The Prestige Trap
November 14, 2020 6:40 PM Subscribe
"I left in the middle of my junior year during the peak of on-campus recruiting, the process by which Harvard students compete for internships at a narrow list of companies. I say "narrow" to emphasize the fact that just three industries captured the attention of my peers: finance, big tech, and consulting (FTC). When you subtract out the students attending grad school or who don't immediately enter the workforce, nearly half choose one of these fields. Why? ... The average Harvard student would probably prefer to work on Google Maps over Kraft Mac & Cheese, but this doesn't explain why students have such narrow interests within FTC. Why are Google and Facebook so attractive to prospective engineers while Stripe and Nvidia are never brought up? Or why do aspiring consultants obsess over McKinsey, Bain, and BCG to the exclusion of more boutique firms with similar compensation structures?"
Name-obsessed institution and name-obsessed faculty produce name-obsessed students, news at 11.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:01 PM on November 14, 2020 [32 favorites]
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:01 PM on November 14, 2020 [32 favorites]
On second thought that's not entirely fair. There's a good amount of academic nepotism/cronyism that doesn't care that much about names as long as there's power, and there's some very solid researchers at Harvard who are more utilitarian in their aims than elitist.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:08 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:08 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
In the tech side getting into a FAANG has major upsides for compensation and over the course of a 40 year career the initial boost adds up to a lot of money. An extra $200k/yr over the first several years means not having to worry about retirement, etc. Work 5 years, save the money, and then go work at whatever brings happiness for the rest of your life.
Having a big name on your resume also allows you to reverse the prestige play on future employers.
It's a good sales pitch.
posted by pdoege at 7:09 PM on November 14, 2020 [27 favorites]
Having a big name on your resume also allows you to reverse the prestige play on future employers.
It's a good sales pitch.
posted by pdoege at 7:09 PM on November 14, 2020 [27 favorites]
I was thinking something like the first few posts and decided I wanted to rta first (not saying they didn't)...
His breakdown of the concept wasn't overly surprising, but it was thoughtful and seemed to come from the right place. It was broken up in a way that did make me think about these pressures and structures that recreate the trap (and suppress others outside the trap).
The thought it left me hung up on, though, was kind of a tangent: Sure, credentialism is a poor approach for self-determination. But what about the societal/non-individual view? Ie, how does a person who's not an expert programmer find a short-hand that allows them to hire expert programmers? What's the heuristic that allows non-excellence to deploy excellence?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 7:11 PM on November 14, 2020 [7 favorites]
His breakdown of the concept wasn't overly surprising, but it was thoughtful and seemed to come from the right place. It was broken up in a way that did make me think about these pressures and structures that recreate the trap (and suppress others outside the trap).
The thought it left me hung up on, though, was kind of a tangent: Sure, credentialism is a poor approach for self-determination. But what about the societal/non-individual view? Ie, how does a person who's not an expert programmer find a short-hand that allows them to hire expert programmers? What's the heuristic that allows non-excellence to deploy excellence?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 7:11 PM on November 14, 2020 [7 favorites]
I think it's hard to overestimate the power of starting your career at a prestige firm. I come at this from the perspective of law, rather than FTC, but people who summer or article or do their first associate position in BigLaw will often benefit from that for the rest of their career. Even in non-trad jobs, it is often lawyers hiring lawyers and they'll alwaysrecognize the imprimatur of having been in one of the big firms. You do a few years in BigLaw and a lot of doors are open to you that aren't open to people without that experience or those connections. If you don't like Big Law or don't make partner, you can still do virtually anything else that requires a law degree, but if you don't head to Big Law in your first year out of school (earlier, really), you will almost certainly never get there. It widens rather than narrows your career options.
As an example, a lot of people do a few years in a big firm and then switch over to one in house at one of their clients and they seem to end up in much more senior roles than people who started out in house and have similar years of experience.
Even in government (at least here in Canada), where salaries are highly stratified, coming in from a high paying job means you have leverage to negotiate for a higher starting classification in your first job. I know people who have made the transition for the better working conditions, and they all got salary step bumps easily -- because they could point at the huge cut they would be taking from their current salary. And then that bump follows them for the rest of their career in the public service, because all the years of service increases and contract increases come on top of a higher starting salary.
There are a lot of reasons why this is shitty and a lot of reasons why it is self-perpetuating, just the same as there are for most aspects of late stage capitalism, but it's not just mindless prestige chasing.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:01 PM on November 14, 2020 [47 favorites]
As an example, a lot of people do a few years in a big firm and then switch over to one in house at one of their clients and they seem to end up in much more senior roles than people who started out in house and have similar years of experience.
Even in government (at least here in Canada), where salaries are highly stratified, coming in from a high paying job means you have leverage to negotiate for a higher starting classification in your first job. I know people who have made the transition for the better working conditions, and they all got salary step bumps easily -- because they could point at the huge cut they would be taking from their current salary. And then that bump follows them for the rest of their career in the public service, because all the years of service increases and contract increases come on top of a higher starting salary.
There are a lot of reasons why this is shitty and a lot of reasons why it is self-perpetuating, just the same as there are for most aspects of late stage capitalism, but it's not just mindless prestige chasing.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:01 PM on November 14, 2020 [47 favorites]
"If chasing prestige is an inefficient way to achieve excellence, then it follows that this trap may be reducing the number of individuals who find authentic success."
No problem. Ambitious immigrants are filling the excellence gap left by prestige chasing native born. Immigrants are responsible for about 25% of all new business startups and employ about 1 out of 10 Americans in private corporations. Immigrants represent 20% of CEOs of the 500 fastest growing companies. 55% of billion dollar startups have immigrant founders.
Trump's anti-immigrant policies have put a serious dent in this progress but hopefully not permanent.
posted by JackFlash at 8:10 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
No problem. Ambitious immigrants are filling the excellence gap left by prestige chasing native born. Immigrants are responsible for about 25% of all new business startups and employ about 1 out of 10 Americans in private corporations. Immigrants represent 20% of CEOs of the 500 fastest growing companies. 55% of billion dollar startups have immigrant founders.
Trump's anti-immigrant policies have put a serious dent in this progress but hopefully not permanent.
posted by JackFlash at 8:10 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]
No problem. Ambitious immigrants are filling the excellence gap left by prestige chasing native born.
Immigrants also attend Harvard in large numbers and chase prestigious jobs at Goldman Sachs.
posted by escabeche at 8:14 PM on November 14, 2020 [11 favorites]
Immigrants also attend Harvard in large numbers and chase prestigious jobs at Goldman Sachs.
posted by escabeche at 8:14 PM on November 14, 2020 [11 favorites]
I can't speak to finance and tech, having never worked in either field, but I can say I learned more analytic, systematic thinking tools in my short stint at a major consulting firm than I did in the fancy MBA program that preceded it.
posted by PhineasGage at 8:19 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by PhineasGage at 8:19 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
Anyway, I went there, the phenomenon described here is very real and it was exactly the same 25 years ago, except there was no Google or Facebook then so swap in getting into Harvard or Yale Law School for those, I guess. Students rolled their eyes about the fact that half our class went into banking, consulting, or law school, but people just kept on doing it.
