
Peter Thiel's unexpected job requirement - cwan
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/14/peter-thiels-unexpected-job-requirement/
======
jbellis
This is stupid. Do people really think Thiel is personally managing every job
opening at every company he's associated with?

Non-sequitur "gotcha" reporting at its worst. I expected better from Yglesias.

~~~
lrm242
Of course the flip side is Thiel has been so amazingly vocal about his views
on higher education you'd think he would have made a his staff aware that this
requirement wasn't aligned with his views.

In the end it is mostly a depiction of how having a degree is a door opener
because it is a default filter for almost all hiring managers. Even hiring
managers employed by a vocal advocate of skipping college.

~~~
defilade
The job requirements and qualifications for an entrepreneur and a hedge fund
analyst are so different that it's not necessarily inconsistent

~~~
jarek
Has Thiel been careful to always specify that his anti-higher-education-in-
the-U.S. stance only applies to entrepreneurial people?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Peter Thiel's exact words on the topic:

"The elitist view in the U.S. is that even if people concede that college is
not for education, the caveat will be that, well, surely it’s for all the
smart people. What we want to suggest is that there are some very smart and
very talented people who don’t need college."

[http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257531/back-future-
pe...](http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257531/back-future-peter-thiel-
interview?pg=5)

"...are there 20 of those 60,000 who should perhaps not go to college--that
does not seem like a terribly controversial statement. That the more talented
you are, the more narrow the set of choices you should make? And that if
you're a really smart person, the only thing in the world you can do is to go
to Harvard?"

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20114584-281/talking-
tech-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20114584-281/talking-tech-with-
peter-thiel-investor-and-philanthropist-q-a/)

------
ShabbyDoo
When I was at CWRU in the mid-90's, I was on a student panel which provided
large donors (those whose last names were the same as large area companies,
mostly) with an opportunity to ask questions of students. Several donors
wondered why Case students studied so hard and participated so little in
extra-curricular activities. After all, one said, I'd rather hire the
interesting, well-rounded student with a 3.0 GPA than the boring one with a
3.7. Several students on the panel explained that many of their peers feared
the short-term consequences of low GPAs -- lost scholarships and limited job
opportunities. The donors were surprised to learn that most companies (in come
cases including their own) would refuse to allow students with less than, say,
a 3.5 GPA to even sign-up for on-campus interviews.

------
temphn
The job posting itself has already been fixed:

[http://www.linkedin.com/jobs/jobs-Investment-
Analyst-w-29013...](http://www.linkedin.com/jobs/jobs-Investment-
Analyst-w-2901306)

    
    
      Quantitative skills in a field such as computer science, 
      mathematics, statistics, physics, or engineering; no 
      college degree required
    

Tempest in a teapot. Obviously someone junior in Thiel's organization who
didn't get the message, fixed at the speed of light. Now let's see Yglesias,
Slate, and CNN issue addendums.

~~~
jarek
And if not for the tempest, when would this have gotten "fixed," if ever? This
isn't about one job, it's about the reality of everyone having an ingrained
sense of "education = capability."

------
Aloisius
There is so much grade inflation at schools today that using it as a filtering
mechanism for any position seems rather pointless.

Elite schools are especially bad about this. The average GPA at Harvard is
3.45 (it was 2.5 in 1950). Yale is at 3.5 (was 2.5 in 1963). Stanford is at
3.5 (was 2.6 in 1948). At one point, over 90% of the graduating class at
Harvard graduated with honors.

If Thiel is requiring a top-tier school, it is because of the network the
person brings, not because of the education.

~~~
sliverstorm
I know you've removed it now, but I thought I'd point out the word is
"shudder". Normally I don't care about spelling, but the two are very
different words.

Apologies; carry on.

~~~
Aloisius
I'm a bit sleep deprived right now. Not particularly a great time to post on
HN. :)

------
tibbon
I'm sure Peter is a great guy, but I've stopped paying attention to what the
newest hype is around what some VC is saying of how you should run your
startup and career. Unless they have heavily funded my startup, then I really
don't care. It isn't their startup or career. We can't all be them, nor should
we be.

