I know, I know, mostly just undergrads care about undergrad prestige (except resumé bots on LinkedIn scanning for “MIT”) but I’m curious about the average Lemming, who might lie less often than Redditors and probably isn’t a hyper outlier. Though I still expect selection and response bias :3
Let me start with my own wall of anecdotes.
- An old American embedded systems mentor I once had had had like two master’s degrees, but in his words,
Just get a Bachelor’s and a good internship. If the company will let you do it on their dime, then get the Master’s.
So the college-then-job thing wasn’t quite cause-then-effect.
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Another friend I had said “All of the higher-ups in the chip engineering dept I’m gunning for have a PhD. Wanna contribute meaningfully? Probably gotta have one too” (Somewhere in the entirety of Asia, exacts hidden for privacy). So grad school matters more in that case.
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My old econ teacher told me that, if you want a job where undergrad is just a stepping stone, then your undergrad “prestige” mostly doesn’t matter (e.g. pre-law, pre-med). And saving 50k in undergrad student loans to then dump into matching the S&P is a cheat code at age 18, worth far more than “initial salary”. not financial advice lol In this case, the “get your job” isn’t even that important.
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An acquaintance I once had pipelined from Cornell to DeepMind. There, prestige and its opportunities probably/definitely/maybe had an effect.
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A second acquaintance says his Canadian public school (iirc) only mildly helped him, so he went all-in on making his own networks outside of school to get into AI (Is he a hustler bro or something?). So he dodged the idea of college choice mattering.
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A Harvard acquaintance I knew says both their dad and granddad agreed that going to Harvard played into getting their positions. (No need to believe me. I forgot what position tho – finance/big business probably)
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The managers and manager managers my parents knew often only had community/state school undergrads, sometimes with MBAs.
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I don’t care about CEOs. All outliers anyway.
So what have you empirically found? And where? (inb4 “American elite school obsession bad” and “CS is skill-based, not school-based, thread over” – heard all of that already)
You can be vague if needed c:
In the UK undergrads are basically considered like high school by most employers. If you want to be employed (especially in tech) you have to have a master’s degree which is like the new bachelor’s, be a talented artist/slop creator with a following (in industries like marketing) or go into trades, but usually that path is only viable if there’s someone you know in trades thats close.
Yeah the market has definitely toughened regarding college degrees, since the 80s. (Maybe bc they’re more common now? If that’s a good thing or not.)
Funny enough, Reddit likes to say
Also: would you say the choice of undergrad matters in UK tech?
lmao
It matters more and less than it probably oughta depending on the specifics.
I wouldn’t have been able to get into Cybersec MSc (and later job) with a Gamedev BSc, yet all the gamedevs were way more hardcore as programmers and software engineers with a much more thorough understanding of computers just by the virtue that they learned C++ and Python and not Java/C#, meanwhile someone with a Business Information Systems degree can easily pivot into a cybersec MSc yet know absolutely nothing about how computers work as that is primarily a marketing/media degree with light IT.
What roles in tech do you consider needing a Masters?
Need? None of course. MSc I did was a waste of time pretty much. But I needed to stay in the country for the visa so I did it anyway.
Before I got an MSc I got absolutely zero offers for:
Junior Software Engineer/Developer (Full stack, backend & frontend; React, Python, NodeJS, C#, Java) Junior Network Engineer Junior Site Reliability Engineer Junior DevOps Engineer Junior UI/UX Analyst Junior IT Technician Junior IT Support Engineer Junior IT Support Analyst Junior Machine Learning Trainee Junior Data Analytics Engineer Junior Infrastructure Analyst (Cloud and DC) Junior Cybersecurity Analyst Junior Security Engineer
I eventually applied for a Java (Node) Developer and turns out they needed a Junior Security Engineer so I got through the interview and did that. About a year later got promoted to mid-level, fully remote. Never looked back.
In the end in my entire life I’ve applied to hundreds of positions, most with custom written cover letters, I got a grand total of 4 interviews, 1 lead to a technical test I did my best on then failed anyway, 1 led to a technical test that I then succeeded at, 2 others led to offers, one of which was my work placement/internship as an “Junior informatics trainee” during uni as part of their program (cost £5000) and paid minimum wage and it was the worst soul-sucking job I ever had.