If I hear one more Silicon Valley type gush over a computer science graduate from CMU, MIT, or Stanford, I’m going to puke. Yes, yes, I’m sure these are mighty dandy nice schools, but you’re letting the stench of superiority and shallow whiff of superficial judgement pollute my airways.
The fantastic thing about programmers is that we don’t have to give a fuck about where they were trained because we have something much better available: We can look at what they actually do! We don’t need the indirection of pedigree to guess at their skills, we can look at their code and know it.
Here’s a list of the top tier schools that helped shape the fine band of programmers we employ at 37signals:
- Lawrence University
- Rochester Institute of Technology
- Brock University
- Washtenaw Community College
- California Institute of Technology
- Copenhagen Business School
- Brigham Young University
David wrote this on Nov 21 2011 There are 96 comments.
Andrew 21 Nov 11
Yes.
Brian Cardarella 21 Nov 11
Context matters. I’d like to see the list of schools engineers at Google have gone to. Or the engineers at Facebook, IBM , Microsoft, and Apple.
Satyajit 21 Nov 11
Hell yeah!
Mike Bishop 21 Nov 11
Congrats on the recent grab of Nick Q. He’s a talented fellow.
On the flip side. I am going to generalize here for a sec. Constantly going on and on about how you are breaking the mold and seeing past the normal stereo types of our industry is starting to look less like “These guys are so groundbreaking” and more like an inferiority complex.
Alexey P 21 Nov 11
I actually see engineers from “unknown” schools performing much better and much more enthusiastic, passionate about their work than most of “awesome graduates”. The latter though, definitely show their level of superiority. Well, they have the ground, they are “symbols of the Valley” nowadays :-(
Adam Patterson 21 Nov 11
Its like saying some one who went to MIT and has no work ex is valued more than some one who went to a local school but has 5+ years of exp.
George Gecewicz 21 Nov 11
This.
And holla at the RIT person.
Khurram 21 Nov 11
To say that you “don’t give a fuck where they were trained” is a bit worrying. I appreciate that you would rather look at a persons proven ability (via projects and actual code) rather than their credentials, but the fact of the matter is that you’re far more likely to find these capable individuals from these ‘top-tier’ schools.
To say that you “don’t give a fuck” about where someone went to school is like not giving a fuck about the last company they worked at. Don’t these things matter? Of course they do. A student at a top-tier school shows at least one thing: that they have the ability to push themselves to be better than the majority (note: I’m not from the US so I don’t really know how the standardised tests work). To ignore a persons school choice sounds ridiculous to me.
If someone has gone to a poor school or studied a poor course, what that tells me is that they don’t care enough to be the best they can be in their chosen field. School isn’t for everyone, so if that person has proven themselves in other ways then so be it. However it’s like placing someone who has done a half assed job for 4 years vs someone who has busted their ass on the same level simply because “it doesn’t matter where they were trained”.
Mark Hoffman 21 Nov 11
3/4 of my developers don’t even have degrees so I completely agree that a degree isn’t the end-all-be-all. But, like 37 Signals, our product isn’t overly complex. We don’t need folks with 8 years of CS. (In fact, they would be largely useless to us.)
But there seems to be at least a slight suggestion here that just because 37 Signals is successful without having pedigree programmers, then nobody needs them. And that’s pretty much bullshit.
Andrei 21 Nov 11
and what life changing things you build around there :))
c’mon, no ofense, but it’s literally NOT rocket science what you guys are working on.
Dave 21 Nov 11
Copenhagen…oof, that place is total crap. I mean, graduates can’t write well enough to publish books let alone ship product. What were you thinking?
Mark Miller 21 Nov 11
The good news is that that big (expensive) fancy degree only gets someone their first job. After that, it’s what they can do that decides how far they get in software. Notice I didn’t say “engineering” as colleges don’t seem to teach that much anymore either, especially the bigger “name” schools. Academics are simply no replacement for learning how to design, build and fix stuff.
Anonymous Coward 21 Nov 11
I somewhat agree with this. I find that people that went to schools with either a thriving social scene (not just partying but student interaction) or where the community was close knit tend to excel further than people who went to a “top-tier” school where they didn’t socialize or to a school with a specific focus where they weren’t exposed to a broad range of peers from all walks of life.
