Re: Testing job applicants

[Pete Fenelon <pete@fenelon.com>]

In alt.folklore.computers Chris Brown <Chris.omitthisbit.Brown@arm.andthisbit.com> wrote:
> Indeed. You might want to add Cambridge to your list, although you're
> less likely to bump into graduates because most of us tend to end up
> working within about 10 miles of the place after we graduate (for the
> benefit of US based readers, the cambridge area , often dubbed
> "Silicon Fen" is fast becoming Europe's answer to Silicon Valley,

There's obviously something good going on in Cambridge, and has been
for a long time, but it seems that at least in the recent past there
was some tendency to deter people from doing Computer Science 
at undergrad level.

I had an offer from Cambridge, but at the time (86 entry) I got the
impression that Computer Science, at undergrad level, was something
regarded as a dumping ground for mathematicians, engineers and Nat Sci
people who washed out in Part 1s. (I'd applied to go in via Part 1 Nat
Sci). There wasn't a CS Part I at the time, and the admissions people I
met seemed much keener to keep me as a scientist... very sniffy attitude
(tried to convince me that ideally I didn't want to study computing until
after my first degree, and if I *must* study it, I should only take the
one-year IIb course) and a very negative experience. 

I felt as though my chosen subject was something they'd rather not have
in their nice old university. Kind of odd since I'd grown up reading
about Turing and Wilkes and so on...

I declined the offer, which caused me great fun at school a few weeks
later when they found out (I wasn't on speaking terms with many of the
teachers, but that's another story.... "You've let the school down, think
of our reputation..." "Why should that bother me? I'm out of here...") 

Maybe things have changed -- I've only worked with a few Cambridge BAs who
haven't struck me as particularly practical; I've worked with a few people
with postgrad experience there, and they're *SERIOUSLY* bright.

Certainly over the past four or five years about a quarter of the
calls I've had from recruitment agencies have been attempting to get me
to defect to the Fens...

pete
-- 
pete@fenelon.com "there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas" (HMHB)