Saturday, November 26, 2016

Wall Street coders wanted, elite college degrees not necessary - Hugh Son, Bloomberg

Financial institutions traditionally coveted graduates from Stanford and other big-name schools and people already working in Silicon Valley. But that system tends to overlook good programmers from other schools or gifted dropouts, according to recruiters. And besides, banks need to fill so many programming jobs that elite schools can't possibly pump out enough candidates. So the industry is looking in places it never did, turning to outside firms to evaluate prospective programmers based on objective measurements, not their pedigree. The idea is that people lacking a computer science degree -- art majors, graphic designers and chemistry graduates from the University of Delaware like Furlong -- can still make the leap to well-paid careers in technology. By using algorithms to spot talented coders, HackerRank and competitors with names like Codility claim they've essentially increased the world's supply of developers. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-banks-coders-55d26040-9cf3-11e6-b552-b1f85e484086-20161029-story.html