At Google, some (not all) positions still have educational requirements, and I’m not sure how they go “school blind” since most new grad resumes contain tons of school identifying information: college name, degree, gpa, relevant class list, publications. When S went through the process, he was recruited from his LinkedIn profile that was loaded with college identifying info, and all the reviewers knew where was attending college.
In any case, attending a “prestigious” university is, net-net, probably more beneficial than detrimental. In other words - it couldn’t hurt
Sure, but how do you define prestigious in CS? Outside of the obvious 4 or 5 ones (UCB, MIT Stanford, CMU, U Illinois say), attending a prestigious college in silicon valley high tech would mean Purdue or Michigan or USC over any of the Claremont colleges.
As a programmer, no, prestige doesn’t matter. Most employers hire locally or regionally because it’s cost effective for entry level jobs. Geography matters more. That’s why you see big tech hub cities like Austin, TX or Columbus, OH building jobs around flagship schools. Even then, most any major city has plenty of tech jobs that recruit from the local university. Speaking from experience, big corporate tech jobs are extremely overrated, and are not for most people. Generally, the hours are long and you have zero job security.
As are tech jobs with startups, tech jobs with banks, tech jobs with fill-in-the-blanks. Anyone who remembers the last four recessions understands that there is zero job security in tech… and which professions do not have long hours???
There are many CS related jobs with a 9-5 workday and a good wage. Actually, many of these are in the more IT related fields although some IT jobs have workers on-call 24x7. Other jobs demand very specific, and sometimes math heavy, expertise, and long hours. Most startups fall into this camp, and depending on the maturity of the start-up, the higher the demands the (much) higher the compensation
My nephew is 30. Just got an offer from a major social media company you all know. $205k + 10% bonus. 30 years old. Studied poli sci at u of Arizona. Worked for a financial firm in Israel last two years. Coming back home.
I know in tech $200k isn’t a lot. Sounds like a lot to me…and for a 30 year old for sure. He does a little coding self taught.
So I’d be on the side that short of the very top/elite schools, it’s likely not a barrier. In this case, even the major isn’t.
He said he had to pass several competency tests to get serious consideration. So that’s most likely the biggest barrier.
There is a difference between a “CS related” job (i.e. working in an IT role supporting large teams with their tech problems) vs. an actual CS job.
Folks in my area love to brag about their kid “snagging” a great CS job… right out of undergrad… which in many cases is actually a job working on a help desk. I am not dissing those jobs-- but helping an HR person figure out why the columns on an excel aren’t lining up correctly, is not the kind of CS folks on CC tend to debate when talking about prestige, Cal Tech, etc.
Actual CS jobs- you aren’t helping your non-technical colleagues change the fonts on their spreadsheets…
Interested in this - my d who is a recent college grad works as a “software engineer”. For this clueless mom - do you consider this a real CS job? She says her work relates to cybersecurity but she has top secret clearance and she says she can’t tell me any more. Lol.
Software engineers are typically doing real CS work. Those doing “tech support” don’t usually have that title. Furthermore, she’s working in cybersecurity which does need a good depth of understanding of various CS concepts.
Based on surveys, working ~40 hours is standard. It’s also been my personal experience working in tech. For example, the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, the average for US was 41.8 hours per week. All non-manager/executive/VP job titles averaged <= 42 hours per week.
In that case she is an example of someone who got into the CS field right out of college without a CS degree but with a degree (double major) in math and physics from a top school.
Just to clarify the misconceptions, there’s no such thing as a “real” tech job. In fact, most CS graduates get jobs in IT, and spend a well-paid career never looking at a math problem. CS/IT and even parts of engineering have a ridiculous amount of overlap with specialties, subspecialties, and micro-specialties across an almost infinite array of industries. Specialties are formed based on what job you get and how much experience you gain with it. Different specialties have different market salaries depending on your skill and demand. That goes equally with IT and CS jobs.
Furthermore, salaries are impossible to compare, because different areas have different costs of living. $100,000 in one place could live affluently, while $100,000 somewhere else is paycheck to paycheck. Most “elite” schools are skewed to east/west coast areas where the cost of living is much higher than the average. The reality is this…a college graduate with no prior experience is not really in a position to negotiate salary. If the employer goes much higher on salary, they can simply hire an experienced professional.
My advice would be to not worry about prestige. Jobs are abundant and experience and hard work will give you a comfortable living in any place you live, assuming there’s a market for your specialty.
Makes total sense - in truth after your first job, your college rarely has a bearing on your chances of being hired. It’s much more dependent on your work experience/projects and interview answers. The exception is when a company has some sort of policy for engineering positions or other titles that specifically states a bachelors degree in a specific field for consideration- in those cases HR reps will weed out the individuals without that before it makes it to a hiring manager
No, and I’m a programmer. I graduated from a non prestigious university. I’ve interviewed for high powered jobs at Google, Amazon, and several fortune 500 companies. Most are overrated. After about 3 years, employers don’t even ask where you went to school because it’s quite literally, not relevant. Most of the “prestigious” schools are on the east/west coast, meaning that starting salaries are skewed towards areas with an inflated cost of living. In reality, it’s just another entry level job. In fact, it’s probably worse, because housing in these places are cost prohibitive. A place like Dallas, Texas is going to offer you a “lower” salary, but that salary will buy you a middle class house with a neighborhood park for the kids to play.
