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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

If you select courses for the easiest route to a degree, you won't be that employable.

I've never seen evidence that specific courses matter much for employment post college. Do you have data on this?

No, I have done no research on this. But if you went for a degree in EE, and took only the minimum of electronics courses, then you'd have a skill deficit compared with a person who took every advanced EE course he could stuff into his schedule? For example, he layered on analog electronics, and you took only digital, that you'd have a problem when faced with a job that needed a bit of analog?

And yes, I've seen EEs flummoxed when faced with a bit of noise in their digital circuit, when a guy who knew some analog had it fixed pronto. Which engineer was more employable?

I don't think Walter Bright meant that listing the courses you took on your resume is going to make you more (or less) employable. I think the point was that taking difficult classes will better prepare your for work.

I slightly disagree with this position, difficult doesn't mean better (depending on your definition of better). For example, I would have been better served to take a class on databases rather than a class on computational geometry.

I didn't mean necessarily taking hard classes. I meant taking classes that would provide a foundation for your career, rather than selecting classes based solely on how easy they are.

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