3/13 Is it hard for new-grads (CS/EE) to get entry-level jobs in this
market?
\_ The type of jobs that I've been involved and have been interviewing
people for in the last 10 years require excellent coding skills
as well as thorough thought processes. The best coders are those
that come from decent schools and have decent GPAs (above 3.0).
Interestingly, some of the WORST programmers I've hired have
really high GPAs (above 3.8) or those that have PhDs. They are
smart and are good theorists, but they aren't necessarily
hard workers or good team players. They are brilliant in their
little own worlds, but have very little common sense and don't
embrace the work culture. Many of them are lazy or think that
existing code is trash ("I'm holier than thou") thus don't
contribute much except for their snide and occasionally
insightful comments; but talk is cheap, and they contribute
very little. They also tend to get bored and leave quickly, or
apply to MBAs/grad school and leave. I don't hire super smart
overachievers anymore. So don't worry about your GPA and such. Just
present yourself clearly and do well on the interview and you'll
be fine. -old alumni
\_ There is always a job for smart, likable people. The obnoxious
and stupid will have a hard time in any market. Right now, things
have/are switching back to the job seeker's side.
\_ What's the salary like for an average new-grad from an average
school? What about for someone with kinda good GPA, say 3.5,
from Cal? I don't mean the super-talented. Thanks.
\_ Entry-level jobs are some of the easiest to get. Who doesn't
like smart people for peanuts? Yes, they are sometimes
not immediately useful, but that doesn't seem to matter.
By the way, why do you think your GPA matters? With a 3.5
you could go to a good grad school, which is what you
might want to consider. That's a very good GPA and your
employer won't even care. They will most likely lump you
in with the guy who got a 3.0 at San Jose State. Grad schools
will care a lot more, if that's important to you.
\_ I heard that there are many really cool companies where
programming staff, HR, etc is dominated by alumni from top
CS schools and they generally do pay attention to where the
applicant is coming from. Of course, the university degree
is only a part of the equation.
\_ Sure, they look at where you went to school. However,
I doubt they care about your GPA. If they do, I
would question why they do. I once had an interview
where the woman asked me why I was so bad at math,
because I had B's in most of my upper division math
classes (I was a math major). I wanted to slap her
and say "If they were all A's I'd probably be
at Princeton right now and not applying for your
crummy job."
\_ Well, I generally filter new grads based on school
and then gpa. The school filter is mostly practical.
I'm more likely to find pearls amongst a pool of MIT
grads than among a pool of Bob's State U grads. Not
that there are noone excellent from Bob's; it's just
that they are rarer and take more effort to discover.
Also, interviewers tend to know more about the program
at the big noise schools (e.g., I know to be suitably
impressed by someone who did well in 6-111), and
that makes the resume screen more meaningful. At least
for me, GPA usually works as a high-pass filter, and
I don't stress too much over the difference once the
\_ Well, I generally filter new grads resumes based on
school and then gpa. The school filter is mostly
practical. I'm more likely to find pearls amongst a
pool of MIT grads than among a pool of Bob's State U
grads. Not that there are noone excellent from Bob's;
it's just that they are rarer and take more effort to
discover. Also, interviewers tend to know more about
the program at the big noise schools (e.g., I know to
be suitably impressed by someone who did well in 6.111),
and that makes the resume screen more meaningful. At
least for me, GPA usually works as a high-pass filter,
and I don't stress too much over the difference once the
GPA meets the reasonable criterion.
\_ Personally, I don't put my GPA on my resume, and never
have. It's a terrible filter, because it automatically
filters out smart, creative hackers that don't care about/
are bored by school. That may be okay for large software
companies writing, say, tax software. It's disasterous
for companies that want to be nimble, and hire the best.
I am in no way insinuating that all people with bad GPA's
are bright creative hackers, or that all people with good
GPA's are dumb automatons. Putting your gpa on your
resume implicitly supports this practice. Not putting it
on there may at least earn you a call back inquiring for it
which gives me the opportunity for me to explain why it's
not there. If a company still refuses to move forward
after that, I say ``Thank you very much for your time, but,
if you are unable to flex on this, I don't think I'd be a
good fit for your company culture.'' Incidentally, my GPA
sucked, but it has never gotten me filtered out of a job
once I reached the interview phase.
