirically unexamined hypothesis that cultural similarities between employers and job candidates matter for employers’ hiring decisions. Drawing from 120 interviews with employers as well as participant observation of a hiring committee, I argue that hiring is more than just a process of skills sorting; it is also a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators, and firms. Employers sought candidates who were not only competent but also culturally similar to themselves in terms of leisure pursuits, experiences, and self-presentation styles. Concerns about shared culture were highly salient to employers and often outweighed concerns about absolute productivity. I unpack the interpersonal processes through which cultural similarities affected candidate evaluation in elite firms and provide the first empirical demonstration that shared culture—particularly in the form of lifestyle markers—matters for employer hiring. I conclude by discussing the implications for scholarship on culture, inequality, and labor markets.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/000312241246321...

The book

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691155623/pe...

> Drawing on scores of in-depth interviews as well as firsthand observation of hiring practices at some of America’s most prestigious firms, Lauren Rivera shows how, at every step of the hiring process, the ways that employers define and evaluate merit are strongly skewed to favor job applicants from economically privileged backgrounds. She reveals how decision makers draw from ideas about talent—what it is, what best signals it, and who does (and does not) have it—that are deeply rooted in social class. Displaying the “right stuff” that elite employers are looking for entails considerable amounts of economic, social, and cultural resources on the part of the applicants and their parents.

George Bush is top shelf, in your book, then, due to the top university?

Test scores

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