[HN Gopher] The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting
___________________________________________________________________
The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting
Author : wdesilvestro
Score : 109 points
Date : 2020-11-14 16:36 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wesdesilvestro.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wesdesilvestro.com)
| Gunax wrote:
| I don't think a lot of people know what they want. There is just
| as much guessing as to which job to take as employers have
| choosing who to hire.
|
| Taking the most prestigious or most compensation is the safest
| bet, given that you don't really know what you want to do other
| than 'I like coding and interesting problems'.
|
| Partly I think that Harvard students have been adapted to seek
| prestige (else they probably wouldn't be there), but I also think
| the author is missing that it isn't so much a drive for prestige,
| but just a lack of other goals for which to substitute.
| seppin wrote:
| Exactly, everyone acts like there is some grand plan/design to
| all decision making. Everyone is just winging it.
| sna1l wrote:
| I would say just because you work at a FAANG company doesn't
| necessarily imply all you care about is prestige. Most of the
| people that I worked with at those companies didn't seem
| interested in the prestige of the role at all. They were
| passionate about growing as engineers and continuing to master
| their craft. When they left they often left to take on larger
| roles at much smaller companies. You could argue that they worked
| at X company to get it on their resume, but working with these
| people, it really didn't feel that way. It seemed more like they
| were learning how things were done at established "premium"
| companies, to then go take on similar work at a foundational
| level at a smaller company.
|
| You could argue that by valuing prestige, you end up devaluing
| perfectly good candidates, but at the end of the day you need to
| have _some_ heuristic to help filter the amount of
| resumes/candidates you consider. Companies like triplebyte,
| interviewing.io, etc are trying to change this by trying to
| determine your actual skills vs your resume, but currently I
| haven't heard of many better alternatives.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Much of this blog post speaks to my experience (probably because
| we went to the same school at pretty much the same time).
|
| That said, I think the thesis is a bit overstated. The reason
| many more Harvard CS students talk about Google > Stripe is not
| because Stripe is not prestigious (it obviously is, and plenty of
| super talented students go there). It's because Google hires a
| ton of Harvard CS grads, whereas many late-stage startups do not
| hire as many new grads, nor do they have as large of hiring
| pools. They're going to have an obviously larger impact on the
| sorts of jobs people discuss.
|
| The same thing with GS, Jane Street, or Citadel, because they
| actively recruit at Harvard through on-campus recruiting and hire
| a comparatively large portion of Harvard graduates.
|
| This is related to the other reason that companies like Google
| are talked about much more than mid-stage startups: the school on
| your diploma has much larger impact at these big, more calcified
| companies than it does on startups where individual hires could
| help make-or-break the company. And places like McKinsey or Bain
| basically hire many students so they can tell clients they have a
| team of Harvard grads working on the problem.
|
| > they assume their intelligence insulates them from peer
| pressure.
|
| If you come into Harvard with this notion, I can't really see how
| you stay with it after your first recruiting/punch season. And,
| honestly, Harvard undergrads aren't _that_ smart.
| dehrmann wrote:
| It's definitely easier for large, profitable companies to take
| on the risk and training cost of interns and new grads.
| treis wrote:
| >Google > Stripe is not because Stripe is not prestigious (it
| obviously is, and plenty of super talented students go there).
|
| I think Google is a pretty clear step above Stripe. They have
| legitimately changed the world and billions of people use their
| products. Stripe is a payment processing firm. A very
| successful one, but ultimately a pretty boring b2b business. Im
| not sure anyone would really miss it if it were gone.
| chrisgd wrote:
| Stock options in an already public company carries a lot of
| weight relative to a company that it doesn't seem they are in a
| hurry to go public.
| fullshark wrote:
| Try getting a new job without a prestigious job on your resume
| and then learn what the real trap is.
| thebradbain wrote:
| I have had absolutely no issue with this, personally. I have
| gotten multiple FAANG offers and have turned them down every
| time, and I still don't have any on my resume. What's the rush?
| They're always hiring -- niche, smaller, lesser-known, earlier-
| stage companies are not.
| tmsh wrote:
| The reason people who drop out of prestigious schools to pursue
| projects become the most successful is because they are 0%
| concerned about credentialism for themselves.
|
| The minute you start hiding behind / pursuing opportunities
| because of social status is the minute you start your descent
| into laziness and lack of useful impact.
|
| Everything is a balance. I relate to how pursuing prestige in
| schools can lead to pursuing promos. But in general use Harvard
| or wherever for great learning, and with promo projects pursue
| actual meaningful work. It's really the most sustainable way.
|
| Source: it's a lot more satisfying to pursue a promo project that
| helps everyone on your team (e.g., engineering excellence etc).
|
| And yeah obviously students rarely have a correct idea about the
| real world (just haven't seen enough of it yet). Interesting
| hypotheses though.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > use Harvard or wherever for great learning,
|
| There is literally 0 need for this. Use Harvard for:
|
| a. the name on your resume
|
| b. access to smart peers (even at Harvard, this takes
| searching, but if you're in the right classes is easy)
|
| c. access to professors
|
| That's pretty much it. You can learn the content just as well
| online.