-dans Disclaimer: tom believes I am Paolo's stooge/tool.
If you're not with tom, you're against him, so
you may want to ignore the preceding, lest you
incur tom's wrath.
\_ Was it really necessary to stir this up again?
Why is it so important that you get the last
word in this argument?
\_ Who's stirring things up? I'm providing a
public service. In fact, when I have time,
I'm plan to write a utility that allows
people to add a disclaimer they write to
their own motd posts. Additionally, it
will allow everyone to write disclaimers
about others. All these disclaimers will
be viewable via the web, but only the most
popular (as chosen by majority vote) will
be added to entries on the motd. Of
course, it would be against policy to run
this tool automatically via cron or script,
so people will need to run it by hand. I
also plan to add an option to run it that
strips out disclaimers, so people who don't
like the utility can remove them. -dans
\_ Well, the utility does sound pretty neat,
but I was referring to your referencing
the Paolo Incident. Repeatedly spamming
motd with it doesn't seem to be resolving
anything. Oh well. n/m -mice
\_ Wow, you must really enjoy losing debates
badly, to bring it up again. -tom
\_ Seriously, you two ever graduate from
grade school? You bicker like a couple of
10 year olds. Grow up. -jrleek
\_ Tom, we already know that, insofar as this
matter is concerned, you have a completely
and utterly distorted view of reality.
Frankly, I have no interest in arguing it
with you any further as I am not your
psychotherapist. If I was, I would
recommend medication since you clearly
haven't responded to talk therapy. -dans
\_ Dude you are no better. Tom's view wasn't
"utterly distorted". He simply claims
Paolo violated policy, wasn't punished,
and lied about it. You have not shown
that to be wrong. You've just written
pages of allusions to secret concerns
about hate speech and stuff that is
frankly not a plausible explanation.
The fact you're bring it up again shows
maybe it hits you harder than you let on?
P.S. I don't know what the new grad market is like, but my
anecdotal sense is that the market is good and getting
better. If you know your stuff, you should have no
difficulty finding a job. The disclaimer applies to this
as well.
\_ There are real problems with hiring people with
good GPAs. Some of these are the same problems I
find with hiring people who are perhaps overeducated
for a particular job. They get bored easily and
bored turns into lazy, for example. They question
decisions made above them. In short, they are not
always good worker bees. You *can* have too many
chiefs and not enough Indians. Everyone wants to
feel important and everyone wants a challenging
job with opportunities for advancement, but no one
wants to work with someone who feels that they are
'doing time' until something better comes along
or they run off to grad school or whatever. Real
life story: I had a Caltech CS grad and a guy who
dropped out of a liberal arts college with the
equivalent of an AA. The latter guy was so much
better. He worked hard. He asked questions. He
put in extra hours. The Caltech guy had to be told
what to do and when he was done he showed no
initiative or desire for increased responsibility.
He saw work as a series of tasks to be completed.
He flirted with medical school and then grad school
and we all knew he'd be gone. We were glad when he
was. He was a smart guy who coasted along doing just
enough to get by. He was a terrible employee with
an inflated sense of self-worth and he was bad for
morale with his attitude. He really didn't care for
hard work and getting him to do mundane crap (as he
was, after all, entry level) was impossible. When
he did get a real task he'd suddenly take off skiing to
Mammoth with his friends, missing the deadline. In
short, a high GPA means you will probably do well
in grad school, not that you'll be a good employee.
\_ Nod. I've had this discussion with many people, and
I'm glad to see that support exists for this
viewpoint on the motd too. -dans
\_ Companies don't care about GPA now? When I graduated
in 1996, Intel would only talk to people who met the
"cut-off GPA", which was 3.5. AT&T's cut-off point
was 3.0, so was TI. And these requirements weren't
from individual hiring managers but from their HR
department.
\_ Yes, and it's stupid. So someone graduates from Cal
with a 3.4 and is rejected, while someone from, say,
Stanford (being generous) with a 3.5 is interviewed?