The basic analysis -- that "getting into Goldman" is structurally a lot like "getting into Harvard" -- is absolutely right. What I think is missing is the fact that Harvard actually is a really great place where you learn a tremendous amount, so Harvard students have learned from one example that chasing prestige actually helps you achieve what you really value. I would say that my classmates who went to Goldman found it, by and large, not as intellectually exciting and not as personally valuable as going to Harvard. But you live and you learn.
posted by escabeche at 8:20 PM on November 14, 2020 [13 favorites]
The basic analysis -- that "getting into Goldman" is structurally a lot like "getting into Harvard" -- is absolutely right. What I think is missing is the fact that Harvard actually is a really great place where you learn a tremendous amount, so Harvard students have learned from one example that chasing prestige actually helps you achieve what you really value. I would say that my classmates who went to Goldman found it, by and large, not as intellectually exciting and not as personally valuable as going to Harvard. But you live and you learn.
posted by escabeche at 8:20 PM on November 14, 2020 [13 favorites]
People who summer or article or do their first associate position in BigLaw will often benefit from that for the rest of their career ... but it's not just mindless prestige chasing.
The point of the article is that it is just mindless prestige chasing and more money. Each stage is just one more step on the ladder of prestige and more money. You want that first prestigious job so that you can get the next prestigious job and more money and more social status.
The author is distinguishing social and financial success from excellence -- doing something important or doing something great or at least doing something because you like it rather than because it leads to you next stage of prestige.
The stories of people doing a couple of years of prestige sucking in order to have the freedom to do something important are mostly mythical. Once you sell your soul to the system, few escape.
posted by JackFlash at 8:25 PM on November 14, 2020 [7 favorites]
The point of the article is that it is just mindless prestige chasing and more money. Each stage is just one more step on the ladder of prestige and more money. You want that first prestigious job so that you can get the next prestigious job and more money and more social status.
The author is distinguishing social and financial success from excellence -- doing something important or doing something great or at least doing something because you like it rather than because it leads to you next stage of prestige.
The stories of people doing a couple of years of prestige sucking in order to have the freedom to do something important are mostly mythical. Once you sell your soul to the system, few escape.
posted by JackFlash at 8:25 PM on November 14, 2020 [7 favorites]
Immigrants represent 20% of CEOs of the 500 fastest growing companies. 55% of billion dollar startups have immigrant founders.
I would wager a good number of them have connections to prestigious institutions and/or previously worked at prestigious companies, whether in the US or abroad.
posted by airmail at 8:43 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
I would wager a good number of them have connections to prestigious institutions and/or previously worked at prestigious companies, whether in the US or abroad.
posted by airmail at 8:43 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]
The stories of people doing a couple of years of prestige sucking in order to have the freedom to do something important are mostly mythical.
Anecdotally, in tech... no? There is so much turnover. Once they get a few years of Famous Company on their resumes, a lot of people leave, often for smaller companies or to start their own companies. If it's for another big company, it's because there's a promised pay bump or promotion or better working conditions, but the name doesn't really matter at that point anymore. If anything, the biggest barrier to quitting is the Golden Handcuffs, but that's not about prestige - that's about pay.
This article really sounds like it was written by a smart 20-year-old: it's probably a revelation to the writer and their same-aged social peers, but most people will realize this on their own once they get a little older.
posted by airmail at 9:03 PM on November 14, 2020 [19 favorites]
Anecdotally, in tech... no? There is so much turnover. Once they get a few years of Famous Company on their resumes, a lot of people leave, often for smaller companies or to start their own companies. If it's for another big company, it's because there's a promised pay bump or promotion or better working conditions, but the name doesn't really matter at that point anymore. If anything, the biggest barrier to quitting is the Golden Handcuffs, but that's not about prestige - that's about pay.
This article really sounds like it was written by a smart 20-year-old: it's probably a revelation to the writer and their same-aged social peers, but most people will realize this on their own once they get a little older.
posted by airmail at 9:03 PM on November 14, 2020 [19 favorites]
But you live and you learn.
you mean there's more to life than money?
posted by valkane at 9:31 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
you mean there's more to life than money?
posted by valkane at 9:31 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
Young person tries to reinvent capitalist rat race sociological theory using different words
posted by polymodus at 11:09 PM on November 14, 2020 [9 favorites]
posted by polymodus at 11:09 PM on November 14, 2020 [9 favorites]
The stories of people doing a couple of years of prestige sucking in order to have the freedom to do something important are mostly mythical.
I'm not really thinking of people who do a few years of Big Law with the goal of later becoming human rights lawyers who champion refugees pro bono. But BigLaw sucks in more first year associates most years than it has fifth year associates or junior partnerships, so people do get spit out of the BigLaw machine at pretty regular intervals. Some leave voluntarily because they don't want to spend more years killing themselves for billable hours and some are forced out. Some of them move down the private practice ladder to smaller firms or strike out on their own. Some go in-house. The ones I know mostly ended up in Government, because, well, I work for the Government and that's where I meet them.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:12 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
I'm not really thinking of people who do a few years of Big Law with the goal of later becoming human rights lawyers who champion refugees pro bono. But BigLaw sucks in more first year associates most years than it has fifth year associates or junior partnerships, so people do get spit out of the BigLaw machine at pretty regular intervals. Some leave voluntarily because they don't want to spend more years killing themselves for billable hours and some are forced out. Some of them move down the private practice ladder to smaller firms or strike out on their own. Some go in-house. The ones I know mostly ended up in Government, because, well, I work for the Government and that's where I meet them.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:12 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
An extra $200k/yr over the first several years
There's no "extra" $200K for new grads, even Harvard new grads, that's the outside limit on their total comp. The pay at FAANG companies is good, but for the rank and file, it's nowhere near fuck-you-money, FIRE-good. New grads go to these companies because they're huge brand names and Harvard grads are not, in fact, omniscient and probably have only heard of 5% of the great tech companies out there. And I suspect they don't go to some tech companies because most tech companies are not, in fact, particularly great places to work, even if the pay is good.
It's also selection bias on the part of FAANG companies - they're highly selective about where they recruit for no particularly good reason. Why does FB recruit heavily at Harvard and not at Howard or Hampton? Hm, I dunno, I wonder why?
from TFA: When I asked my peers why they preferred these particular firms, they often answered that they were better than the rest of the industry. But by which logic are they better? When asked about the specifics, they'd often give vague non-answers that seemed almost scripted.
Yup. These people, while smart, don't actually know anything and go off of hearsay and the marketing they're fed by the top FTC companies. Same reason they buy Tide and not Gain. Stripe is not a consumer brand. Harvard grads are smart, sure, but they're what, 24? In spite of being smart and having the best education money can buy, they don't really know that much. Shit, if I knew in '94 what I know now I sure as hell wouldn't have taken my first 3 or 4 jobs. It's not an insult to say they know nothing, it's perfectly natural, the same way they knew less when they graduated high school. Most of the challenge in life, IMO, is that you don't even realize there's a game being played, much less knowing the rules or how to win.
In reality, they have it backward—prestige follows excellence.
Sure, prestige is a trailing indicator. Trouble is that these kids have not only have no data to form a leading indicator of excellence, they have no model and they don't even know they need a model!
It's a good article, but having been through this particular gauntlet, I'm not sure what other conclusion you could really draw given the thesis of the essay ("Why do all these students end up going to FTC companies?"). You just look around and see what everyone else is doing. This is hardly unique to Harvard grads.
posted by GuyZero at 11:27 PM on November 14, 2020 [12 favorites]
There's no "extra" $200K for new grads, even Harvard new grads, that's the outside limit on their total comp. The pay at FAANG companies is good, but for the rank and file, it's nowhere near fuck-you-money, FIRE-good. New grads go to these companies because they're huge brand names and Harvard grads are not, in fact, omniscient and probably have only heard of 5% of the great tech companies out there. And I suspect they don't go to some tech companies because most tech companies are not, in fact, particularly great places to work, even if the pay is good.