| thr0waway2 wrote:
| >Ambitious students seek out prestige thinking it is the missing
| ingredient to achieving their own excellence. In reality, they
| have it backward--prestige follows excellence.
|
| I'm not sure I agree. I've been seeking out jobs at less
| prestigious firms for ages but I started getting interviews only
| once I had Goldman on my resume. I've never would've had a seat
| at the table where I can try to achieve excellence if it wasn't
| for Goldman. I guess the author's argument makes sense for IT
| where barriers for entry are low, but almost every other industry
| worth getting into has high barriers for entry.
| thr0waway2 wrote:
| To elaborate a bit more: vast majority of jobs where you can
| seek such excellence that you're able to say at some point "I
| am top 100 in my field, I enjoy it and am getting paid for it"
| are taught in an apprenticeship manner. Where you have to make
| the life of a bigger expert easier while stealing as much
| knowledge as possible from them. The knowledge that's worth
| learning is not publicised as if it was publicly accessible it
| would lose its value. It would become industry standard or
| competitors would learn how to counteract it or whatever. And
| if a top expert has hundreds of CVs to chose from for their
| apprentice, having "Harvard" and "Goldman Sachs" mentioned
| there is a good way of skewing odds in your favour to even get
| an interview.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Harvard students are primarily interested in companies with
| reputable names? What a shocker.
|
| Students who go to a selective school, often want to go to
| selective companies and continue to build their "brand" to
| maximize their success (or at least optionality).
|
| It's usually later on when people figure out what's important to
| them and are confident enough to stray for the default path. For
| example, my current company is a well known one, but isn't FANG.
| I chose there because I use / care about the product, and the
| culture is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. It's
| growing, I'm paid well, and I'm relatively happy. I don't feel
| the urge anymore to work for the hottest companies or what not.
| notacoward wrote:
| I find two things to disagree with in this article. First is the
| premise that equally high compensation is offered elsewhere in
| each industry. I don't know about finance or consulting, but at
| least for FAANG it doesn't seem to be true. Second is the
| overlooked explanation that it's _headroom_ - not prestige - that
| accounts for the difference.
|
| I'll provide an example that illustrates both points: me. When I
| went from Red Hat to Facebook, my already-pretty-good total
| compensation jumped by almost 50% - more considering how each
| company's stock performed during the relevant vesting periods.
| I'm pretty sure there were others around me who had been promoted
| from fresh-out to my nominal level in a quarter to a half the
| time it had taken me to build my career. Some of them were quite
| likely making even more than me despite their narrow experience
| and resulting unsuitability for the same role anywhere else (a
| topic for another time).
|
| If my salary curve was a race car, theirs was a rocket ship. The
| FAANG compensation premium to _start_ fresh out of college might
| be smaller, but the potential growth over the next several years
| is much greater than elsewhere in tech ... and yes, recruiters do
| use that as a lure. Given the uncertainty (and compensation
| inequity) at startups, working at a FAANG is the most likely
| route to early wealth for most techies.
|
| Of course, you can also get rich early if you get to put FAANG on
| your resume and parlay that into an early-employee job at a
| startup that later hits it big. That's prestige at work but,
| looking at the attrition/retention rates at FAANG, it seems to be
| the less common route and therefore I'd guess it's the less
| common motive.
| formercoder wrote:
| I work in finance. The "Goldman discount" is well known. People
| will accept lower comp for that brand on their resume.
| Otherwise, the places you can really make the most money are at
| small private firms without public shareholders. There are so
| many cash machines out there with very little public scrutiny.
| smabie wrote:
| I work in HFT and my experience is like yours: the most well
| known firms pay the least. Right now I'm at a very small prop
| firm as a partner and compensation is much greater than I
| would have gotten at Jane St, Citadel, etc.
|
| Generally people only seek at prestigious firms like Goldman
| early in their career and switch over to more obscure but
| lucrative opportunities: prop firms, pe, hf, etc.
| npip99 wrote:
| Wait a second, am I missing out right now? I have an
| opportunity at Jane Street, but I haven't been exposed to
| any of the other small name firms. Where do I look to find
| the higher paying jobs?
| smabie wrote:
| If you're early in your career, then you should probably
| just take the Jane St opportunity. They are very well
| respected and it looks very good on your resume.
|
| If you're later in your career, you should have enough
| contacts and know enough people to get in the door at a
| small firm. If you don't know their name, you'll have a
| hard time getting in. These kinds of places don't post
| job openings on indeed. You kind of have to know someone.
| rhizome wrote:
| One of the first things you might notice in some of the
| job ads for those firms: instead of "Compensation:
| competitive salary, 0.0x% equity," you'll start seeing
| phrases like "extremely high compensation." Then you'll
| start _really_ feeling like you 're not in Kansas.
|
| In this vein, the tech industry screws its employees as
| far as their share of revenue-per-employee goes. Apple
| makes 10x per employee what Jane St. does, and I doubt
| the small firms achieve the difference.
| smabie wrote:
| the joke goes that finance firms are employee run co-ops.
| And for the most part it's true: you end up keeping quite
| a high percentage of the money you earn for the firm.
