A Northwest Pipeline to Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

A Northwest Pipeline to Silicon Valley

nytimes.com

64 pointsjonburs63 comments

It's funny, because it seems to me that a lot of the talent coming out of UW CSE isn't going to make it into the valley in any meaningful way.

UW CSE is still entirely focused on grades. There's literally no way to include anything but grades in your admission application -- not even recommendation letters. I've talked to some of the admissions faculty, and their argument is that it's unfair to people who are totally new to computer science to deny them on the basis of a lack of prior experience. I totally disagree with this, however -- you're not going to get into a music or acting program without any prior experience, why should you get into a CS program?

From what I've seen, a lot of UW graduates end up getting recruited into a big company (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, etc). It's by all means a great program, but it seems like they're never going to have someone they can point to as a success like, for example, Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. I think that's the reason why their reputation is a lot more quiet.

FWIW, my co-founder and I have both been rejected from UW CSE (me with an overall 3.8 GPA and several conference papers published as first author while I was still in high school).

Lol, this is why I laughed to myself when reading this article.

There are tons, I mean tons, of great startups coming out of UW, but they are not coming from the CSE program. They are coming from math, physics, life sciences, and even the entrepreneurship program at the Foster b-school. All the kids who I've met making waves in the Seattle startup scene are informally trained hackers. Oh and by the way, did I mention they are all young and under 23-24, and not PhD/Master's students?

This article is all good for the image of the school and Seattle, but it fails to grasp the real movement of the scene. The movers and shakers, the ones at the crest of a huge potential tsunami in Seattle, are the young people who never got the silver spoon of CS programs, and thus will never be lured away to cushy $80k jobs as entry-level coder at Amazon.

I think you're right about UW CSE, but I'd like to point out similar observations on a different axis.

I know lots of software people in and around Seattle, and I've worked at a couple startups here. A few are "informally trained hackers", but most are formally trained -- only elsewhere (mostly Stanford, or east coast schools you've heard of).

While everyone knows that UW has a good CS department, I don't think I know a single person who went there. I actually know more programmers who went to Whitman (one) than UW.

I don't know where they're going: maybe they leave town, or maybe they're getting hired by big companies, or maybe I'm just hanging out in the wrong circles (quite possible).

It used to be that most UW CSE grads went down to Intel, these days many are off to Google; I'm sure some of them even make their way to Microsoft, but its not a large program so its not like you would see many around outside some otherwise obvious places.

Coolness about Whitman. Walla Walla doesn't get enough love.

Most everyone I know from the CSE program who've graduated are now working for Facebook. They seem to be a major recruiter from there. They even opened a Seattle office fairly recently.

> It's funny, because it seems to me that a lot of the talent coming out of UW CSE isn't going to make it into the valley in any meaningful way.

This, exactly, has been my sentiment since starting at UW. There are plenty of capable, intelligent people who seem to have never written code prior to starting on the CS track. On the whole, the undergraduate program seems to have a very myopic focus. CS is not Biochemistry or Particle Physics - the equipment requirement is $50 for a used Ti-83 to learn BASIC on and catch the bug.

> but it seems like they're never going to have someone they can point to as a success like, for example, Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. I think that's the reason why their reputation is a lot more quiet.

I think the canonical success is Jeff Dean...who went there for graduate school and was immensely successful beforehand. For what it's worth, Harvard doesn't have too many success stories either. Both Gates and Zuckerberg dropped out, and it's a school with a reputation for fostering careers more than entrepreneurship. In many ways, it's more similar to UW than UW is to Stanford.

On that note, I've always been impressed by how Stanford instructors assume that their students will be founding companies in the future.

It's very different from two of the other top 5 schools I've gone to, where you're told that if you succeed, one day you'll be working at Microsoft (in the olden days, not much anymore) or Facebook or some other hot uppercomer. It's somewhat demoralizing when you're taught how to write reports to upper management, always assuming that you want to be an employee (this was from a graduate program).

Right there with you- as a current UW student who briefly considered CSE I decided against it because the mentality (the vibe, even) of the department clashed against my startup aspirations and the learning mindset necessary for creating a startup.

