The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting(wesdesilvestro.com)
wesdesilvestro.com
The Prestige Trap: finance, big tech, and consulting
https://wesdesilvestro.com/the-prestige-trap
317 comments
Monetary success historically flowed to founders, and those off the beaten path. 20 years ago startups provided a strong path to success with friends and family often getting excited when the next hot app/website was something you worked on.
It’s difficult to replicate either the social or monetary prestige these days, as monetary rewards flow to VC and known consumer experiences are crowded.
It’s difficult to replicate either the social or monetary prestige these days, as monetary rewards flow to VC and known consumer experiences are crowded.
Historically, hasn't monetary success gone to people who inherited the wealth?
Monarchs and aristocrats and the like
Monarchs and aristocrats and the like
What historical period are you interested in? Because the aristocracy and monarchs of Europe are not doing great compared to 1915 and they’re doing a lot better than the nobility of any other continent. There have always been the ways to be rich, make it, take it or inherit it. Take it is no longer common in the developed world. For the super rich the top ten of the Forbes Billionaires List has three Waltons. The rest either made their own enormous fortune (6) or grew it out of all recognition.
Most wealthy families actually lose their wealth within two generations.
I seriously the generalizability of your claim. I used to think the same way, until I saw articles like this about Florence (Italy): https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14...
It’s true there are outliers, and especially so at the very top, but the general trend is pretty strong. 80% of American millionaires are first-generation. Pointing at the 0.0001% says very little.
Perhaps the problem is the cutoff? A million dollars is not "wealth", not anymore. It's just 2-3 houses in a big city or half a house in SV.
the richest people in the world list is filled with bill gates, bezos, zuckerberg... none of which inherited it
Since bloggers such as Mr. Money Mustache gained a bit of fame, I don't think it's limited anymore to business owners.
Great point.
My cousin grew up in a nice northern jersey suburb. Circa 2003, everyone in her circle was trying to get into the same 6 schools to be a doctor or investment banker.
It was weird but rational path to achieve a similar lifestyle. Of course my uncle was an accountant and my aunt a social worker... they bought into suburbia in the 80s when you did not need to be a doctor!
My cousin grew up in a nice northern jersey suburb. Circa 2003, everyone in her circle was trying to get into the same 6 schools to be a doctor or investment banker.
It was weird but rational path to achieve a similar lifestyle. Of course my uncle was an accountant and my aunt a social worker... they bought into suburbia in the 80s when you did not need to be a doctor!
>That compounds the material risk of doing these ventures with a social risk
I think part of the issue here is that people may be talking about optimizing different risks. For example, minimizing financial risk may lead to wholly different decisions than, say, minimizing the risk that you will have a fulfilling careers. At times, they may even be orthogonal.
I don't actually think "excellence" is that hard to define. It basically boils down to effectiveness at solving organizational problems (and those may not always be technical in nature). The difficulty is when the problems the individual values doesn't align with what society values. If you can build excellence at a problem highly valued by society, you might be able to have high-status as well. Jonas Salk comes to mind, even though he didn't necessary get financial success.
I personally think the "high prestige" path is followed because there is a clearer template. I couldn't find the excerpt from William Deresiewicz's book, but I remember a quote from a student who was relaying why some from elite colleges struggle upon graduation. The gist was that from kindergarten to college graduation to accepting their first post-graduation job, there was a relatively clear cut template of moving from scholastic excellence, strong extra-curriculars, elite internships, etc. But after graduating and accepting a job at one of the few "prestigious" fields like law, finance, medicine, or consulting. there was no longer a well-defined template and many struggle to know what to do next.
I think part of the issue here is that people may be talking about optimizing different risks. For example, minimizing financial risk may lead to wholly different decisions than, say, minimizing the risk that you will have a fulfilling careers. At times, they may even be orthogonal.
I don't actually think "excellence" is that hard to define. It basically boils down to effectiveness at solving organizational problems (and those may not always be technical in nature). The difficulty is when the problems the individual values doesn't align with what society values. If you can build excellence at a problem highly valued by society, you might be able to have high-status as well. Jonas Salk comes to mind, even though he didn't necessary get financial success.
I personally think the "high prestige" path is followed because there is a clearer template. I couldn't find the excerpt from William Deresiewicz's book, but I remember a quote from a student who was relaying why some from elite colleges struggle upon graduation. The gist was that from kindergarten to college graduation to accepting their first post-graduation job, there was a relatively clear cut template of moving from scholastic excellence, strong extra-curriculars, elite internships, etc. But after graduating and accepting a job at one of the few "prestigious" fields like law, finance, medicine, or consulting. there was no longer a well-defined template and many struggle to know what to do next.
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Humans have always and will always seek standing in their community.
At the moment, that standing is achieved by participating in institutions that serve the oligarchy (BigLaw, BigTech, etc.)
This is a trivial problem to solve. Just create excellence-based communities, like the Linux kernel development community.
The principal obstacle is that working folks don't have the spare resources to create financial stability for high achievers in these communities. We need the approval from the oligarchy, manifested through corporate sponsorship.
It would be nice if Satoshi would come out of the woodwork and bankroll alternatives, the way Signal has been bankrolled.
At the moment, that standing is achieved by participating in institutions that serve the oligarchy (BigLaw, BigTech, etc.)
This is a trivial problem to solve. Just create excellence-based communities, like the Linux kernel development community.
The principal obstacle is that working folks don't have the spare resources to create financial stability for high achievers in these communities. We need the approval from the oligarchy, manifested through corporate sponsorship.
It would be nice if Satoshi would come out of the woodwork and bankroll alternatives, the way Signal has been bankrolled.
Even in the non profit world senior management attaches a lot of value to prestige (not explicitly, but definitely in practice). If you want a high position in an NGO you might be better off starting your career at Facebook rather than at that same NGO.
This isn’t a problem we as Americans need to fix. It fixes itself. For instance, the average Ivy League graduate only makes marginally more money than your public school graduate.
By the time you’re making even low 6 figures, the idea of interacting with an Stanford grad who has done nothing of note with their education and makes something comparable to you is quaint.
Generally speaking, distribution of US income as a proxy for social standing gets you pretty far.
At the end of the day, being associated with prestige is cute (working for a big name) and perhaps what many people desire, but holding it yourself manifests itself in different ways at the individual level. Those who really have any modicum of power don’t care about baseless associations.
“Yeah you worked for a FAANG, great, but what have you accomplished?”
By the time you’re making even low 6 figures, the idea of interacting with an Stanford grad who has done nothing of note with their education and makes something comparable to you is quaint.
Generally speaking, distribution of US income as a proxy for social standing gets you pretty far.
At the end of the day, being associated with prestige is cute (working for a big name) and perhaps what many people desire, but holding it yourself manifests itself in different ways at the individual level. Those who really have any modicum of power don’t care about baseless associations.
“Yeah you worked for a FAANG, great, but what have you accomplished?”
> the average Ivy League graduate only makes marginally more money than your public school graduate
I'm pretty sure that's not true. I doubt there's much of an actual value-add in going to an elite school, but the average incomes of graduates of them are substantially higher than that of random public school graduates.
https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors
I'm pretty sure that's not true. I doubt there's much of an actual value-add in going to an elite school, but the average incomes of graduates of them are substantially higher than that of random public school graduates.
https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors
You are correct that GP's statement is wrong. But research from 2011 showed that this may be largely due the fact that students going into Ivy League schools are more likely to be high achieving in the first place. [1]
> What they found was that two students with similar backgrounds, grades and test scores who applied to the same mix of selective and nonselective schools earned about the same later on, even if the first attended a selective school and the second didn’t. The choice of schools applied to was indicative of ambition which, they argue, is a more powerful driver of success than the school they attend. “The return to college selectivity [is] indistinguishable from zero,” they wrote in 2011.
However, researchers noted that for certain students, going to a more elite school did generate greater returns.
> focusing only on the benefits to the wealthy may miss the full picture. Ms. Dale and Mr. Krueger found that African-American and Hispanic students, and those whose parents didn’t go to college, actually did enjoy an income boost from a selective college, perhaps, the researchers said, owing to networking opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
1: https://outline.com/wWr2v3
> What they found was that two students with similar backgrounds, grades and test scores who applied to the same mix of selective and nonselective schools earned about the same later on, even if the first attended a selective school and the second didn’t. The choice of schools applied to was indicative of ambition which, they argue, is a more powerful driver of success than the school they attend. “The return to college selectivity [is] indistinguishable from zero,” they wrote in 2011.
However, researchers noted that for certain students, going to a more elite school did generate greater returns.
> focusing only on the benefits to the wealthy may miss the full picture. Ms. Dale and Mr. Krueger found that African-American and Hispanic students, and those whose parents didn’t go to college, actually did enjoy an income boost from a selective college, perhaps, the researchers said, owing to networking opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
1: https://outline.com/wWr2v3
Fascinating, most of the top schools are engineering heavy, and their mid-career pays are exactly inline with engineering pay.
Who would have thought?
Who would have thought?
My mediocre high school used to give presentations about how pointless it was to go to a big name school. One of the claims was that, after ten years, all differences in median incomes were gone. Curiously they didn't break it down into percentiles.
Everyone in the advisors' office bought into this public-school-to-public-university pipeline. My dream in junior high was to go to MIT. When I mentioned this to my guidance counselor, they said, basically, "Don't bother, you'll never get in." Self-fulfilling prophecy.
Everyone in the advisors' office bought into this public-school-to-public-university pipeline. My dream in junior high was to go to MIT. When I mentioned this to my guidance counselor, they said, basically, "Don't bother, you'll never get in." Self-fulfilling prophecy.
They were right.
The 90th percentile earner from the Harvard class of 2010 didn’t come from some random high school in Missouri with an 1000 median SAT score.
Guidance counselors suck every where. Mine was a national guard major, 18% of my class joined the military.
The 90th percentile earner from the Harvard class of 2010 didn’t come from some random high school in Missouri with an 1000 median SAT score.
Guidance counselors suck every where. Mine was a national guard major, 18% of my class joined the military.
Medians are misleading. Some random high school in Missouri probably has outliers that it just doesn't know how to deal with. Additionally, maintaining low expectations perpetuates a cycle of underachievement.
> the average Ivy League graduate only makes marginally more money than your public school graduate.
Sorry, what? The average Ivy League graduate makes substantially more than your average non-Ivy graduate.
I don't even understand what your second sentence is trying to say.
Sorry, what? The average Ivy League graduate makes substantially more than your average non-Ivy graduate.
I don't even understand what your second sentence is trying to say.
I believe he probably got the statistic mixed up. The average Ivy League graduate does indeed make more than the average non-ivy college graduate. But they make about the same (or are about as successful, can’t remember the exact statistic) as someone who got accepted to an Ivy but went elsewhere.
No, I mean the actual starting salaries based on employment data from universities themselves tell us there’s only a marginal difference in those who graduate between the institutions.
If you look at the degrees themselves as a form of capital investment, Ivy League schools don’t translate into “paying off,” as it were.
If you look at the degrees themselves as a form of capital investment, Ivy League schools don’t translate into “paying off,” as it were.
> No, I mean the actual starting salaries based on employment data from universities themselves tell us there’s only a marginal difference in those who graduate between the institutions.
Not only is that not true, but Harvard new grads make substantially more than the average BA holder, including people who are 2 decades into their career.
Not only is that not true, but Harvard new grads make substantially more than the average BA holder, including people who are 2 decades into their career.
Yes, and pairwise multivariate comparisons make the gap even larger. (i.e. considering two engineering students or two visual arts students etc)
Here’s one source that says the difference is significant, to put it mildly. Do you have a better source you can cite?
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?166027-Harvard-Unive...
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?240444-University-of...
Edit: Actually the third state school I looked up is not far off! https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?236948-University-of...
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?166027-Harvard-Unive...
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?240444-University-of...
Edit: Actually the third state school I looked up is not far off! https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?236948-University-of...
Picking "Public Ivyies" is stacking the deck a bit, no? My "third tier" school has a median of about half of what Harvard does.
