
What if we hired for skills, not degrees? - jseliger
https://hechingerreport.org/what-if-we-hired-for-skills-not-degrees
======
alanfranz
Yes, sure. But shouldn't degrees teach (or improve) skills as well? So,
shouldn't they be useful, at least for tech/stem/engineering jobs?

I agree that strictly requiring a Bachelor even for candidates with years of
experience is pointless. But would you hire a zero experience programmer
without a Bachelor?

Sure, for a lot of administration/sales/marketing positions a degree may be an
excessive requriment.

But isn't the real problem that a) sometimes universities don't teach enough
actual skills and b) they are too expensive?

~~~
maxerickson
Why not hire someone you think is smart but inexperienced into a low level
programming job?

There's lots of chores that don't exactly take a lot of deep knowledge.

(Of course the answer is that companies have discarded the idea of having a
training pipeline)

~~~
codingdave
If you have two people in front of you, both equally smart, both equally
inexperienced, one straight out of high school, one graduating with a degree,
why would you not hire the one with more education and years of analytical
thought under their belt?

When I got out of college, I took the same low-paying entry level jobs that
the 18 year old high school graduates did. I didn't get a jump start because
of my degree. But I was able to use the skills I had learned (even in my Fine
Arts education), to more deeply approach problems and I moved in my career
more quickly. I'm still in touch with some of the folks from that very first
job. They are struggling -- they spent decades in tech jobs, advancing, making
more money, doing bigger things... but all eventually experienced a layoff,
and can't get re-hired despite their skills and experience because younger
folk, cheaper folk, with 10 years experience can do everything they can, and
demand less salary. Nobody cares that you know 25 year old tech.

So the usefulness of a degree isn't about day one of your career. It is about
years 3-5, when you have a few years of skills built up, and then can
synthesize them into something bigger and better, and start to make bigger
jumps on your career, and put yourself in a position that you are more than
just your tech knowledge. And that is what employers care about once you get
old.

~~~
jandrewrogers
I think this improperly assumes the possible and even probable level of
sophistication of people without a degrees.

To reframe the question you initially posed: if you have two inexperienced but
otherwise technically indistinguishable people in front of you, which is more
impressive? The one that spent four years sitting in classes or the one that
did it entirely by self-study? For the rest of your career, almost all of your
future ability and value will be the product of ongoing self-study, not what
you studied in class.

------
2T1Qka0rEiPr
Economics would suggest that it's purely signally:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_\(economics\))

The idea that people are hired based on skills is obviously laudable, but
_how_ does one verify those skills without extensively testing them?

Whereas deep into your carrier, your professional experience can act as a
stronger affirmation of your skill, for that first job degrees seem to be the
simplest means of signalling your quality. Its obviously going to exclude
would-be great employees, but I guess on a cost-benefit level its
understandable given that hiring can be a very intensive process for the
employer.

~~~
ignoramous
> The idea that people are hired based on skills is obviously laudable, but
> _how_ does one verify those skills without extensively testing them?

One answer to this is to work for your own self, solve problems that you have,
go talk to people who have problems and make them what they want [0].

In an essence, become an indie-developer, a freelancer, or start a business,
create/contribute to an open source project. This works very well for
technology industry because, more often than not, the barrier to entry to make
things is not that high at all.

The advantages are obvious:

1\. If your execution gains traction, you make money or get acqui-hired.

2\. Most companies will value your ability to build, even if you fail.

3\. Being involved in the right communities might even help you find co-
founders, or join other founders on their journey, or be found by prospective
employers.

[0]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html)

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neilv
There was a long period in software during which it was ordinary to hire
people without degrees, including through at least the start of the dotcom
boom. For most software as practiced today, I still don't understand requiring
a degree, if one looks at what the practice is actually doing -- you don't
need a degree for most of what is currently being done.