| Profits are paid out to everyone, not just a few at the
| top.
| centimeter wrote:
| I find it surprising that people still consider FAANG
| prestigious, given that these companies collectively have
| probably 1-200,000 engineers in their employ. Even if they
| managed to perfectly select for the cream of the crop (they
| don't), that still has to be like 10-20% of all
| programmers/engineers in the US. Being top 20% isn't that
| impressive, and in reality they're probably mostly hiring from
| the top 30-40%.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Top 20% of one of the most intellectually challenging jobs in
| America, also if you exclude Amazon it is not 20%.
| smabie wrote:
| I really wouldn't consider most programming to be
| intellectually challenging. Certainly, most FAANG devs
| don't feel challenged in the least bit.
| tudelo wrote:
| Yeah, that's something that I have been a bit confused on
| too. People talk about how hard it is and the "prestige", but
| there are 20k+ other engineers who did the same thing (at
| your company alone!). It's really not all that impressive.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The relevant metric would be the ratio of how many got the
| position to how many wanted it.
| scarmig wrote:
| There are amorphous borders between programmer, developer,
| and software engineer, but there are roughly ~4 million
| "programmers/engineers" in the USA. So call it ~5%?
| tudelo wrote:
| I personally would consider top 5 percent of any task to be
| the low bar of proficiency, so even that doesn't seem super
| impressive to me. But damn, the jobs pay well and wlb can
| be great (or terrible). I guess the weird part is that the
| process of getting hired is so different than the day to
| day work.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| > I personally would consider top 5 percent of any task
| to be the low bar of proficiency, so even that doesn't
| seem super impressive to me.
|
| Top 5% _among paid professionals_ is your low bar of
| _proficiency_?
| dustingetz wrote:
| they're hiring the 40%-15% band. Top top band does not sling
| java for a living. Maybe there are some top programmers in
| the R&D orgs in areas like ML where the startup/resource
| costs are out of reach of an indie
| ackbar03 wrote:
| In general though from what I read on hn I get the impression
| that it sucks to be an early employee at most startups,
| especially early stage. From what I've read a lot of
| compensation seems to be in equity and not cash, and unless it
| takes off like faang, you end up severely ubderpaid relative to
| what you could be making
| notacoward wrote:
| > it sucks to be an early employee at most startups
|
| Absolutely. I worked at ten, with employee numbers from
| single digits up to about fifty. As we all know, most
| startups fail. Even among those that succeed, few employees
| avoid all of the traps that founders and VCs create for them
| (e.g. dilution and special share classes) to get more than a
| modest payout at the exit. For most, even that "big payout"
| might not match the year-after-year premium they could have
| gotten by working and climbing the ladder at one of the
| already-big tech companies.
|
| As one point of evidence, my two semi-successful exits _did_
| help me retire earlier and in more comfort than I otherwise
| might have. I 'm grateful for that. OTOH, my three and a half
| undistinguished years at Facebook helped _more_.
| gumby wrote:
| > I get the impression that it sucks to be an early employee
| at most startups,
|
| Depends what you want. I had a guy work for us at my first
| startup: he was employee #6 and once we got to about 13 or 15
| he decided it was time to move on. I was surprised, but he
| felt the business was just too big for him. And indeed I've
| looked at his career over the ensuing years and he's worked
| for some amazing companies...always just for a year or so and
| always when they were very tiny. Sometimes I noticed he'd
| worked with the same people, so he wasn't leaving because he
| was a poor performer (we missed him) but simply because
| that's what he liked.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I work in consulting, and I'd say the top-end in consulting is
| still higher and much more of a safe bet. It's not uncommon for
| people in consulting to be making $500k-$1m annually by the age
| of 40. If you're a partner, compensation can be significantly
| higher than that; in the $2M-20M range.
|
| I think there was a golden era of startups capturing value from
| the old guard, but that era is largely over IMO. All of those
| tech darlings are hiring consultants to help build corporate
| functions and product strategy -- turns out there is
| significant value in knowing how to manage a company of 30,000+
| employees and revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
| Even a fraction of a percent gain in efficiency translates to
| enormous sums, which the consultants capture some percentage of
| in fees. As the unicorns continue to evolve into mature
| enterprises, more of that value will shift into the consulting
| / finance realm.
|
| If I were graduating in 2020, I would not go into tech as an
| engineer if my goal was to get wealthy. It's still a great
| career and you'll be able to live a very comfortable life
| regardless, but if building wealth is your goal you need to
| follow the prestige (aka political power).
| shostack wrote:
| What's the stress level like to get there? WLB?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| For the typical Harvard student, tech is better paying than
| consulting unless you are an extraordinarily successful
| consultant.
|
| > It's not uncommon for people in consulting to be making
| $500k-$1m annually by the age of 40
|
| This is not "uncommon" in FANG either (just take a look at
| the salary charts), and if anything can be reached earlier.
|
| > there was a golden era of startups capturing value from the
| old guard, but that era is largely over IMO
|
| If I could take a bet against this, I would. That value
| capture is only going to increase.