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?142115-Boise-State-U...
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?142115-Boise-State-U...
What are you talking about? Those are distributions; and they swing just as wildly as the broader US workforce. These people aren't making 250k out of the door, nor mid-career. It's just not impressive.
Cite supporting your statement: https://outline.com/wWr2v3
What’s the play if I didn’t get accepted into an Ivy tier school but want to make as much as them?
What’s a benchmark?
What’s a benchmark?
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 be there), but I also think the author is missing that it isn't so much a drive for prestige, but just a lack of other goals for which to substitute.
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 be there), but I also think the author is missing that it isn't so much a drive for prestige, but just a lack of other goals for which to substitute.
> I don't think a lot of people know what they want.
> Just a lack of other goals for which to substitute.
Ding ding.
I've mentored students/grads from aforementioned prestigious Universities and most of them just genuinely don't know what they want
After a few drinks, many have voiced a fear of there being so many options in life and not knowing which would be more fulfilling for them.
Many reach a goal (graduation~), don't know what's really next, look around at nearby peers/family, and simply emulate what they see.
> Just a lack of other goals for which to substitute.
Ding ding.
I've mentored students/grads from aforementioned prestigious Universities and most of them just genuinely don't know what they want
After a few drinks, many have voiced a fear of there being so many options in life and not knowing which would be more fulfilling for them.
Many reach a goal (graduation~), don't know what's really next, look around at nearby peers/family, and simply emulate what they see.
I was a mediocre student in a decent university and I basically chose my course because bunch of older seniors we looked up to suggested that the course had good job "prospects". The only thing I discovered from that course is that I loved writing code in Fortran while doing one of the electives (I actually wrote it on paper in my exam because we didn't have access to computers). I call that my the most lucky and important break.
I never worked on anything related to what I mainly studied and am thankfully programming now (not in Fortran though) and know that this is what I wanted all along.
I never worked on anything related to what I mainly studied and am thankfully programming now (not in Fortran though) and know that this is what I wanted all along.
I agree that many people don’t know what they want. However, I think this is less about emulation and more about improving ones options while figuring that out.
Consulting, Finance, and Bigtech offer a combination of rapid salary growth, low career risk, and a resume item that almost ensures that you pass the CV stage at every future interview. If you’re unsure about your path it is a great way to ensure you have many doors to choose from once you do.
Consulting, Finance, and Bigtech offer a combination of rapid salary growth, low career risk, and a resume item that almost ensures that you pass the CV stage at every future interview. If you’re unsure about your path it is a great way to ensure you have many doors to choose from once you do.
"Often it is inertia rather than greed that is the driving force behind choosing these
majors and careers (although we might assume high beginning salaries would also have something to do with it). Rather than risking the loss of the praise that their psyches have, at this point,
been conditioned to need, students lose themselves in the pack and follow a well-worn path.
They play it safe. They feel almost forced to choose a career that isn’t “beneath”
them" [1]
I think that risk-aversion is part of what keeps people from choosing what they really want to do.
[1] https://academyedstudies.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/jonesro...
I think that risk-aversion is part of what keeps people from choosing what they really want to do.
[1] https://academyedstudies.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/jonesro...
> After a few drinks, many have voiced a fear of there being so many options in life and not knowing which would be more fulfilling for them.
They better get used to it, because that is life :)
They better get used to it, because that is life :)
I understand why, those of us without anyone to emulate professionally have a tough path with pitfalls and charlatans in every direction.
It seems like today, it’s not about creating opportunities to pursue. Instead value is created by eliminating opportunities.
One of the key takeaways from the social sciences is that people are really bad at estimating what will make them happy. Even those who have a plan for what they want are often drastically wrong about how it'll make them feel in the long run.
This has legs. Adulthood has been a major disappointment thus far. I can say, without condemning myself, that I can no longer pursue happiness. Happiness is to found in moments and at the bottom of a bottle of beer, the rest of the time is mild stress and contentedness with ones lot and working on my goals without pomp or self adulation.
Young adulthood is the harshest. Especially exiting the student’s world from the top and entering adult life as the bottom feeder. Hang in there until you succeed at one of the games: family, friends, work, wealth, workteam, Instagram, your rock band, company animal, NGO...
I've often wondered if happiness is something akin to grasping sand, that the harder we pursue it the more elusive it becomes and that rather we happen upon it as we try for things that are meaningful or even just being content with what is already.
There is a very long philosophical and artistic tradition that explores this exact concept.
Exactly, everyone acts like there is some grand plan/design to all decision making. Everyone is just winging it.
I felt that way about my own life. Still so sometimes. Though far, far less than I used to, and feeling noticeably less anxiety about it previously.
A Relevant bit of reading, I think, I hope: https://fs.blog/2014/05/hunter-s-thompson-to-hume-logan/
A Relevant bit of reading, I think, I hope: https://fs.blog/2014/05/hunter-s-thompson-to-hume-logan/
Yeah, this is a popular saying, but couldn’t be further from the truth for the most successful people.
Generally, they begin with an end in mind. It’s a lot easier to get where you’re going if you know where that is.
Or, as the Cheshire Cat says to Alice, “Which way should I go?” “Where do you want to go?” “I don’t much care.” “Then it doesn’t really matter.” (Abridged)
Generally, they begin with an end in mind. It’s a lot easier to get where you’re going if you know where that is.
Or, as the Cheshire Cat says to Alice, “Which way should I go?” “Where do you want to go?” “I don’t much care.” “Then it doesn’t really matter.” (Abridged)
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 $$$ investment do I need in order for my family to live off interest for Y years so I never work again? For me right now, $X is 5M and Y is 40 years.
2. What do I need to do right now in order to get closer to $X? Maybe it's "study computer engineering". Maybe it's "get a job in tech". Maybe it's "apply for a FAANG company". Maybe it's "Go for promo". Maybe it's "Add more to my retirement savings". Maybe it's even "Change my entire fucking career, I'm at a dead end." Whatever it is will be different for whatever stage of life I'm at.
3. If not at $X, GOTO 1.
4. Retire and do whatever I really want to do with my life.
That's pretty much it for my state machine. I wish I figured this out in my 20s--if I did, I'd be much closer to step 4 than I am now in my 40s.
1. Estimate $X: how much $$$ 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? Maybe it's "study computer engineering". Maybe it's "get a job in tech". Maybe it's "apply for a FAANG company". Maybe it's "Go for promo". Maybe it's "Add more to my retirement savings". Maybe it's even "Change my entire fucking career, I'm at a dead end." Whatever it is will be different for whatever stage of life I'm at.
3. If not at $X, GOTO 1.
4. Retire and do whatever I really want to do with my life.
That's pretty much it for my state machine. I wish I figured this out in my 20s--if I did, I'd be much closer to step 4 than I am now in my 40s.
I once read a book that described this line of thinking as the “deferred life plan”.[1]
At some level I think everyone is pushing some part of ‘what I really want to do’ to the future. I know I do. At the same time I think it’s important to remember to enjoy the years leading up to step 4, even if that makes the overall path less efficient.
1: the monk and the riddle
At some level I think everyone is pushing some part of ‘what I really want to do’ to the future. I know I do. At the same time I think it’s important to remember to enjoy the years leading up to step 4, even if that makes the overall path less efficient.
1: the monk and the riddle
> to live off interest for Y years
You don’t have to live off interest to retire. 4% withdrawal is good enough [1]. You might be lot closer to retirement than you think.
[1] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates
You don’t have to live off interest to retire. 4% withdrawal is good enough [1]. You might be lot closer to retirement than you think.
[1] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates
> 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.
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!
Yeah, this is a popular saying, but couldn’t be further from the truth for the most successful people.
Probably. What about the rest of us who aren't really looking to those people for any kind of framework? Part of the whole "thinking there's a grand narrative" that caused me anxiety was trying to model after all of these "successful" people, what they were doing, and realizing I wasn't any happier for it.
Lately, what's brought me a lot of calm wasn't the chase of an "end state" (so to speak) but more optimizing my path. That, personally, and only speaking personally has been INFINITELY more rewarding.
If that's the "it" factor, then so be it ;)
Probably. What about the rest of us who aren't really looking to those people for any kind of framework? Part of the whole "thinking there's a grand narrative" that caused me anxiety was trying to model after all of these "successful" people, what they were doing, and realizing I wasn't any happier for it.
Lately, what's brought me a lot of calm wasn't the chase of an "end state" (so to speak) but more optimizing my path. That, personally, and only speaking personally has been INFINITELY more rewarding.
If that's the "it" factor, then so be it ;)
I'm not sure the Cheshire Cat was really extolling the virtues of knowing where you want to get to.
By successful you probably mean in the monetary sense. I think it's easy when you choose that as your goal. Not everyone strives for that. Especially software engineers who have enough where it sometimes already feels like excess and going after more becomes less attractive.
> Yeah, this is a popular saying, but couldn’t be further from the truth for the most successful people.
Sergey and Larry tried to sell Google for 1 million dollars, and failed. Zuck thought Facebook would never be profitable. The idea that "successful people" have plan all along is fiction.
They might have a vision and are pursuing said vision, but things rarely turn out anywhere near the way they are intended.
Sergey and Larry tried to sell Google for 1 million dollars, and failed. Zuck thought Facebook would never be profitable. The idea that "successful people" have plan all along is fiction.
They might have a vision and are pursuing said vision, but things rarely turn out anywhere near the way they are intended.
I completely agree. I really like this article, which I felt like I could have written:
https://www.benkuhn.net/hard/
https://www.benkuhn.net/hard/
Thanks for sharing! That article is very good food for thought as a current student.
Great write up
>'I like coding and interesting problems'
From what I understand, after all the hullabaloos in interviewing, most programmers at these companies are assigned menial, boring maintenance code tasks all day.
From what I understand, after all the hullabaloos in interviewing, most programmers at these companies are assigned menial, boring maintenance code tasks all day.
Google has a ton of interesting work, but the worst engineers at Google don't get to do it and you are unlikely to get such a position as a new grad. But as long as you do good work you can easily switch to an interesting team after a year. And since the first year as a new grad you mostly learn the ropes how to design services, write tests, write readable code, deploy to production etc, so most things are interesting anyway.
This is not entirely true. Google doesn’t have enough interesting work for even its “better” engineers. Amount of hoops you have to jump to do any good work is enormous and it takes toll unless you’re in a really good org. It’s a good place to work but you’ll be lot less starry-eyed about Google once you cross your L5 promotion.
Also it’s entirely possible to land in a good team as a new-grad. Be a little picky during team selection.
Also it’s entirely possible to land in a good team as a new-grad. Be a little picky during team selection.
> it isn't so much a drive for prestige, but just a lack of other goals
Couldn't agree more. "Prestige" and the insecurity of people who seek it is the root of why people run the rat race. It is of course a race because we're pushing all our might in an effort to win.
Now I'm not against competitiveness, but if were talking 40+ hour weeks of 30+ years of grinding for this abstract concept of prestige, then it's pointless, and those people accruing checkboxes on their resume are running like lemmings off a cliff. It doesn't help that the chimp mind is wired to feel the pain of low status in the pecking order. But, living life to avoid that pain, through decades of work is just throwing your life away, the only life one gets to live, 90 mph off the cliff. This is why working too much is one of the biggest regrets of people on their deathbeds.
The people working for prestige, titles, paychecks, and status attainment without a larger idea of accomplishing something either for themselves or for the world really don't do anything, accrue far more security than needed, and waste away their time(decades of it) in insecurity, without actually doing anything, except maybe move forward the company agenda (talk about lack of identity, what was the definition of "cog in the wheel"?). No wonder they regret not living their life at 80. Because they haven't.
Couldn't agree more. "Prestige" and the insecurity of people who seek it is the root of why people run the rat race. It is of course a race because we're pushing all our might in an effort to win.
