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'What Straight-A Students Get Wrong' (nytimes.com)
From a story: Year after year, I watch in dismay as students obsess over getting straight A's. Some sacrifice their health; a few have even tried to sue their school after falling short. All have joined the cult of perfectionism out of a conviction that top marks are a ticket to elite graduate schools and lucrative job offers. I was one of them. I started college with the goal of graduating with a 4.0. It would be a reflection of my brainpower and willpower, revealing that I had the right stuff to succeed. But I was wrong.
The evidence is clear: Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the correlation between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and trivial within a handful of years. For example, at Google, once employees are two or three years out of college, their grades have no bearing on their performance.
Academic grades rarely assess qualities like creativity, leadership and teamwork skills, or social, emotional and political intelligence. Yes, straight-A students master cramming information and regurgitating it on exams. But career success is rarely about finding the right solution to a problem -- it's more about finding the right problem to solve.
The evidence is clear: Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the correlation between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and trivial within a handful of years. For example, at Google, once employees are two or three years out of college, their grades have no bearing on their performance.
Academic grades rarely assess qualities like creativity, leadership and teamwork skills, or social, emotional and political intelligence. Yes, straight-A students master cramming information and regurgitating it on exams. But career success is rarely about finding the right solution to a problem -- it's more about finding the right problem to solve.
I work 9-5:30 because that's what my contract stipulates. I don't get overtime, so I'm not working outside those hours. I certainly wouldn't get nebulous and meaningless "kudos" points for staying late,. If anything, there'd be eyebrows raised.
Whether I have a CS degree or not is irrelevant (and always was). What is important is whether I can do the job I am employed for.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
... because everyone is taught the same shit.
That's OK for elementary, but by middle school (junior high), it's time to recognize people's passions and aptitudes and steer them down that or those lanes.
A friend with kids asked me if the kids should learn code. I said, absolutely not. Expose them to it and see if that take the bait. If not, try different bait.
As an analogy (not car), I told him that some parents force their kids to learn how to play the piano. Know how many good pianists there are? Not many.
Forcing kids to take code is a good way to piss them off and never forgive you for being stupid.
And if a kid like the violin, buy them one and the lessons to go with it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I actually wouldn't "guarantee" that. Some people get anxious and can't code worth a damn in an interview. That's just how the brain works: once fight-or-flight kicks in, neocortex basically shuts down. I know because I'm one of those people. I do very well if, for whatever reason, I'm not anxious. I did well in my Google interview only because I had 2 other offers from elsewhere. I spent well over half a decade at Google doing what I think is excellent work, and perf evaluations agreed.
I don't know how to fix this, but I can assure you that there are at least a few great coders among those who can't code FizzBuzz on the whiteboard under the stress of a typical eng interview.
I'll admit that I've never seen a 4.0 average for anyone I interviewed, except for schools that grade on a 5.0 scale. If they received poor grades in subjects we were hiring for, I did ask why. If they were constantly on the edge of flunking out, and didn't have an _amazing_ excuse, I'd turn them down on the basis of having poor task management skills. Conversely, I made a job offer to a recent graduate who got a C in object oriented programming courses because he kept looking at lower levels of abstraction for performance improvements. When I asked to see one of the homework examples, i found that he had done the work _both_ ways, correctly, and been marked down for "ignoring the lesson".
I was _shocked_. The student had clearly mastered the material. I was very saddened that he didn't accept our offer, but instead took a better one of more interest to him.