I was instead drawn to the Informatics program, which is less technical but provides a much better environment for entrepreneurship: we trade project management, information organization, and a web design/development focus for computer science theory and engineering.

A tragic design/planning flaw of UW is that the engineering departments are on the opposite side of campus (~8 minute walk) from the business school. Collaboration is isolated and leaves little serendipitous idea exchanges that could very well develop into potent startups. I can only imagine how things might be different if UW had made the two neighbors...

Wait.

I'm confused reading the admission comments. It seems you get admitted to UW undergrad, and then after two years you apply to the CSE thing. Are you considered undeclared until then? Is there any kind of test or is it entirely based on grades in the initial weeder classes?

That seems like kind of a big risk to people who want to study a specific subject and might not get admitted to it. The'd just have to switch career ambitions or start over at another college with about a one year delay for transferring.

Most state schools I see admit you to a specific major before you matriculate. Then you can change fairly flexibly within your department if you have the right classes and good grades. Elite schools usually admit undeclared students and then have them choose an area of study after a year with no further admission criteria.

Are the UW faculty trying to build an elite program inside a non-elite university? That's an interesting idea, but I don't think I'd want to be the guinea pig who has to suffer for it.

First, UW is already mostly an elite university; its very hard to get in these days without the means to also getting into other elite universities like Stanford or UCB.

Second, if all you want to do is make it into UW CSE, it is a risk. I remember the anxiety I went through as an undergrad waiting to here about whether I was excepted into the program or not. I got in, but it was by no means certain (I had 2.9/3.2/3.8 grades for physics, mostly do to me being slow to adjust to high-pressure weed out classes).

I believe most public state schools are like this, they might have a few programs that are very high-quality compared to others, and therefore have to limit supply even after they have accepted students into the general population.

> First, UW is already mostly an elite university

UW had a ~58% admit rate in 2011, MIT's was 9.6%, Harvard's was 6.2%, and Stanford was 7.1%. To say "it's very hard to get in these days without the means to also getting into other elite universities" is patently false.

Admit rates for private schools are lower since they generally take from a national pool, and the schools are quite popular (lots of noise applications with no chance of getting in). In comparison, UCB has a 21% admit rate from a large state of California and lots of other research schools in competition (UCSD, UCLA, UCD...). UW is only one of two research state schools in Washington, the other being WSU way across the state. Admission is incredibly convoluted: you chance of getting in from the Seattle area is much lower than Eastern Washington, and out of state students have a higher chance than in state (they pay more tuition). This means there are cases (personally known of) where a student is rejected from UW and is accepted into UCB and Stanford (though they have to pay a lot more tuition accordingly).

I am very aware of how the process works and how one's chances are based on holistic factors. Regardless, I spent the last year at UW and to say it's an elite school one would need to ignore large swaths of those who attend. I have had the fortune to speak with tens of former and current Stanford attendees while at Google this summer - overwhelmingly their ability to carry on an interesting conversation, make nuanced insights into diverse topics, and otherwise convey the impression that they are learned individuals far exceeds that of your typical UW student. That is not to say that they don't exist - I could say the same for a handful of UW students - merely that their number is far smaller, and that that greatly impacts the culture.

If you want empirical data, a student in the 25th percentile at MIT has a higher SAT score than someone in the 75th at UW. The SAT has been shown to be a fairly reliable indicator of earning potential.

[1] Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College, Dale & Krueger

UW is still a local state school; you shouldn't expect that students come in with the level of prep as say MIT or Stanford. Its elitness is local and comes mainly from the challenge of getting in, which, for those that bother to try (because they are in the Seattle area), is painful enough! UW also tended to weed students out rather early while I was there; 50% of my friends from the incoming class were gone by the time I hit my sophmore year.

Of course, UW is not as exclusive as UW CSE, but to suggest UW itself is just a so so University is insulting to me.

> UW is not as exclusive as UW CSE, but to suggest UW itself is just a so so University is insulting to me.

