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On Elitism

stanford.edu

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Re: On Elitism

#91

Post by codexon »

scott_s wrote: post #85
codexon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its also customary to say which college you attended if they ask you "where". I also don't know anyone that says HAHHHHHHH-VARD, STANNNN-FAHD or M-AHH-TTTTT. This pseudo-snobbery is all in your head. If you keep hiding the fact that you are from a top school in order to dissociate fallibility with Stanford, this sort of sentiment will continue.

You guessed that he avoids mentioning his school by name to avoid the high expectations along with it. To operate that this guess has to be true is, at best, disingenuous.

This is not a guess. This is factual evidence as publicly admitted by many people like Conan O'Brien.

And I should add that I also went to a top school, so its not like I am making this stuff up.

Re: On Elitism

#92

Post by elblanco »

scott_s wrote: post #69
elblanco wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's on the fast path to a research job, buried in the bowels of some company, working on middle ware. Either that or he'll simply get a teaching job at one of the schools he decries in his post.

I think you misunderstood his arguments. He did not in any way denigrate the non "name brand" schools.

http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/advantages-of-name-brand-s...

Re: On Elitism

#93

Post by elblanco »

scott_s wrote: post #85
codexon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its also customary to say which college you attended if they ask you "where". I also don't know anyone that says HAHHHHHHH-VARD, STANNNN-FAHD or M-AHH-TTTTT. This pseudo-snobbery is all in your head. If you keep hiding the fact that you are from a top school in order to dissociate fallibility with Stanford, this sort of sentiment will continue.

You guessed that he avoids mentioning his school by name to avoid the high expectations along with it. To operate that this guess has to be true is, at best, disingenuous.

No, that's actually what he said

"oftentimes i don't tell people where i went to school because i don't want to automatically be viewed as a snob on first impressions."

Re: On Elitism

#94

Post by pgbovine »

elblanco wrote: post #90
alexgartrell wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without passing any judgement whatsoever, I'm going to leave this link here :) http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/advantages-of-name-brand-s...

Ugh, finally managed to read most of the article at the link. I would have preferred putting my hand in my garbage disposal. It's an absolutely accurate portrayal of what's wrong in the world with respect to the reputation that top-tier schools have and the practices of top-tier corporations. Mr. Guo, in a few areas of self-reflection attempts to strike a reasonable tone in the parts that don't sound like a brochure…

thanks for the comments ... you have a good point regarding some of the passages, i'll take them down soon or try to re-work them.

i'm glad that you understood the main purpose of that article, which is to highlight what i've observed about top-tier schools and the hiring practices of certain big corporations.

however, i really don't mean to sound like i'm an advertising brochure for those schools, because i'm definitely not. again, i'm just trying to share the experiences i've heard from my friends (who went to all different types of schools) with regards to their job hunting process.

in part, i'm trying to express some of the frustrations that people have relayed to me because they were definitely worthy of certain positions but got passed up due to their lack of so-called name-brand credentials. but i see that i've done a bad job at doing that, since i drew such negative criticism due to my tone ;)

please email me personally if you'd like to give me more feedback on how i could emphasize the more objective points of that article without sounding condescending. thanks.

Re: On Elitism

#95

Post by pgbovine »

elblanco wrote: post #86
pgbovine wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, that is quite a stretch from what i said or implied in my article! Here is my central thesis: "Thus, I assert that given two people with comparable levels of intelligence and technical skills, the one who did not go to a name-brand university will be more likely to display outward signs of elitism, arrogance, and snobbery as a form of compensation for his/her lack of visible status." i'm sorry that i didn't make…

Glad the author is here, so this doesn't stay one-sided! Some people here apparently think I'm trolling, but I'm simply cutting to the chase and hoping for a spirited and informed debate. Mr. Guo, your article stands in opposition to itself. On the one hand, you try to state that "given comparable levels of intelligence or skill" and on the other "only the smartest have the highest grades". Your only example is one t…

ok, this is your most convincing post yet. i concede defeat, on two main points ...

