You would be right, but we've built a system that's stacked against the people I describe. The people I talk about can hack circles around me - but they never got high marks in school (family trouble, learning disability, etc.), and therefore never went to a prestigious college. Many employers' hiring practices are obscenely stacked against coders with no degrees (or even degrees from a "crappier" college).
What you're describing is the precise problem with legacy admissions - the fact that we are judging a person's skill set via the college they went to, and controlling people's futures as a result of our artificial interference with what ought to be a true meritocracy.
If people are objective, and looked at a person's hacking talent instead of whether or not they went to MIT, then I agree - these people can clearly carve a path for themselves despite not going to a prestigious school. But this is not the case.
For the record - the people I'm talking about do work on some insanely cool projects despite the fact that they don't go to well-known colleges, or have degrees at all, but they constantly struggle to be taken seriously. When they walk into an interview (if they're lucky enough to get one) the fact that they come from some podunk college automatically tilts the playing field far away from them.
To try to be objective - I don't think we can really correct people's perception that people from "good schools" perform better. So instead of fighting this false presumption, let's make sure we stack our college student body with truly qualified and talented people.
What you're describing is the precise problem with legacy admissions - the fact that we are judging a person's skill set via the college they went to, and controlling people's futures as a result of our artificial interference with what ought to be a true meritocracy.
If people are objective, and looked at a person's hacking talent instead of whether or not they went to MIT, then I agree - these people can clearly carve a path for themselves despite not going to a prestigious school. But this is not the case.
For the record - the people I'm talking about do work on some insanely cool projects despite the fact that they don't go to well-known colleges, or have degrees at all, but they constantly struggle to be taken seriously. When they walk into an interview (if they're lucky enough to get one) the fact that they come from some podunk college automatically tilts the playing field far away from them.
To try to be objective - I don't think we can really correct people's perception that people from "good schools" perform better. So instead of fighting this false presumption, let's make sure we stack our college student body with truly qualified and talented people.