The case against hiring people from Ivy League schools | Hacker News Reader

The case against hiring people from Ivy League schools

bigthink.com

37 pointsBrajeshwar33 comments

It is as foolish to say you shouldn't hire people from Ivy League schools as it is to say that you should hire people from Ivy League schools. How about looking at applicants as individuals instead of stereotypes?

Here's a better stereotype: don't work for a company described as a place where,

"We had burned ourselves out by working so many 100-hour weeks,"

"we were still grinding so hard that we didn’t have the effort to put into our hiring process"

the work environment was "desperation (mixed with exhaustion)"

"Look at applicants as individuals instead of stereotypes" is, I think, missing the broader philosophical question here.

Setting aside recruiters optimizing their own KPIs, hiring is about estimating the value a particular applicant will bring to the organization. And those estimates are hard to make. You are, necessarily, relying on various proxies for their ability within the org, and using those proxies to make more-or-less Bayesian judgements about their value. And those Bayesian judgements are, like any statistics, based on population-level observations - not on the individual.

The philosophical question at hand is: is it OK to use a statistically-powerful Bayesian proxy even if that proxy doesn't rely on any unique information about the individual?

I think we would all agree "only hire people whose families made six figures during their upbringing" would be a horribly unjust way to hire. But that probably does provide a LOT of meaningful Bayesian information - it correlates strongly with, say, test scores (a trait that many people here probably do think is fair to judge on, and which is also a proxy for a lot of other things), the likelihood of criminal backgrounds, social and political connections, and a million other things.

And then you have to ask how far we go with this. Certain genes might be useful proxies - can we go full Gattaca on hiring? What about biases that we know come from terrible social factors (e.g. a black man in 1955 would be very unlikely to be well-educated - would it be ok to use that Bayesian information?).

There is a fundamental conflict, one I think is not being acknowledged, between statistical rigor in optimizing local outcomes today and achieving anything resembling individual-level fairness in the medium-to-long term.

How about looking at applicants as individuals instead of stereotypes?

Who has time to look through hundreds of résumés and treat every single applicant as an individual? Hiring managers are looking to cull the stack as quickly as possible. If you’ve got 300 applicants and 15 of them are Ivy League, you throw away the other 285. Or so the conventional “wisdom” went.

> If you’ve got 300 applicants and 15 of them are Ivy League, you throw away the other 285

You'd be better off throwing away 285 at random. At least then you're not specifically selecting for the people who you are going to have the most competition for.

On your first pass, spend 30 seconds scanning each one and throw away any that just feel off. This is probably at least 50%, possibly a lot more. This is 2.5 hours.

On the 2nd pass, spend 2 minutes more thoroughly reading them, and pick your top 10 to 20. This is about an hour if you already threw away half.

In 3.5 hours you can get a much better pool of favorites than by just throwing away those from non top-tier schools.

I think it’s the same reason people didn’t shop around in the 70’s/80’s, they just bought IBM. Or Microsoft in the 90’s/00’s.

It’s not really about making the best possible decision, it’s the one that’s easiest to defend when the CEO comes around for a chat. “We hired the guy from Harvard” puts a smile on the face of the CEO, who went to Harvard himself. “We hired the guy from Podunk State” might not get you fired, but could be a bit awkward!

Translating to normal person: You shouldn't hire people that aren't at least a bit desperate and ready to be abused as they'll do things like expect fair compensation for doing overtime and won't let you sell them a bridge about how great things will be in 5 to 10 years to break their back with unpaid labour now.

The constant name dropping, the stated preference for people that have debt or are trying to get out of retail jobs, the use of the phrase rockstars all make this sound like it was written by a narcissist.

I'm almost certain the bit about people bringing their parents to an interview is a naked lie or something that happened exactly once.

You pretty much nailed it.

This article can be summed up with: “Don’t hire people that know their worth.”

The real core gist I'm getting from this article is that "the case against hiring people from Ivy League schools" is that ivy league grads don't want to work ridiculous overtime for someone else's dream -- not exactly a scathing indictment in my view.

It's more that they don't want to go the extra mile. They think they're owed something so they don't have to hustle for their spot.

Have people been getting rewarded with hustling more than their peers? Promotions that aren't popularity contests are exceedingly rare from my experience.

The article literally states: > the people we brought in were working such grueling hours that eventually the money wasn’t worth it to them and we’d lose them.

So the author wants to find workers that somehow look past this risk/reward imbalance and determined that Ivy grads are not it.

That one sentence made the whole piece rather confusing.

I tend to agree with the conclusions about mindset and attitude. These are far more valuable than a specific education in the long run. But these traits aren’t synonymous with a willingness to work grueling hours.

They also admit:

> The thing about desperation (mixed with exhaustion) is that it doesn’t lead to the best decision-making. We needed people so badly that we settled for the first ones who walked in the door

This was referring to the leadership team’s desperation and burnout. Essentially that they were making bad decisions because of how stretched thin they were.

It’s not clear to me that their goal is to find people who are willing to put in grueling hours, or if the mention of grueling hours was more about the need to change how they hire and operate.