| hailwren wrote:
| 5 year EV is much lower in tech than finance for Harvard
| grads. I'm not sure ab consulting.
|
| Consulting and tech have similar starting salaries, but
| consider finance/hedge fund engineer starting tc is about
| 3-4x tech for top 3 grads rn.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > 5 year EV is much lower in tech than finance for
| Harvard grads. I'm not sure ab consulting.
|
| Based on what? This is not true in my experience, unless
| you're comparing finance tech to FANG tech, in which case
| it is true. Moreover, at Harvard, some segment of those
| who go into finance are "connected" with higher paying
| finance jobs due to their parents/etc.
|
| Consulting salaries are lower (sometimes substantially)
| than tech starting salaries.
| hailwren wrote:
| Yeah, tech has a starting salary advantage but FAANG just
| doesn't compare on the upside. What's the top 10% of
| FAANG outcomes (for Harvard grads) after 5 years? 500k,
| maybe? The jump to MD in finance makes 1M+ something like
| 10-20% of outcomes (for Harvard grads) after 10 years.
| I'd be very surprised if it were that common in tech
| (over the next 10 years, I know that it was better in the
| 2000s). I think quickest to MD at Goldman was 4 years.
| vikinghckr wrote:
| Top 10% of FAANG is, what, around 30K-40K in raw numbers?
| What's the top 10% in Big Finance? I'd bet it's far lower
| number compared to that. So it's not apples to apples
| comparison. If you compare what top 10,000 FAANG
| engineers make 10 years into their careers vs what top
| 10,000 finance folks make 10 years into theirs, I'm
| pretty sure FAANG will come out ahead.
| hailwren wrote:
| (for Harvard grads) is the important part there.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| But finance is up and out. The typical Harvard student in
| finance is not making that much, even 5 years out. I know
| plenty of them.
| hailwren wrote:
| I needed to rewrite this. I mean something like if I
| select an individual, uniformly at random, after
| conditioning on industry and Harvard degree I would
| expect the salaries of most of the individuals in both
| industries to be about the same. However, I think tech is
| closer to a normal distribution and finance is heavy-
| tailed around tech's mean.
|
| If you do something like conditioning on a CS degree,
| finance probably mops the floor w/ tech.
| scarmig wrote:
| > If I could take a bet against this, I would
|
| Can't you, by starting or (much less favorably) joining a
| startup?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Betting on technology capturing value in general over
| "jack-of-all-trades" consultancy vs. betting on one
| particular startup capturing value.
| shuckles wrote:
| It is not uncommon for people in technology to be making
| $500k-$1m annually by 30, and the lifestyle is much better if
| you have outside commitments.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Consulting in particular really depends on the company. The
| big 4 will grind you to the bone, but boutiques often pay
| better and have much more reasonable expectations of time
| commitment. I don't see consulting ever going back to the
| weekly travel model, and during the pandemic I work maybe
| 30 hours a week while pulling in the salary I do. Most of
| my work involves going to meetings, understanding complex
| business architecture and providing advice around niche
| topics while working within the politics of a various org.
| Pulling in a salary+bonus in this range with very little
| risk on my part.
| emteycz wrote:
| How would a software engineer/previously small startup
| 'CTO' get into consulting like this?
| formercoder wrote:
| You're making a big bet on equity appreciation though.
| That's how the vast majority of very highly paid folks in
| tech make their money. The consulting jobs pay it in cash.
| vikinghckr wrote:
| FANG equities don't require making any "bets". They're as
| good as cash.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's not worth the hit to quality of life, in my opinion.
| It's much easier to plan trips or visit with my friends
| in tech than the ones in finance. Live to work vs work to
| live scenario.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't know why the article's author thinks prestige is about
| anything other than money/power (for the population as a
| whole).
|
| People would rather work at FAANG than Stripe because FAANG
| will get you a lot more pay and connections. And people know
| that, so they will value people from FAANG for it. But it comes
| from the root fact that FAANG makes a ton of net income per
| employee, same as some finance/consulting firms, and that net
| income is more attributable to you specifically, rather than
| say someone at General Mills.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > People would rather work at FAANG than Stripe because FAANG
| will get you a lot more pay and connections
|
| Pshh what? You work at FANG and think this?
| ditonal wrote:
| I have no idea how Stripe became the low paying non
| prestigious startup job in this conversation. They are a big
| prestigious company that pays a ton and is soon to IPO. I
| actually consider Stripe to be FAANG as far as the original
| acronym was for stocks but in practice is for "high paying
| prestigious tech companies."
|
| A better pick for "non prestigious but good company " might
| be Khan Academy, which has an amazing service with great
| engineers but as far as I know doesn't make or pay a ton.
| [deleted]
| rconti wrote:
| I've always found prestige to be so strange. I suppose it helps
| that I went to smaller Jesuit school rather than some big top-
| tier Ivy or similar.
|
| That said, I've kind of gone the opposite direction. I've always
| worked in tech companies, in production environments, for
| companies you may-or-may-not have heard of. I never understood
| why engineers from Big Name companies were considered so much
| 'better'.
