On: Udacity plans to build its own open-source self-dr...

[WhitneyLand]

When will a degree from Udacity have enough credibility to get you hired as a:

  Consultant at Bain or McKinsey

  Developer at a Big 4 tech company

  Investment banker on Wall street

  Other highly competitive jobs

Has it happened a lot? Once? Never?

(in a situation where experience alone wouldn't have earned the position)

[limelight → WhitneyLand]

I doubt it will ever happen.

The purpose of top degrees is signaling. Udacity, by its very mission (trying to democratize education), cannot offer that signal.

Of course, people with Udacity degrees likely already do get top jobs. They're not using the signal of the Udacity degree to get them though.

[dhruvp → WhitneyLand]

We have graduates at Big 4 Tech (Google, Microsoft etc.) and other competitive tech focused companies. I'm not sure about Investment Bankers but we teach software engineering primarily so I wouldn't expect many graduates go into I Banking or Consulting.

[WhitneyLand → dhruvp]

Can you confirm you have Big 4 tech graduates who were hired fresh from getting their Udacity degree without prior experience?

For example since I attended a mediocre state school these companies did not come to interview at my school, and never granted interviews to those who directly applied.

A few years later I ended up getting hired by these same companies based on the merit of my actual experience.

However you see the big difference here? I couldn't fairly say that the big 4 hire from mediocre state schools (or from Udacity), just because someone ended up getting a job there later.

[dhruvp → WhitneyLand]

Hey!

We do indeed have people who got jobs fresh out of graduating from our program. Obviously it's hard for me to discount all their prior experience and say it was entirely up to us. What I can confirm is that within months of graduating from our program they were able to get these jobs. You can read about some of these students here: https://www.udacity.com/success

[Kephael → dhruvp]

Speaking of the prestige issue that WhitneyLand brought up, it seems that both of the featured engineers who are working at a "Big 4" software company attended top schools. One seems to have gone to Harvard and the other attended Rice University.

[jnordwick → dhruvp]

I think he's talking about the tech side of trading that occurs at banks and also a lot of high profile prop trading shops.

[nsgi → WhitneyLand]

When Udacity is as difficult to gain admission to as the schools McKinsey and Goldman typically recruit from?

[Kephael → WhitneyLand]

I'd be willing to bet money on the fact that anyone who got a job at a top consulting firm or an investment banking job at a bulge bracket bank was not hired primarily as a result of a Udacity degree. Hiring pipelines and signaling are a big reason why a degree from a top school is worthwhile and why top schools are not threatened by MOOCs.