It's also selection bias on the part of FAANG companies - they're highly selective about where they recruit for no particularly good reason. Why does FB recruit heavily at Harvard and not at Howard or Hampton? Hm, I dunno, I wonder why?
from TFA: When I asked my peers why they preferred these particular firms, they often answered that they were better than the rest of the industry. But by which logic are they better? When asked about the specifics, they'd often give vague non-answers that seemed almost scripted.
Yup. These people, while smart, don't actually know anything and go off of hearsay and the marketing they're fed by the top FTC companies. Same reason they buy Tide and not Gain. Stripe is not a consumer brand. Harvard grads are smart, sure, but they're what, 24? In spite of being smart and having the best education money can buy, they don't really know that much. Shit, if I knew in '94 what I know now I sure as hell wouldn't have taken my first 3 or 4 jobs. It's not an insult to say they know nothing, it's perfectly natural, the same way they knew less when they graduated high school. Most of the challenge in life, IMO, is that you don't even realize there's a game being played, much less knowing the rules or how to win.
In reality, they have it backward—prestige follows excellence.
Sure, prestige is a trailing indicator. Trouble is that these kids have not only have no data to form a leading indicator of excellence, they have no model and they don't even know they need a model!
It's a good article, but having been through this particular gauntlet, I'm not sure what other conclusion you could really draw given the thesis of the essay ("Why do all these students end up going to FTC companies?"). You just look around and see what everyone else is doing. This is hardly unique to Harvard grads.
posted by GuyZero at 11:27 PM on November 14, 2020 [12 favorites]
I would wager a good number of them have connections to prestigious institutions and/or previously worked at prestigious companies, whether in the US or abroad.
Sundar Pichai: go to Stanford, go to Wharton, join McKinsey for a few years, join Google, flip a coin and get heads 200 times in a row, hey, he's CEO. To some extent your wager is inevitable: your description applies to tens of thousands of people at these companies. Minus the CEO part, there are probably a few hundred people at Google with the same resume as Pichai.
posted by GuyZero at 11:32 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
Sundar Pichai: go to Stanford, go to Wharton, join McKinsey for a few years, join Google, flip a coin and get heads 200 times in a row, hey, he's CEO. To some extent your wager is inevitable: your description applies to tens of thousands of people at these companies. Minus the CEO part, there are probably a few hundred people at Google with the same resume as Pichai.
posted by GuyZero at 11:32 PM on November 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'll tell a little bit of my story, and you can make of it what you will. Neither of my parents are well off. I went to a state school in Texas, Texas A&M, when doing so cost roughly, let's say, $1500 a semester. Maybe it was $3000 a semester, I don't remember. In any event, I emerged with no student loan debt, so it was still within the golden age of cheap in-state college education (class of 1991, BA computer science). Anyway, at the end of 2014, I found myself being ejected from HP, with an offer to work for PMC Sierra when HP realized that RAID controllers no longer offered value to anyone who managed redundancy at the server level, rather than at the disk level, which was rapidly becoming everyone. So, I declined to be employed at PMC Sierra, and, in a scary flying leap, went to work for Google. Along the way, I brought along a friend, who never graduated from college. That's right, my friend, who never graduated college, got a job at Google. And it wasn't because I pulled any weight, I merely passed along his name to the recruiter I was working with. He landed that job on his own. And, no wonder, he was and is a freakin' genius. Just never graduated. It's just not true that you've got to go to the best schools, etc. to land a job at Google. You don't need to. Neither me nor my friend went to the best schools, or in my friend's case, *even had a degree beyond high school*. You just need to be able to do the work. Which is not easy, let me be clear. In fact it was so much the opposite of easy that I left Google after less than 3 years, due in no small part to the high level of stress, leaving a lot of cash on the table. My friend, still lacking any college degree, is still there, and thriving. It's my opinion that you've got to be a special kind of person to thrive at Google (can't speak to the other FANG companies), not only willing to tolerate high stress, but also you've got to be at the top of the game when it comes to programming and computer science. You can't be middling, you've got to be good at it. The other thing I noticed in my time there is that people worked hard. To some extent, I attributed this to the fact that most people there were young, and hired from ivy league schools, and so, these people didn't know anything other than striving as hard as possible towards their goals, that's all they've been doing since a young age, and they simply continued doing what they were accustomed to upon entering the work force. In any case, there's no coasting at Google. You can never get comfortable. You can never sort of learn how the job works, and be like, "ok, I've got this, I know how it works, I've got my little niche, and I can just sit here and competently do my job from day to day and be ok." No, it seems that part of the management culture is to recognize "comfortableness", and treat it as a problem to be solved. If you're comfortable, you're not doing enough, and should be pushed harder. Comfort is not to be tolerated.
So... yeah, it's a weird place. I've said before that working for Google (especially in Mountain View) is like being on "the Island of the Smart People", and it is, and there are some nice features that come along with working on the Island of the Smart People... mainly that all of your coworkers are ridiculously smart. And there's the nice salary and stock options. But the stress that comes along with it is not to be discounted. It was more than I could bear, and I left after less than 3 years, leaving a ton of stock on the table. If you came into that world from Harvard or another Ivy League school, I suppose that means you'd been living on the Island of the Smart People for your entire life, so maybe you don't even notice the transition the way that I did.
I don't know if I have a point, other than to convey my perception of what it was like to work at Google for a couple years before I realized it was too stressful for me to continue there.
posted by smcameron at 11:39 PM on November 14, 2020 [30 favorites]
So... yeah, it's a weird place. I've said before that working for Google (especially in Mountain View) is like being on "the Island of the Smart People", and it is, and there are some nice features that come along with working on the Island of the Smart People... mainly that all of your coworkers are ridiculously smart. And there's the nice salary and stock options. But the stress that comes along with it is not to be discounted. It was more than I could bear, and I left after less than 3 years, leaving a ton of stock on the table. If you came into that world from Harvard or another Ivy League school, I suppose that means you'd been living on the Island of the Smart People for your entire life, so maybe you don't even notice the transition the way that I did.
I don't know if I have a point, other than to convey my perception of what it was like to work at Google for a couple years before I realized it was too stressful for me to continue there.
posted by smcameron at 11:39 PM on November 14, 2020 [30 favorites]
I suppose that means you'd been living on the Island of the Smart People for your entire life, so maybe you don't even notice the transition the way that I did.
Impostor Syndrome has truly reached memetic proportions at Google and I feel like the company is comprised of three groups of people: 1: people with impostor syndrome 2: sociopaths, mostly high-functioning 3: Jeff Dean.
Thankfully groups 1 & 2 just have to make sure the servers running Jeff's jobs keep running.
posted by GuyZero at 11:58 PM on November 14, 2020 [11 favorites]
Impostor Syndrome has truly reached memetic proportions at Google and I feel like the company is comprised of three groups of people: 1: people with impostor syndrome 2: sociopaths, mostly high-functioning 3: Jeff Dean.
Thankfully groups 1 & 2 just have to make sure the servers running Jeff's jobs keep running.
posted by GuyZero at 11:58 PM on November 14, 2020 [11 favorites]
I know what smcameron is talking about, albeit in terms of academia rather than corporoea, and I'm going to take issue with the term 'impostor syndrome'.
What it does not mean (if it ever did): 'the misguided feeling that you don't belong'.
What it does mean: 'confirmation that you don't belong, from those who are excluding you, and transferring the blame onto you and away from themselves'.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:24 AM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
What it does not mean (if it ever did): 'the misguided feeling that you don't belong'.
