I interviewed for an eng role at Coursera back in 2012, not too long after they were founded. Their claimed goal at the time was a re-imagining of education, insisting that current educational institutions were stuck in the past.
Despite that, a large portion of the interview focused on my grades from my time at University, and the specific course-work I had taken. Note that this was for application engineering, and it wasn't my first job out of school. About half of my frontend engineering session was the interviewer focusing on my single sub-B grade (got a C+ in Operating Systems). Mind you, my overall CS BS GPA was a 3.5 from a top-10 engineering school, with a 3.6 in major-specific courses. It seemed like the team was largely Stanford grads, and they really, really, really cared about GPA and school-- basically playing right into the legacy education system.
I knew at that point that there was no way the company was going to "disrupt" anything with regard to education.
Despite that, a large portion of the interview focused on my grades from my time at University, and the specific course-work I had taken. Note that this was for application engineering, and it wasn't my first job out of school. About half of my frontend engineering session was the interviewer focusing on my single sub-B grade (got a C+ in Operating Systems). Mind you, my overall CS BS GPA was a 3.5 from a top-10 engineering school, with a 3.6 in major-specific courses. It seemed like the team was largely Stanford grads, and they really, really, really cared about GPA and school-- basically playing right into the legacy education system.
I knew at that point that there was no way the company was going to "disrupt" anything with regard to education.