Carmen Delessio 21 Nov 11
I’ve seen a few blog posts about whether “MoneyBall” could be applied to entrepreneurship an start-up technology. My answer is yes. One way to do that is exactly what this article describes – hire people for what they’ve done, not their academic pedigree.
If there’s a biology major who has taught himself python for his school work or a French Major who learned Java and Android just for fun, hire them if that’s what you need.
An older post that touches on this http://www.quora.com/Carmen-Delessio/Rockstar-Developers-Mickey-Mantle-Muhammad-Ali
AJ Siegel 21 Nov 11
Another +1 for my fellow RIT alumni. I had a great 3.5 years in the Brick City and love going back to watch my Tigers hockey team!
Anonymous Coward 21 Nov 11
@andrei: preceding a statement “no offense” doen’t make it less offensive. It just lets you feel better about being offensive.
Furthermore, creating simple, intuitive apps that solve complex problems is a very difficult thing to do. It may not be rocket science, but it certainly benefits a great deal of people.
Adam Hutchison 21 Nov 11
Forgot to put my name on the last comment…
Jfk 21 Nov 11
And yet I keep working with self-taught programmers that know nothing about software architecture, database-modelling, testing, and cannot talk about OOAD or even look at a relational model.
Don’t be so full of yourself. You’re building a fcking website, however popular. Try working on satellite communication systems, Siri, your car’s driving system, etc.
Drew 21 Nov 11
I attended Indiana University for my M.S in HCI despite acceptance to CMU and UofM. The later two schools would have put me in debt. IU pretty much paid my way. I selected IU to the furrowed-brow of many of my colleagues, friends, etc.
I landed at Disney Animation Studios for my internship with a small group of master’s and PhD students. We were told that our selection was based on project-to-skill matching across schools, and that our hire had nothing to do with our school’s name. The consensus was that they had been burned before by selecting based on institution alone, except for a handful of specific institutions with whom they had partnerships, and even then there was quite a bit of filtering.
Anonymous Coward 21 Nov 11
SVN has some awesomely insightful posts, but I find this one a bit distateful.
It’s hard to make the case against the presumed bias for top-tier candidates by expressing (what comes across as) a bias against top-tier candidates.
Jfk has a valid point - you’re generalizing software development quite a bit… I see first-hand instances where engineers from top-tier schools are the ones pushing the boundaries of software right now - AI, infrastructure scaling, computer security, etc.
37sig has an affinity for being the best-of-the-best when it comes to UX—that requires engineers with artistic skill, which isn’t something college can teach; it’s a trait that’s as innate as it is rare.
Paul 21 Nov 11
@Khurram
I think what David was trying to get at is that going to these good schools might result in great skills, which you can then assess when you decide if you want to hire them, but simply getting to a good school is not a guarantee that you will be any good.It’s a help, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient.
I went to a York University in the UK, which at the time (1997-2001) was in the top half dozen or so for CompSci. It was a great course, a good mix of theory and practice. It taught me a lot, which I hope I’ve built on in the ten years since. It got me my first job, not because of where it was, but because they taught the kind of things my first employer was looking for (Ada, embedded systems, logic and theory, architecture and design).
But in and of itself, where I got my degree from is no reason to hire me. Judge me on what I can do, not where I learnt how to do it.
Over the ten years I’ve been in this industry I’ve worked with people who have no degree at all, because they had to drop out for financial or health reasons, who have been amazingly good engineers.
I’ve also worked with people who have a 1st from Cambridge and Oxford, some of whom are the smartest people I’ve ever met, and some of who are a total waste of space who were hired primarily because of their degrees. They were so bad that we’d have got more work done if they had just sat on their hands the entire time. I don’t mean these people were the “so smart they were stupid” types, they were just crap. They had made it through university based on obsessive work ethic or just a really good memory.
The world is full of awesome people who didn’t go to top-tier schools but go on to change the world. It’s also full of enthusiastic idiots with fancy bits of paper.
As I said, “Judge me on what I can do, not where I learnt how to do it.” The software world is quite rare that we can do that quite easily.