Now I'm not against competitiveness, but if were talking 40+ hour weeks of 30+ years of grinding for this abstract concept of prestige, then it's pointless, and those people accruing checkboxes on their resume are running like lemmings off a cliff. It doesn't help that the chimp mind is wired to feel the pain of low status in the pecking order. But, living life to avoid that pain, through decades of work is just throwing your life away, the only life one gets to live, 90 mph off the cliff. This is why working too much is one of the biggest regrets of people on their deathbeds.
The people working for prestige, titles, paychecks, and status attainment without a larger idea of accomplishing something either for themselves or for the world really don't do anything, accrue far more security than needed, and waste away their time(decades of it) in insecurity, without actually doing anything, except maybe move forward the company agenda (talk about lack of identity, what was the definition of "cog in the wheel"?). No wonder they regret not living their life at 80. Because they haven't.
> I don't think a lot of people know what they want.
I would go further: I think a lot of people don't know what they want.
I would go further: I think a lot of people don't know what they want.
And they sure as hell won’t know what they would have wanted to want in 20 years time.
That's the same thing
No it isn't, maybe python is clearer:
not think(many({
knowswhattheywant(p)
for p in people
}))
!=
think(many({
not knowswhattheywant(p)
for p in people
}))This just isn’t how the semantics of the English language work
The sentences have different meanings.
"I don't think a lot of people know what they want." -> I believe it is a rare trait in a person to know what they want.
"I think a lot of people don't know what they want." -> I believe it is a common trait for a person not to know what they want.
These things are not mutually exclusive nor mutually inclusive.
Lots of similar sounding statements are subtly different like this in English. "I am not happy" and "I am unhappy" have slightly different meanings as well.
"I don't think a lot of people know what they want." -> I believe it is a rare trait in a person to know what they want.
"I think a lot of people don't know what they want." -> I believe it is a common trait for a person not to know what they want.
These things are not mutually exclusive nor mutually inclusive.
Lots of similar sounding statements are subtly different like this in English. "I am not happy" and "I am unhappy" have slightly different meanings as well.
I find two things to disagree with in this article. First is the premise that equally high compensation is offered elsewhere in each industry. I don't know about finance or consulting, but at least for FAANG it doesn't seem to be true. Second is the overlooked explanation that it's headroom - not prestige - that accounts for the difference.
I'll provide an example that illustrates both points: me. When I went from Red Hat to Facebook, my already-pretty-good total compensation jumped by almost 50% - more considering how each company's stock performed during the relevant vesting periods. I'm pretty sure there were others around me who had been promoted from fresh-out to my nominal level in a quarter to a half the time it had taken me to build my career. Some of them were quite likely making even more than me despite their narrow experience and resulting unsuitability for the same role anywhere else (a topic for another time).
If my salary curve was a race car, theirs was a rocket ship. The FAANG compensation premium to start fresh out of college might be smaller, but the potential growth over the next several years is much greater than elsewhere in tech ... and yes, recruiters do use that as a lure. Given the uncertainty (and compensation inequity) at startups, working at a FAANG is the most likely route to early wealth for most techies.
Of course, you can also get rich early if you get to put FAANG on your resume and parlay that into an early-employee job at a startup that later hits it big. That's prestige at work but, looking at the attrition/retention rates at FAANG, it seems to be the less common route and therefore I'd guess it's the less common motive.
I'll provide an example that illustrates both points: me. When I went from Red Hat to Facebook, my already-pretty-good total compensation jumped by almost 50% - more considering how each company's stock performed during the relevant vesting periods. I'm pretty sure there were others around me who had been promoted from fresh-out to my nominal level in a quarter to a half the time it had taken me to build my career. Some of them were quite likely making even more than me despite their narrow experience and resulting unsuitability for the same role anywhere else (a topic for another time).
If my salary curve was a race car, theirs was a rocket ship. The FAANG compensation premium to start fresh out of college might be smaller, but the potential growth over the next several years is much greater than elsewhere in tech ... and yes, recruiters do use that as a lure. Given the uncertainty (and compensation inequity) at startups, working at a FAANG is the most likely route to early wealth for most techies.
Of course, you can also get rich early if you get to put FAANG on your resume and parlay that into an early-employee job at a startup that later hits it big. That's prestige at work but, looking at the attrition/retention rates at FAANG, it seems to be the less common route and therefore I'd guess it's the less common motive.
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 tech darlings are hiring consultants to help build corporate functions and product strategy — turns out there is significant value in knowing how to manage a company of 30,000+ employees and revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Even a fraction of a percent gain in efficiency translates to enormous sums, which the consultants capture some percentage of in fees. As the unicorns continue to evolve into mature enterprises, more of that value will shift into the consulting / finance realm.
If I were graduating in 2020, I would not go into tech as an engineer if my goal was to get wealthy. It’s still a great career and you’ll be able to live a very comfortable life regardless, but if building wealth is your goal you need to follow the prestige (aka political power).
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 tech darlings are hiring consultants to help build corporate functions and product strategy — turns out there is significant value in knowing how to manage a company of 30,000+ employees and revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Even a fraction of a percent gain in efficiency translates to enormous sums, which the consultants capture some percentage of in fees. As the unicorns continue to evolve into mature enterprises, more of that value will shift into the consulting / finance realm.
If I were graduating in 2020, I would not go into tech as an engineer if my goal was to get wealthy. It’s still a great career and you’ll be able to live a very comfortable life regardless, but if building wealth is your goal you need to follow the prestige (aka political power).
For the typical Harvard student, tech is better paying than consulting unless you are an extraordinarily successful consultant.
> It’s not uncommon for people in consulting to be making $500k-$1m annually by the age of 40
This is not "uncommon" in FANG either (just take a look at the salary charts), and if anything can be reached earlier.
> there was a golden era of startups capturing value from the old guard, but that era is largely over IMO
If I could take a bet against this, I would. That value capture is only going to increase.
> It’s not uncommon for people in consulting to be making $500k-$1m annually by the age of 40
This is not "uncommon" in FANG either (just take a look at the salary charts), and if anything can be reached earlier.
> there was a golden era of startups capturing value from the old guard, but that era is largely over IMO
If I could take a bet against this, I would. That value capture is only going to increase.
5 year EV is much lower in tech than finance for Harvard grads. I'm not sure ab consulting.
Consulting and tech have similar starting salaries, but consider finance/hedge fund engineer starting tc is about 3-4x tech for top 3 grads rn.
Consulting and tech have similar starting salaries, but consider finance/hedge fund engineer starting tc is about 3-4x tech for top 3 grads rn.
I would contend that 5 year EV is probably higher in tech than across all of finance unless you manage to get into only the MOST exclusive megafunds (Hellman-Friedman, Silver Lake, Bain Cap, or Apollo, as most are coming in as associates in 200-300k range) or exclusive HFs (Viking, Citadel, Elliot) and even then, you're usually on a 2 year contract or up-or-out plans. The HFs will need to see you perform well to get anything more than base and your bonus (the chunk of how you get comped) will be at the discretion of your manager anyway.
> 5 year EV is much lower in tech than finance for Harvard grads. I'm not sure ab consulting.
Based on what? This is not true in my experience, unless you're comparing finance tech to FANG tech, in which case it is true. Moreover, at Harvard, some segment of those who go into finance are "connected" with higher paying finance jobs due to their parents/etc.
Consulting salaries are lower (sometimes substantially) than tech starting salaries.
Based on what? This is not true in my experience, unless you're comparing finance tech to FANG tech, in which case it is true. Moreover, at Harvard, some segment of those who go into finance are "connected" with higher paying finance jobs due to their parents/etc.
Consulting salaries are lower (sometimes substantially) than tech starting salaries.
Yeah, tech has a starting salary advantage but FAANG just doesn't compare on the upside. What's the top 10% of FAANG outcomes (for Harvard grads) after 5 years? 500k, maybe? The jump to MD in finance makes 1M+ something like 10-20% of outcomes (for Harvard grads) after 10 years. I'd be very surprised if it were that common in tech (over the next 10 years, I know that it was better in the 2000s). I think quickest to MD at Goldman was 4 years.
Top 10% of FAANG is, what, around 30K-40K in raw numbers? What's the top 10% in Big Finance? I'd bet it's far lower number compared to that. So it's not apples to apples comparison. If you compare what top 10,000 FAANG engineers make 10 years into their careers vs what top 10,000 finance folks make 10 years into theirs, I'm pretty sure FAANG will come out ahead.
(for Harvard grads) is the important part there.
Is it because they have ‘Harvard’ on their resumes or is it that Harvard still admits mostly some of the smartest and most driven people in the country? Ie could a person who is in the top 2% of a flagship state school keep up with the top 10% Harvard grad or is that name on their resume forever going to hold them back?
> could a person who is in the top 2% of a flagship state school keep up with the top 10% Harvard grad or is that name on their resume forever going to hold them back?
If it's a good flagship, absolutely can keep up.
If it's a good flagship, absolutely can keep up.
But finance is up and out. The typical Harvard student in finance is not making that much, even 5 years out. I know plenty of them.
I needed to rewrite this. I mean something like if I select an individual, uniformly at random, after conditioning on industry and Harvard degree I would expect the salaries of most of the individuals in both industries to be about the same. However, I think tech is closer to a normal distribution and finance is heavy-tailed around tech's mean.
If you do something like conditioning on a CS degree, finance probably mops the floor w/ tech.
If you do something like conditioning on a CS degree, finance probably mops the floor w/ tech.
> If I could take a bet against this, I would
Can't you, by starting or (much less favorably) joining a startup?
Can't you, by starting or (much less favorably) joining a startup?
Betting on technology capturing value in general over "jack-of-all-trades" consultancy vs. betting on one particular startup capturing value.
However, isn't quality of life as a junior hire in both finance and consulting much worse than in tech? Every Goldman or McKinsey hire I know was worked like a dog for their first ten years, while at a FAANG you can generally work 9-5 and still have a pretty successful career.
I started comparing the (expected) hourly salaries precisely for this problem: somebody earning twice your salary stops being relevant once you know they work three times the hours.
Obviously there are other components as well (how much you travel, being on call...), but that already captures a lot of what's commonly missing in salary discussions.
Obviously there are other components as well (how much you travel, being on call...), but that already captures a lot of what's commonly missing in salary discussions.
It is not uncommon for people in technology to be making $500k-$1m annually by 30, and the lifestyle is much better if you have outside commitments.
It's extremely uncommon, actually, outside of FAANG. I wouldn't say it's uncommon in FAANG, but it also isn't commonplace enough to be completely unremarkable.
You’re making a big bet on equity appreciation though. That’s how the vast majority of very highly paid folks in tech make their money. The consulting jobs pay it in cash.
It's not worth the hit to quality of life, in my opinion. It's much easier to plan trips or visit with my friends in tech than the ones in finance. Live to work vs work to live scenario.
The consulting total income figures quoted by the person I was responding to almost certainly include a large bonus which I'd guess is correlated with, if not as volatile as, large cap tech equity returns.
FANG equities don't require making any "bets". They're as good as cash.
FANG equities won't dissolve into thin air from one day to another unlike startup equities, and you get hard RSUs instead of options from an "option pool" that's arbitrarily diluted, but do you know how many percent your FANG equity will increase in value by the time it's vested? That's the bet you are doing. It's not a rigged bet, plenty of people were quite happy this year by the TINA craze buyers pushing tech stock, but it's still a bet.
You don't need luck though, even with no stock appreciation at all you make over $300k a year as a senior engineer at Google. The high salaries you see are mostly without extreme stock value changes.
> without extreme stock value changes.
That's the point, you don't know whether there will be any. So they are definitely not "as good as cash". Just because they aren't lottery tickets doesn't mean they are equivalent to cash.
That's the point, you don't know whether there will be any. So they are definitely not "as good as cash". Just because they aren't lottery tickets doesn't mean they are equivalent to cash.
You are much more likely to get fired and lose all your income than for the stock to lose that much value, so the difference in risk between stock and cash is therefore minimal.
Edit: Just to clarify, $300k as a senior engineer is without any stock appreciation at all. I made $250k as one step below senior without any stock appreciation at all. My point about significant stock changes is for significant stock changes downwards, meaning if the Google stock somehow lost 50% of their value or something like that.