We should stop playing follow the leader. Peter's advice will work for many,
but not for all. One size does not fit all. Maybe Peter cares about people's
university credentials, but when hiring I'll look at each person on a case by
case basis as a sum of their parts. There's some great people out there
without ivy league degrees, and some terrible people out there with ones.
Better to evaluate the stack of history and competency than a single
component.

~~~
ticks
I mostly see his name popping up in works by Curtis and similar writers, which
makes me wary by default.

------
srconstantin
There's a difference between optimizing for current conditions, and changing
future conditions.

Optimizing for current conditions: right now, a lot of the best job applicants
have degrees from top-tier schools, and if you need to hire someone today,
using education as a job filter is a reasonable choice.

Changing future conditions: there are plausible arguments that universities
should not have a monopoly on education and credentialing, and promoting
alternatives to a college degree may be a reasonable long-term advocacy and
philanthropic goal.

The real story is: what's going on with this new hedge fund? Is the focus on
"conclusions that are fundamentally correct but missed by most of the world"
an actual strategy or a contrarian buzzword?

------
donzimmer
This brings up an interesting point. Are there jobs where a degree from a
"top-tier university" is more highly-valued?

Being an entrepreneur--even a successful one!--doesn't necessarily require a
college degree. But are there jobs (perhaps this one?) where college classes
are useful enough to warrant this bullet point in the job description?

I'm not sure--I wasn't a stats/math major. But I'd be interested in hearing
some informed opinions on this matter.

~~~
glesica
I think you're looking at it backward in some sense. A "top-tier" university
doesn't teach any skills that couldn't be learned at most other universities
(especially at the undergraduate level). However, the characteristics of an
_average_ student can be vastly different between a top-tier university and
those lower in the rankings.

These sorts of requirements aren't put in place because there are particular
skills necessary to do the job. They are in place to cut down the applicant
pool to a reasonable size while raising the average quality (or at least not
lowering it). It's classic signaling.

They let the university do most of the screening for them, weeding out the
people who aren't smart, driven and dedicated enough to get into and graduate
from a top-tier school.

Some extremely prestigious consulting firms won't look at a resume that isn't
from one of a handful of schools. They fully realize that this policy results
in them outright rejecting hundreds of excellent applicants. But they still
end up with top-tier people, and they don't have to wade through tens of
thousands of resumes to do it.

Highly sought-after employers can do this. But it doesn't work as well the
further down the corporate "food chain" you go. This works especially well in
industries like finance where ambition and a drive to perform while working
within a fairly narrow set of parameters is paramount.

Peter Thiel is a big name, his companies are big names. Therefore they can use
this strategy to their advantage, even if they don't particularly care about
any specific set of skills.

~~~
yalurker
"weeding out the people who aren't smart, driven and dedicated enough to get
into and graduate from a top-tier school."

Wow. Since the rest of your post seems to equate "top-tier school" with the
Ivy's (plus maybe MIT/stanford or whatever) this is just amazingly wrong to
the point of being offensive.

There are tons of smart, driven and dedicated high school students in America
who have no chance of getting into Ivy League schools. If you're lucky enough
to be born into the right family so that you can go to the right private
jewish prep school in one of a handful of posh suburbs, then being smart,
driven and dedicated means you can probably get into one of the Ivy schools.

For every kid going to a public school in the midwest, who has to check the
"will need financial assistance" checkbox (if the application fee alone didn't
make them skip applying) and doesn't have any legacy or connections, then
applying to Harvard is a lottery ticket even with perfect grades, stellar test
scores and a long resume of extra-curriculars.

There are plenty of smart, driven and dedicated 18 year olds who won't be
heading to Harvard or Yale next fall. Admittance to one of those schools
correlates more with growing up privileged than it does about intelligence.

~~~
glesica
I didn't say those are the _only_ people who are weeded out, just that, in
general, people who don't have those qualities are less likely to get into
"top-tier" schools.

Admissions at these schools actually work a little bit like hiring at
prestigious firms in this sense, right? Plenty of awesome applicants get
rejected or are priced out of even applying (as you pointed out). But since
the average applicant is still quite qualified, that doesn't really matter to
the institution, nor to our discussion.

As something of a footnote, I really didn't mean to imply that only Ivy League
grads are smart, driven and dedicated. I'm definitely not one, and I like to
think I'm reasonably bright.

