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Comment by htlion | Hacker News Reader

> if people go to university and actually study and work hard to get a degree, it should be normal they don’t have to go through this bullshit.

There are many flaws in this argument: - what about people without degrees but skills, do they deserve such a job? - Is university free? If not, do poor people deserve such a job?

Finally, we are not talking about the average SE job. We are talking about the top 10% of the jobs where competition is fierce. People at this level, as in any domain, are willing to compete fiercely. Should the marathon been shortened to 10k so that people who can't train can compete?

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I work in 'the top 10%' as you describe, and I certainly did not compete fiercely to get here... I was just good with HTML, CSS, and Javascript that I learned from a community college, but what got me into the interview was a BS in Compsci. Now that I'm involved with hiring, I see candidates who obviously have spent many hours on Leetcode, but struggle to write a for-loop, or who might come up with a solution to the interview exercise, but can't describe why it's the best solution. Despite that, I can see when people are willing to learn and grow, and I pass them through to the next interview. The world is not black and white.

Personally, I wish there was a guaranteed pathway from a degree into an apprenticeship with the same pay and benefits as any other employee. If America wanted to grow and maintain its global economic power, it would guarantee a highly compensated job for every college graduate.

Just because people are willing to compete fiercely doesn't mean they have to. You sound like a crab in a bucket[0], when the reality is that the bucket doesn't need to exist.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

> what about people without degrees but skills, do they deserve such a job?

What about people with actual problem solving and engineering skills, who worked hard to teach themselves, but are bad in test situations?

Some people cope well with tests. Others don't. Neither tells me ANYTHING about how well they will do as engineers.

> People at this level, as in any domain, are willing to compete fiercely.

But the competition is about "who's the best engineer", not "who was best at memorizing leetcode questions".

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