Edit: Just to clarify, $300k as a senior engineer is without any stock appreciation at all. I made $250k as one step below senior without any stock appreciation at all. My point about significant stock changes is for significant stock changes downwards, meaning if the Google stock somehow lost 50% of their value or something like that.
> My point about significant stock changes is for significant stock changes downwards
My point was a more holistic view. It's great that there is a 95% chance that your stock RSUs will increase. But if there is a 90% chance that within 3 years it's a 15% increase or more, you should rather use the 15% increased figure for calculation instead. And then the risk is much higher because it's not just stock not going down, but stock not going up as quickly as it did before.
My point was a more holistic view. It's great that there is a 95% chance that your stock RSUs will increase. But if there is a 90% chance that within 3 years it's a 15% increase or more, you should rather use the 15% increased figure for calculation instead. And then the risk is much higher because it's not just stock not going down, but stock not going up as quickly as it did before.
But I use the 0% figure, so it is how much the company paid and not how much I get. If you count stock appreciation then a simple senior engineer can make 400-500k or more, but people don't really count that.
IDK for me personally that's the metric I'd use when comparing jobs/careers. From your statements alone, it can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in difference. That's not something to gloss over.
Are you assuming you make L6 IC/Manager by 30? Realistic, but not everyone does it.
The type of person who makes partner at Bain / BCG / McKinsey
or their botique equivalents can definitely have that kind of trajectory in a technology company.
Consulting in particular really depends on the company. The big 4 will grind you to the bone, but boutiques often pay better and have much more reasonable expectations of time commitment. I don’t see consulting ever going back to the weekly travel model, and during the pandemic I work maybe 30 hours a week while pulling in the salary I do. Most of my work involves going to meetings, understanding complex business architecture and providing advice around niche topics while working within the politics of a various org. Pulling in a salary+bonus in this range with very little risk on my part.
How would a software engineer/previously small startup 'CTO' get into consulting like this?
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.
A good MBA program will help you develop those exact connections the parent comment mentions
My experience has been that it’s a lot more gatekeeping than networking to the extent that I’ve seen banks move away from requiring it.
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 at age 30?
> 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.
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.
How much of this compensation is equity appreciation? Is it realistic to expect this 10 years from now?
Not like interest rates can get lower or search could get less competitive.
Not like interest rates can get lower or search could get less competitive.
I also work in consulting and think it's a bad comparison. At the top levels of consulting most of your job and a good portion of your comp are tied up in sales/profitability, and client/account management with a pretty crappy lifestyle and work/life balance to match. It's significantly more grueling and less of a "coast to riches" path by far than big tech, although you're right that take-home comp can definitely be higher if the aforementioned job type is up your alley.
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.
Ok let's suppose that consulting salaires hit $1M by age 40. What fraction of new hires make senior consultant? Partner?
If your firm is operating on leverage of 20:1, sure you can make $2-20M annually. But, realistically, what are your odds on the margin of making partner 25 years down the road?
If your firm is operating on leverage of 20:1, sure you can make $2-20M annually. But, realistically, what are your odds on the margin of making partner 25 years down the road?
What's the stress level like to get there? WLB?
I don’t know why the article’s author thinks prestige is about anything other than money/power (for the population as a whole).
People would rather work at FAANG than Stripe because FAANG will get you a lot more pay and connections. And people know that, so they will value people from FAANG for it. But it comes from the root fact that FAANG makes a ton of net income per employee, same as some finance/consulting firms, and that net income is more attributable to you specifically, rather than say someone at General Mills.
People would rather work at FAANG than Stripe because FAANG will get you a lot more pay and connections. And people know that, so they will value people from FAANG for it. But it comes from the root fact that FAANG makes a ton of net income per employee, same as some finance/consulting firms, and that net income is more attributable to you specifically, rather than say someone at General Mills.
I have no idea how Stripe became the low paying non prestigious startup job in this conversation. They are a big prestigious company that pays a ton and is soon to IPO. I actually consider Stripe to be FAANG as far as the original acronym was for stocks but in practice is for “high paying prestigious tech companies.”
A better pick for “non prestigious but good company “ might be Khan Academy, which has an amazing service with great engineers but as far as I know doesn’t make or pay a ton.
A better pick for “non prestigious but good company “ might be Khan Academy, which has an amazing service with great engineers but as far as I know doesn’t make or pay a ton.
The article points out that while Stripe is considered prestigious in the Valley, it is not considered prestigious by the Harvard undergraduates the author spoke to.
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Yup, every cs majors I know think super highly of Stripe. I don't know what students the author is talking to.
Khan Academy is sought after in the cs student community as well. although won't be first choice for many.
Khan Academy is sought after in the cs student community as well. although won't be first choice for many.
Why? It’s a payment processor so there is little reason to know of it compared to the other FAANG companies.
Facebook has a quarter of the worlds population active on it.
Google has most of the search and is responsible for Android, which is the most popular mobile OS in the world.
Amazon broad cloud computing mainstream and now controls a huge chunk of the world compute because of it.
Apple effectively defined the smartphone era.
Netflix is like 60% of all of the Internet traffic and made legitimate streaming a thing.
Stripe... is an easier to use PayPal?
Facebook has a quarter of the worlds population active on it.
Google has most of the search and is responsible for Android, which is the most popular mobile OS in the world.
Amazon broad cloud computing mainstream and now controls a huge chunk of the world compute because of it.
Apple effectively defined the smartphone era.
Netflix is like 60% of all of the Internet traffic and made legitimate streaming a thing.
Stripe... is an easier to use PayPal?
You mean like knowledge of Stripe at all?
It is popular among highly motivated students.
It is less mainstream so exclusivity increases the demand factor.
Amazon's work culture is not very positively seen. Facebook's product is often seen negatively upon although not that much. Google is seen positively.
Some of it is tied into recruiting as well. Apple has a very opaque intern and new grad recruiting process. Netflix simply doesn't hire SWE interns and newgrads.
For Stripe, Presumed High caliber engineering colleagues (party due to size and growth), especially because there is a lot of hype for Stripe and its documentation and process among tech professionals.
High potential for stocks rising at IPO, like Snowflake (although there seems to a value cap) so kids are not as excited about it as Databricks.
It is less mainstream so exclusivity increases the demand factor.
Amazon's work culture is not very positively seen. Facebook's product is often seen negatively upon although not that much. Google is seen positively.
Some of it is tied into recruiting as well. Apple has a very opaque intern and new grad recruiting process. Netflix simply doesn't hire SWE interns and newgrads.
For Stripe, Presumed High caliber engineering colleagues (party due to size and growth), especially because there is a lot of hype for Stripe and its documentation and process among tech professionals.
High potential for stocks rising at IPO, like Snowflake (although there seems to a value cap) so kids are not as excited about it as Databricks.
>Yup, every cs majors I know think super highly of Stripe
Also wondering, why?
A 2.6+% merchant fee payment processor?
Also wondering, why?
A 2.6+% merchant fee payment processor?
As a place to work at. Presumed High caliber engineering colleagues (party due to size and growth), especially because there is a lot of hype for Stripe and its documentation and process among tech professionals.
High potential for stocks rising at IPO, like Snowflake (although there seems to a value cap) so kids are not as excited about it as Databricks.
High potential for stocks rising at IPO, like Snowflake (although there seems to a value cap) so kids are not as excited about it as Databricks.
Prestige is definitely not just connected to money/power. I've worked at a scientific institute and worked on satellites. Invariably, this entry on my perceived as prestigious by recruiters, parents, friends, acquaintances et cetera.
that’s not true at all. i’ve worked at fang. google for instance pays a lot less than stripe or pinterest or snapchat etc. people specifically work there for the prestige and not the compensation
> People would rather work at FAANG than Stripe because FAANG will get you a lot more pay and connections
Pshh what? You work at FANG and think this?
Pshh what? You work at FANG and think this?
I think Stripe is one of the few bad examples they could have picked to compare against FAANG. Among late-stage startups, it seems highly regarded and its employees' options are likely to hold real value in the not-so-distant future.
But generally I think the OP is correct: working for FAANG has made many, many people far more money over the past decade than they would have otherwise made on average in a startup.
I suspect that eventually the tide will turn, as it always does. The companies will get middle-manager bloat, MBAs and accountants start pinching pennies, systems get dragged down in technical debt, and more nimble competitors eventually outcompete. But we're not there yet.
But generally I think the OP is correct: working for FAANG has made many, many people far more money over the past decade than they would have otherwise made on average in a startup.
I suspect that eventually the tide will turn, as it always does. The companies will get middle-manager bloat, MBAs and accountants start pinching pennies, systems get dragged down in technical debt, and more nimble competitors eventually outcompete. But we're not there yet.
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.
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.
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.
A word about what? Their salaries are certainly competitive with, if not higher paying than, Google and Stripe's are objectively higher.
Not according to public info. When I left Google an L5 was commonly clearing 500k in liquid comp. Airbnb and WeWork weren’t even close and that was before the implosions.
airbnb pays a lot more than google lol. and they are actually doing great now despite layoffs at the realllt beginning of covid
I work in finance. The “Goldman discount” is well known. People will accept lower comp for that brand on their resume. Otherwise, the places you can really make the most money are at small private firms without public shareholders. There are so many cash machines out there with very little public scrutiny.
I work in HFT and my experience is like yours: the most well known firms pay the least. Right now I'm at a very small prop firm as a partner and compensation is much greater than I would have gotten at Jane St, Citadel, etc.
Generally people only seek at prestigious firms like Goldman early in their career and switch over to more obscure but lucrative opportunities: prop firms, pe, hf, etc.
Generally people only seek at prestigious firms like Goldman early in their career and switch over to more obscure but lucrative opportunities: prop firms, pe, hf, etc.
Wait a second, am I missing out right now? I have an opportunity at Jane Street, but I haven't been exposed to any of the other small name firms. Where do I look to find the higher paying jobs?
If you're early in your career, then you should probably just take the Jane St opportunity. They are very well respected and it looks very good on your resume.
If you're later in your career, you should have enough contacts and know enough people to get in the door at a small firm. If you don't know their name, you'll have a hard time getting in. These kinds of places don't post job openings on indeed. You kind of have to know someone.
If you're later in your career, you should have enough contacts and know enough people to get in the door at a small firm. If you don't know their name, you'll have a hard time getting in. These kinds of places don't post job openings on indeed. You kind of have to know someone.
One of the first things you might notice in some of the job ads for those firms: instead of "Compensation: competitive salary, 0.0x% equity," you'll start seeing phrases like "extremely high compensation." Then you'll start really feeling like you're not in Kansas.
In this vein, the tech industry screws its employees as far as their share of revenue-per-employee goes. Apple makes 10x per employee what Jane St. does, and I doubt the small firms achieve the difference.
In this vein, the tech industry screws its employees as far as their share of revenue-per-employee goes. Apple makes 10x per employee what Jane St. does, and I doubt the small firms achieve the difference.
the joke goes that finance firms are employee run co-ops. And for the most part it's true: you end up keeping quite a high percentage of the money you earn for the firm. Profits are paid out to everyone, not just a few at the top.
From someone working at Jane Street, Apple definitely does not make 10x per employee what Jane Street does.
These numbers are easy to find, but sure, let's break out our calculators. By recent generic numbers, Jane street does $171MM revenues across 900 employees. Apple has $274B revenues across 137,000 heads.
$190,000 vs. $2,000,000. Netflix is even higher: $2.4MM. What numbers do you have?
$190,000 vs. $2,000,000. Netflix is even higher: $2.4MM. What numbers do you have?
Your Jane Street numbers are not even close. They're required to report this stuff in the UK, which shows revenues of $229MM (see https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...). And that's just the UK revenue - most of the business is in the US. I would estimate closer to $1MM/head.
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Profit matters, not revenue.
Where do you think most revenue goes? Employees.
Depends on the company. For example most of Walmart's revenue goes to buying goods to sell. Apple sells physical products and hence will spend a lot of money acquiring the physical parts etc, you can't really compare their revenue to for examples Facebooks revenue.