|
| Now I work at a big tech company you've heard of (but definitely
| not a FAANG), and I understand now. The professionalism, the
| thoughtfulness, ownership, and output they expect.. it really is
| another level from just showing up at work every day. I'm not
| saying 60 hour weeks, I'm just saying the caliber of work and
| collaboration. The job titles really are "worth" more than at the
| average company.
| [deleted]
| karmakaze wrote:
| There is some truth to what's being said, though leaves out
| several other factors mentioned in these comments.
|
| > Prestige, like the social status it serves as a proxy for
|
| This illustrates to me that it's not really about prestige--
| merely a correlation. Having a FAANG on your resume is not a
| proxy for social status. It clearly indicates that you got into a
| competitive technical position. It's like getting an otherwise
| useless degree that indicates that you can stick with something
| and come out on top.
| abcxyz02 wrote:
| My life is the living playbook of pursuing prestige. Went to
| Harvard, then consulting, then big tech. Initial pride quickly
| gave way to disillusionment at every step of the way.
|
| Yes, there are people who genuinely enjoy these positions. But
| they are truly few and far between. The more in demand a position
| is, the less pressure the employer has to actually make it a
| fulfilling experience.
|
| To be fulfilled, we often have to unlearn conventional lessons:
| https://productlessons.substack.com/p/unlearning-the-first-2...
| amb23 wrote:
| The problem with prestige is that you, yourself, may not care
| about it, but those around it still do and still use it for
| social signaling. That affects the rationality of the decisions
| you make around your career in serious ways.
|
| I think one of the problems around targeting prestige vs.
| targeting excellence is that we know what it takes to do
| something prestigious, but excellence is hard to define, and
| generally comes with much higher risk. Landing a fancy job at
| Facebook or Google means you tick the box on success without much
| risk. The criteria that defines success when you start a company,
| for instance, or work at a non-profit, is much less clear. That
| compounds the material risk of doing these ventures with a social
| risk of taking these jobs in the first place. So then what would
| would it take, in American society, to replace the prestige
| baiting with an emphasis on achieving actual excellence instead?
| [deleted]
| n0nc3 wrote:
| Humans have always and will always seek standing in their
| community.
|
| At the moment, that standing is achieved by participating in
| institutions that serve the oligarchy (BigLaw, BigTech, etc.)
|
| This is a trivial problem to solve. Just create excellence-
| based communities, like the Linux kernel development community.
|
| The principal obstacle is that working folks don't have the
| spare resources to create financial stability for high
| achievers in these communities. We need the approval from the
| oligarchy, manifested through corporate sponsorship.
|
| It would be nice if Satoshi would come out of the woodwork and
| bankroll alternatives, the way Signal has been bankrolled.
| lumost wrote:
| Monetary success historically flowed to founders, and those off
| the beaten path. 20 years ago startups provided a strong path
| to success with friends and family often getting excited when
| the next hot app/website was something you worked on.
|
| It's difficult to replicate either the social or monetary
| prestige these days, as monetary rewards flow to VC and known
| consumer experiences are crowded.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| This isn't a problem we as Americans need to fix. It fixes
| itself. For instance, the average Ivy League graduate only
| makes marginally more money than your public school graduate.
|
| By the time you're making even low 6 figures, the idea of
| interacting with an Stanford grad who has done nothing of note
| with their education and makes something comparable to you is
| quaint.
|
| Generally speaking, distribution of US income as a proxy for
| social standing gets you pretty far.
|
| At the end of the day, being associated with prestige is cute
| (working for a big name) and perhaps what many people desire,
| but holding it yourself manifests itself in different ways at
| the individual level. Those who really have any modicum of
| power don't care about baseless associations.
|
| "Yeah you worked for a FAANG, great, but what have _you_
| accomplished?"
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > the average Ivy League graduate only makes marginally more
| money than your public school graduate.
|
| Sorry, what? The average Ivy League graduate makes
| substantially more than your average non-Ivy graduate.
|
| I don't even understand what your second sentence is trying
| to say.
| sgerenser wrote:
| I believe he probably got the statistic mixed up. The
| average Ivy League graduate does indeed make more than the
| average non-ivy college graduate. But they make about the
| same (or are about as successful, can't remember the exact
| statistic) as someone who _got accepted_ to an Ivy but went
| elsewhere.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| No, I mean the actual starting salaries based on
| employment data from universities themselves tell us
| there's only a marginal difference in those who graduate
| between the institutions.
|
| If you look at the degrees themselves as a form of
| capital investment, Ivy League schools don't translate
| into "paying off," as it were.
| jcheng wrote:
| Here's one source that says the difference is
| significant, to put it mildly. Do you have a better
| source you can cite?
|
| https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?166027-Harvard-
| Unive...
|
| https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?240444-University
| -of...
|
| Edit: Actually the third state school I looked up is not
| far off! https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?236948-U
| niversity-of...
| desert_boi wrote:
| Picking "Public Ivyies" is stacking the deck a bit, no?
| My "third tier" school has a median of about half of what
| Harvard does.
|
| https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?142115-Boise-
| State-U...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > No, I mean the actual starting salaries based on
| employment data from universities themselves tell us
| there's only a marginal difference in those who graduate
| between the institutions.