What it does mean: 'confirmation that you don't belong, from those who are excluding you, and transferring the blame onto you and away from themselves'.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:24 AM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
As always, these sorts of articles make me really glad to have not been from a family or social class who valued any of this nonsense.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:08 AM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 4:08 AM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]
Young person tries to reinvent capitalist rat race sociological theory using different words
Google says 'No results found for "capitalist rat race sociological theory"', so I guess they aren't the only ones.
posted by Not A Thing at 5:11 AM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
Google says 'No results found for "capitalist rat race sociological theory"', so I guess they aren't the only ones.
posted by Not A Thing at 5:11 AM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
What it does mean: 'confirmation that you don't belong, from those who are excluding you, and transferring the blame onto you and away from themselves'.
Does anyone have further reading on this? It sounds like an interesting re-definition of the term but not one that I've ever encountered.
posted by Not A Thing at 5:17 AM on November 15, 2020 [5 favorites]
Does anyone have further reading on this? It sounds like an interesting re-definition of the term but not one that I've ever encountered.
posted by Not A Thing at 5:17 AM on November 15, 2020 [5 favorites]
At my firm we delete resumes from Harvard grads without reading them.
This is more satisfying than you might imagine.
posted by 1adam12 at 5:51 AM on November 15, 2020 [12 favorites]
This is more satisfying than you might imagine.
posted by 1adam12 at 5:51 AM on November 15, 2020 [12 favorites]
Early 20s autodidact doesn't know the facts, news at 11.
Globally - prestige really matters. You will retire at 70 before where you went to school and what your first job(s) were stop mattering a lot to prospective clients and employers.
On tech - FAANG pay is vastly higher than non-FAANG ... and Harvard undergrad aspirants for "tech" jobs are highly weighted towards non-STEM and softer STEM majors. The FAANGs have thousands of jobs for early-20s smart kids in marketing, finance, strategy and M&A. How many 22-year-old history or econ majors do NVIDIA or Cisco hire with six figure packages?
On finance - the training and deal/trading exposure that the bulge bracket banks (Goldman and a few peers) can give you is qualitatively different from what any boutique can give you. Once again, outliers aside, the compensation especially in the first few years is far higher. Finally, the two major target exit points from junior banking - private equity, top MBAs and (for traders) hedge funds - are almost entirely restricted to the top banks (trading desk to hedge fund somewhat less so).
On strategy consulting - the top few firms monopolize the high-profile corporate engagements on which a junior with a non-STEM background can expect to get serious exposure, and also monopolize the exit points (same as banking - private equity and top MBA). There are a lot of great strategy boutiques but they the domain expertise of their senior principals, not the mass application of IQ points of analysts and associates in their 20s -- those analysts and associates get fewer opportunities and lower pay.
posted by MattD at 5:59 AM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
Globally - prestige really matters. You will retire at 70 before where you went to school and what your first job(s) were stop mattering a lot to prospective clients and employers.
On tech - FAANG pay is vastly higher than non-FAANG ... and Harvard undergrad aspirants for "tech" jobs are highly weighted towards non-STEM and softer STEM majors. The FAANGs have thousands of jobs for early-20s smart kids in marketing, finance, strategy and M&A. How many 22-year-old history or econ majors do NVIDIA or Cisco hire with six figure packages?
On finance - the training and deal/trading exposure that the bulge bracket banks (Goldman and a few peers) can give you is qualitatively different from what any boutique can give you. Once again, outliers aside, the compensation especially in the first few years is far higher. Finally, the two major target exit points from junior banking - private equity, top MBAs and (for traders) hedge funds - are almost entirely restricted to the top banks (trading desk to hedge fund somewhat less so).
On strategy consulting - the top few firms monopolize the high-profile corporate engagements on which a junior with a non-STEM background can expect to get serious exposure, and also monopolize the exit points (same as banking - private equity and top MBA). There are a lot of great strategy boutiques but they the domain expertise of their senior principals, not the mass application of IQ points of analysts and associates in their 20s -- those analysts and associates get fewer opportunities and lower pay.
posted by MattD at 5:59 AM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
At my firm we delete resumes from Harvard grads without reading them.
Why?
posted by leslietron at 7:01 AM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
Why?
posted by leslietron at 7:01 AM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
At my firm we delete resumes from Harvard grads without reading them.
I'm quite surprised to read of a lawyer not just willingly committing an act of discrimination, but cheerfully admitting it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:15 AM on November 15, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'm quite surprised to read of a lawyer not just willingly committing an act of discrimination, but cheerfully admitting it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:15 AM on November 15, 2020 [2 favorites]
So, uh, when we say discrimination here, are we saying that resumes from Harvard grads and resumes of graduates from, say, Umpqua Community College need to be regarded equally? (or an opposite-of-prestigious university that grants equivalent degrees, you know what I mean) Or is UCC an institution a firm is allowed to have pre-conceptions about?
posted by XMLicious at 7:38 AM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by XMLicious at 7:38 AM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
At my firm we delete resumes from Harvard grads without reading them.
Why?
Bragging rights? McKinsey infamously started advertising in some on-campus Harvard newspaper to reject most candidates. It was a brilliant marketing strategy. Facebook stumbled upon this when it first started and limited itself to not just the Ivy League but elite institutions within the Ivy League.
posted by geoff. at 7:42 AM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
Why?
Bragging rights? McKinsey infamously started advertising in some on-campus Harvard newspaper to reject most candidates. It was a brilliant marketing strategy. Facebook stumbled upon this when it first started and limited itself to not just the Ivy League but elite institutions within the Ivy League.
posted by geoff. at 7:42 AM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
Does anyone have further reading on this? It sounds like an interesting re-definition of the term but not one that I've ever encountered.
If you've never encountered it, you've never been on the receiving end of it. Be grateful.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 7:50 AM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
If you've never encountered it, you've never been on the receiving end of it. Be grateful.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 7:50 AM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
If you've never encountered [a particular definition of a term], you've never been on the receiving end of [the thing defined].
I mean, no? But until I unpacked it, this comment gave me a surprisingly strong flareup of imposter syndrome over my own imposter syndrome (not for the first time, but definitely for the first time in this particular way). So I guess that's a pretty cool way of demonstrating the validity (if not the authoritativeness) of the proposed definition.
posted by Not A Thing at 8:07 AM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]
I mean, no? But until I unpacked it, this comment gave me a surprisingly strong flareup of imposter syndrome over my own imposter syndrome (not for the first time, but definitely for the first time in this particular way). So I guess that's a pretty cool way of demonstrating the validity (if not the authoritativeness) of the proposed definition.
posted by Not A Thing at 8:07 AM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]
"I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta. Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard."
posted by briank at 8:40 AM on November 15, 2020 [9 favorites]
posted by briank at 8:40 AM on November 15, 2020 [9 favorites]
So, uh, when we say discrimination here, are we saying that resumes from Harvard grads and resumes of graduates from, say, Umpqua Community College need to be regarded equally?
When "regarded equally" comes to "do we at least read the damn thing", yes that is exactly what I am suggesting.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:50 AM on November 15, 2020
When "regarded equally" comes to "do we at least read the damn thing", yes that is exactly what I am suggesting.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:50 AM on November 15, 2020
Are Harvard graduates a protected class?
(I mean, in the discrimination law sense. In every other sense, the answer is clearly yes.)
posted by jacquilynne at 10:02 AM on November 15, 2020 [14 favorites]
(I mean, in the discrimination law sense. In every other sense, the answer is clearly yes.)
posted by jacquilynne at 10:02 AM on November 15, 2020 [14 favorites]
I mean, in the discrimination law sense. In every other sense, the answer is clearly yes.
Is putting Harvard graduates at the bottom of the pile any more discriminatory than putting them at the top of the pile, which is the general practice?
