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Why Equifax’s error wasn’t hiring someone with a music degree

7 points by RKoutnik 9y ago

schoen 9y ago
I learned yesterday that Mudge's degree is from the Berklee College of Music (a top school for music performance): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiter_Zatko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiter_Zatko So I think that's a great example of how someone with a music degree could potentially be one of the world's top infosec experts. (Also I believe Chris Palmer, who used to be my boss and currently works on the Google Chrome security team, has a degree in linguistics but would probably have been rather tempted by a music degree considering his huge passion for music performance.) I think it's worth considering what really does make for good infosec qualifications, but it's easy to see that it's not necessarily a university degree. (Also considering how many leading infosec experts didn't finish university.)
pixelperfect 9y ago
I haven't looked into the Equifax hack, but plenty of highly competent programmers have music degrees. Rich Hickey for example. (source: https://gist.github.com/harfangk/f98e627f7567b7b5741fe0c239b57d6c https://gist.github.com/harfangk/f98e627f7567b7b5741fe0c239b...)
- dang 9y ago
  The only interesting thing about this non-issue is that people brought it up without realizing how they were embarrassing themselves. Talk about a middlebrow dismissal.
  - schoen 9y ago
    I think there's a real issue about the resources that are brought to bear on information security, and what we need to do to get more traction on it, but focusing people's academic background is a misleading way to try to talk about that.
    - dang 9y ago
      Those are two completely different things. It couldn't be more ignorant to think that a music degree suggests anything about someone's technical competence (other than maybe a weak positive signal of intellectual breadth). One expects that from media outlets but to see it crop up on HN was shocking. Among people who ought to know better, I can't imagine a stronger indicator of small-mindedness.

7 points by RKoutnik 9y ago

I learned yesterday that Mudge's degree is from the Berklee College of Music (a top school for music performance): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiter_Zatko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiter_Zatko So I think that's a great example of how someone with a music degree could potentially be one of the world's top infosec experts. (Also I believe Chris Palmer, who used to be my boss and currently works on the Google Chrome security team, has a degree in linguistics but would probably have been rather tempted by a music degree considering his huge passion for music performance.) I think it's worth considering what really does make for good infosec qualifications, but it's easy to see that it's not necessarily a university degree. (Also considering how many leading infosec experts didn't finish university.)

pixelperfect 9y ago

I haven't looked into the Equifax hack, but plenty of highly competent programmers have music degrees. Rich Hickey for example. (source: https://gist.github.com/harfangk/f98e627f7567b7b5741fe0c239b57d6c https://gist.github.com/harfangk/f98e627f7567b7b5741fe0c239b...)

dang 9y ago
The only interesting thing about this non-issue is that people brought it up without realizing how they were embarrassing themselves. Talk about a middlebrow dismissal.
- schoen 9y ago
  I think there's a real issue about the resources that are brought to bear on information security, and what we need to do to get more traction on it, but focusing people's academic background is a misleading way to try to talk about that.
  - dang 9y ago
    Those are two completely different things. It couldn't be more ignorant to think that a music degree suggests anything about someone's technical competence (other than maybe a weak positive signal of intellectual breadth). One expects that from media outlets but to see it crop up on HN was shocking. Among people who ought to know better, I can't imagine a stronger indicator of small-mindedness.