|
| Not only is that not true, but Harvard new grads make
| substantially more than the average BA holder, including
| people who are 2 decades into their career.
| hailwren wrote:
| Yes, and pairwise multivariate comparisons make the gap
| even larger. (i.e. considering two engineering students
| or two visual arts students etc)
| scarmig wrote:
| > the average Ivy League graduate only makes marginally more
| money than your public school graduate
|
| I'm pretty sure that's not true. I doubt there's much of an
| actual value-add in going to an elite school, but the average
| incomes of graduates of them are substantially higher than
| that of random public school graduates.
|
| https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors
| hailwren wrote:
| Yes, and the gap grows even wider when you normalize for
| per-professional degree percentages (i.e.
| STEM/pharm/premed/prelaw/military inflating the bottom half
| of the curve)
| rhizome wrote:
| I'd also be interested to see the rates of claiming
| unemployment benefits across that spectrum.
| alexashka wrote:
| > Prestige can take the ambitious far, but it can't bring them
| excellence.
|
| Some people just want high social status, they really don't give
| a shit about 'excellence', unless excellence is absolutely
| necessary to achieve high social status and it isn't - going to
| the right school and working at the right job at the right
| company is enough.
|
| If you know anyone with immigrant parents who value 'education',
| you already know what they actually value is high social status
| regardless of everything else, including the child's happiness.
|
| What you spent a whole lot of words describing is a narrow case
| of a more general human phenomena that has a name - tragedy of
| the commons.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
|
| There isn't a cure, because most people don't want a cure -
| that's why it's a tragedy :)
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I find many of these companies the opposite of prestigious.
|
| They are shameful.
|
| It's a symptom of how screwed up this world is that people would
| actually want to work for them and consider it an honor to do so.
| config_yml wrote:
| As Steve Blank said, in 5 years, having FB on your resume will
| be like Enron. I hope he's right.
| samfisher83 wrote:
| I think most people did ok. Enron had a lot of really smart
| people. Morally bankrupt, but very smart. No different than
| any of these big tech companies. People like money, smart
| people will be attracted to it. Companies like smart people
| so I don't think they will have a hard time getting another
| job.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I've interviewed several smart people from Palantir and
| naturally I did not hire them. They might as well wear a
| scarlet letter.
| shostack wrote:
| So you made a biased decision about a candidate based on
| where they worked rather than evaluate them on their
| ability to perform in the role relative to other
| candidates?
| jeffbee wrote:
| No, I evaluated their lack of a functioning moral
| framework to conclude they couldn't possibly perform a
| function in my organization because ethics are much more
| important than the ability to traverse directed graphs in
| pseudo-code on whiteboards.
|
| If a candidate told me they got fired for intentionally
| sabotaging Palantir's production operations, that would
| neutralize the issue. So far haven't met that person.
| hhmc wrote:
| Why bother interviewing them at all?
| esoterica wrote:
| You seem very confident they won't find anything morally
| objectionable with your company and decide to sabotage
| your operations.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| If it's so difficult to discern a difference between your
| company and Palantir, you've got a problem.
| esoterica wrote:
| You seem very convinced that everyone shares the same
| moral framework you do. Just because you find your
| company's work unobjectionable doesn't mean everyone else
| does. I mean, there are Unabomber types out there who
| think all tech is inherently bad, how do you know the
| person you are hiring isn't or won't turn into one of
| those people?
| jeffbee wrote:
| You're not wrong, I also think carefully about whether
| candidates show signs of being acutely deranged privacy
| freaks, sovereign citizens, gold bugs, and a bunch of
| other modern-day mental illnesses. Sad but that's how it
| goes these days. Maybe I should just ask for their HN
| handles?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Clearly not everyone in tech shares my moral framework,
| or the internet wouldn't be infested with ads, spyware,
| and malware, thanks to these "prestigious" companies.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Anyone that worked at Palantir is potentially a mole.
| friendlybus wrote:
| How is that different to microsoft logging your
| keystrokes or google reading your email? Having to deal
| with old fashioned employee espionage seems quaint.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| As with many corrupt organizations Enron was full of good
| people who had no power and never did anything morally
| wrong.
|
| A select few held the power or agency to act selfishly and
| did so.
|
| It didn't become apparent to many employees that something
| was amiss until shortly before the FBI raided them.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Of course we can't paint all employees of any company
| with one brush, but I don't think we should let the
| majority of Enron employees off the hook so easily. That
| kind of systemic fraud requires cooperation or at least a
| large number of individuals to look the other way. I
| realize some innocent people's reputation will be hurt,
| but there needs to be some social pressure for whistle
| blowers otherwise the risk reward is always such that "a
| few bad apples" will take the risk enabled by the silent
| majority "just doing their jobs".
| esoterica wrote:
| Unless you were part of the small group of people committing
| accounting fraud, I don't think the rest of Enron had serious
| trouble finding new jobs elsewhere because of the name on
| their resume.
| tudelo wrote:
| For the qualities that you consider a negative, some may
| consider it a positive.
| jnwatson wrote:
| In my social group, working for Facebook in particular is
| definitely shunned.