Isn't that one of the primary reasons for seeking admittance to Harvard, so that you get a boost to the top of the pile for jobs based on prestige.
posted by JackFlash at 10:31 AM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
Is putting Harvard graduates at the bottom of the pile any more discriminatory than putting them at the top of the pile, which is the general practice?
Isn't that one of the primary reasons for seeking admittance to Harvard, so that you get a boost to the top of the pile for jobs based on prestige.
posted by JackFlash at 10:31 AM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
I don't hire many people but in my academic experience, people who have undergrad degrees from Harvard & their ilk have to be reviewed much more closely, due to rampant grade inflation and high incidence of Dunnong-Kruger syndrome, relative to say someone with top marks and research experience from any of the many amazing flagship state universities.
Basically their signals are not that honest, and you don't know if their pedigree means they are strong, or they just have the right mix of privilege and weak morals.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:59 AM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]
Basically their signals are not that honest, and you don't know if their pedigree means they are strong, or they just have the right mix of privilege and weak morals.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:59 AM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]
On tech - FAANG pay is vastly higher than non-FAANG ... and Harvard undergrad aspirants for "tech" jobs are highly weighted towards non-STEM and softer STEM majors. The FAANGs have thousands of jobs for early-20s smart kids in marketing, finance, strategy and M&A. How many 22-year-old history or econ majors do NVIDIA or Cisco hire with six figure packages?
The bit about people going to FAAM?G (I don’t think Netflix actually hires massive numbers of new grads?) and not the top-tier software startups was a little interesting to me, because those places can compete pretty well on pay and present themselves as offering an outside chance to get rich quick(er). But you’re right that I’m thinking about this not just from a West Coast perspective but an engineering perspective.
posted by atoxyl at 11:16 AM on November 15, 2020
The bit about people going to FAAM?G (I don’t think Netflix actually hires massive numbers of new grads?) and not the top-tier software startups was a little interesting to me, because those places can compete pretty well on pay and present themselves as offering an outside chance to get rich quick(er). But you’re right that I’m thinking about this not just from a West Coast perspective but an engineering perspective.
posted by atoxyl at 11:16 AM on November 15, 2020
Imagine you did well enough in high school to get your self into an Ivy+. Then imagine that same skill set has gotten you to junior year with a high gpa, but you have nothing you are passionate about other than "succeeding" and then imagine a bunch of people just like you 2-5 years out of school come to you and say "I was just like you. I succeed >at succeeding, and people like us do what I'm telling you you should do"
That's basically the pitch - and it's not even wrong. Like 95% of these people end up bailing on this path -either two years down the road, or five years down the road or post MBA . There are even equivalent next steps. Gotta get that Private Equity gig.
It's the equivalent of the post college malaise for hyper type A's who don't know how to not know what to do.
It's also not the path most plutocrats take because it's actually a pretty miserable time and their family can usually concoct better offers for them. Actually the plutocrats who do it tend to be of the less odious variety because it shows their family has an expectation of work.
People who are actually passionate and excited about something at 20 are both very lucky and highly unlikely to fall for the charms of these programs.
posted by JPD at 11:51 AM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
That's basically the pitch - and it's not even wrong. Like 95% of these people end up bailing on this path -either two years down the road, or five years down the road or post MBA . There are even equivalent next steps. Gotta get that Private Equity gig.
It's the equivalent of the post college malaise for hyper type A's who don't know how to not know what to do.
It's also not the path most plutocrats take because it's actually a pretty miserable time and their family can usually concoct better offers for them. Actually the plutocrats who do it tend to be of the less odious variety because it shows their family has an expectation of work.
People who are actually passionate and excited about something at 20 are both very lucky and highly unlikely to fall for the charms of these programs.
posted by JPD at 11:51 AM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
From now on, Harvard will have to over-compensate for unleashing Jared Kushner upon the world.
posted by Ber at 12:05 PM on November 15, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Ber at 12:05 PM on November 15, 2020 [2 favorites]
From now on, Harvard will have to over-compensate for unleashing Jared Kushner upon the world.
Harvard already got their compensation, $2.5 million from Jared's father.
posted by JackFlash at 12:13 PM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
Harvard already got their compensation, $2.5 million from Jared's father.
posted by JackFlash at 12:13 PM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
They aren't dumb either. They got it up front.
posted by JPD at 12:40 PM on November 15, 2020 [9 favorites]
posted by JPD at 12:40 PM on November 15, 2020 [9 favorites]
There's no "extra" $200K for new grads, even Harvard new grads, that's the outside limit on their total comp. The pay at FAANG companies is good, but for the rank and file, it's nowhere near fuck-you-money, FIRE-good
I just kinda love it how The Blue switches from "we should assassinate to everyone making over $100k/yr" to "400k/yr is just OK but not great". Yeah, you aren't retiring at 30 with that total comp when a house with giant holes in the roof is going $1.5m cash only, but we should all agree that pretty close a half mil a year is a lot of money.
Anyway, I'm an engineer for the biggest "A" in FAANG, and I honestly don't know a single Harvard grad in all off my coworkers, I've never interviewed one, not sure their engineering school is really good enough to get you right in the door, and to be honest we don't hire that many inexperienced new grads in my part anyway. Although, I worked with a Project Manager for years before I found out he was a Stanford Comp Sci undergrad with a Yale Law degree and had passed the California Bar in a former life, so who knows.
Apple doesn't really attract the "I'm going to kill myself for 3-5 years before I get the real job I want" crowd anyway, and every decent teammate I can think of was at a stage of their career way after what school they went to (if they want to school) didn't matter one bit compared to their actual job experience. Although, because of my hugest boss, for a while it seemed like anyone who came into the lobby and screamed out "I'm a graduate of Duke University!" instantly got a job offer.
posted by sideshow at 12:44 PM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]
I just kinda love it how The Blue switches from "we should assassinate to everyone making over $100k/yr" to "400k/yr is just OK but not great". Yeah, you aren't retiring at 30 with that total comp when a house with giant holes in the roof is going $1.5m cash only, but we should all agree that pretty close a half mil a year is a lot of money.
Anyway, I'm an engineer for the biggest "A" in FAANG, and I honestly don't know a single Harvard grad in all off my coworkers, I've never interviewed one, not sure their engineering school is really good enough to get you right in the door, and to be honest we don't hire that many inexperienced new grads in my part anyway. Although, I worked with a Project Manager for years before I found out he was a Stanford Comp Sci undergrad with a Yale Law degree and had passed the California Bar in a former life, so who knows.
Apple doesn't really attract the "I'm going to kill myself for 3-5 years before I get the real job I want" crowd anyway, and every decent teammate I can think of was at a stage of their career way after what school they went to (if they want to school) didn't matter one bit compared to their actual job experience. Although, because of my hugest boss, for a while it seemed like anyone who came into the lobby and screamed out "I'm a graduate of Duke University!" instantly got a job offer.
posted by sideshow at 12:44 PM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]
Let me plug one of my all time favorite ethnographies! Karen Ho's Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street which has a really awesome chapter on exactly this topic of college recruitment (and does a far better job of breaking down the problem than this article, including really getting to grips with the way talk of 'smartness' masks the insidious racism/sexism/classism of college recruitment.)
posted by EllaEm at 12:59 PM on November 15, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by EllaEm at 12:59 PM on November 15, 2020 [5 favorites]
They aren't dumb either. They got it up front.
