On Sat, 27 Jan 2018 21:00:25 +0000 (UTC) David Schwartz wrote: > What I will say is this: > > I’ve interviewed enough people in my time that I think I’ve noticed a > pattern. I’m curious what you guys think. > > The higher the GPA, the less such people seem able to do > out-of-the-box or even off-the-cuff thinking. There's enough anecdotal evidence of what you observed that it's acquired a proverb: ========================================================= "The A students become college professors, and the B students work for the C students." ========================================================= > > I think my overall GPA was 2.76 and in my major it was a little lower > (because of required math classes I really didn’t like or find > stimulating). I was bored out of my mind most of the time, and I > spent a lot of time playing with other things. You just implicated a possible CAUSE for what you've observed: A zero sum relationship between grades and learning. You could have buckled down and gotten a 3.9, but curiosity caused you to hack, thereby becoming a much better programmer. Most 4 year colleges promote a zero sum between learning and grades. My belief is that they do this to justify their existence: If prospective students thought the subject matter was easy enough to do it themselves (Read Wirth's "Algorithms and Data Structures" and analyze it in a study group, for instance), they'd never get a student. As opposed to community colleges, which just want to get the student ready for the marketplace. When I learned programming at Santa Monica Community College, it was so easy to get an A that I did all sorts of special projects and still had a 4.0. Long before Santa Monica College, I was a BSEE major (and grad) at Illinois Institute of Technology (I think about 2.5 GPA). In the dorm, I got a big old capacitor, charged it up, and discharged it on peoples' doorknobs, making a loud pop and sending sparks 8 inches out. One guy, with much better grades than mine, asked in awe "What is that thing?" When I said a capacitor, he couldn't understand, and I finally had to go through the math to show him how a capacitor could store a given amount of charge at a given amount of voltage. Finally I got him to understand that a capacitor is more than two parallel lines on a paper: It's a physical thing that can do some pretty interesting stuff. My friend in the preceding paragraph was in it for the money. He didn't mess around with radios, or dream of doing strange logic with nand gates, or make spark gaps. When he turned 17, he had to figure out what to do with his life, and electrical engineering seemed as good as anything. With his excellent grades, I'm sure he did just fine. But I wouldn't expect anything earth-shaking. > > I’d prefer to hire people with similar GPAs and avoid those with 3.4 > and higher, since they can’t seem to figure out how to break out of a > paper bag given a few nominal restrictions. (Yes, it’s a > generalization, but that’s what I’ve found.) If one assumes that the generalization is mostly true, it's still prudent to look at factors that cause both great grades and paper bag breakout. In my opinion, if a person went to an easy school (like Santa Monica College, or perhaps a 4 year equivalent), then there was no tradeoff and he might be excellent. If he graduated at an advanced age (above 28,for instance), it's likely he's a great technologist who went back to school to learn the theoretical underpinnings whose lack were bottlenecking him. Also, maybe the guy's just a plain genius who can go to the most confusing college and still get straight A's combined with spectacular projects. In those three situations, you'd be missing a good candidate to reject because he's over 3.4, even though in general you just might be right. SteveT Steve Litt January 2018 featured book: Troubleshooting: Why Bother? http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss