Be True To Your CS School: LinkedIn Ranks US Schools For Job-Seeking Programmers

theodp writes "The Motley Fool reports that the Data Scientists at LinkedIn have been playing with their Big Data, ranking schools based on how successful recent grads have been at landing desirable software development jobs. Here's their Top 25: CMU, Caltech, Cornell, MIT, Princeton, Berkeley, Univ. of Washington, Duke, Michigan, Stanford, UCLA, Illinois, UT Austin, Brown, UCSD, Harvard, Rice, Penn, Univ. of Arizona, Harvey Mudd, UT Dallas, San Jose State, USC, Washington University, RIT. There's also a shorter list for the best schools for software developers at startups, which draws a dozen schools from the previously mentioned schools, and adds Columbia, Univ. of Virginia, and Univ. of Maryland College Park. If you're in a position to actually hire new graduates, how much do you care about applicants' alma maters?

Comments

In theory

[smittyoneeach]

In theory, schools can act as a crap filter for workers.
"The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory."--some C++ Users Journal article

Re:In theory

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory, schools can act as a crap filter for workers.

In theory. In practice, I test employees myself (and ask them to show me something they've done) and hire self-educated individuals because I know that schools pump out lots of trash.

Re:In theory

[The Ickle Jones]

Self taught programmers have huge holes in their knowledge that they don't even know they have.

A hasty generalization which could be applied to graduates as well.

Re:In theory

[Bengie]

Most trash I know has a grasp on practice, but doesn't understand theory. They have hard time understanding edge cases or scaling. The opposite is knowing theory but no practice, but anyone can get practice. It's hard to get theory self taught, the internet is sparsely populated with good theory and lots of bad ideas. Plenty of code examples.

Missing the point

[philip.paradis]

A huge number of software development jobs don't require a CS degree, including many highly paid positions. In fact, having a CS degree may reduce the odds of being hired for some positions. It seems the trend of misunderstanding the term "computer science" hasn't lost any momentum.

Re:Missing the point

[jones_supa]

I would say that it's the opposite: B.Sc. is the new high school diploma. Highly recommended.

Re:Missing the point

[philip.paradis]

I have a GED, and I assure you I earn substantially more than most CS graduates. Additionally, I continue to note a marked absence of (1) actual programming ability, (2) knowledge of even the most rudimentary information security practices, and (3) adequate understanding of core systems principles among recent CS graduates. Perhaps your perspective is the result of having grown acclimated to working with people with substantially reduced capabilities.

Re:Missing the point

[buddyglass]

Do you think you're representative of most GED-havers? I don't.

Re:Missing the point

[philip.paradis]

This is the sort of reply I expected, so please allow me to bring my core point into sharper perspective. In the course of my fifteen years of employment in a variety of roles in assorted industries (network infrastructure, hosting, finance, biological sciences, etc), my firsthand experience has been that software developers "lacking" a CS degree have displayed a marked tendency to produce more functional, reasonably secure, and efficient/scalable code than their CS counterparts. They have also, on average, commanded substantially higher salaries in software development roles than their CS counterparts.

Degree mills and some otherwise respected educational institutions may not be happy about these facts, but it's important to note that they're not exclusively to blame for the situation. A computer science degree simply doesn't translate to skill in software development, largely because formal computer science has relatively little to do with programming. Thus, my original post is entitled "missing the point."

I've worked with a few CS graduates who purportedly had a specialized focus on information security. As it turned out, their ability to actually perform in their professional roles was woefully lacking.

Re:Missing the point

[philip.paradis]

That's a fundamentally flawed statement. The question isn't whether I'm representative of most individuals with GEDs, but whether I'm representative of individuals holding GEDs who happen to have pursued careers involving substantial software development duties. You may wish to reference my last reply for clarification.

On a side note, in my experience these discussions tend to invite emotionally-driven responses from people who spent an awful lot of time and money obtaining a CS degree because somebody told them they needed it to pursue any kind of career associated with information technology. I certainly hope you aren't one of those people.

Re:Missing the point

[philip.paradis]

And it sounds like you're defensive because you don't have a CS degree (i.e. you have something to prove).

Not at all. I have zero regrets in this area, mostly due to the fact that I recognized very early on that a CS degree was largely useless for most roles that entail full-time software development responsibilities. Please don't misunderstand me here: I grew up with a bunch of smart people (including CS majors) who wound up attended schools like Georgia Tech, Emory, MIT, and CalTech. Their ability to contribute in properly aligned positions isn't under dispute here.

Here's what I'm really trying to say: of all the programmers I've worked with, the ones producing the best code in terms of functionality, efficiency, and security have almost universally lacked CS degrees. Interestingly enough, I've worked with some very gifted developers who held bachelor's (and in some cases master's) degrees in fields such as psychology, electrical engineering, physics, pure mathematics, and even English literature. The "odd factor" here has been the pronounced absence of CS degrees among that pool of truly able developers.

I have some very simple advice for young people interesting in pursuing software development as a career. Get any job that pays the bills for now, spend every free waking moment actually writing software in a variety of languages and learning about software written by others, become intimately acquainted with a variety of operating systems and toolchains, and start putting information security first in everything you touch. In less time and at considerably lower expense than you would suffered chasing down a CS degree, and armed instead with a portfolio of practical demonstration of skills, you'll have little difficulty obtaining a decent software development position.

