41–50 of 68 posts
The article stops just short of implying a causal connection between what school you go to and whether you're going to "found a unicorn" but come on! Maybe, just maybe , could it be that this deserves a little deeper look? Perhaps people who have the opportunity to go to one of these top schools have that opportunity because of some other structural advantage that also provides them the opportunity to found a unicorn…
Class and wealth pretending to be worthy of merit.
This is gradually normalizing viewpoint is toxic to society, because our obsession with rich white people is nothing but anti-intellectualism and scapegoating disguised as a seemingly justified class welfare. Does it make it easier to be wealthy? Yes. Does it give imply that no one born into wealth is capable of being meritful? Absolutely not.
And bear in mind that these are the people that build society, and the kind of people I would guess frequent other intellectual bastions like hackernews, where you can experience their brilliance daily and first hand.
This ordering is bunk because the author makes no attempt to normalize for student population. Larger schools have a massive advantage compared to smaller ones. Compare the University of California and MIT. University of California has 250,000 students and MIT has 11,000. After normalizing the data, MIT produces 1 unicorn per 1,200 yearly enrolled student, while UoC produces 1 unicorn per 13,900 yearly enrolled stude…
Class and wealth pretending to be worthy of merit.
It is so frustrating to see this inane sour grapes mentality. The idea that there is nothing exceptional about attendees at ivy league schools is wholly absurd and betrays a personal ignorance. The schools are extremely selective and offer lucrative scholarships to minorities (and, let's not forget, poor whites as well) such that you do not need to be wealthy or connected to get into something like MIT, but you do ne…
It's almost too peak HN to be taken seriously.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better? It is just much easier for them to get funding. More funding -> More successes. Source: I know a ton of people who went to Stanford and who had zero trouble getting near unlimited funding. Also the purpose of this article is to appeal to the Indian reader base that is qz.com. They are writing articles to appease their demographics.
Amazes me that a low/no capital business model (software) combined with the hacker ethos was so readily and quickly hijacked by The Money People. You don't need this much money and a true entrepreneur dies inside everytime they give away a piece of their company.
Often, you do need that much money.
Elon Musk went begging among his rich friends because he was less than 30 days from not making payroll.
Mere mortals would have to shut down.
This is what makes unicorns.
The article stops just short of implying a causal connection between what school you go to and whether you're going to "found a unicorn" but come on! Maybe, just maybe , could it be that this deserves a little deeper look? Perhaps people who have the opportunity to go to one of these top schools have that opportunity because of some other structural advantage that also provides them the opportunity to found a unicorn…
But what about skill, ability, creativity, ambition, determination? Do the people doing this work deserve no credit?
IIT grads get funded to study using taxpayers money in India and they migrate to the US. There is no use for the country funding them with high quality education. We should stop funding IITs with tax payers money which is of no benefit to the people or the country. India's brain drain.
Unfortunately for the US, proposed revisions to immigration policy may be sending more of that brain drain back. Also, in general, more public funding for education does pay for itself in the long run, though I'm not sure how that's adjusted for net emigration. (Edit: corrected fat fingered typo.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is so frustrating to see this inane sour grapes mentality. The idea that there is nothing exceptional about attendees at ivy league schools is wholly absurd and betrays a personal ignorance. The schools are extremely selective and offer lucrative scholarships to minorities (and, let's not forget, poor whites as well) such that you do not need to be wealthy or connected to get into something like MIT, but you do ne…
I can't quite tell if this is a satirical comment. It's almost too peak HN to be taken seriously.
As a current public high school student, I can assure you that the ivies are more selective than ever and kids who are being accepted nowadays are truly exceptional.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would definitely work if you can find it, but it is pretty impossible to find a $160K/year coming out of the local state school. At least where I'm from....
You don't do it directly. You find the best-paying job you can, work there, do some open-source work in your nights & weekends, and then start looking for a new job when you're about 6 months in, on the strength of your work experience & open-source portfolio. Repeat 2-3 times at roughly 1-year increments until one of the big firms comes knocking. I started at $8/hour at my first programming job and doubled my income…