And @Andrei, you’re right, what 37s is doing is not rocket science.
The point is, nor is 99% of what the Silicone Valley types are doing.
If you need a rocket scientist, then hire one, but the vast, vast majority of businesses do not need that kind of person.
Dan 21 Nov 11
One of the things that annoys me about 37S is that you guys seem to be unable to transpose your company’s position onto the rest of the world. Sure, building and selling a suite of cloud-based software into a market of rabid fans probably doesn’t require a top-tier engineer or VC investment. That doesn’t mean that extrapolates to the Microsoft’s, Oracle’s, and Google’s of the world.
Eric 21 Nov 11
w00t! I almost went to Lawrence. Had a fabulous college visit there, and had a HS classmate who went and majored in biology. Go Vikings!
Dan 21 Nov 11
I should clarify. I’m certainly not suggesting that 37S doesn’t employ top-tier engineers. Just that the criteria you find useful for candidates does not necessarily translate to other companies. Let’s see who you guys recruit and what kinds of cool office policies you enact when you have 1,000+ employees and have to deal with an HR department and all the legal ramifications that come with scale.
Joe 21 Nov 11
It’s not programming chops that these Valley types are after. It’s experience with and access to leading edge tech.
The research performed and technologies developed at CMU , MIT, and Stanford are at a whole different level than that of most community colleges.
Tim 21 Nov 11
What’s all the big deal about rocket science. 5th graders can build rockets!
And if we are talking about rocket science and top-tier education I direct you to Homer Hickam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Hickam).
He learned to build rockets first, then went to Virginia Tech, then NASA !
btw: someone mentioned Siri – Adam Cheyer (Founder and VP Engineering of Siri, Inc. and now at Apple, Director of Engineering in the iPhone group) went to Brandeis University (ranked #31 nationally, US) and UCLA (ranked #25 nationally, US) – just sayin’
Mer 21 Nov 11
CalTech’s not on the top tier list? c’mon now.
George Gecewicz 21 Nov 11
A classic case of, instead of addressing something that exists today (i.e., the company’s current size and practices), shrugging off responsibility to be rational and making up hypotheticals.
Charlotte 21 Nov 11
+1 with Mer. Caltech ranks just as highly (if not higher) as MIT on prestige measures (e.g. number of Nobel laureates). Look at US News & World Reports rankings. It will be in the top 10. It’s just smaller and unless things have changed, does not have a true CS major. Doesn’t matter to employers.
Not sure if you’re trying to make the point that “unknown” schools exist that are hotspots of engineering excellence or if you’re saying that the school doesn’t matter. If the latter, make sure you don’t list schools that are known for the quality of their graduates to those in the know.
Andrei 21 Nov 11
@Tim Thanks for the links, I just got a good movie suggestion by going to that wikipedia article :) (october sky)
What i meant was far better expressed by others in subsequent comments, but it’s amazing to see others defending 37s. That proves that these guys may not know how to build something like Mathematica, which powers Siri ( to quit the rocket field) but they sure know how to build a brand.
Scott 21 Nov 11
Sounds like you touched a nerve with a few CS people that value their education! I happen to agree that academics help very little in the tech world.
B-Y-U! B-Y-U!
Alpha01 21 Nov 11
Amen!
Dennis 21 Nov 11
You said you dont’ give a fuck, but then you listed the schools anyway, presumably to prove that your your fine band of programmers are not from the top schools, like MIT or Stanford, but then you listed CalTech? Go read up on CalTech, will you?
Adam 21 Nov 11
I’d go a step further and question the necessity of a CS degree. I paid for a bunch of researchers to grunt at me and wound up teaching myself almost everything I know now, most of which was not even on any of the syllabi. My first boss after college was a self-taught biology major. The one after that was a self-taught art major. Both are among the sharpest programmers I’ve ever known. Get a real degree—math, science, philosophy, art—something more fundamental to the world and the human experience than a trade degree. If you really want to program, you’ll make time for it on the side.
Tim 21 Nov 11
@Andrei
I agree with the sentiment that the best people for your job are not necessarily from the top-tier schools. And I definitely agree about all the sycophantic BS around how amazing these uber-engineers are.