Re:Missing the point

[philip.paradis]

While in practice nothing is perfect, I'd like to add that your mention of "security hole plugging" conveniently ignores the principle that you don't have to plug holes that don't exist in the first place. Abject failure to recognize this point is probably at least half the reason for information security being in its presently deplorable state. Hint: bolt-on approaches to security are typically no security at all.

Re:Missing the point

[Casualposter]

I have two observations: (1) From your command of language, you are not an average GED holder. (2) Your advice to young programmers is virtually the same to that given by Stephen King (and a long list of other authors) to young authors.

Re:Missing the point

[lgw]

To put it a different way: a CS degree is a sort of crap filter. Succeeding in the field without any degree at all is a better sort of crap filter, because no one cuts you any slack.

But you won't make it far as a dev without some serious self-education, just like the guy with the CS degree won't make it far without some serious forgetting of BS learned about performance of code that runs on a whiteboard (fortunately for the latter, many forget the day after finals).

Re:Missing the point

[philip.paradis]

I don't disagree with your observations, but in reply I have two of my own: (1) the average GED holder doesn't pursue a career involving substantial software development duties, but a substantial number of gifted developers have GEDs, and (2) I wish more people would make the connection you just nailed. In many cases, software development is much more a creative art than it is an abstract and dry discipline, with the caveat that it by necessity involves a measure of structured thought as well (just as [most] novels follow certain structural principles).

Re:Missing the point

[Greyfox]

That's what I've found, too. I have more luck just seeing if someone will work with a team well, rather than look at their degree status. I'd take a kid with a high school diploma and a few open source projects out on github if I think he'll work on my team well. Unfortunately those are just the sort of people HR usually filters out.

Re:Missing the point

[roman_mir]

Here is my take on it, I have a number of people from well known schools, same number of people from schools that nobody heard from and in some cases people from unknown schools who dropped out and started working for me when I offered them a job. I have a number of people that had no formal higher education at all and a couple of guys that didn't know much about computers before they started here.

AFAIC I care about the attitude, I care that the person can work within a team, that I can work with the person, whether they are eager to learn. This is a starting job for all of the people I hire, very few of them worked in the field before, I do not pay much but that is also part of the equation. The people that do not have student debts do not have the same problem as those with debt, they don't need to try and get a highly paid position right away and so they can afford to work with me, where they are gaining more than enough experience so that eventually they are propelled to better paying jobs.

I will say this: I have about equal number of good coders, whether they had any formal computer science training or not, but I go through many people to find good ones but it does not take much time at all to know who is who. Just in the last 2 months I interviewed about 15 people, 3 of them ended up with me, 2 are going to be excellent developers. Out of the 15, 4 decided it was too hard in the first 3 days. 2 decided that they made a mistake and shouldn't be in this field right during our meeting.

In the interview all I do is I show them what we do, how we work, ask them what they like to do and explain the structure here: you are studying here before I put you on an actual paying project. I teach you what you need to know and while I am teaching you, I am not paying you anything. Normally takes 2-3 weeks for a developer to go through training and start being productive. This is my way of doing stuff, I do not care where you studied, what you think you know, I only care to figure out if you are OK for the team and if you can learn and have the right attitude for this company.

only US schools?

[hooiberg]

Is it on purpose that there are only American schools? I see nothing from Europe and Japan, for example. It seems terribly unbalanced.

Alma mater maters but not because of their quality

[iceco2]

A candidates school(s) definitely come into my hiring considerations. Especially as a tie breaker or when their is little other information to go on.
This is not because I think the top schools teach you so much more than other schools, The big difference is in who gets accepted in the first place.
Top schools screening process are reasonably correlated with qualities I look for in a candidate and therefor are valuable input to my hiring decision.

Re:Ringknockers

[lgw]

Let's put this another way. If that is a priority, I doubt I'm going to be interested in working for them.

Clearly they're focusing on the wrong thing, usually brought on by elitism

I've never cared much about a candidate's education, nor has any hiring manager I've worked with, but HR drones do for your first job, because for your first job they have nothing else to filter on. That's a big deal when you're trying to break into the field.

Even more important: the big software companies, which are the best places to start at (long term, career-wise) only actively recruit from schools they see as "top schools". Overt elitism in full force. But your first job isn't about being picky about the day-to-day, it's about launching your career.

the conflict in modern programming culture

[superwiz]

The conflict in modern programming is between code monkeys and math brains. Both are dismissive of the other. The code monkeys think the math brains overcomplicate things. The math brains think the code monkeys don't understand the problems they are solving.

Also, nothing against SJ State, but...

[Gordo_1]

isn't it on this list largely due to its proximity to Silicon Valley? You'd think that the number of applications to work at tech companies in the valley coming from SJ State would be off the charts to begin with due to it being in the middle of the valley... I'm sure Georgia State has a reasonable CS program too, but few if any applications from there would be going to companies in Silicon Valley. Does that make SJ State a meaningful CS job target or just a beneficiary of location?

Though not a perfect measure by any means, I think it would be more interesting to see the CS job acceptance rates coming out these schools and the average starting salary for each.

Re:CS is (extreamly) soft morph between EE and Mat

[phantomfive]

A simple opinion based on personal observations having passed via EE, Math and CS degrees and heaving thought core CS (math) subjects.

But clearly not a grammar class........