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Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

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Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#371

Post by lapcat »

squokko wrote: post #367
lapcat wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't answer my question.

The "soccer program" is the professional soccer team that Cristiano Ronaldo was on. Should Freddy Fatass have been playing for them too?

No. This is why I said "Cristiano Ronaldo was not attending a nonprofit school, he was a member of a for-profit professional team."

Harvard is a nonprofit school, financially supported by the government in various ways. The standards are different. If Harvard wants to act like a business, then it needs to give up its nonprofit status, forsake government support, and pay taxes as a business.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#373

Post by earthboundkid »

blitzar wrote: post #254
earthboundkid wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, all your political leaders went to Harvard and the Kennedy School. :-)

I believe none of them have - they all went to Oxford / Cambridge, why would they step down to an inferior institution that would only hold them back in life?

Francophone Africa is laughing at us in Sorbonne.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#374

Post by laidoffamazon »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #364
laidoffamazon wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve advanced further than everyone I know that went to Harvard in my career and not once did someone wink at the Harvard guy and pass me over. I'm only 27 and I definitely have - basically every Harvard CS grad from the year I graduated from my state school makes at least $200k more than me a year if they're in the workforce instead of academia and has a significantly higher net worth as a result!

Harvard is a pretty mediocre CS school. I would expect MIT, CMU, Stanford, Berkeley, UIUC, and the other (last I looked) 30 better schools for CS to do better on average. I don’t mean this as unkind, but Harvard is very hard to get into and very selective and state schools generally are neither. This often means the people that get in, other than legacy, are very capable people. State schools also have very capable p…

> and the vast minority of state school students are equally as capable

OK but I don't think anyone would say I'm even close, since I didn't even get into any top schools (somehow people only talk about the few that got into top schools but didn't go. Seems like everyone got into at least one top school but me). What do I do? Where does that leave me?

> After maybe 10 years into your career what school you went to matters almost not at all, and it’s entirely based on what you did with that opportunity.

I don't know. I'm 5 years out and I'm just an SDE2/mid-level. Harvard CS (and yes I'm including that in the upper echelon with MIT and Stanford regardless of rankings because education isn't what's really rendered at these institutions as the original post argues) graduates from 2018/2017 are all staff and senior engineers at Google and FB making $200k more than me at minimum, or have YC funding because they were Senior engineers at Facebook years ago.

> and it’s up to you to make a stronger resume if it matters to you.

I'm genuinely unsure if that's even possible. I don't think anybody in this tier of humanity would consider a career that started with 3 years at Amazon good enough to differentiate me from anyone else.

> What should matter is if you’re happy with what you’re doing yourself

Why would I be happy if I'm going to be "behind" for the rest of my life, no matter how much effort I exert, and I'm going to be seen as lesser for it?

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#375

Post by laidoffamazon »

pseudalopex wrote: post #334
laidoffamazon wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but not enough for Jane Street or Citadel Securities (not the hedge fund which did give me an offer) or DE Shaw or HRT. Aka, the firms actually offering $350k+ to new grads while I make far less.

I see. I have no consolation to offer you. No amount of money or prestige will satisfy you. Someone will be wealthier than you no matter how much you acquire. And old money families look down at new money. How is your social life? Do you consider most people around you beneath you?

> Do you consider most people around you beneath you?

Several of my friends are crypto millionaires who also have higher total compensation than me and they certainly think I'm beneath them. I know a lot of people that got into top schools or have higher SATs/more "merit" than me. I'm probably the person with the least merit in my social circle.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#376

Post by squokko »

gonehome wrote: post #141
lapcat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. I think you missed the point of the article, which was "Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic, and it does that while subsidized by everyone else." > Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. The author discusses this: "The hardest part of Harvard is g…

> “On a personal note, I was accepted to an Ivy League school (though not Harvard) as a high school senior, but my family couldn't afford to send me there, so I had to go to a state school instead. My classmate and friend was accepted to MIT but also had to go to a state school because of money.” This does fit my hypothesis that the outliers at state schools are likely undervalued in the market by recruiters. The ave…

The best way to get the elite school benefits as a state school undergraduate is to attend a graduate program at an elite school. The financial ROI on a Yale JD or Harvard MBA will be really strong, and if you want a paid-for program you can do a PhD.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#377

Post by blitzar »

earthboundkid wrote: post #373
blitzar wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe none of them have - they all went to Oxford / Cambridge, why would they step down to an inferior institution that would only hold them back in life?

Francophone Africa is laughing at us in Sorbonne.

When the snow falls they're found in St. Moritz

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#378

Post by chimprich »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #292
chimprich wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ownership of wealth in America is relatively diffuse. The top 1% owns only 32% of the wealth. "Relatively"? According to what metric? I think the US has one of the world's highest Gini coefficients, at least among Western countries. "Only"? 1% owning about a third of all wealth seems remarkably skewed.

> 1% owning about a third of all wealth seems remarkably skewed. This isn’t that interesting unless you can pair it with numbers showing how the remainder is distributed. If the majority of people have a high quality of life, who cares how rich the 1% are unless you also want to be part of the elite? How it actually affects people is what matters. Trying to pick some arbitrary threshold for how much wealth some subse…

> This isn’t that interesting unless you can pair it with numbers showing how the remainder is distributed

I didn't bring up the figure - I was just remarking on how I had a different reaction to it. And the remainder is also distributed in a non-diffuse manner.

> If the majority of people have a high quality of life, who cares how rich the 1% are

Do the majority of people have "a high quality of life"? I'm not sure that's true, but assuming it is true, then one issue is the massive power imbalance in terms of control over society: small numbers of people having huge influence over politics, the media, social tech companies etc.

> Trying to pick some arbitrary threshold

Which I was not doing. I'm not sure what would be the best distribution - but if I can't look at it quantitively, I think we can consider it qualitatively. Would we be in a better place if we moved towards more wealth inequality or less?

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#379

Post by dctoedt »

rayiner wrote: post #211
glimshe wrote: post #39

This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is required to go there or hire someone from there. Why do Harvard people "drive 20% above the speed limit"? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. I've seen dozens of theo…

> This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. It’s not, and I think your view ignores a really important fact about our society. Ownership of wealth in America is relatively diffuse. The top 1% owns only 32% of the wealth. And even the top 1%, which starts at about $12 million net worth, covers a lot of people who aren’t exactly the ownership class. Much of the power in society is therefore held by a…

> Folks like Jamie Dimon and Tim Cook are billionaires, but they made that money by being very highly compensated employees of institutions in which their equity interest is negligible.

Jamie Dimon went to Tufts — Harvard-adjacent? — with an MBA from Harvard.

Tim Cook went to Auburn, with an MBA from Duke.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#380

Post by pxx »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #298
pxx wrote: post #68

> You can't start a tax-exempt country club. Uh... Sure you can? This is literally section 501(c)7; private clubs in general are exempt from federal income taxation.

Country clubs have a specific business model and are definitely not exempt from federal income taxes. The Freemasons are exempt from income taxes as an organization though.

Some specific country clubs may not be 501(c)7s but country clubs in general often are. See, e.g.:

https://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2015/01/22/most-loca... https://www.pugetsound.edu/sites/default/files/file/1359_Fah...

and straight from the horse's mouth, the IRS:

> Typical organizations that may qualify for exemption under IRC section 501(c)7) are: ... Country clubs, ..., Yacht clubs

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/atg_social_rec_clubs.pdf

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