It's an interesting take. I wonder which market you are hiring in.
There might be a selection bias at play here. Someone who was able to create its own degree from scratch and learn enough to pass your interview should adopt the same mindset when tasked with a new problem. You are selecting for folks who require less hand holding.
> Not to mention that what someone learned in uni a decade ago is probably not applicable anymore whatsoever (in tech)
Not if they had a good degree. Sure the tools change and whatever language/framework too but the fundamentals don't.
Applying a a systematic approach to debugging, algorithms, automata and complexity are still very much the same than they were a decade ago.
The bias comes from me. I'm the guy who got a CS degree a decade ago. I can tell you from personal experience, 100% of tech-related course material in uni fell into one of two categories: either "I know this already" or "this will never be applicable in a real-job scenario". And I know I'm just some guy on the internet, but I went to a "good" university, and I'm director-level at a tech company you've heard of. As you say, "applying a a systematic approach to debugging, algorithms, automata" is absolutely essential in what we do, but I'm asserting you're much better at all of the above by researching, discovering, and applying it for yourself rather than memorizing textbook definitions and answering multiple choice questions.
If the degree is memorizing textbooks and mostly multiple choice questions then I question the validity of the degree itself.
Going to college forces someone to learn full time, and that's the real value. Sure you can learn on your own part time but it'll take wayy longer than dedicating a few years to the problem. So in that regard, I wouldn't advise a prospective CS student to go do something else and learn software "on the side".
There might be a selection bias at play here. Someone who was able to create its own degree from scratch and learn enough to pass your interview should adopt the same mindset when tasked with a new problem. You are selecting for folks who require less hand holding.
> Not to mention that what someone learned in uni a decade ago is probably not applicable anymore whatsoever (in tech)
Not if they had a good degree. Sure the tools change and whatever language/framework too but the fundamentals don't.
Applying a a systematic approach to debugging, algorithms, automata and complexity are still very much the same than they were a decade ago.