It's well considered by a lot of people in the industry that a prospective's grades and even which school they went to aren't a good predictor of skill.
Is the school thing a strictly American phenomenon? In New Zealand for instance all that tends to matter is which city/town you want to live in and whether the institution offers the field you want to major in (medicine for example is only offered by Otago IIRC).
I've only been asked for grades once in the previous 12 years where at which point I withdrew my application.
Yes, America has more school inequality than other countries (although it’s not the only one, Oxford and Tokyo U also exist). Part of this is because they’re so good they suppress top international schools from forming in other countries. But also they teach in English and I assume it’s harder for international students to attend a French or Chinese school.
In some cases, school is a legal way to discriminate. The top tier companies incorporate recruiting into their culture.
If you recruit at Brown, you’re going to get a different candidate than some CUNY school. They all tested well in high school or have parents with good networks, and they tend to look and quack alike.
"Culture fit" is just another way to discriminate a candidate based on race, age, or gender.
HR from my company has explicitly told all interviewers not to use "culture fit" as a reason to disqualify a candidate presumably to avoid potential lawsuits.
The best programmers I know didn't go to college. It's been my experience that degrees and standardized test don't tell you jack about how well someone will do a job.
for startups, new grads with good portfolios and ok grades > new grads with good grades and ok portfolios
likewise, new grads with a story of upward trajectory & energy > new grads who coast on what their parents/school setup
the bet being made is they'll put in the hard work and achieve the personal growth to progress quickly, and they'll roll with the uncertainties of startups. grades do hint at the hard work, and youth suggests dealing with uncertainty, but not as well as succeeding at difficult and fuzzily-defined projects. if they've done that before, better chance they'll do it again.
outside of startups, priorities change. big orgs need people who won't risk the cash cow. consultancies need people with better credentials than their customers. etc.
Different people have different ways of learning and working. Some people build a bunch of stuff. Others build toys, others may just focus on their primary jobs and don't have a portfolio of things they can share.
most students don't work on classified fbi projects, see in the thread on some of the projects I've seen undergrads involved in that are more demonstrative than grades. a project portfolio is just a cv section that focuses on the projects and your involvement, and hopefully ways for the interviewer to see it and the code, but even descriptions and screenshots go far for the interview conversation.
most good cs programs have significant project components, and students not putting in their project time there are often doing so elsewhere.
if not, they may have the potential to be good at projects, but tbd. without other strong signals, probably fewer startups are in a good position to take that bet.
also, going beyond students, the top programmers I've worked with have a history of great public and private projects - papers, $100B companies, top frameworks, launched top products, record breaking results, news articles around their impact, etc. The main exceptions are 'lifer at apple' types and 'works at secret bank', but most hop jobs enough that it's not an issue. A top group I see that really struggle a lot are 'lifer at secret gov agency x', which gets many of them stuck in the defense contractor round door.
we may have different experiences for what top means and what they help achieve. Who is this silent majority of top 1% programmers that don't have any referenceable projects? And more to the point, top intern candidates?
if they don't have impressive projects.. maybe not so good?
when i think of the best cs ugrads i've known, and would be great at startups:
* cool projects outside of classes, especially self-initiated, like doing their own startups
* cool libraries or algs that got popular or, not quite as good, published
* hardcore mode attempts at class projects, e.g., well beyond extra mile for OS's + graphics, or took grad-level courses for the same (=> w/ accompanying projecs), or new to CS and are proud at winning some class competitions despite that
>if they don't have impressive projects.. maybe not so good?
lol, you realize that for I'd say almost all projects the interesting part/core is small % of the whole, meanwhile the rest is just boring code that needs to be done?
ofc it's not the nicest thing that you arent completing your side projects and just doing the interesting stuff, but you may have experience in industry, so you know how to do that boring ass stuff anyway
Startup conditions are chaotic and every new person takes management + training overhead. Internship applicants who have well-done and challenging projects have shown the energy, self-management, know-how, & self-learning to get projects done in mini-versions of these conditions. So every hour spent on them goes a lot further, and both sides benefit more.
Conversely, if someone can't get their projects done, the projects are too low quality for where it matters, or their skill are on too-different of a thing, at best, it's non-evidence. So you'll have to fall back to evaluating weaker signals like grades. At worst, lacking or failing at projects is a red flag that they'll struggle on the adult-sized projects as well.
For 'interestingness', probably more relevant is 'tied to the mission', but I think being youthful covers 80% of that for intern-level folks.
Failure to figure out fit may mean everyone loses. Interns are more about recruitment pipeline for companies, and I'm not sure that's the wisest way to solve that for a lot of startups if that's the goal. Likewise, startups not ready to invest in their interns (management overhead, training, etc.), or fail to screen for a good match in skills, can easily be a bad experience and opportunity cost for the students, who may have had a more pleasant, productive, and rewarding experience at a more mature company.
I'll speak from perspective of average CS in E. Europe
people who were the best at my year were mostly focused on jobs / real world software development and just wanted to get degree, so just pass the exams and projects effortlessly
but I've been studying at weekends, so I may be biased.
