Ask HN: Who will hire a Udacity grad? Would your startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who will hire a Udacity grad? Would your startup?

5 pointshodder6 comments

Sebastian Thrun and Udacity may offer an entire CS curriculum. Do you see the large software companies like Facebook or Google hiring someone who has completed a degree worth of courses? Would your startup? Would you pay competitive rates? Let's assume the candidate has also built a decent portfolio of work/code.

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I'd hire a high-school dropout if he/she can convince me of their chops. Degrees hint at your capabilities, but a degree is not necessary to be a talented developer, not does having a degree guarantee that you are one. In the grand scheme of things, I don't much care about where you went to school or how you acquired your skills. Attitude, outlook and work ethic matter more to me.

One of the best things of a program like Udacity is that Udacity is free to quickly iterate on the curriculum to make sure it meets the needs of employers.

I've never heard of universities going to talk to companies that employ their alumni to learn what they could be doing to better prepare students. Udacity can do just that because it's part of the same ecosystem where its students are employed like Stanford, but it will be free from the bureaucracy of an academic institution, a luxury Stanford doesn't have.

Lets wait to see whats in the course first; then employers can check content themselves. Something that traditional courses don't really allow.

I agree, it will depend on the courses, but if the courses cover content that would make one a good fit for the team, the student has demonstrated the mastery of the content, and they have a good portfolio, I do not see why I would not consider hiring them.

Yes I would.

Most tech companies don't care about your paper...just what you can do!!

I'm sure Google would feel differently though

I think it helps having Sergey Brin (google) doing a promo on the CS 101!!

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