I’d be interested to know if the people who disagree with DHH (whatever interpretation of his post they are using) disagree because:
A. They went to a top-tier school and are defending it (and themselves)
B. Know someone or work with someone from a top-tier school and are defending them (and it)
C. Like the idea that these are the top-tier schools and therefore produce the top grads and are defending them (and them).
D. Have never worked with or even met someone from these top-tier schools so don’t really know what they are like and are therefore basing their argument on very little information.
E. Just don’t like 37 and/or DHH .
Of course these all work in reverse for those in support :)
(And yeah, October Sky is pretty good. I liked it more than I thought I would.)
Anonymous Coward 21 Nov 11
The f-bomb? Really?
It reminds me of thirteen year olds who’ve just learnt to swear.
Jackson 21 Nov 11
@37signals
This explains why Rails was technically dropped for Merb (but just rebranded as “Rails”), Merb was created by guys from “Top Tier Schools”
Steve Bryan 21 Nov 11
@Adam Hutchinson, I suspect the comment about rocket science might be that AI, computer vision and other “rocket science” topics might benefit from a Stanford, MIT connection. Most software does not depend on expertise that is currently being developed at major research universities. As such I doubt the comment was intended to be offensive.
Steve Bryan 21 Nov 11
@Tim, when you are looking for a university that is not top tier, Brandeis is not a good choice. Ed Witten is just about the apotheosis of rocket scientist and he is a product of Brandeis. Not to mention how exquisitely expensive it is to attend.
Tomas Sancio 22 Nov 11
Programmers have their StackOverflow cred now to back up their code work as a resumé.
Anonymous Coward 22 Nov 11
It also depends on what type of problems your programmers need to solve. Not to be a put-down, but do you really NEED A -list brain power to code-gen using rails? I don’t think so. Top talent are not attracted to that type of work – i.e., follow the pattern.
I don’t think it’s necessary to put down A-list schools. But then again, I don’t think it’s necessary to drop the f-bomb to complete a sentence either. But then again, I’m from an A-list school.
Alex 22 Nov 11
It’s hilarious how huffy individuals get about education/work experience without realizing their own personalities cloud their judgment.
37signals is a very design oriented company and I’m willing to bet their highest priority is to hire pragmatic individuals whose primary goal is shipping quality products. One’s academic cred says absolutely nothing about your ability to ship products in the real world.
Apple is another company in this quadrant.
Google is the exact opposite. Larry is an AI guy. He views everything through the lens of an AI academic doing hard CS problems. Everything they do is “Is this is a hard CS problem worth solving?” That’s why they’re working on self-driving cars and they offer services that make it easy for academic type people (and similar personalities) to share information and collaborate. So Google mostly hires CS grads with specialist expertise.
Microsoft is mostly a business company in tech. Their highest priority is cost-efficiency. These days I bet they are full of middle of the road “day jobber” type competent but unexciting coders.
Facebook is the last quandrant. One half hard CS and one half pragmatic shippers. Only they ship lots of stuff noone wants and the hard CS is just keep the ship running another day.
Dan Jaffe 22 Nov 11
Totally agree with David that academic “prestige” doesn’t mean crap when it comes to creating, writing great code and shipping. I’d be surprised if most SV types don’t see through that BS too, but still recognize a business value in the connections (either direct or by association) that having a fancy alma mater can bring. If that’s the angle, makes sense to gush loudly and often.
Devang Kamdar 22 Nov 11
So True … In my 7 years of experience as a software developer working for Hue Ass MNCs to staring a small iOS Dev Studio … I have found University degrees from top school do not make anyone better programmer or to be precise, better problem solvers. We have our share of Stanfords and MITs. We call them IIMs and IITs here in India. Very few people and I by that I mean really few I have met with degrees from these top schools have really impressed me. When I hire for my company, I look at the best parameter to judge a programmer – their CODE !
Andrei 22 Nov 11
@Alex 100% agreed.
