The Degree Requirement Was Never Tested — It Was Just Repeated
A job posting says “bachelor’s degree required.” Nobody on the hiring team remembers who wrote that line first, or what evidence justified it. It is simply there, the way a company’s font choices are simply there — inherited, unquestioned, renewed every time someone copies last year’s posting into this year’s template. That is the quiet trap at the center of a lot of hiring decisions, and it is also a trap that founders and product teams fall into constantly when they mistake a familiar rule for a validated one.