And here's the kicker. Jared's father used the $2.5 million as a tax deduction, so effectively, you as taxpayers paid as much as half of Jared's entry fee to Harvard.
posted by JackFlash at 1:01 PM on November 15, 2020 [5 favorites]
And here's the kicker. Jared's father used the $2.5 million as a tax deduction, so effectively, you as taxpayers paid as much as half of Jared's entry fee to Harvard.
posted by JackFlash at 1:01 PM on November 15, 2020 [5 favorites]
I just kinda love it how The Blue switches from "we should assassinate to everyone making over $100k/yr" to "400k/yr is just OK but not great". Yeah, you aren't retiring at 30 with that total comp when a house with giant holes in the roof is going $1.5m cash only, but we should all agree that pretty close a half mil a year is a lot of money.
I think the point was that new grad comp for Big Tech is still closer to $200K than $400k? Not that this isn’t crazy high for a 23-yo regardless, but one probably can beat it in finance? I know more about tech than I do about finance.
posted by atoxyl at 1:13 PM on November 15, 2020
I think the point was that new grad comp for Big Tech is still closer to $200K than $400k? Not that this isn’t crazy high for a 23-yo regardless, but one probably can beat it in finance? I know more about tech than I do about finance.
posted by atoxyl at 1:13 PM on November 15, 2020
I was a weird art kid and most of my friends who went to an Ivy—mosty Columbia and Brown—were also weird art kids (to date I know, personally, one person in Finance and maybe three in tech, not counting the half dozen or so that followed some version of the plot of “Party Girl” back into library school a decade+ after their BFA/MFA). So this is a thing I missed out on entirely, even secondhand, and it really does feel like reading about an alternate universe. The closest thing i remember to this were people going for hotly contested internships at Harpers or The New Yorker or trying to get their credentials in the right place to maybe vie for a slot writing for a sketch comedy show or PA on a Spike Jonze movie, and the rest of us being a little jealous of those people like “Well, I can’t afford to live in New York on an unpaid internship so I can do laundry for ‘Strangers With Candy,’ so I guess grad school?”
posted by thivaia at 1:32 PM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by thivaia at 1:32 PM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
This entire thread makes me feel better about choosing my state school over Harvard. Especially when my friends who did go to Harvard have things like "chief of staff to an FCC Bureau" on their resume and have their retirement packages alread planned out, while I struggle with trying to buy a house.
posted by gwydapllew at 1:48 PM on November 15, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by gwydapllew at 1:48 PM on November 15, 2020 [4 favorites]
So this is what harvard kids who read too much hacker news write like. This manages to be both shallow and contributing to every stereotype every reader has about those kids without making me feel like the author has any insight or empathy for his peers nor any clue about the tech industry as a whole.
posted by ch1x0r at 1:54 PM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by ch1x0r at 1:54 PM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
who did go to Harvard have things like "chief of staff to an FCC Bureau" on their resume and have their retirement packages alread planned out, while I struggle with trying to buy a house
I mean, do you want to be part of the exploiting class who builds wealth on the backs of the poor? Obv many people do. But I don't envy their ill-gotten goods for a moment, perhaps due to my relatively secure not-facing-loss-of-food-or-housing-stability privilege.
posted by SaltySalticid at 3:20 PM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
I mean, do you want to be part of the exploiting class who builds wealth on the backs of the poor? Obv many people do. But I don't envy their ill-gotten goods for a moment, perhaps due to my relatively secure not-facing-loss-of-food-or-housing-stability privilege.
posted by SaltySalticid at 3:20 PM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
Students at a prestige university -- THE prestige university to most -- spent a lot of time and emotional investment getting into it and succeeding there, probably only consider prestige companies, it's pretty simple.
[I actually only had one friend that went to Harvard despite going to an intellectually rigorous private high school in Boston, and he kind of defies a lot of Harvard stereotypes. I think for him it was likely a confluence of the academic prestige attached to the name with a genuinely top program in his decided field of interest (not the business cache-- he was going into a purely academic field). ]
posted by thefool at 4:01 PM on November 15, 2020
[I actually only had one friend that went to Harvard despite going to an intellectually rigorous private high school in Boston, and he kind of defies a lot of Harvard stereotypes. I think for him it was likely a confluence of the academic prestige attached to the name with a genuinely top program in his decided field of interest (not the business cache-- he was going into a purely academic field). ]
posted by thefool at 4:01 PM on November 15, 2020
Is putting Harvard graduates at the bottom of the pile any more discriminatory than putting them at the top of the pile, which is the general practice?
I wasn't reacting to what looked like the "bottom of the pile". I was reacting to what looked like ELIMINATION from the pile altogether.
I mean, I used to run a playwriting contest and used to get a lot of submissions that I could tell at first glance weren't gonna be great. The cover letters were mis-spelled, or they printed the thing on hot-pink paper or they drew little pictures of Garfield on the cover, whatever - something that triggered my own "oh lord this is gonna suck" prejudice. But - I still read their play, because that's just what you do. 99.9% of the time my initial "oh yuck this is gonna be terrible" reaction was justified, but I could say that I had based that assessment on having actually read the thing itself instead of rejecting it solely on the fact that it came from South Dakota or something.
Hating Harvard is all well and good. Reading a resume from a Harvard grad and then saying "yup, sounds like a typical Harvard grad" before chucking it is fair enough. But not reading it at all based solely on them being a Harvard Grad seems to me like it's cut from the same cloth as not reading it because the person's name is "foreign-sounding" or something like that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:17 PM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
I wasn't reacting to what looked like the "bottom of the pile". I was reacting to what looked like ELIMINATION from the pile altogether.
I mean, I used to run a playwriting contest and used to get a lot of submissions that I could tell at first glance weren't gonna be great. The cover letters were mis-spelled, or they printed the thing on hot-pink paper or they drew little pictures of Garfield on the cover, whatever - something that triggered my own "oh lord this is gonna suck" prejudice. But - I still read their play, because that's just what you do. 99.9% of the time my initial "oh yuck this is gonna be terrible" reaction was justified, but I could say that I had based that assessment on having actually read the thing itself instead of rejecting it solely on the fact that it came from South Dakota or something.
Hating Harvard is all well and good. Reading a resume from a Harvard grad and then saying "yup, sounds like a typical Harvard grad" before chucking it is fair enough. But not reading it at all based solely on them being a Harvard Grad seems to me like it's cut from the same cloth as not reading it because the person's name is "foreign-sounding" or something like that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:17 PM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
Not wanting to hire Harvard grads is not in any way cut from the same cloth as racism, no.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:22 PM on November 15, 2020 [20 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 4:22 PM on November 15, 2020 [20 favorites]
But - I still read their play, because that's just what you do.
That's fine if you're running your own playwriting contest and can finish when you finish without spending an excessive amount of time per day doing it. It's almost certainly deeply not fine if you're initially scanning applications for an employer who needs you to move on to more important things in a day or two.
Not considering Harvard grads is fine in that context. Harvard grads are nor some oppressed or marginalized group, so using a heuristic that's punitive towards them is fine. It might be error prone, but as long as 1adam12's employer is satisfied with their intake and with how quickly hiring teams disband to get back to real work, no harm no foul.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:03 PM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
That's fine if you're running your own playwriting contest and can finish when you finish without spending an excessive amount of time per day doing it. It's almost certainly deeply not fine if you're initially scanning applications for an employer who needs you to move on to more important things in a day or two.
Not considering Harvard grads is fine in that context. Harvard grads are nor some oppressed or marginalized group, so using a heuristic that's punitive towards them is fine. It might be error prone, but as long as 1adam12's employer is satisfied with their intake and with how quickly hiring teams disband to get back to real work, no harm no foul.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:03 PM on November 15, 2020 [7 favorites]
John Legend tweeted today (yesterday?) that he used to be a consultant at Boston Consulting Group which sort of melted my mind. Prestige!
posted by GuyZero at 5:48 PM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by GuyZero at 5:48 PM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
SaltySalticid I don't consider federal service to be "part of the exploiting class."
posted by gwydapllew at 6:06 PM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by gwydapllew at 6:06 PM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]
John Legend tweeted today (yesterday?) that he used to be a consultant at Boston Consulting Group which sort of melted my mind. Prestige!