@Tim from the options you listed above, none, with the comment on E) that I actually like DHH and 37s ( that’s why I’m on this blog, I’m not here to spill my hate :) )
My opinion is very subjective and I have dealt with very few top tier / non top tier schooled people. In general, I value quality education. An old highschool colleague who was top of the top in mathematics went to Princeton and he was treated very well there and he found teachers who could handle his talent and intelligence. I am now doing ml-class online course from Stanford and I’m really impressed by how prof A. Ng makes his lectures so full of information yet so easy to grasp. I went to Romania’s “toptier” CS uni and I can assure you that 80% of the country’s best CS people graduate this one. The quality is very high in these places.
I remember reading that lately college in the US has become sort of a business, with tuition fees being very large and top tier schools marketing themselves by saying “research says you will be paid this much after graduating our university”. If you leave all that aside I can bet there still is more talent in both teachers and students in this top tier universities. There’s quality people everywhere in life and there are self educated people who are awesome, but on average, top tier education always has more of those “quality” people.
Anonymous Coward 22 Nov 11
Why do you need MIT grads to make web pages?
Neil 22 Nov 11
I don’t believe going to a high level university shapes the professional that you become, you can attend a shit university and still turn out as one of the best. Talent and drive is what separates.
Jen 22 Nov 11
I have a CS degree from MIT , and I have to agree with the original post. It’s depressing the extent to which people pay more attention to my alma mater than the work I’ve done in the past ten years since I graduated.
A month or so ago, a recruiter contacted me about a potential position and the only information he gave about the job were the languages they were using and that they were only looking for graduates of top universities (their list was Stanford, Caltech, MIT , Harvard, and Berkeley). I politely informed him that if some of my favorite coworkers wouldn’t even be considered, I didn’t want to work there.
And that’s the thing—yes, most of the MIT grads I’ve worked with have been very good, but certainly not all of them, and I’ve worked with some very good people who attended lesser known schools or had no college degree at all. Education is just one part of your background, and in a field where your work can be relatively easily evaluated, I think it’s harmful to make it the most important part.
Also, to all of the people who have been saying that 37 signals would be singing a different tune if they were doing different work: you really think that MIT , CMU, and Stanford are the only places doing cutting edge research or turning out graduates capable of doing so? Please. Again, why be lazy and only look at the school when you can evaluate the research and the work that an individual has done?
Whatever 22 Nov 11
Oh what a stupid argument.
David is right to the extent that a prestigious degree is no indicator of quality. But hey, we all know that and the point doesn’t even bear repeating.
What David is really saying is that 37 Signals doesn’t need developers with a heavy engineering background and neither do you. This is typical. We’ve seen this in his ridiculously simple book and David’s talks where his point is the same: I’ve been successful at this little company that makes web pages, therefore you should do things exactly like me.
What arrogance! 37 Signals doesn’t innovate anything. It’s nothing new. It’s not hard. If your company is building incredibly complex AI, for example, then the guys at 37 Signals probably aren’t qualified to do it. They may be smart, but they probably lack some engineering and math skills that would be necessary. Doesn’t mean they couldn’t learn it, but that guy from MIT has probably done research in this area.
Of course, our industry is about as arrogant as they come and everyone will say “Well, I teach MIT PHd’s how to build shit and I never graduated high school.” Well, congrats there Sparky. But you’re an anomaly.
Bottom line: If you’re building web-apps that are largely data entry then you don’t need grads from the top schools. If you are building something that requires some R&D then you will need folks that have strong backgrounds in math, CS, engineering, etc and the best schools are logically the best place to look. Not the only, but the best.
Duh. We need to have a fucking debate on this? Anyone who has any sense already knows this.
Ohio 22 Nov 11
What a refreshing post, thank you for not being afraid to speak your mind!
Anonymous Coward 22 Nov 11
Strongly agree with @whatever.
Brian 22 Nov 11
Mine’s a slightly milder sentiment, but on the whole: echo @whatever.
Michael 22 Nov 11
This is Chicago talking. Well said, David.
ploogman 22 Nov 11
Starfleet Academy grads are actually better, just saying
Dan 22 Nov 11
I have a degree from a top-tier school and I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer, only that if you randomly pull a candidate from a top-tier school and one from a lesser-known school, chances are great that the candidate from the top-tier school is better qualified. Why? Because he/she could have gone to either. The candidate from the lesser-known school probably could not have.
