There's a certain cultural or community hypocrisy in these discussions. Not at the level of individuals necessarily, but it seems in reading through HN and other sites, there's two opposite messages I see:
The first is "degree doesn't matter! You need to go out and build something, and you don't need a degree to do it!"
The other is "we won't hire anyone except those with X STEM degree, possibly even not anyone unless they have a master's degree or higher."
As someone considering a career change (with an advanced degree) it's maddening. The message seems to be that if you don't have a core STEM degree, or haven't started a self-sustaining mega-profitable business, you have no ability to do anything.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than that societal perceptions of skill and ability seem seriously pathological.
I don't think everyone needs an undergrad degree, but it sure doesn't hurt. But by the same token, a degree isn't everything, and I think people need to take this position seriously if they're going to take it.
I've worked with lots of people from different backgrounds, including individuals from elite schools (hell, I guess I'm married to one), and what frustrates me isn't the wealth (although there is always that story lurking in the background among those I know--they're never wealthy themselves, but they tell stories of legacy students everywhere).
What frustrates me is the assumption that because an elite school is so selective, the inherent abilities of someone admitted there are that much greater than someone who was not. In my experience, as the admission selectivity is raised, the signals being paid attention to are that much more random, for lack of a way of putting it.
It's kind of like Japanese fruit. Is it good? Sure, but is it best? Does that perfectly round melon mean that it's better than, say, that wonderful rare heirloom melon you bought from a farmer at that farmer's market, that was a little blemished on one side?
You have to have the stars align in just the right way to have the right application, plus a bit of luck. Does that mean that person isn't talented? Definitely not--they almost certainly are.
The thing that's much more pernicious, to me, is the assumption that that person is necessarily any different from someone who, say, went to a state school and graduated with top honors.
The most talented people I've worked with were not necessarily from elite private schools; the latter were talented, but not any more so than many of the other people I've met and respected.
But I do think that they were often given the benefit of the doubt, or kind of revered or something, based on their degree, rather than what they had accomplished. It's as if the person from the state school had to work harder to gain the same respect, even though their actual accomplishments said otherwise.
Just the other day, there was a job posting on HN for a new health care startup.
It pissed me off, frankly, because the ad was not framed in terms of actual accomplishments or credentials or skills, but in terms of whether or not you attended an elite school. As in it literally stated that they were looking for people from "top 10 schools" or some such thing.
They made it abundantly clear they did not care about someone's actual abilities or skills, only what their pedigree was.
What makes me so angry is that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point. This article is a natural extension of that process.
I loathe recent political trends in the US, but I'm not surprised at all to see the populism that's arisen. Society is dripping with nepotism of various forms.
The first is "degree doesn't matter! You need to go out and build something, and you don't need a degree to do it!"
The other is "we won't hire anyone except those with X STEM degree, possibly even not anyone unless they have a master's degree or higher."
As someone considering a career change (with an advanced degree) it's maddening. The message seems to be that if you don't have a core STEM degree, or haven't started a self-sustaining mega-profitable business, you have no ability to do anything.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than that societal perceptions of skill and ability seem seriously pathological.
I don't think everyone needs an undergrad degree, but it sure doesn't hurt. But by the same token, a degree isn't everything, and I think people need to take this position seriously if they're going to take it.