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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

#281

Post by klmadfejno »

pram wrote: post #202
rconti wrote: post #46

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…

I've worked at plenty of big name companies you've heard of, and I have not experienced what you describe. Oracle, for example, was pretty much about showing up at work every day. Personally I think they churn out 'better' engineers simply because you are afforded more opportunities to work on things that can be of enormous scale, specificity, and complexity.

Big isn't the relevant word here. The right word is growing, and wealthy. I don't have any personal insight into Oracle, but if I were to fathom a guess, I'd say it's probably bureaucratically entrenched and a fiercely competitive internal culture.

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

#282

Post by whimsicalism »

kortilla wrote: post #258
ffggvv wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you’re comparing fang to average startup. instead you should compare fang to top tier startup. as that’s the choice people who get fang offers make... in almost all examples i can think of, the top tier startup pays more. furthermore before they were fang companies, google was the top tier startup and IBM was the equivalent to FANG.

> in almost all examples i can think of, the top tier startup pays more. WeWork and Airbnb want a word.

> a word.

A word about what? Their salaries are certainly competitive with, if not higher paying than, Google and Stripe's are objectively higher.

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

#283

Post by wayoutthere »

shuckles wrote: post #191
wayoutthere wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is gonna sound corny, but apply for jobs at any of the big 4 to learn the industry, and after a couple years you’ll know the companies you want to work for and have connections through co-workers who have left. Consulting is all about politics and connections, so thinking those aren’t directly correlated to wealth is naive.

Do you see this industry loosening its expectations for an MBA? That is nearly $1m of opportunity cost to some of the technologists who might be interested in growing a management consulting career.

I wouldn't say an MBA is a requirement, but to advance beyond an associate / consultant level you do need a good general understanding of finance, marketing and ops. There's definitely an inflection point where you become more of an expert in your clients' business than any specific technology. Eventually your skills trend towards sales and the business of consulting (staffing projects, managing margin, building capabilities) but that's not much different than the kind of leadership roles (estimating, hiring, mentoring, speaking at conferences, etc.) that senior ICs have to do to make that kind of money.

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

#284

Post by tmsh »

whimsicalism wrote: post #44
tmsh wrote: post #36

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 pursui…

> 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.

Yeah totally.

The best talk I ever heard related to YC was from Adam d’Angelo at a startup school (#2?) - where he spent most of his time quietly just saying to people: use your connections. And for 5% of the audience I’m sure it went in one ear and out the other.

There’s a lot to be said for being forced to slow down and learn the content around smart peers and professors tho.

Agreed possible online just requires more drive and focus and the number of people who can / have the time / interest / motivation to do that starts to trail off (but the world is large).

The other big thing schools like this do to you is inject a healthy dose of competitiveness for the rest of your life since you know there are a lot of things that aren’t special about the people there but are about their results.

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

#285

Post by wayoutthere »

shuckles wrote: post #268
ativzzz wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with anything, it is what you make of it. HN has a stereotype of MBA students that doesn't always hold up to the real world (though not all stereotypes are wrong).

Help me understand why MBA graduates placing into technology companies as, eg, PMs see little leveling benefits for their efforts versus graduates from the same schools placing at consulting firms? Is the network really that much more essential to a consulting career than a PM career? And is the hours-adjusted total income of a consulting career that much better for wealth building than an extra million bucks pre-tax…

> Is the network really that much more essential to a consulting career than a PM career?

Yes. I sell projects to my former classmates all the time, and if I ever find myself out of a job, I could have a half dozen interviews within a month. The network is absolutely amazing if you go to one of the top 20 or so schools and have some people skills. You can't really make use of the network if you're a PM.

> And is the hours-adjusted total income of a consulting career that much better for wealth building than an extra million bucks pre-tax at age 30?

Lifetime income for a partner at a consulting company can easily top $30 million -- with the benefit of being able to blow the escape hatch and land in a VP role in industry if you burn out on the consulting work.

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

#286

Post by wayoutthere »

bertr4nd wrote: post #225
wayoutthere wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

How many people make it to that $2-20MM partner bracket in consulting? That’s VP range at FAANG and while there are only so many VPs they certainly exist.

Somewhere in the 10% range if you stick with it. Plenty of folks leave to director / VP level roles in industry before they make it though -- the job of a partner isn't one that everyone enjoys.

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

#287

Post by ffggvv »

kortilla wrote: post #258
ffggvv wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you’re comparing fang to average startup. instead you should compare fang to top tier startup. as that’s the choice people who get fang offers make... in almost all examples i can think of, the top tier startup pays more. furthermore before they were fang companies, google was the top tier startup and IBM was the equivalent to FANG.

> in almost all examples i can think of, the top tier startup pays more. WeWork and Airbnb want a word.

airbnb pays a lot more than google lol. and they are actually doing great now despite layoffs at the realllt beginning of covid

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

#288

Post by whimsicalism »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #205
whimsicalism wrote: post #5

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…

> 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 Google and Facebook hired almost exclusively from Ivy League and equivalents during their "make or break" phase.

But again, this is when their hiring pools were much smaller and they could hire the cream of the crop of Harvard et al. students

I don't think this is inconsistent with what I'm saying.

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

#289

Post by ryandrake »

burntoutfire wrote: post #278
ryandrake wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I'm a big believer in setting goals, and then taking the "most likely" path to get there. My career decision method (disclaimer: it might not work for you) boils down to this: 1. Estimate $X: how much $$$ investment do I need in order for my family to live off interest for Y years so I never work again? For me right now, $X is 5M and Y is 40 years. 2. What do I need to do right now in order to get closer to $X?…

> Retire and do whatever I really want to do with my life. Do you know what that is? I suspect most people don't, especially after spending 20+ years in various jobs.

Oh yea. I have a long list of things I'd be doing if I wasn't filling out TPS reports 5 days a week. Some of them I've already started, but on nights and weekends. I can't wait to retire, and know exactly how I'd take advantage of the time!

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

#290

Post by happy_pancake »

Boxxed wrote: post #187
Gunax wrote: post #111

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…

I completely agree. I really like this article, which I felt like I could have written: https://www.benkuhn.net/hard/

Great write up
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