Does that matter? Well, yes and no. I will be the first to say that the criteria used to determine admission to highly-competitive schools does not perfectly align with any job. Yet a lot of the screening has been done by the admissions committee. Higher test scores, grades, and achievement are pretty good indicators of aptitude.
Now if you have no degree or a shit degree, but have invented a new software product on your own time that’s quite impressive but for the general populous, that’s the exception, not the rule, and far more likely to occur at the top levels of the top institutions.
It’s sort of like saying that just because a football player was an all-star at a top division one college program, he isn’t necessarily better than a top player at a lesser-known program. That may be true, but I don’t see too many top prospects choosing to play for division two schools.
Don Schenck 22 Nov 11
I didn’t even FINISH college.
Yet, last year I worked on software that will save THOUSANDS OF LIVES .
What are you working on, again????
It’s all about perspective and how you want to look at it.
in hoa don 22 Nov 11
It’s sort of like saying that just because a football player was an all-star at a top division one college program
ploogman 22 Nov 11
@ Dan
I think the point is that if you have formal education from an accredited school, no matter what it is, you are on even playing field regardless of the marque/cache of a particular “top” school.
And I think the point may also be that some great programmers and developers and designers are great without formal education. That is nothing new. But, more uncommon I would say.
37signals has some uncommonly good people, degrees or not. That’s my opinion.
Joe 22 Nov 11
By starting off by saying your problem is with other people’s hiring practices, you’ve crossed the line from sharing “what to works for us” to “here’s how everyone should do it”. I love it when you share what works for you. It’s useless to readers when you pretend to know what the needs of other companies are.
Damion Hankejh 22 Nov 11
[ yawn ] you’re just lime green jealous - I dropped out of MIT after 4 years - do I get a gold star?
TJ 22 Nov 11
Love it!
Justin 22 Nov 11
I received some of the best hiring advice from my old boss. He said he prefers to hire the guy who has the intellect to have gone to the high level university but didn’t for whatever reason and is pissed that people keep looking down on him and will spend the rest of his life proving that the name on his degree doesn’t matter.
GeeIWonder 22 Nov 11
Dear all:
Please, please, please please, please please please…
Do not confuse technicians with innovators.
That is all.
Daryl Yeo 22 Nov 11
I have incredible respect for you, David, but you are confusing programmers with computer scientists. 37signals makes web apps, there is no need for computer scientists when you are not using computer science to solve a problem. You will need smart people if you are going to solve really complex problems.
Sure, you guys can make great webapps that makes people’s lives easier and be incredibly successful at that. It’s really not hard to make a webapp these days. Anyone, regardless of educational background, but you guys will probably never be able to solve a problem like search like the PhDs at Google are trying to solve.
Nwokedi 23 Nov 11
I think for the most part, respectable tech companies actually do look at the candidate’s code regardless of what school he/she came from. The assessment may be in the form of a mini-project or online/in-person technical interview—but companies are definitely looking.
calendar for android 23 Nov 11
And they’ve all seemed life-changing, and they’ve all seemed important. ...
Anonymous Coward 23 Nov 11
I hardly consider making websites “programming.”
David V 23 Nov 11
I think David missed the point.
VCs gush about the education of their vapourware gamblers because they cannot just the substance! The makers of the emperor’s new clothes have good degrees. Just like the textiles, only the latest and finest will do.
Anonymous Coward 23 Nov 11
It’s great that 37signals sticks to it’s values and opinions no matter what but it shouldn’t make such stupid statements.
Remember your products were built on the shoulders of countless such computer scientists that you now scoff at. Remember your roots and never take things for granted.
This is why you guys are and always will be a small business.
ploogman 23 Nov 11
wow – some super hostile comments here!
I guess we can tell who went to the “top tier”! Me think some doth protest too much.
There are people who are great programmers who have no degree of any kind. Others have degrees in seemingly unrelated disciplines. Others have degrees in computer science.
Yes, web applications and websites do require extensive programming – they are part of the realm of programming. Its total bullshit to say that complex data drive websites or web applications do not require programming.
The days of the white coated computer scientist passed. Software can be written without a white coat and without being in a computer room. If you are talking about hardware development, making chips, circuits, etc., that is computer and electrical engineering.
