Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

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IMHO the whole concept of legacy admissions (among other things) is distinctly un-American. The USA is all about hard work, perseverance, and talent. This is what has made America great, and it is only through this that America can remain this way.

More and more American society resembles the old European oligarchies of old, the one the people fought so hard to free themselves from. Patents of nobility are gone, but the aristocrats remain all the same.

It saddens me - I've known so many people who had so much raw talent, but never got the help they needed to really excel. I know people who got poor grades in school who could hack circles around me. Yet here I am in college, surrounded by a bunch of pompous idiots who are only here because mommy and daddy could afford to send them to the best tutors, and boost their marks so far beyond what normal, but talented folks get.

Many of the most talented developers I know never got the chance to go to a prestigious school, or even study CS at a formal level. Yet the people around me by and large can't hack their way out of a wet paper bag. The talented, truly obsessive hackers don't get any help from society, but the career-seekers who aren't the least interested in the code they write are. There's no justice.

I'm of the belief that it doesn't really matter for the type of people you are talking about.

If these "lost" people are as talented and ambitious as you claim, they will have no problem succeeding at whatever field in which they choose to apply themselves. If they could "hack circles around [you]," then they will have no problem hacking one of the most peculiar and challenging systems of all, the steps needed to be successful in everyday society.

If they are that capable, then surely putting together a decent college application and getting into a good school or getting a great job would be piece of cake. You might have to bite the bullet and do things like create a resume and apply for jobs or take the SATs, gather the necessary papers, and submit your applications, but sooner or later smart, industrious people will realize that you don't get anywhere by complaining about your situation.

Talented, truly obsessive hackers don't need help from society, because they have the fortitude and resourcefulness to succeed on their own. You can't stop them from learning and working on hard problems. The "career-seekers" can take their safe, well-paid programming jobs at big companies and buy their cookie-cutter house in the suburbs next to all the other "career-seekers," with their white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a dog. Good for them. But the kinds of hackers you are talking about would not be happy with that kind of lifestyle. They would probably want to be on the bleeding edge, to be a visionary or trendsetter rather than somebody who blindly walks along path paved before them. I believe that if you have a passion as strong as this, the rejection letters from jobs or colleges will lie and fade to ashes, forgotten as you blaze ahead into the life that you forge for yourself.

You would be right, but we've built a system that's stacked against the people I describe. The people I talk about can hack circles around me - but they never got high marks in school (family trouble, learning disability, etc.), and therefore never went to a prestigious college. Many employers' hiring practices are obscenely stacked against coders with no degrees (or even degrees from a "crappier" college).

What you're describing is the precise problem with legacy admissions - the fact that we are judging a person's skill set via the college they went to, and controlling people's futures as a result of our artificial interference with what ought to be a true meritocracy.

If people are objective, and looked at a person's hacking talent instead of whether or not they went to MIT, then I agree - these people can clearly carve a path for themselves despite not going to a prestigious school. But this is not the case.

For the record - the people I'm talking about do work on some insanely cool projects despite the fact that they don't go to well-known colleges, or have degrees at all, but they constantly struggle to be taken seriously. When they walk into an interview (if they're lucky enough to get one) the fact that they come from some podunk college automatically tilts the playing field far away from them.

To try to be objective - I don't think we can really correct people's perception that people from "good schools" perform better. So instead of fighting this false presumption, let's make sure we stack our college student body with truly qualified and talented people.

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