Hacker News Reader

See I came out of college learning the exact opposite lesson. I optimized for learning as much as possible, and didn't care at all about grades.

Turns out 90% of the shit I learned in college was a waste and GPA matters quite a bit.

There are still jobs that's ask my GPA 10 years in. And your first job determines your second one, and I imagine I lost out on somewhere between 70-250k in compensation at least from having a bad GPA.

There are lots of different perspectives on education in this thread, yours included, and I respect that. It's a complicated issue, and no two people have the same experience. This is why I always tell people not to just blindly follow my path because it worked for me, that's the same as just taking the path your parents want or worse.

I still want the main takeaway to be that we shouldn't necessarily always be pushing teenagers straight into College, and that something clearly needs to change.

This relates to one of the weird effect of going abroad: nobody cares, except if you’re from an elite world renown school.

For some visa application the criteria was to have graduated from college, and a printed paper saying “this student graduated in 20xx” was enough. No job cared to ask what school it was, how it’s ranked or what grades, as it was out of their social ranking and they wouldn’t be able to pin it in the hierarchy. It was a good school and I enjoyed the curriculum, but really nobody cares.

>And your first job determines your second one

what. the. hell.

I hate that mindset with passion.

Folks, just skew the odds.

Huh? I legitimately can't tell what mindset you're railing against, or what "skew the odds" means in this context?

>I legitimately can't tell what mindset you're railing against

Basically that there's some "chain" of dependencies, impossible to overcome when it comes to career

like previously quoted statement for me sounds like

good gpa -> good first job -> fast path to high tc jobs

mediocre gpa -> mediocre job -> a lot of other not fancy jobs -> high tc job after a lot of years

What I'm saying is that "And your first job determines your second one" is not true (except edge cases like govt jobs).

You can start your career at the most unknown company in country and still manage to jump to the top companies

>or what "skew the odds" means in this context?

Just because the odds are not favoring you, it's still doable

It's not impossible to overcome, but it does take time. Time your earning less money than you would be.

Time to build up a competitive resume so you get an interview despite a lower GPA, and time to study so that when you do get the interview you leave a better impression to make up for the poor GPA.

Generally the whole "GPA" importance concept is crazy to me, because in my country I've never heard anyone ever being asked about it

I don't even remember my GPA because I've seen it maybe twice - once when I received diploma and second time when I've been going thru my documents and just wanted to check out of curiosity

It's so flawed metrics that I'd never even consider it as reasonable when interviewing people

In my early career I've had several recruiters who were very interested in me based on my resume, had several conversations and then when they found out my GPA said they couldn't place me.

Also had several jobs I wanted that required a certain GPA even 5-10 years into my career.

To your point, college is a path to education for some and a signal for others (and, probably more accurately, some mixture of both). I think the issue is when both groups (those that cheat and those that do not) both get the same credential. That means the credential has lost its "signal value".

To someone who values college as almost exclusively for its educational value, maybe that doesn't matter. But to many, especially HR, the degree is valuable for its signaling capability and watering that down has real and lasting consequences.

I went to university to get the mandatory piece of paper. Sometimes I had enough time between courses to actually learn how to program, amid the UML and ethics in CS.

I still don't appreciate the value of a good education. You could have replaced mine with pre-recorded Stanford lectures, set coursework, work placements, and Saturday morning coffee with a senior engineer to go over the week with our laptops out. It would have been 10% of the cost or less and it would have taught me more.

My dude, I make a quarter million a year. I found out how useless college was after I accrued $2,944 in student loans (I attended college after 2001). The value to me was, and continues to be zero. College is not for everyone, and this applies even in countries where higher education is free.

The ability to use critical thinking does not come from a college education.

how many employers req. 'critical thinking' instead of a degree.

Far too few.

Were it possible; employers might screen candidates on the results of a test of critical thinking, as opposed to a degree. However, this has been illegal since Griggs vs. Duke.

Wasn't the intent of Griggs v. Duke that the testing needed to apropos to the job? Meaning that "critical thinking" tests could be part of the job filter as long as they related to the job at hand?

Well, some places do leetcode... and then they ask if you have a degree.

I agree completely.

many make that because of massive information asymmetry. they are players in a giant con game that is engulfing the world. to some, there is more to life than bartering.

, they don't know the value of money, and are just going because their parents just want them to.

how does this follow from not cheating. if you care about not wasting money, you would do everything, including even cheating, to pass.

they don't even know what they really want to do with their lives

or maybe they do know and just see 4 years of college as a waste of time to get there.

Because most of the cheating is born out of laziness, not from a desire to pass at all costs.

"all cost" not include cheating as well?

>if you care about not wasting money, you would do everything, including even cheating, to pass.

If you care about not wasting money, why risk everything you've spent and not even gain the education that you've purchased while you're at it?

>or maybe they do know and just see 4 years of college as a waste of time to get there.

If they truly already have the skills they need to skip to their life of choice - why cheat? If they don't have this capability, their feeling that they should just be able to skip over education is wrong.