Any of you programmers or developers out there are working in computer science – its just that web-related computer science captures the most attention these days – whether you are from MIT , CIT, Clarkson, Syracuse, Tulane or a small community college – or god forbid, for some anonymous cowards above, those of you with no degree.
At least David has the stones to make a statement and get a dialog going. That’s more what it is about. He never said he was perfect or right about everything.
And FYI David and 37 have created and innovated much more than most readers. Rails? Pow? The list goes on, all for your own use. Talk about walking on shoulders of others. We all walk on C and Unix, that is from the 1960s. Give it a break. Yeah, that shit is great. Next…
Matt Craig 23 Nov 11
I agree with David. In my career I’ve observed a pretty consistent inverse relationship between someone’s educational pedigree and their ability to produce.
True, I’m not coding for the space program… but then again, neither are 99% of the people reading this discussion.
Zac Wasielewski 23 Nov 11
Yet another shout-out to the RIT programmer! I graduated from their graphic design program, but eventually found my way to a programming/web development career. Oddly enough, the school prepared me well for a totally unrelated career (though arguably not $100k+ well).
GeeIWonder 23 Nov 11
Turing didn’t wear a white coat. He wrote software - conceived of it even - without a computer. So then he conceived of a computer.
Maybe an education was necessary for this, maybe it wasn’t, maybe it helped, maybe it got in the way. The point is this: the two guys winding the tape back and forth have no business spouting opinions on the matter.
Edgar 23 Nov 11
Don’t forget what I like to call brute force programmers who are those who just pick a book or some sort of tutorials and start learning things on their own.
sure it would of been nice to have someone teach you the way it supposed to be, however if it works and works really good that’s good enough for me.
Alex Bunardzic 23 Nov 11
I agree with the original post. Software development is the only craft known to man where complete transparency is fully disclosed. You can run but you cannot hide.
My only reservation would be in the following: just as, given enough loose cash, one can buy a prestigious education, one can also buy a prestigious open-source product on github. I wouldn’t be surprised if some talented developers would be willing to build something to order and allow the paying customer to inherit the sole ownership. The paying customer then acquires the bragging rights, in which case, we, the recruiters, would be fooled just as much as we can get fooled by the educational pedigree.
That’s why I’m only willing to interview people who are open to doing a hands-on coding test on the premises. I give them a problem, give them half a day to work on implementing the solution, and then examine the resulting product. The proof then indeed is in the pudding.
Cyber Design 24 Nov 11
Nice post! thank you for sharing the information with us.
Web designers
Anonymous Coward 24 Nov 11
Haha ploogman has no idea what he’s talking about.
Hamid 24 Nov 11
It’s obvious that talent and innovation are not developed in the university but in work-place and practicing.
Sudburyrob 24 Nov 11
Nothing fires up people more than this topic! My experience is that below average performers who went to top tier schools never shut up about where they earned their degree. One of my best bosses went to Harvard, and NEVER talked about it. Bottom line: if you value your school more than your accomplishments, you are destined to get eaten alive in the real world.
Anonymous Coward 24 Nov 11
Fuck programmers. Hire brogrammers.
You Guys Have Become Tiresome 25 Nov 11
Huh. Berate people who champion grads from one set of schools, then brag about the schools from which you and your colleagues graduated.
Pompus horseshit.
Juan Pablo Manson 25 Nov 11
I like the articles where you write about actually doing things, but latelly this blog has become a platform to just brag about unimportant stuff, mostly commented by flatterers.
There are a lot of insteresting things to write about, why waste your time with this bullshit?
Jobs Guru 25 Nov 11
Now I get it. This is the reason why I must visit silicon valley. Even if is just to come and stay 6 months , I wouldn’t mind, but the sure thing is that I ll grab a lot Idea that I would bring back to Nigeria. The problem of Tech StartUps in Nigeria is that business men and Government do not invest in young boys that have vision. I started blogging last 4 yrs, i have a couple of blogs but my blog is Jobgurus Nigeria, is job portal that publishes Latest Job Vacancies in Nigeria
Pat Hall 25 Nov 11
I find these arguments pretty tiresome and I admit to not having read all of them.
