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The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

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Re: The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

#51

Post by alexashka »

> 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 :)

Re: The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

#52

Post by whimsicalism »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #48
sgerenser wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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.

Re: The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

#53

Post by emteycz »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #27
bla3 wrote: post #21

> 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.

Is that view that common in Europe? Seems awfully self-serving to be the broad consensus.

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.

Re: The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

#54

Post by dasudasu »

>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.

Re: The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

#55

Post by sna1l »

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.

Re: The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

#56

Post by bla3 »

ceras wrote: post #41
bla3 wrote: post #21

> 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.

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.

TIL! That's good to know. That changes my assessment of them quite a bit.

Re: The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

#57

Post by jcheng »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #48
sgerenser wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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-University-of...

Re: The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

#58

Post by esoterica »

config_yml wrote: post #4
pmoriarty wrote: post #2

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.

As Steve Blank said, in 5 years, having FB on your resume will be like Enron. I hope he’s right.

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.

Re: The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

#59

Post by karmakaze »

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.

Re: The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting

#60

Post by hailwren »

scarmig wrote: post #38
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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

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)
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