1.) i can now understand why my intro regarding high school grades led people to make certain assumptions about what i was trying to say; again, horrible choice of intro

2.) i don't think my definition of elitism or elitist behavior matches up with the commonly-accepted definition, so that is where lots of conflicts seem to be arising

could you please email me at the address i posted on my webpage? (i haven't figured out if you can private message on HN yet, sorry) i want to ask you something personally ... don't worry, it's nothing scary or bad :)

Re: On Elitism

#96

Post by joe_the_user »

zackattack wrote: post #43
joe_the_user wrote: post #21

I'm sorry but this isn't a new one for sociology... I've observed that some of the people who display the greatest degrees of elitism and snobbery are those who are technically skilled in their given area of expertise but who do not necessarily have the most reputable externally-recognizable marks of status. Indeed. Those who need to display elitism are those who aren't automatically accepted as elite . Similarly, th…

Can you recommend a good book on modern signalling theory?

What I have been reading recently is "Game Theory Evolving" by Herbert Gintis. The Wikipedia articles on signaling theory and evolutionary game theory are useful too.

Re: On Elitism

#97

Post by elblanco »

pgbovine wrote: post #95
elblanco wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad the author is here, so this doesn't stay one-sided! Some people here apparently think I'm trolling, but I'm simply cutting to the chase and hoping for a spirited and informed debate. Mr. Guo, your article stands in opposition to itself. On the one hand, you try to state that "given comparable levels of intelligence or skill" and on the other "only the smartest have the highest grades". Your only example is one t…

ok, this is your most convincing post yet. i concede defeat, on two main points ... 1.) i can now understand why my intro regarding high school grades led people to make certain assumptions about what i was trying to say; again, horrible choice of intro 2.) i don't think my definition of elitism or elitist behavior matches up with the commonly-accepted definition, so that is where lots of conflicts seem to be arising…

Live and learn. You've suffered a withering attack here, but you've continued to engage. I like that, upvoted for balls.

At the very least it was a popular and thought provoking article that warranted lots of passionate debate. Borderline trollish, but with enough elements of truth as to make for interesting forum fodder!

Email being sent if I can figure out this Internet thing with the education I received from a 2nd rate school ;)

Re: On Elitism

#98

Post by psyklic »

pgbovine wrote: post #66
psyklic wrote: post #35

The author writes about himself, "Coming from two universities with world-renowned Computer Science departments (MIT and Stanford) and having worked at a top-tier software company (Google) as well as at several less high-profile companies ..." Meaning, of course, that he is not elitist -- he just had to share these crucial facts about himself.

fair enough, that does sound pretty elitist ;) sorry if i offended people with that language. but the rest of that sentence says "... , I have seen a wide variety of personalities and egos amongst computer scientists and software engineers." the point of that paragraph was to establish that i had experience in interacting with CS people from a variety of backgrounds, both from so-called elitist places and from less e…

No offense taken! I honestly didn't expect my comment to be voted up so high. Your point in that paragraph is valid.

I was just struck by the contrast between this and when you state later on that people who attend elite institutions generally do not share where they've worked ;-)

Your essay did make a nice point though, one that I did not previously consider!

Re: On Elitism

#99

Post by scott_s »

elblanco wrote: post #92
scott_s wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood his arguments. He did not in any way denigrate the non "name brand" schools.

http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/advantages-of-name-brand-s...

Saying X has advantages over Y is not the same as saying Y is crap.

Re: On Elitism

#100

Post by scott_s »

elblanco wrote: post #93
scott_s wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guessed that he avoids mentioning his school by name to avoid the high expectations along with it. To operate that this guess has to be true is, at best, disingenuous.

No, that's actually what he said "oftentimes i don't tell people where i went to school because i don't want to automatically be viewed as a snob on first impressions."

Not wanting to be viewed as a snob is different than wanting to avoid high expectations. I tried to illustrate that point with my example with BJJ.
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