But I wanted to say: I just started grad school and it’s amazing. I have the good fortune to be able work with amazing minds every day. I admire 37s for their willingness to challenge the status quo, and especially for their insistence on encouraging young developers to chase their dreams. They’ve had a huge impact on the tech field.
But at the end of the day the business world is still business, and it wasn’t for me. Higher education (disregarding for the moment the meaningless question of what a “tier” really is) is about pure research, and pure research is a beautiful thing.
I just hope our society as a whole doesn’t choose to devalue it in the future.
Jobs 25 Nov 11
I agree with you david, it’s not about where you trained but if and how you get the job done.
Patrick Gant 26 Nov 11
Granted, I went to university in Canada and we don’t have the same wide gap- scratch that…perceived gap -between the Ivy leaguers and all the rest.
Where you went to school is far, far less important than what you do with the education you’re given. The only extra edge that the pedigreed folks get are the networks of people they meet when in school and that they can mine for a lifetime thereafter.
Jim Jones 26 Nov 11
@Jackson Merb was created by Yehuda Katz. He ran the school newspaper at Brooklyn College and later taught himself to code. Not exactly a “top tier” schooling (not knocking on Yehuda, much respect)..
http://thegeektalk.com/interviews/yehuda-katz/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merb
sushil bharwani 26 Nov 11
I think going to a good school gives you a great exposure. But at the same time if you end up in a group who does wonderful things it could be equally exiting. Also it depends on where your interest are so being a good programmer is not just about school its about your interest and people you work with.
Gaurav 26 Nov 11
Have you guys considered having small ‘thumbs up’ button near comments? Some really good comments I’ve seen regularly on your blog and I think we could use that functionality.
Matthew @ Thepen 26 Nov 11
I think people can go to any schools and really make a difference.
Walt 27 Nov 11
I think everyone was quite pleased by 37signals early success, and obviously you guys and gals have made some real money. Good for you.
But in the last year or two your attitude in these posts have come across as a bunch of smug assholes. Seriously, this post pretty much tops everything, including your last dopey book which I bought and immediately threw away after reading. “Just do it”? Really? I paid for this? I guess that makes me the bigger schmuck.
If you guys were on the leading edge of anything in computer science, and did it well, I would say your argument has muster. It still does, regardless. But you guys have made a pretty good living delivering something pretty simple to a whole bunch of people who are looking for something simple – good for you. But do not pretend that the technology behind your business is anything like what some of the hardcore types out of the A++ CS schools do for a living – it is not.
The bottom line is two years ago I would have no problem recommending a peer looking for some simple project management tools to just sign up for Basecamp. Two years later – not so much. With so much “smugness” and a shitty attitude towards the highly educated people that built some of the technologies that your business takes for granted, this thing might just blow up sooner or later, and I’m betting sooner.
BTW , I didn’t go to one of those A++ technology schools either.
Sarah Bird 27 Nov 11
I am feeling depressed after reading this. I never passed out from these universities. What does that say about me? Does that make me any less of a coder? People who master grads from same schools and then brag about their schools and univs. from where they graduated. Duh! Can we please change the topic?
Andy 27 Nov 11
Well we can agree that David has 1. a strong opinion and 2. gets folks talking. That in itself can be valuable.
Tyler 27 Nov 11
Absolutely. Most of the best and most talented developers I know didn’t even graduate college. I’m all for education, but where someone went to school has very little to do with how good a developer they are.
Bruno Barros 28 Nov 11
Wow, fuck yeah!
Bryan 28 Nov 11
What I read here is simply this: a person’s passion and skills matter more than where they went to school or where they worked. Now, admittedly if they come from a solid background (school, employer) they are more likely to have advanced skills based on their exposure and field of study/depth of specialization. But many times success comes down to how bad you want something, how hard and smart you are willing to train/prepare yourself, and what you do when you have the opportunity (e.g. working long hours, doing stuff others don’t want to, going after additional opportunities). You can develop this focus and discipline in many places and in many ways, not just the big corporations and elite schools. In this regard, I’m more aligned with the Jack Welch’s philosophy on success.
This discussion is closed.