I'm sorry you feel that way, I am merely sharing my experiences and impressions of the school, and "so so" is certainly how I would describe it. I had the fortune of attending a fairly elite international school abroad and a highly ranked public high school in Massachusetts. In both places the caliber of student was high, and I was rather disappointed to find university less so. I have my biases, as you yours, but I do believe my argument has some merit.

That said, to call a school "elite" because it is difficult for locals to get in is both disingenuous and inconsistent with your prior statement that it is nearly as competitive as its more widely known and more prestigious competitors. UW continues to care increasingly less about its undergraduate population and view them as a funding source for research as much as valuable contributors to the campus community. Tuition hikes are putting it closer and closer to the cost of attending a private university at the same time class sizes are larger than ever and making it so most fresher could go an entire year without so much as meeting a professor one-on-one.

What most boggles me however, is that Seattleites remain fiercely devoted to the school. In Massachusetts (and New England in general) it's rare to find ten people in a room having gone to the same university, whereas in Seattle it seems the rare occasion for that not to be the case. Is it the lack of viable alternatives for the highly capable wanting to stay close to home?

For undergraduate, UW is primarily a school for work class locals; we were not rich enough to go to nice prep schools and then afford the tuition of a nice Ivy league school. But then Seattle is also a fairly sophisticated upper-middle class city, so why not make the school in your backyard very good? That tuition is rising sucks; I paid $800 a quarter when I started in '93, and could get by mostly paying my own way; that is obviously no longer possible. But it is still relatively affordable if you live at home as well as a first-class research institution, Seattlites still want to send their kids there while UW is getting increased attention from China/India/the rest of asia (UW always did actually, 90% of the international students hail from somewhere in Asia). As a working class school, UW is definitely elite, but compared to other much elite schools for the elite then ya, UW is not Stanford.

I rarely interact with other people from UW CSE, this is the case even in Seattle as its just not a very big program. However, I do know a couple of UW CSE graduates where I work today (Beijing China).

"In both places the caliber of student was high, and I was rather disappointed to find university less so."

I have to say that my experience in a similar situation (many years ago) was similar and I agree.

But in your other comment where you said this:

"tens of former and current Stanford attendees while at Google"

You are taking a group of "Stanford attendees" who ended up with jobs at google. So I'm wondering to what extent that group is representative of Stanford attendees and not google's hiring practices. Was there a difference that you could tell with those working at google who didn't go to Stanford?

> But in your other comment where you said this: > "tens of former and current Stanford attendees while at Google"

I stated that rather poorly. I am interning at Google in Mountain View for the Summer, but not all of the Stanford attendees I have met and spoken with at length are working there, though most at Google are certainly bright.

Regardless of whether they are working at Google, Facebook, hacking away in a SOMA loft, or hunkered down in their parents' garage all of them have been highly intelligent and fun to be around. Whether that's more representative of who I choose to befriend with than the university's admission practices is another question altogether ;)

This is a slightly complicated topic. It comes down to a substantial difference between elite state institutions and elite privates, undergraduate and graduate programs, and engineering/cs vs general majors.

Elite private universities (stanford, harvard) tend to have very small undergraduate populations and draw from a national or international pool of applicants. This of course makes them highly selective, as spots are scarce and the applicant pool is large. Public universities (Berkeley, UW) have very large undergraduate student bodies (often 5 times the size of a small private) and require a much larger portion of in-state students. More slots, smaller applicant pool means a much higher admission rate and generally lower numbers (SATs and so forth). Like another poster mentioned, 25%ile at MIT > 75% at UW, but the top 25% of the class at UW is larger than the entire undergrad population at MIT. The difference in nature of undergraduate admissions makes the averaging kind of meaningless.

At the graduate level, elite private and public universities tend to admit roughly similar numbers of students. And not surprisingly, admission rates are much more comparable. Elite publics, for some reason, seem to do particularly well at the grad level in engineering and computer science (aside from Cornell, the ivies don't really show up much on the top 10 lists, while Berkeley, Illinois, Michigan, Texas, and so forth are highly ranked - by the same magazine (US News) that doesn't put a single public into the top 20 at the undergrad level).

