Math Team

Great, honest-sounding description of this college application grind, doing things he wasn't interested in, and suggesting that most of the other mathletes also weren't interested in math.

Now that he's 15 years into a tech career, I'm wondering what he thinks if/when interviewing applicants, and sees or doesn't see similar grind on the resume.

I imagine that some, if they got their position by virtue of the hoop-jumping grind, would think that the grind was positive signal for a candidate for that kind of position. But I don't know how common that belief is.

Reason I'm wondering... The last time I did a call with a FAANG recruiter (for Staff/Principal SWE), they did something new, running down a long list of checkboxes, and asking me for each one whether I had it or not. Most of it sounded like college application fodder, like people get coached to do in affluent prep schools, including multiple checkboxes about mathlete competitions. Not something that I would've thought would still matter for someone with a big industry track record. Was gathering this college app grind data for experienced candidates a new thing, or have recruiters and resume-scanning software been filling out these properties of each candidate for a long time?

It's because there are enough rich people who only want to hire Ivy League graduates. Not for any fact other than everyone around them that is Ivy League tells them its the best place to hire from.

It's so elite institutions can avoid admitting only Asian students.

I don't like name dropping the school I went to but I didn't have the same high school experience as this writer. All of my peers at my school seemingly did though which made me feel very behind and out of place. I definitely noticed that a lot of the students in the CS program already knew a good amount of discrete mathematics when we took our 'first' proofs class. In fact, most of the other kids went to really highly ranked high schools, competed on math or programming or science teams, and had a lot of accomplishments but it also simultaneously seemed performative. I didn't even know competitive math was a thing until I got to campus. I resented my parents for not pushing me into all these extra-curriculars so I could be like everyone else on campus and have things to brag about. But from the author's experience there is a downside to being pushed into these things too.

Although the playing ground was actually fair and hard work gets you on even footing, I have a couple of things to say about college admissions. I will definitely say that although the top universities claim to be meritocratic, I don't think they are. Most of these students, maybe all now, are kind of acculturated into this college admissions process where from a young age you are doing STEM competitions and building letters of rec. A lot of these kids have parents who move the whole family to be near to a high school that can get their children into the top schools. Most people in the US are not aware, or unable to do anything with this specific cultural knowledge you need to get in to those schools. Exceptions do not make the rule. So the top schools are filled with people who don't reflect the country which is bad I think.

Second, as people have focused on STEM accomplishments just to get in to the top schools, I think Goodhart's Law is in action and that STEM competitions and precocious authorship is becoming less meaningful but whether admissions offices change I don't know if that will happen and has not yet. So these will continue to be performative for the time being which is also unfortunate.

I would be curious about that person, too, but devil's advocate...

How do you know you can aim that person's drive for math towards company problems?

Unless and until you know that, is it more positive signal to look for people who, well, have solved company problems?