------
GuiA
Using GPAs is so silly, as scales vary widely between universities, and even
countries.

In French universities, you get marks between 0 and 20 (you need 10 to pass a
class, and in some cases you can pass a class with 8 if it averages out with
certain other classes). In some universities (classes préparatoires), marks
superior to 10 are extremely rare, with a class average at ~6-7 being common,
as professors want to push students to the max.

A student having an average of 15 would be a very, very strong student (the
top student in my university, whom I was friends with, had an average of 14.5
or so at graduation).

So would employers just divide that by 5 to get an American GPA? That would
barely be a GPA of 3 for top students— I doubt they would get any
consideration from such employers, although they're probably much more
competent than a top-tier student with a GPA of 3.5+ (I'm not too familiar
with undergraduate studies in the US, but it seems that as long as you show up
and do the homework, you pretty much get an A in the class).

~~~
munin
> (I'm not too familiar with undergraduate studies in the US, but it seems
> that as long as you show up and do the homework, you pretty much get an A in
> the class)

that is emphatically untrue (either that, or myself and all of my classmates
are a lot dumber than we think we are)

~~~
ojbyrne
In my experience, it's not true of undergrad studies. It is however (again
from my experience) very true at the graduate level. Typically because of the
grade compression at grad school - in most cases a C+ is a failing grade, thus
the range of acceptable grades is compressed (undergrad A-F, grad A-C+). So a
grad B+ takes on the characteristics of a undergrad C+ - essentially a signal
that you need to shape up.

------
biot
Obviously the requirements for an entrepreneur are different than the
requirements for someone who is going to execute on the entrepreneur's vision.
I don't see this being inconsistent with the Thiel Fellowship[0].

[0] [http://www.thielfellowship.org/become-a-fellow/about-the-
pro...](http://www.thielfellowship.org/become-a-fellow/about-the-program/)

------
mitchelldm7
Ridiculous. To say that a top-tier university produces a better employee, or
business leader, is to say that a person's individual personality, upbringing
or work ethic plays no part.

A high GPA - that's an understandable requirement - but to base it arbitrarily
on a 'top-tier' university is depriving qualified, talented employees from
consideration.

~~~
bishnu
Turning away a qualified candidate isn't the bad outcome for a hiring process
- hiring an unqualified worker is. So if the trade off for avoiding the latter
is some of the former, it is arguably worth it (and Thiel is likely in a good
position to know what the appropriate ratios are)

~~~
GuiA
>Turning away a qualified candidate isn't the bad outcome for a hiring process

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem>

------
adamtmca
Thiel has argued that there is a "bubble" in higher education -- that is, on
average, American's over value it. Not that higher education is meaningless or
that going to a top school and getting good grades doesn't signal that you
are: smart, ambitious, hard working and would fit in with the academic culture
at a hedge fund.

------
moocow01
It amazes me how many people listen to others without understanding their
motivation.

Peter is an investor - if he's able to monetize a model where a group of
students drop out of college for a startup and on the whole make his fund
money, he will do so. There is no fault in that but don't think he is looking
out for the good of anyone but his clients and himself - its not evil - its a
business model.

The unfortunate part is that many (but certainly not all) develop these
critical thinking skills to question everything in the very institutions he is
influencing young kids to drop out of. I know this comes off as "stay in
school kids" but I'm more hoping that students will think for themselves and
identify their own reason for dropping out before leaping.

------
krain
A bit more context is available here: [http://www.businessinsider.com/busted-
hypocritical-peter-thi...](http://www.businessinsider.com/busted-hypocritical-
peter-thiel-demands-you-have-a-college-education-to-work-at-his-new-hedge-
fund-2012-5)

------
tedunangst
_Will their former "top tier" universities allow them to return, or give that
spot to someone who values it a bit more?_

The former. I know people who finished their undergrad degrees after stopping
out for _years_ , and it wasn't much of a problem at all.

You could very reasonably drop out, start a company, have it fail, finish
school, then work for the hedge fund. There's no problem here.

------
Tycho
Thing is, are people who are capable of graduating from a top tier American
university with a high GPA the sort of people who are ever going to lack
options, the sort of people we need to worry about?