Lastly, there is the question of the degree itself. At top publics, engineering often requires a second admissions process - you get into Berkeley or UW, and then you have to keep your grades high enough to gain admission to the engineering or CS major. You can gain admission directly to the major from high school, but that's tougher. And the process of getting the degree itself is daunting - I don't know much about UW, but the coursework in CS at Berkeley is extremely rigorous (and I have no reason to think it wouldn't be at UW as well). As with UW, Berkeley does have a much larger undergraduate population. It's less selective because of that (and the in-state quota), but on the way out, we're talking about students in the top quarter of the class, from a major that is extremely difficult to enter and complete.

All in all, I'm not surprised that people would feel that the undergrads who make it out of CS from UW are among the top grads that year. The grad level programs are already known to be top 10, so I don't think that even comes up.

North of Washington, across the border, we have 2 big name schools: UBC and SFU. Both schools require prospective students to spend 1 to 2 years (SFU 1-year, UBC 2-years) taking "required courses" (Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, CS courses, and a few GEs) before they can apply to the CS program.

Both UBC and SFU have solid track records (beating UW consistently) when it comes to ACM CS competition:

https://sites.google.com/site/ubcprogrammingteam/history

Yes, gotta start some sort of pride-war between schools no? :)

  taking "required courses" (Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology...

So smart. Many of my best developers came from outside of CS: bus driver, ballet dancer, EE, history, poly sci, mfg, aerospace, etc.

It's the same story with EE at UBC to my knowledge; they also have to spend 1-2 years taking required courses so they're not that far different really.

What is exactly you're trying to point out? :)

There are quite a few universities which use this system. Basically, you get admitted to the school, take some prerequisite classes, then apply to the major. For most majors, just having taken the prerequisites will get you in. UW's CSE program is what's called "highly competitive", i.e. good luck.

And yes, it's quite high risk. After being rejected my co-founder printed out his rejection letter and framed it, dropped out of UW, and took a job as the head of development for a local iPhone shop. Most people either keep trying, or switch to a math major. It's extremely stupid and elitist.

This article focuses more on potential employees graduating from UW, but Seattle is a great place to found a startup. In the Valley, everything is pretty crowded, and if you can find real estate, it's not going to be cheap.

In Seattle, it's a buyers market and you can grab some office space or a hacker house for a lot less.

There are more startup resources in the Valley (accelerators/angels/VCs), but that doesn't mean there is a good amount in the Emerald City. One of them, Madrona Venture Group (http://www.madrona.com/), just raised $300M to be invested in startups. There are also a few hacker spaces popping up, such as Surf Incubator (http://www.surfincubator.com).

If you want a good place to start your company with less competition and more rain, move to Seattle.

I think its a great place to found a startup. I graduated three weeks ago from the U, and chose to stay up in Seattle to launch http://ziibra.com

The tech community here is great, and the university is moving towards supporting entre x CS... especially through its CS Entrepreneurship courses.

There's definitely work to do, but the city and the university are moving in the right direction.

> Although Stanford is considered the Hogwarts of techdom, U.W. has quietly established itself as the other West Coast nexus of the information economy.

Odd line given that Berkeley is also on the West Coast and is ranked as high as Stanford.

> Odd line given that Berkeley is also on the West Coast and is ranked as high as Stanford.

This is a NYT Technology article, don't expect anything to make sense.

Yep. These claims are cheap and plentiful, no need to pay much attention to them.

Is it still the case that you need straight As in math and physics to get into CS at UW? It's insane that they crank out psych and english majors by the thousands but keep a lid on CS.

I went to UW last year and yes, that's still the case, and it's incredibly unfortunate. There are quite a few students who are wickedly talented and very gifted engineers that have been turned down from the program because they were bored by the mandatory introductory courses or were building products instead of slaving away on Physics problem sets. Year after year they turn out graduates who will sidle into the ranks of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon and toil away as a well-compensated cog.

It's both a disappointing waste of talent and bad for the Seattle startup community.