Stanford, while a good school, has incredible grade
inflation. Maybe they should hire based on SAT scores
or GRE scores or something. I think that would
actually be more meaningful than comparing GPAs
across programs and across universities - even as
a simple high-level filter.
P.S. I realize that a GPA shows a remarkably
different aptitude than a standardized test, but at
least the test scores can be compared reliably - at
least against others from the same testing year.
\_ I'm sure that many companies today do care about GPA,
and will continue to do so. I simply have no interest
working for a company that a) cares about GPA and b) is
so rigid wrt a) that a group or hiring manager can't get
them to ignore it. It's a personal choice, which, thus
far, has done well by me. -dans
\_ Removing the GPA from my resume was the fastest way
to turn getting no responses to lots of responses.
Turns out most people didn't really care, and it
only served to reduce offers. I'm sure it would
have helped if I had a 3.8 GPA. I still have an
almost 100% interview:job offer ratio.
\_ Last I talked to Google (2004), they kept
telling me over and over and over again that
they placed a lot of value on GPA. I
suspect they still care a lot about it now.
\_ Yes, this is true. Google places a lot of
value on GPA for new college grads. Which
means that, if you put your gpa on your
resume, it is below their threshold, and you
submit your resume cold (i.e. not through a
contact that works there), it is rejected
outright. They may reject what appears to be
a ncg app outright if it does not include a
gpa, in which case, if your gpa sucks, damned
if you do, damned if you don't. Or the
absence of a gpa may get it past auto filters
and into human hands, which is what you want.
Also, note that Adam Bosworth works for
google. He would utterly fail the gpa/degree
test. But he's a superstar so, he's not
necessarily pertinent to the discussion at
hand. -dans
\_ New grads? I had been working for 10
years when I interviewed with them. I
could only assume it was their polite
way of saying, "sorry, your GPA sucks".
Needless to say, they didn't extend me
an offer.
\_ Now that they're post-IPO why would
anyone want to work there anyway?
If you're a superstar making $1MM plus
stock a year to do whatever you want,
sure. But for the smart but otherwise
normal people out there? They have
nothing to offer anyone like that now.
Hours are long, pay is below average,
without a PhD you're going nowhere.
\_ Just what exactly do these PhDs
do at Google, anyway? You only
need a few good guys for
algorithm development. Isn't
Google basically a marketing/media
company at this point?
\_ You've been working for 10 years, and
you still include your GPA on your
resume? That looks kind of pathetic
and desparate. -dans
\_ 12 years now. I didn't include
my GPA. Google insisted on
knowing that information before
second round interviews.
\_ To me this is just another data point that
Google's hiring criteria are stupid. I know
people working at Google I'd never hire,
but they look good on paper. From what
I know of the hiring process they make
you feel like you should be lucky to be
working for them. Any company that does
that sucks. It would be interesting to
note when Google's hiring policies changed
and why. From an outsider point of view
they seem to be hiring 'superstars' more
for PR than to address actual needs, because
they can. I've seen this lead to disaster
when all of the rats desert the sinking
ship after they've cashed their options.
I'm not saying it will happen again, but
I think it's been shown time and again
that teams of superstars (whether sports,
entertainment, science, or business) tend
to underperform relative to the hype. I
view it as Google's way of creating a buzz to
fool sucker drones into thinking that they
have a better job than they do.
\_ Google has put a lot of effort into
recruiting phd physicists to work there,
with hiring ads in Physics Today etc.
As a phd physicist, this strikes me as
totally retarded. I'm a pretty good
physicist, but you'd have to be an idiot
to hire me to write code. I wouldn't hire
me to write code.
\_ I assume the job isn't writing code,
but instead working on a technology
to transform the heat from all of their
servers back into electricity. Duh.
Either that or the warp drive they
are building. Remember, Google is
not just a search engine. It's a
conglomerate that is going to change
the world.
\_ Which doesn't do evil! (well, unless
it has no other convenient choice).
\_ Um, that's a nice rant, but the sensible
conclusion is that you don't want to work
for google because you feel their hiring
practices are stupid, and leading to
disaster. It's a perfectly reasonable
opinion, but others may differ. -dans |
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