Slashdot Mirror
Ph.Ds From MIT, Berkeley, and a Few Others Dominate Top School's CS Faculties
An anonymous reader writes "A Brown University project collected the background information of over 2,000 computer science professors in 51 top universities. The data shows a skew in their doctoral degrees, "Over 20% of professors received their Ph.D. from MIT or Berkeley, while more than half of professors received their Ph.D. from the [top] 10 universities." For those professors, fewer work in theoretical computer science and there is a growing trend of recent hires in systems and applications. The original data is also publicly-editable and available to download."
...if you want a low paying job in your field after you graduate, get your doctorate from one of the best schools in the country.
Got it!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's pretty sad that the other 90% of universities have so little faith in their OWN graduates that they won't hire from within.
If I had just gotten a PhD, and it ended up being so worthless that even my own school wouldn't accept it, I would demand a refund.
Ivy league academia is a circle-jerk
Except that only three of the "top ten" schools in the list are in the Ivy League, and none of those are in the top five.
Here is the list from TFA:
MIT
UC Berkeley
Stanford
Carnegie Mellon
Univ of Illinois
Princeton
Cornell
Univ of Washington
Georgia Tech
Harvard
At least you haven't let it make you bitter.
Top professors dominate top positions at top school!
Who would have ever guessed.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So...how come that "actual proven ability" didn't translate into founding your own company?
Ezekiel 23:20
I'm one of the best programmers anyone could hope to hire.
You sound so much better than those egotistical rich kids.
What a load of shit.
You appear to be not only brilliant, but extremely eloquent as well. I can't imagine why all those employers declined to hire you.
Overheard at lunch there around 2000 (paraphrase): "We hire the most competitive candidates from the most competitive top three schools and then we wonder why they have trouble cooperating and getting along..."
I hope the policy has changed since... It also seemed like they were passing over a lot of interesting people and thus limiting their cognitive diversity.
See also Scott E. Page book "The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies"
http://www.amazon.com/Differen...
Google probably suffers to a lesser extent from a similar problem as I suggest here:
http://developers.slashdot.org...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
If a candidate is not smart enough not to understand simple concepts about the nature of interaction of social species, he are too dull to warrant employment. If he understands the concepts but ignores them, he is immediately declaring that he rejects the importance of established standards, and would make a substandard engineer. Either way, a person who does not communicate well with a goodly proportion of people is always the worse choice when pitted against someone who communicates well with many people. And engineers are a dime a dozen, while good communicators are rare.
If an employer is petty enough to not hire someone because they use 'swear words' instead of something that amounts to the same thing, they're illogical and not someone you want to work for.
The ability to control oneself and behave in a manner that does not offend other employees is important to building and maintaining a productive workplace rather than, say, a hostile work environment. Conforming to some minimum standard of politeness shows that one can work as part of a team and is not some aggressive "loose canon" that will disrupt the workplace and become a liability.
And I'm not buying the "CIO" thing at all, unless it's a one or two person operation functioning out of a garage someplace. There is really no way that any real company would hire a guy who mouths off like this. He sounds more like a guy who is jealous of those who were able to attend schools like MIT. I'm sure he feels his personal experience added to his Associates degree is more than equil to 4 or 6 years at MIT, but I'm not buying it.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So basically, if you wanna be a prof, don't bother getting a PhD outside the top 10. If you don't wanna be a prof, don't bother getting a PhD at all.
I find "what a load of shit" to be a very apt and useful expression in many circumstances. Rudeness and eloquence are not incompatible.
I also think the CIO's point is valid, and fear that whatever percentage of CS professors received their training from MIT may still lack a college education, as I do. (Certainly MIT does not offer a college education, instead diverting people into excellent technical training.)
I've often wondered what the results would be of a poll that compared long term outcomes for students who matriculate at a given university with students who were accepted but went elsewhere. To my knowledge, no such poll has ever been conducted.