I have eight years of experience, both of my last two jobs were six-figures, and I've been rejected from UW CS thrice. That was before I stopped worrying about it and focused on my career instead though :) but yeah, it's insanely difficult to get in.

Yep, I know multiple people who have gone elsewhere in the state to less competitive programs for the simple fact that UW CSE is so arbitrarily difficult in its admission process. The byproduct is schools like WSU, WWU and others getting top talent who just don't want to put up with bullshit.

They were pretty lenient back in the day for out-of-state students. I got an offer without particularly outstanding grades.

I'm sure you mean getting into UW and not getting into UW CSE. UWCSE wouldn't care if you were in/out state, and you would apply in your Sophmore year according to marks you got in your first two years.

At least back in 94, I got in with some low marks (2.9 in Physis 121!), but I was really sweating it. Its a very competitive department, while increasing its size would have quality implications.

Sorry Pacific Northwest: the NYT Technology section found you. Expect some really weird and disconnected articles about how you have pull in "the IT sector" or "big data" or whatever analysts from obscure hedge funds think is the next thing. Hopefully we can stem the damage before they notice Austin or Boston.

I'm a little baffled why the attention is coming now. The Seattle area has been home to Microsoft and Amazon for ages, as well as Valve, Nintendo of America, and many others. Not to mention the sizeable facebook and google campuses which hardly sprouted up over night (google has had a big presence in Seattle for about a decade). On top of that there is also digipen which has been one of the few well regarded trade schools for video game design and engineering in the entire country. And, of course, there is UW.

My working assumption is that the tech press is so massively insular it has a lot of difficulty seeing beyond the silicon valley / NYC scene.

The article is timely. A couple of additional data points:

UW CS had a huge increase in admissions (and yield) for the Ph.D. program this year. IIRC they mentioned the incoming class size is almost twice what they had last year.

Aided by a recent budget increase, the department also hired a massive number of new faculty this year.

Glad that Seattle is getting noticed. Wish more Seattle people would stay in Seattle rather than think they need to relocate to SV. Just my opinion.

Hank was a co-founder of the first startup I worked at after leaving Microsoft. Great guy, super smart, super friendly.

>even if mist and dark skies envelop the scenery for much of the year.

Obviously written by someone who doesn't live in Seattle. Seattle is a beautiful city in a very beautiful location. Today it's sunny, 70 degrees, with spectacular views of the lakes, trees, and snow-capped Olympic mountains.

It is, however, undeniably overcast-prone and short-dayed in winter.

I think it’s worth it, but it is a legitimate problem for some people.

To fend off uninformed remarks elsewhere in the comments, here’s Wikipedia on the climate of Seattle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle#Climate

And to fend off uninformed remarks about seasonal affective disorder, which is real but doesn’t account for every instance of feeling bad in winter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder

I like being outside on nice days. On rainy days I enjoy coffee and coding. My winter productivity in Seattle is probably higher than it would be in Palo Alto.

An excellent reference for climate data:

http://weatherspark.com/averages/29735/Seattle-Washington-Un...

The short days in winter are a drag, but are made up for by correspondingly long days in summer.

I moved up to the Portland area a couple years ago from California, and I have considered going to U. of Washington for CS. I love the school, the campus is just beautiful and the city is really cool. But since moving up here, my productivity has taken a serious hit.

From the months of October well into June, I have a constant struggle to stay motivated with such dreary weather. I know Portland isn't Seattle, but I visit Seattle often and it's almost as "bad" as Portland when it comes to the weather. Many of my friends here don't mind the weather and actually love the rain. As someone that needs sunlight, I can't stay up here another year, I will be moving back down to the bay area this upcoming fall. It really is a shame because I do love Portland and Seattle very much.

If only the Northwest had just a little bit more sunlight, I would never consider moving down. But those few months in the Winter/Spring really take a toll on me.

I wonder how much of that may be a vitamin D deficiency or a kind of SAD? Too late for you to experiment with melatonin, high lux lights, or vitamin D, I guess.