| notacoward wrote:
| > I find many of these companies the opposite of prestigious.
|
| I agree, but perhaps not for the reasons you'd think. The
| "moral stain" of having worked for these companies only matters
| if hiring managers elsewhere make it matter. They don't.
| Throughout the industry, they're looking at potential return on
| investment and little else. Having worked at Facebook might
| matter if you want to go work for the White House or New York
| Times, but not for another tech company.
|
| The reason I think working at those companies is anti-
| prestigious is that they're such unique self-contained worlds.
| If I see that somebody _only_ has experience at FAANG since
| college, I know that they 've become accustomed to having a
| vast array of systems and libraries and experts and other kinds
| of support available to them that aren't so available anywhere
| else. Maybe they'll learn to adjust to how computing is in the
| rest of the world. Maybe they'll be absolutely helpless,
| functioning at a one- or two-year level despite five or seven
| years among "the best engineers in the world" or whatever
| they're saying nowadays. I don't attach a premium to that
| experience. I attach a discount.
| emteycz wrote:
| Because they have control of the money. How do we cut them out?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Legislation and regulation.
| emteycz wrote:
| Meh, I absolutely don't believe that's the way. That's how
| we get the market to halt.
|
| I was thinking more of teaching business and management
| skills to engineers.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| So "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"?
| Tomminn wrote:
| This essay is weakened significantly by one glaring clanger. If
| this person had equal levels of talent and yet wasn't from the
| place they are, they would never make the foolish statement:
| "exposure to prestige can't make you successful any more than
| spending time around rich people can make you wealthy".
|
| Apart from that I think they've got some of the causality the
| wrong way around. Consulting and finance are not buying
| excellence, they're buying prestige. If you become excellent, no-
| one in top tier FTC will care, except maybe the T strand of that.
| F and C never wanted your excellence, they wanted to use your
| prestige as a cover for extracting large fees from high net worth
| individuals and companies respectively. The T strand is
| interesting, because the value of your prestige here isn't to the
| company as a whole, but to your ability to rise within it.
| Essentially, you can use it as a tool to extract a plush job from
| a monopoly by outcompeting others within the company. On some
| level, success at every company is a social phenomena, and you're
| excellently positioned to succeed at the social games required to
| be promoted.
|
| So if you're an Ivy league grad, generally your most valuable
| asset is your prestige, not your skill. You can make an entire
| career based on being prestigious, so long as you're careful not
| to dilute it. And this is why T is grouped with F and C, if you
| take a career inside top tier FTC, you maintain your prestige,
| outside it you dilute your prestige, and therefore dilute your
| most valuable asset.
|
| The point that he's missing is that Ivy league grads are not the
| top students. They are the most prestigious students. The top
| students in terms of excellence are scattered around the
| country/world and most come from universities you've never heard
| of. And will hopefully succeed by sheer excellence. And companies
| that hire these students will rise, and companies that hire
| prestigious students over the excellent students will fall
| (unless their business model is based on the projection of
| prestige).
|
| So he doesn't need to worry about the future. The future is fine.
| Him and his classmates were never the future, except for the
| future of extracting large fees from high net worth individuals
| and companies.
|
| All that said, it's nothing but great if he's deciding to start
| playing the excellence game and stop playing the prestige game. I
| just think he'll be surprised at how close to zero he's located
| at within that game if he starts playing it in earnest.
| mips_avatar wrote:
| I think students internally identify the prestige trap. They are
| aware that they studied in the hollow pursuit of an "A" rather
| than for the sake of mastering the topic. They know that they
| traded excellence for prestige. They gained a signaling currency,
| and they aren't confident that they have the excellence needed to
| gain more.
| bla3 wrote:
| > For the majority of Ivy Leaguers, the most impressive thing
| they've accomplished is achieving admission to their university.
|
| Is this a common view in the US? In central Europe, the view is
| that ivy leagues are for people who need external validation so
| much that they are willing to pay through the nose for it. This
| view explains the rest of the article too.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Mostly you can't buy your way into an Ivy. You have to have the
| right social connections. When I worked for a New York broker
| half the partners were outright imbeciles with Yale educations.
| They got into Yale because of their ridiculous WASP names.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This continues to be the case, but used to be the case more
| than it is now. Specifically for Yale, it has really become
| much less blue-blooded, WASPy in the last 2 decades.
| ceras wrote:
| If your parents make median income or less, Ivy League schools
| are effectively free. Your parents have to earn quite a lot for
| you to pay sticker price.
| bla3 wrote:
| TIL! That's good to know. That changes my assessment of them
| quite a bit.
| currymj wrote:
| The Ivies and comparable schools actually are now incredibly
| generous with financial aid.
|
| For instance Harvard automatically gives a full scholarship to
| any accepted student whose family makes less than $65,000 per
| year. For Stanford, the cutoff is $125,000.
|
| There are other private schools that are as you describe,
| though.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > For instance Harvard automatically gives a full scholarship
| to any accepted student whose family makes less than $65,000
| per year.
|
| This is not strictly true, although it is mostly true.
|
| source: attended Harvard with family income less than $65k
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| Is that view that common in Europe? Seems awfully self-serving
| to be the broad consensus.