Comparing revenue between industries is nonsense. Profit says something.
RenenTech?
I wish I knew this coming out of school. I think this is also another reason why people prefer prestigious schools. Those who own and operate these cash machines tend to send their children to elite schools.
I can't even begin to count the number of people I've met at Stanford whose parents own "X," where X is a little publicized, privately held business with >$10M in revenues.
I can't even begin to count the number of people I've met at Stanford whose parents own "X," where X is a little publicized, privately held business with >$10M in revenues.
In general though from what I read on hn I get the impression that it sucks to be an early employee at most startups, especially early stage. From what I've read a lot of compensation seems to be in equity and not cash, and unless it takes off like faang, you end up severely ubderpaid relative to what you could be making
> it sucks to be an early employee at most startups
Absolutely. I worked at ten, with employee numbers from single digits up to about fifty. As we all know, most startups fail. Even among those that succeed, few employees avoid all of the traps that founders and VCs create for them (e.g. dilution and special share classes) to get more than a modest payout at the exit. For most, even that "big payout" might not match the year-after-year premium they could have gotten by working and climbing the ladder at one of the already-big tech companies.
As one point of evidence, my two semi-successful exits did help me retire earlier and in more comfort than I otherwise might have. I'm grateful for that. OTOH, my three and a half undistinguished years at Facebook helped more.
Absolutely. I worked at ten, with employee numbers from single digits up to about fifty. As we all know, most startups fail. Even among those that succeed, few employees avoid all of the traps that founders and VCs create for them (e.g. dilution and special share classes) to get more than a modest payout at the exit. For most, even that "big payout" might not match the year-after-year premium they could have gotten by working and climbing the ladder at one of the already-big tech companies.
As one point of evidence, my two semi-successful exits did help me retire earlier and in more comfort than I otherwise might have. I'm grateful for that. OTOH, my three and a half undistinguished years at Facebook helped more.
> I get the impression that it sucks to be an early employee at most startups,
Depends what you want. I had a guy work for us at my first startup: he was employee #6 and once we got to about 13 or 15 he decided it was time to move on. I was surprised, but he felt the business was just too big for him. And indeed I've looked at his career over the ensuing years and he's worked for some amazing companies...always just for a year or so and always when they were very tiny. Sometimes I noticed he'd worked with the same people, so he wasn't leaving because he was a poor performer (we missed him) but simply because that's what he liked.
Depends what you want. I had a guy work for us at my first startup: he was employee #6 and once we got to about 13 or 15 he decided it was time to move on. I was surprised, but he felt the business was just too big for him. And indeed I've looked at his career over the ensuing years and he's worked for some amazing companies...always just for a year or so and always when they were very tiny. Sometimes I noticed he'd worked with the same people, so he wasn't leaving because he was a poor performer (we missed him) but simply because that's what he liked.
You're basically saying the equity is too low. Any decent exit would make the founders and investors a lot of money. If they wanted to motivate employees to make that happen, equity needs to be good enough to make the employee a lot too. Instead it tends to be much closer to a token amount to check the box, taking advantage of the fact that you can't easily assess its value.
It doesn't matter how much equity you have if it never ends up being worth anything.
I find it surprising that people still consider FAANG prestigious, given that these companies collectively have probably 1-200,000 engineers in their employ. Even if they managed to perfectly select for the cream of the crop (they don't), that still has to be like 10-20% of all programmers/engineers in the US. Being top 20% isn't that impressive, and in reality they're probably mostly hiring from the top 30-40%.
You’re looking at the wrong pool of potential employees. On my team of ~40 people, I am the only one who was born in the U.S. They hire from all over the world and will pay what’s necessary to import top talent from other countries.
Also, 200,000 sounds way too high for total number of technical positions at these companies. There are a very large number of people working non-technical jobs there as well.
Also, 200,000 sounds way too high for total number of technical positions at these companies. There are a very large number of people working non-technical jobs there as well.
Yeah, that's something that I have been a bit confused on too. People talk about how hard it is and the "prestige", but there are 20k+ other engineers who did the same thing (at your company alone!). It's really not all that impressive.
The relevant metric would be the ratio of how many got the position to how many wanted it.
Not really - that would inflate how impressive it is, because the bottom, say, 80% of the talent pool applies to avg 100 companies whereas the top 20% applies to avg 5 companies, so the number of talented applicants to a given company is very small. Just because you hire top 1% of people who apply to your company doesn't mean you hire top 1% of devs (even if your company is getting the best average applicants).
There are amorphous borders between programmer, developer, and software engineer, but there are roughly ~4 million "programmers/engineers" in the USA. So call it ~5%?
I personally would consider top 5 percent of any task to be the low bar of proficiency, so even that doesn't seem super impressive to me. But damn, the jobs pay well and wlb can be great (or terrible). I guess the weird part is that the process of getting hired is so different than the day to day work.
> I personally would consider top 5 percent of any task to be the low bar of proficiency, so even that doesn't seem super impressive to me.
Top 5% among paid professionals is your low bar of proficiency?
Top 5% among paid professionals is your low bar of proficiency?
I would keep in mind that FAANG likely has a much higher percentage of international students and workers, which skews things a bit. It's definitely taking the top talent from all over the world, versus your small web shop in Cleveland, Ohio, hiring whoever it can get.
they're hiring the 40%-15% band. Top top band does not sling java for a living. Maybe there are some top programmers in the R&D orgs in areas like ML where the startup/resource costs are out of reach of an indie
Top 20% of one of the most intellectually challenging jobs in America, also if you exclude Amazon it is not 20%.
I really wouldn't consider most programming to be intellectually challenging. Certainly, most FAANG devs don't feel challenged in the least bit.
Exclude Amazon? What?
Big size, low barrier to entry (especially at SDE-1 level)
Source: work at Amazon
Source: work at Amazon
I'm also an SDE1 at Amazon and find this extremely insulting, what the hell man
> find this extremely insulting, what the hell man
I find it somewhat astonishing that you would be extremely insulted by the exclusion of your employer from some arbitrary acronym.
It's well known that Amazon hiring standards are the lowest of FAANG, just like G's hiring standards are lower than N (as a whole). That doesn't mean that everyone who is an SDE1 at Amazon is less talented than everyone who is an L3 at Google, it's just different means.
I find it somewhat astonishing that you would be extremely insulted by the exclusion of your employer from some arbitrary acronym.
It's well known that Amazon hiring standards are the lowest of FAANG, just like G's hiring standards are lower than N (as a whole). That doesn't mean that everyone who is an SDE1 at Amazon is less talented than everyone who is an L3 at Google, it's just different means.
The whole 20% comment makes me think you’re being a little disingenuous about the idea that we are not less talented.
I am not being at all disingenuous in any of the statements I'm making.
The "20% comment" was the one above me, I was just responding to it.
The average Amazon engineer is less talented than the average Google engineer. That is what I was saying. I wasn't making any claim about how talented you are or aren't!
The "20% comment" was the one above me, I was just responding to it.
The average Amazon engineer is less talented than the average Google engineer. That is what I was saying. I wasn't making any claim about how talented you are or aren't!
He doesn't understand stats. Don't worry about it.
The exclude amazon is the issue - I’m sorry but do you not see the contradiction in the last 3 sentences? When you make broad generalizations like that you’re also broadly calling people like me lesser. You realize that right?
Do you even math ? That's not how on average works ?
How is it not how an average works? They haven't exactly demonstrated that the average is lowered by significantly less talent on the low end, so I'm here assuming they mean everyone at Amazon is just slightly less talented. Any other view is just charity.
It's insulting, and I'm glad they were downvoted for it.
It's insulting, and I'm glad they were downvoted for it.
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This article briefly touches the real explanation:
> When we listen to prestige, we're often opting for a path of certainty, while foregoing whatever promising thing was just around the corner.
But it doesn't quite dwell on it as the important component of the answer that it truly is. Prestige and credentialism certainly have to do with peer pressure, but they also have a lot to do with risk reduction. And this is true on both sides of the equation.
If your job is to obtain a top 0.01% quality engineer, should you just hire from a top tier university? Probably not. That's not to say that a top 0.01% engineer wouldn't go to a top tier university. They well might. But it's not a very strong filter for that level of quality. What it is, however, is a very strong filter for say, top 30% quality.
When you hire from a top tier university, you aren't getting the very best. What you are getting is a very strong guarantee that someone is at least a certain level of quality. A Harvard or Stanford degree most certainly does not guarantee excellence. But it does guarantee a minimum standard of competence and work ethic. When you hire from one of these places, you can be reasonably certain that you are not hiring the human equivalent of a lemon.
The same is true on the flip side for an employee seeking jobs. If you go work at FAANG, one of the big three consulting firms, or Goldman, you are almost certainly not choosing the absolute best possible career path at that moment for yourself. What you are doing is selecting a career path that will be very good, with very high certainty.
In finance terms, these choices are optimal, because they maximize the Sharpe ratio of your career/hiring process. That is, they maximize the risk-adjusted return of your decisions. People who go to top tier universities have already demonstrated a preference for a lower risk path in life.
> When we listen to prestige, we're often opting for a path of certainty, while foregoing whatever promising thing was just around the corner.
But it doesn't quite dwell on it as the important component of the answer that it truly is. Prestige and credentialism certainly have to do with peer pressure, but they also have a lot to do with risk reduction. And this is true on both sides of the equation.
If your job is to obtain a top 0.01% quality engineer, should you just hire from a top tier university? Probably not. That's not to say that a top 0.01% engineer wouldn't go to a top tier university. They well might. But it's not a very strong filter for that level of quality. What it is, however, is a very strong filter for say, top 30% quality.
When you hire from a top tier university, you aren't getting the very best. What you are getting is a very strong guarantee that someone is at least a certain level of quality. A Harvard or Stanford degree most certainly does not guarantee excellence. But it does guarantee a minimum standard of competence and work ethic. When you hire from one of these places, you can be reasonably certain that you are not hiring the human equivalent of a lemon.
The same is true on the flip side for an employee seeking jobs. If you go work at FAANG, one of the big three consulting firms, or Goldman, you are almost certainly not choosing the absolute best possible career path at that moment for yourself. What you are doing is selecting a career path that will be very good, with very high certainty.
In finance terms, these choices are optimal, because they maximize the Sharpe ratio of your career/hiring process. That is, they maximize the risk-adjusted return of your decisions. People who go to top tier universities have already demonstrated a preference for a lower risk path in life.
This is a fantastic insight! I had never considered the Sharpe ratio of my career choices before, but I think subconsciously, I have been all along.
As someone without a prestigious university reputation (or accompanying network) backing me, I think I've really prioritized stability and low risk (but pretty good) move for my career.
As someone without a prestigious university reputation (or accompanying network) backing me, I think I've really prioritized stability and low risk (but pretty good) move for my career.
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-stage startups do not hire as many new grads, nor do they have as large of hiring pools. They're going to have an obviously larger impact on the sorts of jobs people discuss.
The same thing with GS, Jane Street, or Citadel, because they actively recruit at Harvard through on-campus recruiting and hire a comparatively large portion of Harvard graduates.
This is related to the other reason that companies like Google are talked about much more than mid-stage startups: 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. And places like McKinsey or Bain basically hire many students so they can tell clients they have a team of Harvard grads working on the problem.
> they assume their intelligence insulates them from peer pressure.
If you come into Harvard with this notion, I can't really see how you stay with it after your first recruiting/punch season. And, honestly, Harvard undergrads aren't that smart.
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-stage startups do not hire as many new grads, nor do they have as large of hiring pools. They're going to have an obviously larger impact on the sorts of jobs people discuss.
The same thing with GS, Jane Street, or Citadel, because they actively recruit at Harvard through on-campus recruiting and hire a comparatively large portion of Harvard graduates.
This is related to the other reason that companies like Google are talked about much more than mid-stage startups: 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. And places like McKinsey or Bain basically hire many students so they can tell clients they have a team of Harvard grads working on the problem.
> they assume their intelligence insulates them from peer pressure.
