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armchairhackertoday at 9:24 AM3 repliesview on HN

Do you know any employers actively avoiding students from Ivy-league colleges?

I agree that colleges have acted as filters, but the value of degrees has been deflated, even in Ivy leagues, because they’re easier and more common. I think a degree still acts as a filter though; getting a job is hard with a degree but nearly impossible without.

EDIT: There’s the Thiel fellowship, which requires not having a degree, but I’m not aware of other such opportunities. Early work experience looks better to some employers than university, but that requires getting a job in the first place.


Replies

kopirgantoday at 11:52 AM

I don't "know" that's why I said guess. I doubt if they'll ever say this. Even in today's USA.

But there's enough SM comments to make a guess.

walthamstowtoday at 9:38 AM

I don't know about actively avoiding, but I have worked for multiple companies in London who prefer not to hire at the 'top' end of candidates (hence hiring me!), because they'll cost more and can have cultural issues like not be very fun people or thinking themselves to be above the self-taught and weird-career guys who didn't get a first from Imperial.

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nemo44xtoday at 1:06 PM

I was a hiring manager at a company that didn’t recruit from top universities for strategic reasons. In short we were smaller and a startup so it would have been difficult to compete. As we grew we had a presence at university job fairs but still avoided the top schools.

Similarly we avoided engineers from the Bay Area due to cost concerns.

The company was also a pioneer in the distributed work environment. A decade before Covid. So that opened a huge market for recruitment at that time.