I edit my posts often, because I don’t typically see the $""&-!? Autocorrects until it posts.
I haven’t waded through all of the pages on this thread, so please forgive me if I am being redundant:
I’m sick and tired of reading on CC that “where you go” doesn’t really matter, and I’m especially annoyed that so many CC posters think that in STEM you are just as capable if you attended Utah State (as an example… I’m not trying to pick on Utah State) as if you attended Caltech. Really, really dumb IMO. Rigor matters.
The ole “sticky keys” excuse… 
Let me clarify . I see nothing wrong with editing posts for grammar, spelling errors , to add a word . I’ve done it and will continue to edit . I am specifically talking about posters who post one thing, then immediately go back to change the entire post , including the original meaning.
And for me, old habits die hard. Newer posters will not remember the days before we had the “save draft” option. Way too many a time a long, and of course brilliant, post would go poof and you’d have to rewrite the whole thing, if you weren’t too frustrated and just gave up. Happened so often I’d just post the thing and edit for spelling/grammar/what have you, later.
Hate autocorrect. I’m convinced we’ve developed a new adaptive skill: successfully translating what a poster meant before autocorrect blundered in.
Time for some anecdata. I’ve worked with a sum total of one developer from Caltech and one from Utah State. Remarkably, the one from Caltech accomplished approximately nothing in his time at the company before one of the bosses working for me chased him off and the one from Utah State was a brilliant system architect. Granted, it’s slightly apples and oranges as the guy from Utah State was probably 10 years older but I gotta say it baffled me that the guy from Caltech accomplished as little as he did. Come to think of it, we had a guy with more experience than the guy from Utah State who was an MIT undergrad and CMU for his Master’s who we ultimately ended up firing as well.
In most industries, I don’t think pedigree matters that much but it probably matters more for academia, IB, and consulting.
^ As I said, CC is rife with posters that firmly believe that your educational background doesn’t matter in your career, especially as an engineer.
Here’s my anecdata as a retort: in my 30 years as an engineer, the two most brilliant people that I’ve worked with were graduates of MIT and Caltech respectively. I don’t think that many will be surprised by that, given the reputations of those universities.
There are two extremes expressed here on CC: those who feel that the undergrad school attended is irrelevant versus those who believe that unless you go to a top 15 school you are doomed to a miserable life and career. Both views are incorrect.
But if those two people had attended Ohio State or UFlorida for engineering they would likely be just as brilliant and successful.
“But if those two people had attended Ohio State or UFlorida for engineering they would likely be just as brilliant and successful.”
Possibly. There’s no way to prove it. It could also be that they were exceptionally smart when they entered college and benefited enormously by receiving the most rigorous engineering education on the planet.
Dare I mention threads where people make broad, sweeping claims about how successful individuals who graduate from certain colleges will or will not be, based purely on tiny, observation-bias-tainted samples? O:-)
Yep. I think afew here may want to get their own room, I mean, thread.
@whatisyourquest:
The problem with your assertion is you aren’t stating the parameters of your assertion, which is a big problem on CC or any discussion board for that matter. Caltech and MIT represent truly elite schools, to get into them requires the kids to be out on the bell curve someplace, and they are quite rigorous and difficult when it comes to curricula…but that also begs the question, what are they preparing students for? Sure, if you want to go into cutting edge computer science, or want to create new industries, on the bell curve of jobs, those schools can mean something (especially when going on to grad schools). On the other hand, that Cal Tech or MIT student might not be well prepared for a lot of jobs in programming or engineering for that matter, if they involve more pragmatic uses of intelligence and training. I have seen a lot of brilliant techies who couldn’t find their way in careers, because they weren’t suited for a lot of the ‘regular’ jobs out there. For example, a programmer who can understand quant mathematics from a place like MIT or Cal tech might do great at a hedge fund or designing algo systems for investment banks, but may not do well where they are in the trenches trying to work with BA’s (business analysts) and the ‘ordinary’ people who implement things.
Likewise, those brilliant people from MIT or Caltech might not be very good as managers or managing people, either, and that is a different track in of itself, and that kid from Utah state with the CS degree might be better suitied for such a role.
The answer to the question is when talking about fit, is what the job is you are trying to fit it into. The guy who founded the company I worked for as a startup were both MIT graduates and both are truly brilliant, but they also succeeded because they had other skills that may or may not be nurtured at the schools in question… it is much like the idea of going to an Ivy league or other elite school, while they are great schools, and attract some students with real horsepower, that doesn’t mean graduates are doing to do well at anything they try, many ivy league graduates end up in careers where they work with people, are managed by people, who went to less stringent schools. On the other hand, if your goal is to get into the esoteric areas of computer science or engineering, developing nano technology or new levels of AI or whatnot, then going to an MIT or Caltech likely would be a better fit. Creativity and brilliance may not even be measured by ‘rigor’, there were plenty of physicists who came out of program more rigorous than where Einstein went, yet he turned out to be the genius and plenty of those who came out of the ‘rigourous’ programs did nothing special shrug.
The threads that get hijacked by a poster or two bickering about a side subject. Until recently most posts here were more like tweets. 140 characters or less.
Threads that spin into the endless “does it matter where you go to college” debate. X_X
^^ this. I’ve learned to put prolific users who can’t keep any of their posts <500 words on ignore, simply because they’re tedious to read, often off-topic, and contributing little to the overall discussion. I’ve noticed I’ve rarely missed these posts while reading a thread, because either few people respond to them, or the same people go back and forth with each other anyway.
Threads where one poster tries to shame people for caring about one thing instead of his designated outrage-worthy event, as though people cannot care about more than one thing and as though it’s even possible for people to invest in every outrage-worthy event to begin with.
Despite my weakness for self-referential posts, I am resisting the urge to post a response here that’s five hundred words or longer.
You may thank me at your leisure.
So let’s include the long posts without paragraph breaks.
The thread where a holier-than-thou poster uses the term “popping out kids” to describe his niece having had a child with her high school boyfriend.