If you come into Harvard with this notion, I can't really see how you stay with it after your first recruiting/punch season. And, honestly, Harvard undergrads aren't that smart.
> 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.
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.
I don't think this is inconsistent with what I'm saying.
>Google > Stripe is not because Stripe is not prestigious (it obviously is, and plenty of super talented students go there).
I think Google is a pretty clear step above Stripe. They have legitimately changed the world and billions of people use their products. Stripe is a payment processing firm. A very successful one, but ultimately a pretty boring b2b business. Im not sure anyone would really miss it if it were gone.
I think Google is a pretty clear step above Stripe. They have legitimately changed the world and billions of people use their products. Stripe is a payment processing firm. A very successful one, but ultimately a pretty boring b2b business. Im not sure anyone would really miss it if it were gone.
It's hard to argue against what Google has accomplished in the last 20 years. But in my Bay Area social circle, working at Stripe is considered more prestigious. These days Google is big, boring, bureaucratic, and maybe a little evil. Stripe is successful, growing, pays at least comparably well and has way more potential financial upside. They're also known to have a high hiring bar and a great dev culture. I've heard nothing but good things about the company or the people who work there.
- an ex-Googler with friends at Stripe
- an ex-Googler with friends at Stripe
I've always perceived working in finance/payment infrastructure as more "evil" than ad-tech. Is that not the general perception?
What's evil about helping consenting adults transmit money?
Stripe isn't a monopoly like Visa.
Stripe isn't a monopoly like Visa.
Google has changed the world, and it likely will change it in the future, but will you get the job that does the changing, or will you just end up working on a project that's going to be cancelled in 3 years because it only attracted hundreds of millions of people instead of billions?
It's definitely easier for large, profitable companies to take on the risk and training cost of interns and new grads.
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 big tech company you've heard of (but definitely not a FAANG), and I understand now. The professionalism, the thoughtfulness, ownership, and output they expect.. it really is another level from just showing up at work every day. I'm not saying 60 hour weeks, I'm just saying the caliber of work and collaboration. The job titles really are "worth" more than at the average company.
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 big tech company you've heard of (but definitely not a FAANG), and I understand now. The professionalism, the thoughtfulness, ownership, and output they expect.. it really is another level from just showing up at work every day. I'm not saying 60 hour weeks, I'm just saying the caliber of work and collaboration. The job titles really are "worth" more than at the average company.
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.
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.
This essay is weakened significantly by one glaring clanger. If this person had equal levels of talent and yet wasn’t from the place they are, they would never make the foolish statement: “exposure to prestige can't make you successful any more than spending time around rich people can make you wealthy”.
Apart from that I think they’ve got some of the causality the wrong way around. Consulting and finance are not buying excellence, they’re buying prestige. If you become excellent, no-one in top tier FTC will care, except maybe the T strand of that. F and C never wanted your excellence, they wanted to use your prestige as a cover for extracting large fees from high net worth individuals and companies respectively. The T strand is interesting, because the value of your prestige here isn’t to the company as a whole, but rather this is just another high net worth company you as an individual can target to extract high fees from using prestige as your weapon.
So if you’re an Ivy league grad, generally your most valuable asset is your prestige, not your skill. You can make an entire career based on being prestigious, so long as you’re careful not to dilute it. And this is why T is grouped with F and C: if you take a career inside top tier FTC, you maintain your prestige, outside it you dilute your prestige, and therefore dilute your most valuable asset.
The point that he’s missing is that Ivy league grads are not the top students. They are the most prestigious students. The top students in terms of excellence are scattered around the country/world and most come from universities you’ve never heard of. And will hopefully succeed by sheer excellence. And companies that hire these students will rise, and companies that hire prestigious students over the excellent students will fall (unless their business model is based on the projection of prestige).
So he doesn’t need to worry about the future. The future is fine. Him and his classmates were never the future, except for the future of extracting large fees from high net worth individuals and companies.
All that said, it’s nothing but great if he’s deciding to start playing the excellence game and stop playing the prestige game. I just think he’ll be surprised at how close to zero he’s located at within that game if he starts playing it in earnest.
Apart from that I think they’ve got some of the causality the wrong way around. Consulting and finance are not buying excellence, they’re buying prestige. If you become excellent, no-one in top tier FTC will care, except maybe the T strand of that. F and C never wanted your excellence, they wanted to use your prestige as a cover for extracting large fees from high net worth individuals and companies respectively. The T strand is interesting, because the value of your prestige here isn’t to the company as a whole, but rather this is just another high net worth company you as an individual can target to extract high fees from using prestige as your weapon.
So if you’re an Ivy league grad, generally your most valuable asset is your prestige, not your skill. You can make an entire career based on being prestigious, so long as you’re careful not to dilute it. And this is why T is grouped with F and C: if you take a career inside top tier FTC, you maintain your prestige, outside it you dilute your prestige, and therefore dilute your most valuable asset.
The point that he’s missing is that Ivy league grads are not the top students. They are the most prestigious students. The top students in terms of excellence are scattered around the country/world and most come from universities you’ve never heard of. And will hopefully succeed by sheer excellence. And companies that hire these students will rise, and companies that hire prestigious students over the excellent students will fall (unless their business model is based on the projection of prestige).
So he doesn’t need to worry about the future. The future is fine. Him and his classmates were never the future, except for the future of extracting large fees from high net worth individuals and companies.
All that said, it’s nothing but great if he’s deciding to start playing the excellence game and stop playing the prestige game. I just think he’ll be surprised at how close to zero he’s located at within that game if he starts playing it in earnest.
>So he doesn’t need to worry about the future. The future is fine. Him and his classmates were never the future, except for the future of extracting large fees from high net worth individuals and companies.
Excellent insight
Excellent insight
I think this is overly cynical. These prestige firms do legitimately expose you to the tops of the fields. You will gain experience that you would be hard pressed to get elsewhere.
I would say just because you work at a FAANG company doesn't necessarily imply all you care about is prestige. Most of the people that I worked with at those companies didn't seem interested in the prestige of the role at all. They were passionate about growing as engineers and continuing to master their craft. When they left they often left to take on larger roles at much smaller companies. You could argue that they worked at X company to get it on their resume, but working with these people, it really didn't feel that way. It seemed more like they were learning how things were done at established "premium" companies, to then go take on similar work at a foundational level at a smaller company.
You could argue that by valuing prestige, you end up devaluing perfectly good candidates, but at the end of the day you need to have _some_ heuristic to help filter the amount of resumes/candidates you consider. Companies like triplebyte, interviewing.io, etc are trying to change this by trying to determine your actual skills vs your resume, but currently I haven't heard of many better alternatives.
You could argue that by valuing prestige, you end up devaluing perfectly good candidates, but at the end of the day you need to have _some_ heuristic to help filter the amount of resumes/candidates you consider. Companies like triplebyte, interviewing.io, etc are trying to change this by trying to determine your actual skills vs your resume, but currently I haven't heard of many better alternatives.
My life is the living playbook of pursuing prestige. Went to Harvard, then consulting, then big tech. Initial pride quickly gave way to disillusionment at every step of the way.
Yes, there are people who genuinely enjoy these positions. But they are truly few and far between. The more in demand a position is, the less pressure the employer has to actually make it a fulfilling experience.
To be fulfilled, we often have to unlearn conventional lessons: https://productlessons.substack.com/p/unlearning-the-first-2...
Yes, there are people who genuinely enjoy these positions. But they are truly few and far between. The more in demand a position is, the less pressure the employer has to actually make it a fulfilling experience.
To be fulfilled, we often have to unlearn conventional lessons: https://productlessons.substack.com/p/unlearning-the-first-2...
I find many of these companies the opposite of prestigious.
They are shameful.
It's a symptom of how screwed up this world is that people would actually want to work for them and consider it an honor to do so.
They are shameful.
It's a symptom of how screwed up this world is that people would actually want to work for them and consider it an honor to do so.
> I find many of these companies the opposite of prestigious.
I agree, but perhaps not for the reasons you'd think. The "moral stain" of having worked for these companies only matters if hiring managers elsewhere make it matter. They don't. Throughout the industry, they're looking at potential return on investment and little else. Having worked at Facebook might matter if you want to go work for the White House or New York Times, but not for another tech company.
The reason I think working at those companies is anti-prestigious is that they're such unique self-contained worlds. If I see that somebody only has experience at FAANG since college, I know that they've become accustomed to having a vast array of systems and libraries and experts and other kinds of support available to them that aren't so available anywhere else. Maybe they'll learn to adjust to how computing is in the rest of the world. Maybe they'll be absolutely helpless, functioning at a one- or two-year level despite five or seven years among "the best engineers in the world" or whatever they're saying nowadays. I don't attach a premium to that experience. I attach a discount.
I agree, but perhaps not for the reasons you'd think. The "moral stain" of having worked for these companies only matters if hiring managers elsewhere make it matter. They don't. Throughout the industry, they're looking at potential return on investment and little else. Having worked at Facebook might matter if you want to go work for the White House or New York Times, but not for another tech company.
The reason I think working at those companies is anti-prestigious is that they're such unique self-contained worlds. If I see that somebody only has experience at FAANG since college, I know that they've become accustomed to having a vast array of systems and libraries and experts and other kinds of support available to them that aren't so available anywhere else. Maybe they'll learn to adjust to how computing is in the rest of the world. Maybe they'll be absolutely helpless, functioning at a one- or two-year level despite five or seven years among "the best engineers in the world" or whatever they're saying nowadays. I don't attach a premium to that experience. I attach a discount.
As Steve Blank said, in 5 years, having FB on your resume will be like Enron. I hope he’s right.
I think most people did ok. Enron had a lot of really smart people. Morally bankrupt, but very smart. No different than any of these big tech companies. People like money, smart people will be attracted to it. Companies like smart people so I don't think they will have a hard time getting another job.
I've interviewed several smart people from Palantir and naturally I did not hire them. They might as well wear a scarlet letter.
I wonder if your employer appreciates your injection of your own personal ideological axe-to-grind into their hiring pipeline. If I found out that any of my employees was rejecting candidates we were paying to bring on-site out of hand due to their previous employer, I would fire that person instantly.
My employer has specifically asked us to make ethics the top item in our interview feedback, thanks for asking.
You've said many foolish things in this thread, but you should at least consider the fact that if your employer considers ethics important, and then asks you to interview prospects from such an "unethical" company, your own company's ethics are clearly contrary to your own.
So you made a biased decision about a candidate based on where they worked rather than evaluate them on their ability to perform in the role relative to other candidates?
No, I evaluated their lack of a functioning moral framework to conclude they couldn't possibly perform a function in my organization because ethics are much more important than the ability to traverse directed graphs in pseudo-code on whiteboards.
If a candidate told me they got fired for intentionally sabotaging Palantir's production operations, that would neutralize the issue. So far haven't met that person.
If a candidate told me they got fired for intentionally sabotaging Palantir's production operations, that would neutralize the issue. So far haven't met that person.
Why bother interviewing them at all?
You seem very confident they won’t find anything morally objectionable with your company and decide to sabotage your operations.
If it's so difficult to discern a difference between your company and Palantir, you've got a problem.
You seem very convinced that everyone shares the same moral framework you do. Just because you find your company’s work unobjectionable doesn’t mean everyone else does. I mean, there are Unabomber types out there who think all tech is inherently bad, how do you know the person you are hiring isn’t or won’t turn into one of those people?
Clearly not everyone in tech shares my moral framework, or the internet wouldn't be infested with ads, spyware, and malware, thanks to these "prestigious" companies.
You’re not wrong, I also think carefully about whether candidates show signs of being acutely deranged privacy freaks, sovereign citizens, gold bugs, and a bunch of other modern-day mental illnesses. Sad but that’s how it goes these days. Maybe I should just ask for their HN handles?
Anyone that worked at Palantir is potentially a mole.
How is that different to microsoft logging your keystrokes or google reading your email? Having to deal with old fashioned employee espionage seems quaint.