If the former, it’s an incredibly hypocritical goal given their own direct experience with the counterproductive effects of overworking.

If the latter, they need to make that more clear in the writing.

I’ve worked with people who feel they’re entitled to everything without putting in effort. This is a very different dynamic than refusing to fall for the BS variety of “work hard, play hard” mentality which is really code for “we expect you to treat your job like it’s the most important thing in your life”.

All said, some good insights in the piece about the value or lack thereof in hiring based on prestige. But I really can’t get a read on their stance re: working long hours.

If the extra mile means 100 hour work weeks then I'd say they are being pretty reasonable. I'll hustle at 2.5x my paid hours if you make it worth my while, otherwise it just sounds stupid.

What's the value proposition here for the employee? Go the extra mile, and get absolutely zero benefit, except for slightly smaller odds that your employer will sever their relationship with you?

Maybe Ivy Leaguers are more used to actual partnerships and not exploitative labor relationships.

This person thinks that her sweatshop sales position was a "performance" position for smart people. Really, it was a performance position for social people who could and would stomach abusive hours:pay ratio in a high risk startup.

Beer Taste, Beer Budget, Champagne Label, and a Deluded CEO to the detriment of everyone

"Unlimited commissions" is the type of thing one tends to see advertised on craigslist job offers and is generally code for "no salary of which to speak". It is telling that she thinks that this pay structure was attractive and a brag.

"no salary to speak of" would be the expression.

I thought this version was quaint.

"Please don’t even get me started on the college grads who brought their parents with them to the interview, or, worse, had their folks follow up with me. I wish I was kidding."

What happens when a candidate shows up with their parents? Is it a 15 minute and show them the door, or do you assume you are being recorded and tread carefully?

I've interviewed hundreds of college students and recent grads and have never had this happen or even thought of it as a possibility. I can't imagine how I'd respond as it feels so far out of norms I'd expect.

Same. I didn’t bring my parents to my interview for a job at the movie theater when I was 16 years old and I had very involved parents. I guess maybe some kids are just different these days but I still can’t imagine it.

Knew of a guy who brought his girlfriend to work with him. Not to do any work, but to massage his shoulders while he sat at the desk.

Happened before I was hired, but the fact that I heard the same story from the owner and an employee suggests that it wasn't made up.

Why would you waste 15 min or care about being recorded? I would show them the door immediately and move on with other tasks.

It haopened to me once. It was more like a significant other situation. (Actually looked like overprotective guy).

I asked the guy to please wait outside and adviced the candidate to take job interviews by herself.

Note that this isn't (primarily) about tech. The author is writing about her experiences hiring for a "translation and language services company".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransPerfect

As of 2012, TransPerfect is "the largest privately owned language services provider, with offices in over 100 cities worldwide" and more than 7,500 employees.

Trigger warning: I'm going to use the phrase "Harvard Law School" multiple times in this rant about my brothers.

My older lawyer brother (OLBro) will tell you one of two things within the first paragraph of family-get-togethers: how much his currently hourly rate bills at; or, something about "Harvard Law School," perhaps that "he attended." Just an absolute pompous asshat — bulldog, as per usual.

My younger lawyer brother (YLBro) talks about all the good things he's done with his wife/family, how a recent action he took helped countless such-and-such... and it's always a rewarding pleasure to see him at gatherings.

----

So this one particular Thanksgiving, OLBro and YLBro are heatedly "discussing" some controversial court action - while The Rest of Us eat on listening, bemused; we all know that OLBro(Harvard Law School alumni) is WRONG, and he is just "adding rope" to his own legal misunderstanding/lie/POV.

OLBro (clearly in-the-wrong): "So, YLBro... which law school did you attend?!"

YLBro (absolutely correct): "UT La..."

OLBro (louder voice; we're eating family holiday dinner): "So NOT HARVARD, then?!"

Then I laughed in his face, and The Rest of Us all chuckled and changed subject.

ThatHappened.gif

Reminds me of an interview I sat in on in Cambridge a few years back.

Manager: "So, why should we hire you?"

Guy: "I have a Masters in CS from [University next door]"

Manager: "You and everyone else in this town. So, why should we hire you?"

Well, that shows how much of an over supply of labor there is.

Manager: We like you, but unfortunately you are underqualified for the position.

Job applicant: Underqualified? But I have a Master's degree!

Manager: Yes, but all of our other baristas have Ph.D.'s.

At this point in my career, "rock star" is a red flag phrase when used unironically by employers.

At least because of "The Rockstar Programming Language", "Rockstar Programmer" and "Rockstar Developer" isn't a thing everywhere anymore.

"rockstar", "we work hard, we play harder", "hybrid", "works well under pressure"...job ads are choc full of anti-human bullshit.

Assuming every grad of a university will be the same is going to lead to a lot of false positives. If you're hiring for a huge company then maybe generalizing will be useful but if you're looking for one person - you should probably evaluate each candidate on their merits.

So, I would frame this as: 'The case for hiring people from any school - or no school at all'.

Crazy stuff. May be good psychotherapist could untie, what is this about.

I read this to understand, what really want employer, so I will learn, earn right habits, etc, but I cannot figure out.

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