Separately, it also seemed not-unusual to hire software people for general
ability and experience, on the assumption that they could quickly pick up
whatever language/tools were needed. This seems to be less common now, outside
of new-grad recruiting.

~~~
craig1f
This tends to work better with smaller companies.

In my experience, in a small company, the CEO is still involved in the hiring
process. If he's highly technical, he can conduct an interview, identify
talent, and if it doesn't work out, it's his problem.

As a company grows, the CEO has delegate to people below him. Whether he's
technical or not, hiring managers get involved. If a hiring manager hires
someone good, degree or not, everything is fine. They don't get bonuses for
hiring people without degrees who work out.

However, if an employee has to be fired, there will be a meeting to discuss
what red flags there might have been that could have signaled that this person
was a mistake to hire. If the hiring manager believes that they'll get in
trouble for ignoring the lack of a degree, they're not going hire people
without a degree. They might overlook talent, but at least they won't get
blamed for messing up and hiring someone unqualified.

~~~
fjsolwmv
That's a lot of FUD I've never seen actually happen.

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chriselles
I believe the university system aspires to produce thinkers, but doesn’t.

Because it has become utterly polluted by non default government backed loans.

If the government removed it’s college loan guarantee, what would happen?

Schools would have to transition instantly from offering unnecessary student
experience and switch to essential student value.

In the automotive industry there are financial disclosure and lemon laws.

Car dealers have to disclose their finance profit as well as right if return
if vehicle is unsuitable.

Shouldn’t the same or similar exist in education?

At the very least, universities should have to provide externally audited
reporting on graduate employment %/$.

I’ve met too many young people with too much student debt. Some will never get
out from under it, effectively indentured servitude.

So many university degree programs have negative ROI, partly due to the
unnecessary experiences to attract student borrowers.

Trade school have such a stigma amongst those who aspire to have their
children move up the human food chain, but really shouldn’t when you run the
math.

This is the space that Lambda School and others are disrupting.

It’s a BIG space.

I suspect when it’s all over there will be hundreds of thousands of “white
collar jobs” lost that exist only due to the government backed student loan
competition over unnecessary and non value added experience.

Basically a repeat of the “manufacturing jobs” lost in the post dot com
housing bubble.

Leaner and meaner will eventually have to come to the university system,
removing a lot of expensive experience and hopefully some of the highly
corrosive politics.

------
analognoise
Low priced code jockies with "boot camp" or "self taught" level knowledge are
working with industry to try to lower wages, and sure, there are plenty of
menial coding tasks out there. Let them have em.

A 14-week training program is the "do you want fries with that" equivalent of
coding, and will also get pushed down in wage. So once coding like that is at
minimum wage, that's... Success, I guess? But good luck having that stay an
easy path to the middle class.

"Anyone with no formal training and 14 weeks of time can make it to the middle
class!" \- boy is somebody over extrapolating how fast the labor market is
going to correct for this. "Well paid" and "quickly trained" don't exist
together for a reason (unless there is another component, like "very
dangerous" added to the mix).

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didibus
This seems to be how hiring works in my experience. And today, there's many
more roles one can apply too, and different level of schooling one can get.
For example, you have System Engineer roles, or Web Dev, or QA Engineer, etc.
You've got a lot of bootcamp education options to teach these as well. And if
you look at the hiring process, it's all skill based, how good is your
knowledge of data structures, algorithms, system design, frameworks, and
programming languages. Experience, resume and portfolio is almost completely
overlooked, at least beyond the initial HR screen.

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_cs2017_
I think some parts of the job market ignore degrees.

I know many people who got very solid SWE jobs through the popular recruitment
platforms. Those platforms essentially allow people to get an on-site with big
tech and startups without ever sharing one's resume: they rely solely on the
results of technical interviews to screen for promising candidates. The
employer spends ~$5000 to bring the candidate on-site (fees to the recruitment
platform, plus the flight/hotels, plus the full day of engineers' time spent
on the interviews). So I highly doubt the employer auto-rejects candidates
without a degree regardless of their on-site performance. If they wanted to do
that, they would have simply asked the recruitment platform to screen people
for degree in advance, to avoid wasting $5k on a hopeless candidate.