John Legend went to UPenn where his roommate was a guy who ended up doing A&R at Kanye West’s label, in case you didn’t think music was a profession the Ivy League could break you into.
posted by atoxyl at 7:39 PM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
John Legend went to UPenn where his roommate was a guy who ended up doing A&R at Kanye West’s label, in case you didn’t think music was a profession the Ivy League could break you into.
posted by atoxyl at 7:39 PM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]
Impostor Syndrome has truly reached memetic proportions at Google.Ha. For most of my time at Google, I didn't feel like an impostor, and did not experience impostor syndrome. But, at some point near the end of my time there, I found out that I was at the same level as Brian freakin' Kernighan, and, yeah, at that point, I started to feel a little bit of impostor syndrome.
posted by smcameron at 10:50 PM on November 15, 2020 [4 favorites]
A few years ago the start-up I worked for got acquired by Google. Our employees did the Google interviews in Boulder, which I didn't pass. But I still had to attend the Google orientation session in Mountain View for one day, because we would keep working in the Vancouver office for a few months and I would be a Google employee during that time.
Those couple of hours I spent with new Googlers at my table made me very self-conscious. The self-intro part alone was very hard for me, as literally everyone there had experiences and accomplishments beyond anything I had or planned to have. I was just a on-again, off-again developer who got into software for the third time thanks to a coding bootcamp.
The months I spent working as a Googler doing the same job in my old office weren't any different from before, but that title on my resume made a huge difference in my job search afterwards. I made a point to explain the context in interviews because I didn't want to give future coworkers inflated expectations of my ability, but still. People were impressed.
posted by fatehunter at 1:11 AM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]
Those couple of hours I spent with new Googlers at my table made me very self-conscious. The self-intro part alone was very hard for me, as literally everyone there had experiences and accomplishments beyond anything I had or planned to have. I was just a on-again, off-again developer who got into software for the third time thanks to a coding bootcamp.
The months I spent working as a Googler doing the same job in my old office weren't any different from before, but that title on my resume made a huge difference in my job search afterwards. I made a point to explain the context in interviews because I didn't want to give future coworkers inflated expectations of my ability, but still. People were impressed.
posted by fatehunter at 1:11 AM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]
I found out that I was at the same level as Brian freakin' Kernighan
The big lie is that Software Engineering is a career. It isn't; it's a trade.
Engineers have two levels: 'Engineer' and 'Distinguished Engineer'. The latter are engineers who (a) have been at it for years, (b) have demonstrated a particular level of expertise, and (c) work in a corporation where a title may mean they are less unlikely to receive the respect and the remuneration commensurate with their skills and experience.
'Certified Engineer' doesn't cut it, because the requirements for certification are simply inadequate compared to other trades. A 'certified gas fitter' has to have completed some seriously certifiable gas fitting; if not, he simply isn't allowed to fit any gas appliances. I don't think 'Certified Microsoft Engineers' have ever had to do anything like reimplement the entire Hotmail backend in Apache Linux, for example.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 5:36 AM on November 16, 2020 [3 favorites]
The big lie is that Software Engineering is a career. It isn't; it's a trade.
Engineers have two levels: 'Engineer' and 'Distinguished Engineer'. The latter are engineers who (a) have been at it for years, (b) have demonstrated a particular level of expertise, and (c) work in a corporation where a title may mean they are less unlikely to receive the respect and the remuneration commensurate with their skills and experience.
'Certified
posted by Cardinal Fang at 5:36 AM on November 16, 2020 [3 favorites]
I mean, I used to run a playwriting contest and used to get a lot of submissions that I could tell at first glance weren't gonna be great. The cover letters were mis-spelled, or they printed the thing on hot-pink paper or they drew little pictures of Garfield on the cover, whatever - something that triggered my own "oh lord this is gonna suck" prejudice. But - I still read their play, because that's just what you do. 99.9% of the time my initial "oh yuck this is gonna be terrible" reaction was justified, but I could say that I had based that assessment on having actually read the thing itself instead of rejecting it solely on the fact that it came from South Dakota or something.
The problem is that at a large company which has a good reputation when you interview graduates for entry level roles these days you can be looking at dozens to hundreds of resumes for each person you hire after you brutally prune the pile of applications by rejecting everyone who didn't go to a whitelisted school for a whitelisted degree and hit a certain GPA.
The only candidates who tend to dodge the automated first stage of screening are either under represented minorities recruited via diversity campaigns or know someone at the company who can get their resume directly to the HR team. If companies really wanted to be equitable and actually read anywhere close to all the resumes that come in they'd have to hire a bunch of extra HR staff.
It is difficult to justify hiring HR people who are seen as a cost center on equity and difficult to quantify improved entry level employee quality so it doesn't happen.
posted by zymil at 5:54 AM on November 16, 2020
The problem is that at a large company which has a good reputation when you interview graduates for entry level roles these days you can be looking at dozens to hundreds of resumes for each person you hire after you brutally prune the pile of applications by rejecting everyone who didn't go to a whitelisted school for a whitelisted degree and hit a certain GPA.
The only candidates who tend to dodge the automated first stage of screening are either under represented minorities recruited via diversity campaigns or know someone at the company who can get their resume directly to the HR team. If companies really wanted to be equitable and actually read anywhere close to all the resumes that come in they'd have to hire a bunch of extra HR staff.
It is difficult to justify hiring HR people who are seen as a cost center on equity and difficult to quantify improved entry level employee quality so it doesn't happen.
posted by zymil at 5:54 AM on November 16, 2020
With all due respect, the distinction between career and trade is a false dichotomy. An individual can make one’s trade their career. Perhaps you meant “profession”?
posted by Stu-Pendous at 5:59 AM on November 16, 2020
posted by Stu-Pendous at 5:59 AM on November 16, 2020
Engineers have two levels: 'Engineer' and 'Distinguished Engineer'.
There actually is such a thing as being a certified Professional Engineer. It's just for actual engineers, not computer programmers.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:28 AM on November 16, 2020 [5 favorites]
There actually is such a thing as being a certified Professional Engineer. It's just for actual engineers, not computer programmers.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:28 AM on November 16, 2020 [5 favorites]
I think the point was that new grad comp for Big Tech is still closer to $200K than $400k?
Depending on how the market is doing, it's pretty common to for a decent engineer to show more Restricted Stock Unit related income on their W2 than their salary by year 4. Coming in with a ~$100k RSU sign off bonus that vests over four years, and then receiving 3 years worth of ~$100k refreshes, means that ~$100k worth of RSUs are vesting every year. If the stock is doing well, the $100k that vests every year could be more like $200k - $250k.
I guess someone starting 4th year of their career isn't a "new grad", but that's still someone still in the 20's.
posted by sideshow at 8:44 AM on November 16, 2020
Depending on how the market is doing, it's pretty common to for a decent engineer to show more Restricted Stock Unit related income on their W2 than their salary by year 4. Coming in with a ~$100k RSU sign off bonus that vests over four years, and then receiving 3 years worth of ~$100k refreshes, means that ~$100k worth of RSUs are vesting every year. If the stock is doing well, the $100k that vests every year could be more like $200k - $250k.
