michael_nielsen

Why? (Not an argumentative why, just a curious why. This is a claim often made, but usually badly argued - I'd love to see a good argument for it.)

It's unclear to me that this is happening in non-tech industries. Now I think tech is increasingly rising in scale and importance so that may be enough. But I see no signs of law, finance, etcetc moving this direction

The need for the signal has been slowly eroded; the shift will be slow, and then all at once.

Which other industries will be first to undergo the transition? And why has need for signal been eroded in the other industries?

Media is already in-progress. Creative industries have always been less degree dependent, but they’re getting deeply eroded. I think tech-adjacency will be a big factor; literal bleed-over. I think that makes finance one of the earlier ones.

This is part of my thesis, too: if (without loss of generality) Goldman Sachs will only hire from prestige institutions and all similar employers share same restriction, then one must go to Harvard/etc. But if Goldman will hire from Google which will hire from the Internet...

And it doesn't take decades for that preference cascade to happen. How many Googlers need to go to Goldman before that is not merely a one-off target-of-opportunity but a path that can be repeatedly trodden and systematically laid out to people?

there’s a good example of the opposite of this happening (but in some ways a great outline of the challenges) in Liars Poker around switching from hire anyone to requiring a degree from a certain school