I actually did take Vitamin D and 5-HTP for quite sometime (still take 5-HTP), and it did help me a little bit. My problem was the fact that every time I go outside to head to work/school, it's either raining, cloudy, foggy, or a combination of the three. And I used to love rain and fog when I lived in California, but it didn't last for 6+ months at a time.

Waking up in the morning during the winter has been the worst part. I have always been an early riser, but when I just moved here, for about a year I could barely get up at 9am.

I've had a hard time getting up in the morning all my life, and it was worse in the winters after moving to Portland. I ended up getting an earlier version of this gadget (http://www.amazon.com/Philips-goLITE-BLU-Therapy-Device/dp/B...), and found that a few minutes of blue-frequency light every morning turned me into a natural early riser. (I still don't like mornings, but I naturally wake up and get out of bed at the same time every day)

Your circadian rhythm is especially susceptible to the blue end of the spectrum so instead of a 10,000 watt sun lamp you can just use one of these (or perhaps a home-brewed equivalent with the right LEDs) to let your body know that, if you were in a better lattitude, the sun would be shining right now.

I think seattle gets more sun breaks then portland thanks to the rain shadow of the olympics and areas like Wenatchee (no tech jobs) and the tri cities (tech jobs at PNNL or working on the nuclear waste cleanup at hanford) get much more sun and can be nice for weekend trips. Learning to ski is also a great way to enjoy the winters.

Seattle has better weather than Portland: the marine winds blow the clouds out of the way every now and then, whereas in Portland it feels like it can be overcast for months.

Summer is great in both cities.

It's now early July. We can count all of the cloudless days this year so far on one hand.

Seattle averages about 200 mostly cloudy to overcast days per year, and about 90 that are partly cloudy. You're right, it's amazingly beautiful up here, but it's also not sunny most of the time. Even with the clouds, I'll take living up here over being back in the Bay Area any time.

It doesn't sound that you yourself have lived in Seattle for very long. The 2-3 nice months in summer are all you get before the continuously gloomy rest of the year. Check out the Bay Area sometimes to get a serious weather-culture-shock.

I've lived here for 33 years now.

But this is the best it's going to get, and we only have a few more weeks of it.

It is beautiful to me, but there are quite a lot of days with dark skies which does make it a little depressing.

To follow up, I live about in the middle of the metropolitan area. I regularly see in my neighborhood deer, coyotes, deer, eagles, herons, quail, mountain beaver, raccoons, squirrels, hawks, snakes, lizards, ducks, geese, mice, etc. How many cities can boast that? :-)

Los Angeles, believe it or not. Nearly all of those (minus beavers and eagles), regularly. Helps that I live at the base of the hills, I suppose, but that's city city city to the north and south.

Its also surrounded by the two incredible cities of Vancouver and Portland (a few hours drive to either). Also, the region is home to some of the best beers in the world (if you're a fan of hoppy beer).

It's also wonderful for waterskiing. We used to go out 3 days a week. With a drysuit you can ski all year. It's fun skiing along side the 520 bridge while the commuters rot in traffic :-)

And yes, Seattle traffic is terrible. It's one downside.

I personally enjoy the rainy days. They're quiet and peaceful, and make the air smell good. There's nothing quite like a nice rainy day when you're drinking coffee and working on your computer, in a plaid flannel shirt.

His description of Seattle is accurate. -lifetime PacNw'er

Lived there for 5 years before moving to SF last year. Love Seattle and summers are beautiful. But even I'll admit that that line isn't far off from the truth :).

Laying on a hammock across the Puget Sound from Seattle typing this on an iPad. 75 degrees outside. Beautiful. It's not the norm, but it makes it that much more enjoyable when we get it. In fact, we get to experience all four seasons, and I tend to look forward to each as they arrive. I can't speak directly to the start-up environment, but it is a great place to live. The family manufacturing business I work at has been around for 30 years. As always, thre are things that could been done to improve the small-business climate.

> In fact, we get to experience all four seasons

I'd say three seasons; there isn't really a proper winter. The average high temp in December (the coldest month) is 45 degrees...

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