Comment by rahimnathwani
9 months ago
"I guess they'll filter for the signal that their candidate is able to complete something long and tedious"
That signal is pretty weak, though. Would you rather hire an English major who graduated from one of these two colleges, or a high school graduate with a good SAT score?
Would you rather hire an English major who graduated from one of these two colleges, or a high school graduate with a good SAT score?
Depends on what my incentives are on the hiring end. Many jobs default to requiring a college degree, and hiring someone without one would require a lot of extra work on my end. Also hiring a high school grad over a college grad would involve me putting my reputation on the line by implicitly vouching for them. If the high school kid can't do the job I will get blamed for the bad hire since I broke the procedures put in place to prevent such a thing from happening. I the college graduate sucks at the job, well these things happen, you did what you could.
I should have been more specific about what I meant :)
Your answer is reasonable but, it's entirely about the principal-agent problem.
What if you were the boss, and you were accountable only to yourself and your family?
Realistically, I would weight the two educations as roughly equal and judge on other factors.
2 replies →
Are we hiring an 18-year-old, or deciding between two similarly aged candidates with those educational backgrounds?
I'm assuming you mean the same age, correct?
No, I'm talking about either:
- an 18-year-old with a good SAT score, or
- a 22-year-old who graduated from Pittsburgh State, after majoring in English
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44072878