Wow, you are really an arrogant fool. First, MIT has never been a "legacy" school. The vast majority of students there get significant financial aid because their middle- and working-class families cannot afford the full price. (The Ivies have also been moving away from admitting the sons of sons of sons, and focusing more exclusively on merit.) Second, you obviously have no idea how much work it takes, how competitive and hard-working students have to be, just to get into these top tier schools, much less stay in them and graduate. So your bullshit about spoiled kids is just laughable--I've hired from these schools, and what I got was highly-motivated, smart, hard-working employees.
...I beat 88% of their programmers worldwide...
Which probably translates to an ability to beat 0% of CS students at MIT. Seriously. The majority graduate in the top 1% of their high-school class. And 25% of this year's incoming freshman had perfect math SAT scores. (Of course that doesn't prove what they'll do in the real world...)
So I'm one of the best programmers anyone could hope to hire.
I've known plenty of people like you in my career, and I sure as hell hope to not hire anyone like you.
The ability to control oneself and behave in a manner that does not offend other employees is important to building and maintaining a productive workplace rather than, say, a hostile work environment.
If you feel like you're on a razor thin wire because the people around you are oversensitive, controlling assholes and feel the need to control how other people use language, then that *is* a hostile work environment.
Just because someone has an irrational hatred of certain words and has bought into the religious and illogical notion that some words are inherently 'bad' doesn't mean they should be able to stop everyone else from saying those words.
Conforming to some minimum standard of politeness shows that one can work as part of a team and is not some aggressive "loose canon" that will disrupt the workplace and become a liability.
If "politeness" is controlling how other people use language in order to create a facade where everyone acts and speaks exactly as you want them to, then I don't want to be polite. I don't care about being polite, and apparently neither does my employer.
Those types of artificial environments are hostile to any intelligent person's well-being.
There is really no way that any real company would hire a guy who mouths off like this.
Maybe not all employers are authoritarian imbeciles? Mine isn't, at least. I have no clue if he's actually a CIO.
So yeah, as I said, those are not the types of employers you want to work for. Find someone who isn't a complete moron.
People are very diverse, come from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, and socioeconomic situations. Part of maintaining a professional work environment is understanding that groups of people have diverse viewpoints on what is acceptable and comfortable (I will note that this is also part of being an adult). Labeling someone as "uptight" or "razor thin" just because they value the accepted professional behavior norms in the work environment shows an extreme lack of social intelligence and inability to see the world from other perspectives. You would be a liability at any respectable tech company. You come across as the guy who doesn't understand why putting up a bikini calendar on your cubicle wall might create an uncomfortable environment for female coworkers.
You certainly wouldn't ever be hired at my company. Yes, sometimes there are sensitive people or people who get upset over things we may feel are silly. However, these people can still be very productive employees. When you don't respect that you are preventing these employees from being productive. You create drama that prevents people from focusing on work and getting the job done. If you worked for me or my company (and you wouldn't, btw), you don't get paid to be buddies with me or your coworkers. You get paid to work as part of a team. You also won't get coddled to feel like you can roll into the office and feel like you're back at the frat house.
It's also the world you live in. Whether you like it or not, people make impressions based on their interactions with you. These impressions override most everything you claim about yourself. Just ask yourself how many times a well dressed and respected person gets off with less penalties than the guy who shows up to court for the same charges acting like a street thug while trying to convince the judge he is an upstanding pillar of the community. There is nothing religious about it, it is just the other person's expectations.
As for the rest of your post, communication is often essential in work whether it be engineering or prostitution. It's a basic reason behind TPS reports and various other forms one has to muscle through while actually getting work done. It standardizes the communication process somewhat to make up for poor communication. Those who communicate better and are around better communicators, are likely to excel more so than those who do not communicate well. With the exception for foreigners for whom English is not a first language (for some reason, they are excused), not to many fortune 500 companies employ people with poor communication skills unless it is for some quota or to fill low level jobs that aren't really relevant to the operation. Those jobs are the lower paying jobs in the establishment too. It is just a fact of life- if you want to get ahead, you have to act like it.
There is nothing religious about it, it is just the other person's expectations.
Then their expectations reveal them as irrational and shallow. In particular, this sort of attitude has zero place in court rooms, and that it exists in courts is a travesty indeed. In my opinion, anyway.