Most people can tell the difference between an activity that provides a clear benefit, like classifying my emails, and one that provides no personal benefit, such as selling mass surveillance as a service to the highest bidder. If you can’t tell the difference than your ethical framework isn’t serving you.
I don't know what you mean. Snowden docs showed google moving domestic US data to the UK and back again so the data is considered foreign and thus readable by spy agencies.
The ability for google to legally and materially read my emails transcends law, classifying emails and my knowledge. Ethics doesnt even start when its done outside society. Advertising is second order financial gain derived from their absolute power over retained information. There's a bigger picture.
The ability for google to legally and materially read my emails transcends law, classifying emails and my knowledge. Ethics doesnt even start when its done outside society. Advertising is second order financial gain derived from their absolute power over retained information. There's a bigger picture.
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As with many corrupt organizations Enron was full of good people who had no power and never did anything morally wrong.
A select few held the power or agency to act selfishly and did so.
It didn’t become apparent to many employees that something was amiss until shortly before the FBI raided them.
A select few held the power or agency to act selfishly and did so.
It didn’t become apparent to many employees that something was amiss until shortly before the FBI raided them.
Of course we can't paint all employees of any company with one brush, but I don't think we should let the majority of Enron employees off the hook so easily. That kind of systemic fraud requires cooperation or at least a large number of individuals to look the other way. I realize some innocent people's reputation will be hurt, but there needs to be some social pressure for whistle blowers otherwise the risk reward is always such that "a few bad apples" will take the risk enabled by the silent majority "just doing their jobs".
Unless you were part of the small group of people committing accounting fraud, I don't think the rest of Enron had serious trouble finding new jobs elsewhere because of the name on their resume.
For the qualities that you consider a negative, some may consider it a positive.
In my social group, working for Facebook in particular is definitely shunned.
Because they have control of the money. How do we cut them out?
Legislation and regulation.
Meh, I absolutely don't believe that's the way. That's how we get the market to halt.
I was thinking more of teaching business and management skills to engineers.
I was thinking more of teaching business and management skills to engineers.
So “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”?
That is called the MBA.
Curious why he would need to move to a more prestigious position? Most people realize by their 30s that prestige is a sucker's game; it's a way of inducing people to do things that aren't much fun and they wouldn't really want to do on their own, by lauding them with accolades from people they don't really care about.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11833832
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11833832
To double down on this -- I think there was an era 10 years ago, when working for google or facebook actually impressed the average person.
Now (that it's privacy killing adtech) it's vaguely slimy, maybe not as slimy as being a lawyer, but I don't see it impressing people other than recruiters. Which is probably a good thing, honestly.
Now (that it's privacy killing adtech) it's vaguely slimy, maybe not as slimy as being a lawyer, but I don't see it impressing people other than recruiters. Which is probably a good thing, honestly.
In general, many people (not in tech) still find it prestigious.
Since 2016, that has taken a hit because the news media bang the drum of how terrible these companies are.
Since 2016, that has taken a hit because the news media bang the drum of how terrible these companies are.
Some people really need the validation that prestige gives.
> Prestige can take the ambitious far, but it can't bring them excellence.
Some people just want high social status, they really don't give a shit about 'excellence', unless excellence is absolutely necessary to achieve high social status and it isn't - going to the right school and working at the right job at the right company is enough.
If you know anyone with immigrant parents who value 'education', you already know what they actually value is high social status regardless of everything else, including the child's happiness.
What you spent a whole lot of words describing is a narrow case of a more general human phenomena that has a name - tragedy of the commons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
There isn't a cure, because most people don't want a cure - that's why it's a tragedy :)
Some people just want high social status, they really don't give a shit about 'excellence', unless excellence is absolutely necessary to achieve high social status and it isn't - going to the right school and working at the right job at the right company is enough.
If you know anyone with immigrant parents who value 'education', you already know what they actually value is high social status regardless of everything else, including the child's happiness.
What you spent a whole lot of words describing is a narrow case of a more general human phenomena that has a name - tragedy of the commons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
There isn't a cure, because most people don't want a cure - that's why it's a tragedy :)
I work at McKinsey, straight out of a master program. I find this article obtuse. Does McKinsey feel prestigious to me? Sure. That has nothing to do with James McKinsey inventing managerial accounting (in fact, internally, James McKinsey is rarely mentioned in discussions of company history). It's because as a 20-something guy I can have discussions with fortune 100 CEOs about what I think they need to do. I think that's pretty cool. A smaller boutique firm probably wouldn't allow that. It's not a huge deal at the end of the day though. Prestige is a loaded word that sounds snobby. If there's any reason to seek prestige, its because having a prestigious experience tends to qualify you for more lucrative opportunities down the line via automatic respect and helpful connections.
Reasons why I think I made a good choice:
* Comp was pretty good. Consulting isn't like ridiculous $200k+ salaries for new grads like FAANG, but its more than I need.
* Growth is very fast. In most companies, you need someone above you to leave or a new need to open up to get promoted. Consulting, as well as rapidly growing companies, don't have this. You can advance as quickly as you are capable. I don't know if that holds for finance (I think not?), but it probably holds for a decent while for big tech.
* The company has a vested interest in you doing well long term. When one wants to leave, they get a few weeks of paid time to do no work and find a new job, often with the help and support of senior colleagues with good connections. That is a wonderful benefit. If I want to leave, I have far more options available to me than if I had worked at most other orgs.
* I don't do any work I perceive to be unethical, and am encouraged to decline serving clients I don't want to serve without needing to justify it or fill out a form.
I'm happy with my job. I really don't need people applying values judgments over why I would have made these choices. Job culture, especially in America IMO, is generally unhealthy. If you can legit say you're happy with your job and it pays your bills, just stop the dialogue there, you've won, that's great; pay no heed to those competing possible pasts that may have been better.
Reasons why I think I made a good choice:
* Comp was pretty good. Consulting isn't like ridiculous $200k+ salaries for new grads like FAANG, but its more than I need.
* Growth is very fast. In most companies, you need someone above you to leave or a new need to open up to get promoted. Consulting, as well as rapidly growing companies, don't have this. You can advance as quickly as you are capable. I don't know if that holds for finance (I think not?), but it probably holds for a decent while for big tech.
* The company has a vested interest in you doing well long term. When one wants to leave, they get a few weeks of paid time to do no work and find a new job, often with the help and support of senior colleagues with good connections. That is a wonderful benefit. If I want to leave, I have far more options available to me than if I had worked at most other orgs.
* I don't do any work I perceive to be unethical, and am encouraged to decline serving clients I don't want to serve without needing to justify it or fill out a form.
I'm happy with my job. I really don't need people applying values judgments over why I would have made these choices. Job culture, especially in America IMO, is generally unhealthy. If you can legit say you're happy with your job and it pays your bills, just stop the dialogue there, you've won, that's great; pay no heed to those competing possible pasts that may have been better.
Lol consultants are most often ignored post their assignments and so are their recommendations.
Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan have all moved down market and lead most IPOs these days. Everyone else is fighting for 30% or less of the fees. As a CEO, you can’t lose your job if they mess up your IPO. But if you choose Jefferies and they blow it, you can get fired. There is a term for this that is escaping me right now. There is also a potentially easier path to get an intro as the Goldman brand name carries a lot of weight. All this to say though, there is significant competition within there but if you work there for 3 years you probably work as hard as you would on your own company, but probability weighted income is higher and you have more exit opportunities. I think it makes sense to go work there if you can.
That argument was originally used for IBM I think?
The author's examples of places that aren't considered prestigious throughout, such as Stripe and Nvidia, are ridiculous. The article basically takes companies that are considered prestigious to a smaller subset of harvard undergrads and claims that since a larger subset of the population doesn't find them prestigious they are somehow "underrated" and need to be looked at more.
At the end of the day, prestige comes with money, full stop. In CS, prestige at first might start out as just FAANG, and then later on also include well off start ups like Stripe or various HFT firms / hedge funds since more people start to realize their compensation is equal or higher.
At the end of the day, prestige comes with money, full stop. In CS, prestige at first might start out as just FAANG, and then later on also include well off start ups like Stripe or various HFT firms / hedge funds since more people start to realize their compensation is equal or higher.
yeah anyone within tech or fang finds stripe prestigious. even if some random person on the street hasn’t heard of it. same with HFT. some would even consider them more prestigious than fang. Fang is the backup for harvard grads who can’t work at a unicorn
Agreed. At this point even companies like stripe have been referred to as underrated so many times that they’re bordering on overrated
>Ambitious students seek out prestige thinking it is the missing ingredient to achieving their own excellence. In reality, they have it backward—prestige follows excellence.
I'm not sure I agree. I've been seeking out jobs at less prestigious firms for ages but I started getting interviews only once I had Goldman on my resume. I've never would've had a seat at the table where I can try to achieve excellence if it wasn't for Goldman. I guess the author's argument makes sense for IT where barriers for entry are low, but almost every other industry worth getting into has high barriers for entry.
I'm not sure I agree. I've been seeking out jobs at less prestigious firms for ages but I started getting interviews only once I had Goldman on my resume. I've never would've had a seat at the table where I can try to achieve excellence if it wasn't for Goldman. I guess the author's argument makes sense for IT where barriers for entry are low, but almost every other industry worth getting into has high barriers for entry.
To elaborate a bit more: vast majority of jobs where you can seek such excellence that you're able to say at some point "I am top 100 in my field, I enjoy it and am getting paid for it" are taught in an apprenticeship manner. Where you have to make the life of a bigger expert easier while stealing as much knowledge as possible from them. The knowledge that's worth learning is not publicised as if it was publicly accessible it would lose its value. It would become industry standard or competitors would learn how to counteract it or whatever. And if a top expert has hundreds of CVs to chose from for their apprentice, having "Harvard" and "Goldman Sachs" mentioned there is a good way of skewing odds in your favour to even get an interview.
> For the majority of Ivy Leaguers, the most impressive thing they've accomplished is achieving admission to their university.
Is this a common view in the US? In central Europe, the view is that ivy leagues are for people who need external validation so much that they are willing to pay through the nose for it. This view explains the rest of the article too.
Is this a common view in the US? In central Europe, the view is that ivy leagues are for people who need external validation so much that they are willing to pay through the nose for it. This view explains the rest of the article too.
Mostly you can't buy your way into an Ivy. You have to have the right social connections. When I worked for a New York broker half the partners were outright imbeciles with Yale educations. They got into Yale because of their ridiculous WASP names.
This continues to be the case, but used to be the case more than it is now. Specifically for Yale, it has really become much less blue-blooded, WASPy in the last 2 decades.
The Ivies and comparable schools actually are now incredibly generous with financial aid.
For instance Harvard automatically gives a full scholarship to any accepted student whose family makes less than $65,000 per year. For Stanford, the cutoff is $125,000.
There are other private schools that are as you describe, though.
For instance Harvard automatically gives a full scholarship to any accepted student whose family makes less than $65,000 per year. For Stanford, the cutoff is $125,000.
There are other private schools that are as you describe, though.
> For instance Harvard automatically gives a full scholarship to any accepted student whose family makes less than $65,000 per year.
This is not strictly true, although it is mostly true.
source: attended Harvard with family income less than $65k
This is not strictly true, although it is mostly true.
source: attended Harvard with family income less than $65k
Harvard is not really that expensive when you factor in financial aid. Nor is it an easy task to be admitted.
What I've generally found is the "common view" in the US is that people get upset/snide at the mention of the school. It seems like this is also an int'l phenomenon if your comment is any guide.
What I've generally found is the "common view" in the US is that people get upset/snide at the mention of the school. It seems like this is also an int'l phenomenon if your comment is any guide.
Is that view that common in Europe? Seems awfully self-serving to be the broad consensus.
In central Europe, public universities that are free for all are the norm, sometimes even for foreigners (other EU citizens are not even considered foreigners). For-profit schools are often of questionable quality, serving those who couldn't pass the bar of the easiest of the free public schools, or are unable to make the minimal commitment to pass them, but still want the diploma. It doesn't help that these for-profit schools try to fake prestige very hard (as opposed to the 1000-year old public universities that indeniably are prestigious, in a different way).
