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Comment by pknomad | Hacker News Reader

It's unfortunate but not surprising given that the job market is awful and worthwhile recruiting tends to be localized to top tier unis...

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I think CS is starting to become more and more like being a lawyer. Nobody cares if you have the credentials unless it’s from a good school, but if it is they’re willing to pay a lot

In law it also depends a lot on how what rank in your class you were.

The situation with law is that you need credentials from a good school, with a decent class rank, and probably a good clerkship to get your foot in the door with a well-paying white shoe law firm. Otherwise there are probably plenty of law positions but they may pay pretty poorly in many cases.

That doesn't make sense because a lawyer's pedigree is valuable to the firm. They want to tell their clients that "we have Harvard lawyers working on your case."

Nobody really cares about the pedgree of a computer programmer. There are some narrow areas where they may want to have a highly credentialed person serving as "chief scientist" or something, to impress investors. A startup may want to tell investors that "our technology team is lead by an MIT PhD in AI" but beyond that the credentials of your dev team are not marketable.

Contact firms care a lot, although I think the degree is intended to convey competence. An exceptional programmer is worth a lot more than two mediocre programmers, and so if you can be convinced someone is exceptional they can make a lot of money. Although I don’t always agree with the logic, going to a top school can help convey this sentiment

Everyone cares if you have credentials as a layer. It is illegal to practice law without having the credentials.

Yeah, I think people arguing about "they want 4 year degrees" and "they use professors as contacts" may be missing the forest for the trees.

Career fairs are a very effective advertising route (guaranteed real people, high chance people are developing in relevant fields, chance to network with future recruiting wings) on top of a way to try and get interns or junior level candidates. Especially small local businesses who have no chance attracting national talent.

To tell people that you aren't interested in I'm advertising (a business's favorite thing) paints a dire situation, reflecting how bad times really are. Especially in an area like SF

And as a fun little dystopia to end off on, there are many non-school career fairs companies go to in 2023/4 with no intention of even interviewing. A few will straight up tell you they aren't and just want to "bring brand awareness". Yay economy.

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