Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdelsman | Hacker News Reader

It's annoying that even if you have a degree in Theoretical Linguistics or something absurd like that, you can still get a software/hardware engineering job at Google. Google really need to think harder about their approach to hiring if they want to remain a powerhouse. What happens when, in the near future, the computer science graduating pool (i.e. the "bubble") becomes flooded with losers who don't know their ass from their elbow when it comes to building a great product for the web or anything else?

View on HN

I agree with your point but I don't know if theoretical linguistics is really such an absurd degree to show programming aptitude. It's quite an analytical subject and the structures of natural languages do have some parallels with the structures of programming languages, plus of course natural language processing is a big area of computational research.

When I was choosing a degree I often heard that people with Classics degrees found it easy to get recruited as programmers. I have no idea how true that is but my former boss took that route. I dropped out of my CS degree and often wish I'd studied something language-related instead.

(I didn't really know what CS was before I started studying it - what I really wanted was to learn to take my programming to the next level of turning little 100-line programs into real projects, which I know now is almost unrelated to theoretical CS and really just needed a little more reading and a lot more practice. This was in the days before StackExchange and Github, or I might have worked it out in time to save myself from being yet another CS dropout.)

I'm put in mind of Larry Wall, although I don't know whether he is a "theoretical" linguist.

Also, my father has told me (being more of that generation), and I have read, that many early entrants into the CS field had backgrounds in linguistics.

That said, the described Google policy of degree trumping ability, I find disappointing.

However, from a point of analysis, it's a simple filter, and after applying it, a "premier" venue like Google will still have a significant oversupply of highly qualified candidates.

But... it puts me in mind of Google's reputation for support: You only get a response if you're one of "the important people".

Don't count on your "looks", Google; they don't last forever.

Theoretical linguistics was an example.

I agree mostly. Hard to swallow that you are being ruled out because you don't (by choice) have a qualification that doesn't really determine aptitude. Blank's recent post comes to mind: http://steveblank.com/2012/07/30/lying-on-your-resume/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com