I guess someone starting 4th year of their career isn't a "new grad", but that's still someone still in the 20's.
posted by sideshow at 8:44 AM on November 16, 2020
John Legend went to UPenn where his roommate was a guy who ended up doing A&R at Kanye West’s label, in case you didn’t think music was a profession the Ivy League could break you into.
Work it, make it, do it
Makes us harder, better, faster, stronger
N-now th-that legacy admissions don't kill me
Squash varsity team can make me stronger
I need you to hurry up now
'Cause the RFP won't wait much longer
posted by geoff. at 9:29 AM on November 16, 2020
Work it, make it, do it
Makes us harder, better, faster, stronger
N-now th-that legacy admissions don't kill me
Squash varsity team can make me stronger
I need you to hurry up now
'Cause the RFP won't wait much longer
posted by geoff. at 9:29 AM on November 16, 2020
I guess someone starting 4th year of their career isn't a "new grad", but that's still someone still in the 20's.
I'm not super on top of this in any sense - I'm a ways from being a new grad, and I don't work for one of the big big companies - but I was basically going on the numbers I've seen reported for cash plus cash value of stock vested annually, within the first few years at entry level, and not getting into the long-term value of that stock because then you also have to compare to scenarios like - what if you get more cash than stock but buy stock?
posted by atoxyl at 10:56 AM on November 16, 2020
I'm not super on top of this in any sense - I'm a ways from being a new grad, and I don't work for one of the big big companies - but I was basically going on the numbers I've seen reported for cash plus cash value of stock vested annually, within the first few years at entry level, and not getting into the long-term value of that stock because then you also have to compare to scenarios like - what if you get more cash than stock but buy stock?
posted by atoxyl at 10:56 AM on November 16, 2020
I'm quite surprised to read of a lawyer not just willingly committing an act of discrimination, but cheerfully admitting it.
Really? Perhaps you're unaware of the many, many, many firms that won't even consider your application unless you went to Harvard or Yale, and are quite open and public about this in their hiring practices. Is that also an illegal act of discrimination? I suspect we can agree that it isn't.
So is it discrimination if I laugh and delete such applications? Legally, no, it isn't, because "where you went to school" is not a protected class either under federal or state law. Would I like to live in a world where that was considered an illegal act of discrimination? Maybe. But when it comes to applications for public employment, ANY public employment, I'd say that prioritizing applicants from certain schools is a form of public corruption. But hey, that's just me.
And anyway, I was kidding. I have to read the applications, or how else would I know where they went to school? I print them out and shoot arrows at them.
No, I don't do that either.
posted by 1adam12 at 11:48 AM on November 16, 2020 [7 favorites]
Really? Perhaps you're unaware of the many, many, many firms that won't even consider your application unless you went to Harvard or Yale, and are quite open and public about this in their hiring practices. Is that also an illegal act of discrimination? I suspect we can agree that it isn't.
So is it discrimination if I laugh and delete such applications? Legally, no, it isn't, because "where you went to school" is not a protected class either under federal or state law. Would I like to live in a world where that was considered an illegal act of discrimination? Maybe. But when it comes to applications for public employment, ANY public employment, I'd say that prioritizing applicants from certain schools is a form of public corruption. But hey, that's just me.
And anyway, I was kidding. I have to read the applications, or how else would I know where they went to school? I print them out and shoot arrows at them.
No, I don't do that either.
posted by 1adam12 at 11:48 AM on November 16, 2020 [7 favorites]
I think this article conflates too many different things - first, prestige (self actualization, whatever) is the next step up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, so it makes sense that people rate 'prestige' higher than minor differences in salary when the salary is high enough to where self-actualization becomes an option. This is to be expected - otherwise, everyone interested in compensation alone would be endlessly job hopping since that brings the biggest salary jumps. You've met people like this right? They are T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E merenaries.
Also this is a chicken/egg thing, but the author suggests that 'excellence follows prestige', and it does, but only at an aggregate level, not at the level of Goldman Sachs (38,000 employees) or Google (98,000 employees). It doesn't really matter if you are individually more excellent at Goldman Sachs at investing or at coding than any particular Google employee - the scale matters.
Also if you don't join a prestigious firm, how do you recognize 'excellence' at your work when you are just out of college? Terribleness is barely even recognizable. "This explains why many of my peers returned..feeling more dissatisfied'. No it doesn't. Again, 98,000 employees. Odds are some think working at Google sucks, whether through the fault of Google's actual practices or personal delusions of grandeur. If it really was as bad as your dis-satisfied peers suggest, then it would be losing prestige.
"Getting a job...vs being an excellent software engineer" Oh my god, this kind of person. What does this Bill & Tedism even mean? Does your software go out the door on time and do what its users want? Do you have to work few weekends of fixing stuff you messed up? Then you are an 'excellent software engineer'. People, even those who develop software, sometimes have other life priorities and there is no Olympics of software to even rank such things. The entire concept is silly!
He makes the same conflation about the grades. People can't learn everything -people don't and can't care about everything. Sometimes a grade is just a grade.
".. the hardest thing about constructing a career...is finding interesting problems to work on".
No it is not. How can you dick around about 'excellence' and then write that? If your work is boring and it's problems uninteresting, then the problem is YOU.(Also in the context of university-educated highly compensated employees who have choices) (which is completely fine, again, some people have more important stuff to care about than work nonsense. Think that Devil Wears Prada speech - some people just buy the sweater and move on).
Also to his final point (reducing collective excellence)- the prestigious firms change, so I don't really see an issue there either (even if I agree there is such a thing as 'collective excellence' that was higher at some point in the past, and might be lower in the future. Most of the FAANG firms haven't been around that long, and prestige is ever mutating.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:37 AM on November 17, 2020
Also this is a chicken/egg thing, but the author suggests that 'excellence follows prestige', and it does, but only at an aggregate level, not at the level of Goldman Sachs (38,000 employees) or Google (98,000 employees). It doesn't really matter if you are individually more excellent at Goldman Sachs at investing or at coding than any particular Google employee - the scale matters.
Also if you don't join a prestigious firm, how do you recognize 'excellence' at your work when you are just out of college? Terribleness is barely even recognizable. "This explains why many of my peers returned..feeling more dissatisfied'. No it doesn't. Again, 98,000 employees. Odds are some think working at Google sucks, whether through the fault of Google's actual practices or personal delusions of grandeur. If it really was as bad as your dis-satisfied peers suggest, then it would be losing prestige.
"Getting a job...vs being an excellent software engineer" Oh my god, this kind of person. What does this Bill & Tedism even mean? Does your software go out the door on time and do what its users want? Do you have to work few weekends of fixing stuff you messed up? Then you are an 'excellent software engineer'. People, even those who develop software, sometimes have other life priorities and there is no Olympics of software to even rank such things. The entire concept is silly!
He makes the same conflation about the grades. People can't learn everything -people don't and can't care about everything. Sometimes a grade is just a grade.
".. the hardest thing about constructing a career...is finding interesting problems to work on".
No it is not. How can you dick around about 'excellence' and then write that? If your work is boring and it's problems uninteresting, then the problem is YOU.(Also in the context of university-educated highly compensated employees who have choices) (which is completely fine, again, some people have more important stuff to care about than work nonsense. Think that Devil Wears Prada speech - some people just buy the sweater and move on).
Also to his final point (reducing collective excellence)- the prestigious firms change, so I don't really see an issue there either (even if I agree there is such a thing as 'collective excellence' that was higher at some point in the past, and might be lower in the future. Most of the FAANG firms haven't been around that long, and prestige is ever mutating.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:37 AM on November 17, 2020
« Older Robert S. is dying today. He wants to share his... | Meeting Mr. Kid Pix Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
At a guess.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:58 PM on November 14, 2020 [23 favorites]