| emteycz wrote:
| In central Europe, public universities that are free for all
| are the norm, sometimes even for foreigners (other EU
| citizens are not even considered foreigners). For-profit
| schools are often of questionable quality, serving those who
| couldn't pass the bar of the easiest of the free public
| schools, or are unable to make the minimal commitment to pass
| them, but still want the diploma. It doesn't help that these
| for-profit schools try to fake prestige very hard (as opposed
| to the 1000-year old public universities that indeniably are
| prestigious, in a different way).
|
| Overall yes, schools known only for their claims of prestige,
| as opposed to their academical merit, are looked down upon.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Harvard is private, yes, but it's not _for-profit_. Those
| schools are likewise considered low-quality in the states.
|
| Harvard is a non-public non-profit, and is cheaper than the
| comparable public university for 90% of Americans after
| aid.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Harvard is not really that expensive when you factor in
| financial aid. Nor is it an easy task to be admitted.
|
| What I've generally found is the "common view" in the US is
| that people get upset/snide at the mention of the school. It
| seems like this is also an int'l phenomenon if your comment is
| any guide.
| bliss wrote:
| I work for a well known media company where I live, a brand, our
| grad scheme is really good (disclaimer I'm a small part of that)
| and attracts the best of the best out of colleges, people like
| having my company on their CV, it doesn't do any harm, our
| allumni typically go on to have good careers, or stay for the
| long haul. We love it when our people take the skills we've honed
| into, for example, Amazon, JP Morgan and amazingly often return
| to the fold and are welcomed back with open arms. There isn't a
| prestige trap really, but maybe we just think we're the best of
| the best and going anywhere else is just for rounding out
| experience.
| chrisgd wrote:
| Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan have all moved down market
| and lead most IPOs these days. Everyone else is fighting for 30%
| or less of the fees. As a CEO, you can't lose your job if they
| mess up your IPO. But if you choose Jefferies and they blow it,
| you can get fired. There is a term for this that is escaping me
| right now. There is also a potentially easier path to get an
| intro as the Goldman brand name carries a lot of weight. All this
| to say though, there is significant competition within there but
| if you work there for 3 years you probably work as hard as you
| would on your own company, but probability weighted income is
| higher and you have more exit opportunities. I think it makes
| sense to go work there if you can.
| namdnay wrote:
| That argument was originally used for IBM I think?
| kazen44 wrote:
| it used to be true for cisco in the telecom/ISP world aswell.
| (atleast from early 90's to mid 2000's).
|
| Sadly, Cisco decided the stop making proper networking
| equipment and ditch proper support via TAC.
| [deleted]
| dasudasu wrote:
| _> In reality, they have it backward--prestige follows
| excellence. Exposure to prestige can't make you successful any
| more than spending time around rich people can make you wealthy._
|
| Exposure to "prestige" and by proxy exposure to ambition-driven
| individuals that are also "excellent" enough to be accepted into
| the "in-group" is a big factor into how you unlock your own
| potential. The author seems to hold the view that being excellent
| is just an innate quality that follows you around no matter what.
| If you join some organization where nobody cares, nobody pushes
| you to be excellent, or can't even recognize excellency when it
| exists, then no, you won't become a superstar out of nowhere and
| have the world at your feet. Even founding a startup nowadays
| would be considered a "high prestige" move, because few people
| can really afford to stop a menial job to pursue that.
| darawk wrote:
| This article briefly touches the real explanation:
|
| > When we listen to prestige, we're often opting for a path of
| certainty, while foregoing whatever promising thing was just
| around the corner.
|
| But it doesn't quite dwell on it as the important component of
| the answer that it truly is. Prestige and credentialism certainly
| have to do with peer pressure, but they also have a lot to do
| with _risk reduction_. And this is true on both sides of the
| equation.
|
| If your job is to obtain a top 0.01% quality engineer, should you
| just hire from a top tier university? Probably not. That's not to
| say that a top 0.01% engineer wouldn't go to a top tier
| university. They well might. But it's not a very strong filter
| for that level of quality. What it is, however, is a very strong
| filter for say, top 30% quality.
|
| When you hire from a top tier university, you aren't getting the
| very best. What you are getting is a very strong guarantee that
| someone is at least a certain level of quality. A Harvard or
| Stanford degree most certainly does not guarantee excellence. But
| it does guarantee a minimum standard of competence and work
| ethic. When you hire from one of these places, you can be
| reasonably certain that you are not hiring the human equivalent
| of a lemon.
|
| The same is true on the flip side for an employee seeking jobs.
| If you go work at FAANG, one of the big three consulting firms,
| or Goldman, you are almost certainly not choosing the _absolute
| best_ possible career path at that moment for yourself. What you
| are doing is selecting a career path that will be very good, with
| very high certainty.
|
| In finance terms, these choices are optimal, because they
| maximize the _Sharpe ratio_ of your career /hiring process. That
| is, they maximize the risk-adjusted return of your decisions.
| People who go to top tier universities have already demonstrated
| a preference for a lower risk path in life.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-11-14 23:00 UTC)