rdr

agreed, university reputation matters a lot less nowadays than it did in the previous generation ... nowadays anyone with a good idea can start up a tech company and get rich. nobody cares about ur college name

ad hominem arguments detract from this discussion, i think :)

plus, the blogger is still a student, so of course he's not going to have much in terms of real-world accomplishments.

yep i agree. it's not like you just got the job cuz your father owned the company or something outright nepotistic

ah nice, yeah it seems like internships during college is a good first step since the barrier to entry is a bit lower ... from there you can start building your network

thanks for the quick reply! so how did you get your FIRST job then? it seems easier to bootstrap once you've made connections at your Nth job to go to the (N+1)th job, but how do you start?

"note: most students at top phd programs didn't go to major name brand undergrad programs... they went to small (not well known) schools and accomplished meaningful research that would have been harder to accomplish in a cutthroat name brand atmosphere."

i think it depends on the department. some smaller departments at top schools are fairly elitist in their admissions, mostly since they're based so heavily on recommendation letters. if you didn't go to a top undergrad institution, chances are they don't know who your letter writers are and might not give as much weight to your letters or application. just speculation, tho :)

have you personally seen cases where you were discriminated against but an MIT grad was given preferential treatment? or is that just a general sentiment you're conveying?

that's probably the most healthy attitude ;)

i suppose it's harder when you are around people from name-brand colleges, no?

if nobody around you went to a name-brand college, then of course there's no point of reference

all of these name-brand colleges are private, so if the state has a role in all of this, it's quite indirect, right? of course the government has a role in accredidation, grants, laws, etc., but it's hard to imagine eliminating those ... sorry, i don't want to get into a debate on libertarianism ;)

what do you mean by "thanks to state support"? please clarify, thanks.

really? isn't the startup community supposed to be more anti-establishment and not worry about paper credentials as much as, say, a large corporation or government organization?

thanks for the quick reply! i'm curious about your statement about "skill commensurate with the name brand of your degree" ... does that imply that certain people are held to a higher standard due to where they went to college? that seems unfair both to those people (who have unreasonably elevated expectations) and to everyone else (who have lowered expectations since they don't have a name-brand diploma). if 2 people are in the same position at the same company receiving the same pay (working as peers), shouldn't others expect something similar from them regardless of their degrees?

could you please provide some examples of logical flaws or careless conclusions that the author has made in this particular story? i just read the article, but sorry i still don't quite understand what you mean by that assertion.

completely agree, I don't see why this post is specific to R&D ... seems like it's a useful question to ask of any candidate who has to write code, but the essence of R&D seems to be knowledge of the research literature and ability to advance the company's interests through performing innovative research, which this question doesn't at all cover

agreed, oftentimes hacking on a problem for a long time enables you to discover another more interesting (or practical) problem whose need wouldn't have arisen if you weren't working on your original problem in the first place.

cool, thanks for the quick reply. i was also gonna ask whether parts of your thesis were available online in the forms of research papers or PDF dissertation, but i guess i can read the free On Lisp PDF.