Is law a good example? My understanding is if you didn’t go to a top 14 school (whoever came up with that arbitrary number) it basically forecloses on the best opportunities.
A similar pattern exists in tech startup hiring practices and which ones attract VC funding. Not unusual to see funded startups with founders who have no work experience but Stanford degrees. Before my time at The Atlantic, I had a couple recruiters for no-name startups tell me I didn't have a prestigious enough background to be hired. There is a highly-visible class hierarchy in tech that many people in the industry seem unaware of. Perhaps this is because base salaries are high-enough that the middle class is just happy to be included at all.
100%. I'm not sure if this was always the case or if it was a slow result of tech becoming overrun by finance, but it's a very motivating thing for me. I started a company for a lot of reasons, and this isn't the top one, but I sure would love to show success without playing the class-signalling games that the valley seems overrun with.
On the other hand, I'm posting my content post here in part because I know the HN candidate pool is about a trillion times better than I'll get anywhere else. So perhaps I've already lost that battle.
After 30+ years in the field..it definately wasn't always the case. All the leet code and take home stuff is a pretty new thing. Can't say I've seen it result in higher quality teams. Seems mostly a way to rank recent grads that are working from memory and not experience?
Well, companies aren’t looking for someone who grinds leetcode problems. They’re looking for the people who can pass their hiring bar without needing to do that sort of practice in the first place.
In my more cynical moments I think a lot of the tech hiring process is just a complex IQ test dressed up as a skill test to work around the fact that IQ tests are illegal.
And there’s only so many great engineers around. More companies fighting over the same candidates doesn’t result in a lot of high quality teams.
>>Well, companies aren’t looking for someone who grinds leetcode problems. They’re looking for the people who can pass their hiring bar without needing to do that sort of practice in the first place.
Thats basically what I was saying. Recent grads don't (typically) have a lot of work experience to look at. So they're looking for the ones that learned/remember the most from their education.
>>In my more cynical moments I think a lot of the tech hiring process is just a complex IQ test dressed up as a skill test to work around the fact that IQ tests are illegal.
Heh - I never thought of that...
>> And there’s only so many great engineers around. More companies fighting over the same candidates doesn’t result in a lot of high quality teams.
True - where I am now we have an awesome team ... some really great talent but oddly, this is one of the places we don't do leet code/take home crap. Its mostly talking about how you solved real problems...IBM on the other hand, was a total cluster f*ck. Anyway, just what I've encountered running around Wall St. and Silicon Valley - your mileage may vary :-)
That sucks. It can definitely be an uphill battle if you didn’t go to an “elite” school or have a non traditional career path. That said, I think tech gives many more chances than law. Bigger companies discriminate far less (also not perfect) and once you have that on your resume it’s a strong social signal moving forward.
They might ask for a writing sample, but because filings are public anyway, it's easier to share work you've done before. You could always change or redact the names on ones that aren't public and still get the substance of the candidates work.
