Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

The one piece of data that having a college degree communicates is that the person with it did something they didn't have to do, it took longer than a few months, and it involved a wide variety of tasks. As such its a useful way to prove you can do something that takes a long time to do.

I agree however that there are people who haven't chosen to do that who have shown that ability in other ways. And there are people who have neither a college degree nor any long term project in their history which often indicates they are unwilling to put up with any inconvenience.

But the message that there is no silver bullet that will make sure all of your employees are "great" is true. If you assume that credentials are that bullet you will eventually get populated with a bunch of highly credentialed and ineffective bozos who will drive out the good people and leave behind an empty husk of a work force.

View on HN

In a similar vein.

GED recipients have been less successful than originally anticipated. Social scientists were surprised because these are people who are intelligent enough to pass the curriculum but they weren't achieving greater success than other dropouts. In trying to understand the gap, what they focused in on is that life success isn't just intelligence, its soft skills like stick-to-it-iveness, willpower, concentration, etc. The GED recipients were talented but unfocused. And the same habits that kept people on track to graduate were the habits that led to life success.

How is that relevant? It's relevant in that college signals more than conformity. It signals soft skills that matter. A willingness to slog through sometime tedious, un-exciting work. Which is what companies need sometimes.

So while I'm kind sympathetic to the argument, its a bit too black/white IMO.

> In trying to understand the gap, what they focused in on is that life success isn't just intelligence, its soft skills like stick-to-it-iveness, willpower, concentration, etc.

Do you have more information about these studies? I have always assumed that to be true. When you look at successful people, it is the indicator that stands out most often. I'd love to look at the formal research.

here are a couple papers.

http://ftp.iza.org/dp6580.pdf

http://www.economics.uci.edu/files/economics/docs/micro/f07/...

Things I use that signal the same thing that a college degree (in any subject) does: Military service, long-term contributions to an open source project (even if it's their own and no one uses it), long-term personal projects (such as restoring a car, being in a band, participating in a gaming group) and being employed at a single company for 3+ years. None of these things are easy and rosy the whole time, there's conflict, potential disillusionment, the luster wears off of them and they require real work to accomplish (you can't just kinda half-ass them). For younger developers (sub-25), a college degree (even an associates) of some sort is the most clear on paper before you've had a talk with them. However, you can easily find out if there's anything like that by asking them what they do for fun and leading into things not directly related to their potential position (I typically lead with an example of how I like to work on cars, so I buy a classic car in bad shape and fix it up over 3-4 years, sell it off, then repeat).

> The one piece of data that having a college degree communicates is that the person with it did something they didn't have to do, it took longer than a few months, and it involved a wide variety of tasks. As such its a useful way to prove you can do something that takes a long time to do.

As long as we accept that it is one way of proving you can do something that takes a long time to do. I'm not sure that's what the author was saying when he talked about the signaling of a college degree though. It's more a matter of the acceptance of the dogma of the degree, not the signal that the application can commit to long term projects.

More directly, it's fine to look at an applicant who has a college degree and say, "this person was willing to put in the time and effort to get a college degree", so long as you're willing to evaluate other long term commitments with a similar measure. For example, if I see that a developer has a Github profile containing a handful of active libraries with commit activity dating back a year or more, I'm similarly impressed.

Both Github profiles and college degrees can be gamed. Many people cheat in exams, copy assignments, and send doubles along to aptitude tests. They clone the base code for their Github projects from somewhere else, only dressing it up with infrastructural differences like they would a college programming assignment.

Those who didn't put in the time for either a degree or Github history will often lie on their CV about them. An interviewer will often not check up when employing someone so they'll have something against the new hire later on if they want to get rid of them quickly.

Developers who don't do college but genuinely can code projects don't apply for jobs anyway, they apply for funds then employ people.

I believe this is the same thinking the author of the article is rallying against.

So a candidate is more qualified because they ran a (potentially) meaningless gauntlet of bureaucracy, debt, and busywork?

I know that's not quite what you're saying. As I stated below - the issue is the gatekeepers. Large companies are ignoring incredibly talented individuals - simply because their HR departments are inept - or their hiring prerequisites don't allow anyone without a degree.

That said - startups can use this to their advantage. Review code samples, ask REAL questions, get to know your hires.

I love finding the savant coder, the incredibly motivated sales rep, etc - and using them to build our company - and looking at their past projects, samples, experience to make a hiring decision.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com