Of course, I'm describing only a specific slice (Silicon Valley, maybe NYC) of
the specific industry (software engineering). I guess such disregard of
degrees hasn't spread to other parts of the job market because most companies,
in most industries, believe that the degree provides useful information above
and beyond what can be learned in an interview. Are they wrong in that belief?
Or do degrees, despite being such a horrible proxy for skill, still provide a
valuable incremental statistical signal about the candidate's likely fit?

------
wallflower
Since this topic comes up every few months, there is one major reason why
college degrees are often prerequisites for job applications.

Pasting the entirety of patio11’s old comment below.

> _Are companies really legally disallowed from using IQ tests in the USA?_

Griggs v. Duke Power Company, 1971. US Supreme Court found that a particular
use of IQ tests in hiring practices caused a disproportionate impact on
African American employees. "Disproportionate impact" can make a facially
neutral policy illegal under various US civil rights laws.

This is not a blanket ban on IQ testing in employment, but corporations being
risk-averse, most of them don't really do it much any more.

(This is a very happy outcome for universities, since it gives them a virtual
monopoly on discriminating on the basis of intelligence. Since that is really
useful to do, all a university has to do is maintain its reputation as being a
mostly reliable discriminator, and the actual contents of what it teaches are
virtually irrelevant.)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2414062#2414152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2414062#2414152)

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paulie_a
I've reviewed my share of resumes and the education section is the least
important part. If it is a new fresh graduate sure, it is a bigger
consideration. But far more important is their experience, what have they done
since graduation. Hell if someone has 5-10 years experience that section is
getting skipped entirely.

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erlangNewb
That would be viewed as undermining the trillion dollar higher education
business. We need universal higher education. What if the next Einstein
couldn't afford college?

~~~
suff
Then he would have published on PLoS instead of getting 300 paper rejections.
The cream rises to the top. It's bureaucracy that artificially stops it.
Genius happens in spite of it, not because of it.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Einstein went to school before he wrote papers.

------
karmakaze
The basic premise doesn't make sense.

If the candidate has real-world experience, go with that. If they're recent
grads assume they know very little and will need on the job exposure _to
learn_. So the most useful criteria is an ability to learn. If there's a
better indicator for that than a degree then by all means use it. Skills is
only a useful measure if you plan to utilize rather than cultivate them.

------
jseliger
That would be good. [https://jakeseliger.com/2018/03/12/the-case-against-
educatio...](https://jakeseliger.com/2018/03/12/the-case-against-education-
bryan-caplan/)

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rscho
What if higher education did its job and actually delivered skilled people
instead of offering "the best campus experience"?

Edit: to make myself clear, I absolutely think universities should focus more
on thinking than doing. That is not a valid excuse for focusing on campus
experience and the like.

~~~
bhl
What if we stopped relying on higher education with its high tuition fees to
produce skilled workers, and instead focus on community colleges and K-12
education?

~~~
rscho
I also agree with that. We could also ask parents to actually educate
children, but it seems that's too much to ask.

~~~
fjsolwmv
It is, when we insist parents work two fill time jobs to feed, clothe and
house their children.

~~~
rscho
It's your job as a parent to make your kid fit for school. And by that I mean
a kid that knows to listen, respect others, and learn. Even poor people can do
that.

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purplezooey
If this worked, why wouldn't it have happened already. The answer is college
means something.

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toomuchtodo
Hire for curiosity, grit, and empathy. Everything else can be taught.

~~~
alanfranz
I think one of the problems of the modern "gig economy" or the general "job
hopping" approach to the job market, is that teaching and coaching doesn't
work.

Why should an employer risk with the education of a worker that may then leave
for another company?

Such approach worked in the past, when you entered a company when you were 19
and left when you retired (unless the company blew up, of course). Then, you
could expect to get 100% training on the job, by your company.

Now, you need most skills before entering. And you should expect minimal
training.

~~~
winrid
Heh, I joined as a S/E at my current company when there were only a few
engineers at age 19 and am still there six years later.

~~~
alanfranz
This can happen. But there's no guarantee for the company, that's the
"problem". Maybe we should have a "training pipeline" where, then, you must
stay in the company at least X years or you need to "pay back" what you
received (something similar happens in the military, I think)

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imagetic
I'm be employed and in high demand?