When I went to job interviews (though it has been years), I made it a point to dress up in the 'worst' clothes I had. I'd go into job interviews with casual clothes that would have stains and rips in them. The idea is that I don't want to work with shallow people. I'm simply choosing my own company, and I don't want to hang around people that are irrational and shallow if I can help it, you see.
As for the rest of your post, communication is often essential in work whether it be engineering or prostitution.
I guarantee, I can communicate with my fellow workers, and yet they feel no need to try to control my language, or claim that some words are objectively 'bad'.
It seems I'm lucky to be in a non-hostile work environment, huh?
It is just a fact of life- if you want to get ahead, you have to act like it.
That's not how change happens.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
This is a free world, you can think anything you want about the courts or even people hiring others to work for them. It just doesn't change reality much.
Again, this is a free world (for a little while longer anyways). That is your choice. I know people who did that same thing except they did it in order to flunk the interview so they could meet their job search requirements and keep drawing their unemployment checks while working under the table on the side.
but change is how bigotry happens. So either you hate them or they hate you. Or both happens. Either way, I'm willing to bet that there will not be much codependency on each other for quite some time.
middle of Wisconsin?
That might be half your problem. Still, I see where you're coming from. On the other side of that, many technical schools are just degree mills. Lots of candidates come out of technical schools that look good on paper and then when you hire them, it's like they never attended a day of class or learned anything. I think companies have gotten burned there, which really sucks for the students that come out that are good, and it sucks for the technical schools that are good because now 'technical school' has a stigma.
Again, this is a free world (for a little while longer anyways). That is your choice. I know people who did that same thing except they did it in order to flunk the interview so they could meet their job search requirements and keep drawing their unemployment checks while working under the table on the side.
This right there is why you didn't get a job with a software firm and ended up in IT instead. It might be a symptom of you not getting into one of these top CS schools in that when you are at such an university, you are surrounded by people who are as smart or smarter than you (perhaps for the first time in your life) and you realize really quickly that first impressions and looks are very likely to fool you when dealing with such people. You learn to look a bit deeper and you learn that a term like "smart" can take on many forms. Some people are better communicators, some are better engineers, some are better at abstract logic and some are more pragmatic folks that always make sound decisions. And how they dress rarely will tell you which someone is. So you learn to filter those factors and look deeper. Something you clearly never learned to do. And putting someone like you in a quality engineering team can be like throwing a wrench into a clock's gears. That's why you ended up where you did and no other reason. I've worked with people in the software field without CS degrees and with degrees from "lesser" schools. Your authoritarian attitude toward others is why you are barred from software firms, thank his noodley goodness.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
It's just sad that we rely on pieces of paper to 'prove' our worth, even when most of the people with pieces of paper don't know what they're doing (Most of the people without don't either.). It's also sad that you need to waste your time in rote memorization facilities in order to get scholarships. It's just a huge waste of time and effort.
You know what you are? Bitter.
I would be bitter too if I got rejected just because I didn't have a certain piece of paper. That's illogical garbage.
But being "bitter" doesn't debunk his little rant. But yeah, I don't see why he would decline to hire someone just because they're rich; it seems like the same sort of petty nonsense that leads to employers not hiring people because they're lacking pieces of paper.
Clearly written by someone who never was at one of these top CS schools. I assure you that rote memorization won't get you a degree at any of them. Most of my tests at CMU were open book and open note and I can count on 1 hand how many times I used my textbook or notes during a test. Why? Because the tests weren't rote memorization tests but instead tested for your ability to synthesize what you learned and apply it to a domain you might not have ever considered. One question on my OS final was to write a device driver for an optical disk, with a pencil and paper (no compiler or debugger) in valid C. Rote memorization won't help you there. Quit being bitter and ignorant about educational experiences you haven't had. Perhaps there is a reason all the CS profs come from MIT, Berkeley and CMU...
PS Berkeley graduates about 4X the CS major as MIT and CMU combined. Not sure the author considered this in their analysis...good engineers are supposed to see this type of omission. Guess CIOs aren't...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."