Overall yes, schools known only for their claims of prestige, as opposed to their academical merit, are looked down upon.
Overall yes, schools known only for their claims of prestige, as opposed to their academical merit, are looked down upon.
Harvard is private, yes, but it's not for-profit. Those schools are likewise considered low-quality in the states.
Harvard is a non-public non-profit, and is cheaper than the comparable public university for 90% of Americans after aid.
Harvard is a non-public non-profit, and is cheaper than the comparable public university for 90% of Americans after aid.
This needs a hard disclaimer, as in the USA "non-profit" is simply a term used to define a tax bracket. The spirit of the term is grossly violated when Red Cross can be in any category with Harvard or the like--schools that expressly serve the rich (and allow the poor).
In no meaningful way can a school who charges $100k+ for tuition--which is required in addition to "endowments" and other such huge checks they receive to help pay their wealthy administrators--be considered an actual non-profit organization. It is a tax ruse.
To put it even simpler: if the wealth of my parents is a metric for how much they'll charge me to attend, clearly "profit" is important, and specifically scarcity, a prime driver of profit in capitalist society. It sounds like the definition of "non-profit" in EU is different than here in the USA.
In no meaningful way can a school who charges $100k+ for tuition--which is required in addition to "endowments" and other such huge checks they receive to help pay their wealthy administrators--be considered an actual non-profit organization. It is a tax ruse.
To put it even simpler: if the wealth of my parents is a metric for how much they'll charge me to attend, clearly "profit" is important, and specifically scarcity, a prime driver of profit in capitalist society. It sounds like the definition of "non-profit" in EU is different than here in the USA.
> the USA "non-profit" is simply a term used to define a tax bracket
This understates the importance of the distinction - non-profits don't have shareholders, don't return profit to owners, etc. They are very different.
That does not mean that you can't create a non-profit for any terrible goal. You could form a non-profit for directing funds to Nazi organizations globally. But a non-profit is not aiming to make money for some owners and in an educational context, that is important.
> if the wealth of my parents is a metric for how much they'll charge me to attend, clearly "profit" is important, and specifically scarcity
This is facile. Is medicaid for-profit? If your family makes too much, you will be booted off and have to pay for your own healthcare.
Indeed, any means-tested governmental program falls under your definition of operated for "profit" which is nonsense when those programs are redistributive (although perhaps not redistributive enough).
This understates the importance of the distinction - non-profits don't have shareholders, don't return profit to owners, etc. They are very different.
That does not mean that you can't create a non-profit for any terrible goal. You could form a non-profit for directing funds to Nazi organizations globally. But a non-profit is not aiming to make money for some owners and in an educational context, that is important.
> if the wealth of my parents is a metric for how much they'll charge me to attend, clearly "profit" is important, and specifically scarcity
This is facile. Is medicaid for-profit? If your family makes too much, you will be booted off and have to pay for your own healthcare.
Indeed, any means-tested governmental program falls under your definition of operated for "profit" which is nonsense when those programs are redistributive (although perhaps not redistributive enough).
I've sometimes wished that a couple of the FAANGs had less prestige, since I would've gone to one of them years ago.
Now that they're institutionalized go-to career steps/destinations for so many people, there's so much interview prep and ritual to go through.
Investing hundreds of hours in Leetcode prepping and then interviewing is justifiable if your main goal is simply to get hired at one of the prestigious companies, and that's just the next in a line of required steps of things that you don't want to do but that will get you that prestigious job.
But having to drill Leetcode is discouraging or prohibitive, if you already have significant skills and credentials more relevant to the job, and your main goal is to do good work, in a good environment, on good things.
Now that they're institutionalized go-to career steps/destinations for so many people, there's so much interview prep and ritual to go through.
Investing hundreds of hours in Leetcode prepping and then interviewing is justifiable if your main goal is simply to get hired at one of the prestigious companies, and that's just the next in a line of required steps of things that you don't want to do but that will get you that prestigious job.
But having to drill Leetcode is discouraging or prohibitive, if you already have significant skills and credentials more relevant to the job, and your main goal is to do good work, in a good environment, on good things.
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 pursuing promos. But in general use Harvard or wherever for great learning, and with promo projects pursue actual meaningful work. It’s really the most sustainable way.
Source: it’s a lot more satisfying to pursue a promo project that helps everyone on your team (e.g., engineering excellence etc).
And yeah obviously students rarely have a correct idea about the real world (just haven’t seen enough of it yet). Interesting hypotheses though.
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 pursuing promos. But in general use Harvard or wherever for great learning, and with promo projects pursue actual meaningful work. It’s really the most sustainable way.
Source: it’s a lot more satisfying to pursue a promo project that helps everyone on your team (e.g., engineering excellence etc).
And yeah obviously students rarely have a correct idea about the real world (just haven’t seen enough of it yet). Interesting hypotheses though.
> 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.
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.
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.
Harvard students are primarily interested in companies with reputable names? What a shocker.
Students who go to a selective school, often want to go to selective companies and continue to build their “brand” to maximize their success (or at least optionality).
It’s usually later on when people figure out what’s important to them and are confident enough to stray for the default path. For example, my current company is a well known one, but isn’t FANG. I chose there because I use / care about the product, and the culture is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. It’s growing, I’m paid well, and I’m relatively happy. I don’t feel the urge anymore to work for the hottest companies or what not.
Students who go to a selective school, often want to go to selective companies and continue to build their “brand” to maximize their success (or at least optionality).
It’s usually later on when people figure out what’s important to them and are confident enough to stray for the default path. For example, my current company is a well known one, but isn’t FANG. I chose there because I use / care about the product, and the culture is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. It’s growing, I’m paid well, and I’m relatively happy. I don’t feel the urge anymore to work for the hottest companies or what not.
Describing a school like "Harvard" as selective is trivially equating "arbitrary and biased" with some kind of semantic merit. Realistically, if you get into harvard you are lucky, wealthy, or usable for marketing. They have no desire to convince you otherwise by simply increasing their allowed student number, especially to compete internationally—by numbers, they are mostly effective via attracting people, not through education.
Prestige is a euphemism for "not worth it," as it's what they offer instead of paying you. Ask yourself, "do I admire these people and do I want to be like them?" If the answer is not an enthusiastic hell yes, they're time vampires, get the hell out.
Know who is attracted to prestige? People who don't have something that comes free with success. They make up the long tail of the distribution, and they're not first movers, risk takers, or leaders. If it's already prestigious, it's mostly played out.
Know who is attracted to prestige? People who don't have something that comes free with success. They make up the long tail of the distribution, and they're not first movers, risk takers, or leaders. If it's already prestigious, it's mostly played out.
>If it's already prestigious, it's mostly played out.
That's going in my book of quotes.
That's going in my book of quotes.
> but I've never heard of a Harvard CS major wanting to work for Stripe.
This seems to run very contrary to my experience. The most sought after tech companies among CS majors at my top school were not Google or Facebook, but hot late stage startups like Robinhood, Stripe, Coinbase or Samsara. These companies have all the upside (in terms of pay, security) as G/F, in addition to being seen as "off the beaten path" or slightly more adventurous.
This seems to run very contrary to my experience. The most sought after tech companies among CS majors at my top school were not Google or Facebook, but hot late stage startups like Robinhood, Stripe, Coinbase or Samsara. These companies have all the upside (in terms of pay, security) as G/F, in addition to being seen as "off the beaten path" or slightly more adventurous.
This article really resonated with me. I got into a very prestigious university, and then developed an anxiety at each career stage that my next move would less prestigious than my last. It took me a long time to realise this was how I was thinking about the world, and even then the 'prestige anxiety' drove my decision-making.
In the end I finally managed to take a job at a small environmental startup, and then an NGO, and am much happier.
In the end I finally managed to take a job at a small environmental startup, and then an NGO, and am much happier.
>In reality, they have it backward—prestige follows excellence. Exposure to prestige can't make you successful any more than spending time around rich people can make you wealthy.
Exposure to "prestige" and by proxy exposure to ambition-driven individuals that are also "excellent" enough to be accepted into the "in-group" is a big factor into how you unlock your own potential. The author seems to hold the view that being excellent is just an innate quality that follows you around no matter what. If you join some organization where nobody cares, nobody pushes you to be excellent, or can't even recognize excellency when it exists, then no, you won't become a superstar out of nowhere and have the world at your feet. Even founding a startup nowadays would be considered a "high prestige" move, because few people can really afford to stop a menial job to pursue that.
Exposure to "prestige" and by proxy exposure to ambition-driven individuals that are also "excellent" enough to be accepted into the "in-group" is a big factor into how you unlock your own potential. The author seems to hold the view that being excellent is just an innate quality that follows you around no matter what. If you join some organization where nobody cares, nobody pushes you to be excellent, or can't even recognize excellency when it exists, then no, you won't become a superstar out of nowhere and have the world at your feet. Even founding a startup nowadays would be considered a "high prestige" move, because few people can really afford to stop a menial job to pursue that.
I work for a well known media company where I live, a brand, our grad scheme is really good (disclaimer I'm a small part of that) and attracts the best of the best out of colleges, people like having my company on their CV, it doesn't do any harm, our allumni typically go on to have good careers, or stay for the long haul. We love it when our people take the skills we've honed into, for example, Amazon, JP Morgan and amazingly often return to the fold and are welcomed back with open arms. There isn't a prestige trap really, but maybe we just think we're the best of the best and going anywhere else is just for rounding out experience.
It’s about having options. There’s not much downside to taking a job with the most elite/selective/prestigious company in a field you want to work in because you’ll be well-paid and you can jump to pretty much any other company later.
Compare that to starting off at a company that is less well-known in the general sector or less selective — you may be able to jump later to a more selective company, but you’ll have more of an uphill climb.
Compare that to starting off at a company that is less well-known in the general sector or less selective — you may be able to jump later to a more selective company, but you’ll have more of an uphill climb.
The author doesn’t consider Stripe prestigious? I work at one of the companies he lists as prestigious, and I think most of my co-workers consider Stripe to be a top company to work at and very competitive to get into. A lot have in fact left to go work for them, because they have a reputation for having good career growth and great engineers. If I decided to go somewhere else, that’s actually where I would send my resume first.
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This is a nice essay but I think it misses 3 key points:
1. FTC returns are predictable. The returns to taking an unbeaten path is anything but. Further, how will your peers and the world view you as CEO of New Idea Inc vs. L4 at Google? 2. Prestige is a cheap correlate, and thus substitute, for aptitude. Outside of Tech, verifying aptitude and fit is like trying to pay with physical gold whereas prestige is like paying with Amex Platinum. 3. Consulting and Finance offer exposure to a swath of otherwise opaque industries and opportunities. This appears to be especially true in industries driven by culture fit and trust. Why do many e.g. biotech companies eschew an MD/PhD CEO for an ex-MBB 'professional CEO'? Because the CEO exists raise money and that requires immense trust and penetrating opaque networks.
Perhaps returns to prestige are overrated, but I'll take the prestige 10/10. In my experience, the previously closed doors suddenly open themselves for you.
1. FTC returns are predictable. The returns to taking an unbeaten path is anything but. Further, how will your peers and the world view you as CEO of New Idea Inc vs. L4 at Google? 2. Prestige is a cheap correlate, and thus substitute, for aptitude. Outside of Tech, verifying aptitude and fit is like trying to pay with physical gold whereas prestige is like paying with Amex Platinum. 3. Consulting and Finance offer exposure to a swath of otherwise opaque industries and opportunities. This appears to be especially true in industries driven by culture fit and trust. Why do many e.g. biotech companies eschew an MD/PhD CEO for an ex-MBB 'professional CEO'? Because the CEO exists raise money and that requires immense trust and penetrating opaque networks.
Perhaps returns to prestige are overrated, but I'll take the prestige 10/10. In my experience, the previously closed doors suddenly open themselves for you.
OP, this was a remarkably self aware essay and I quite enjoyed it. I went to Wharton and remember EXACTLY how the prestige trap feels. 10 years later I can tell you that it is exactly as pointless and empty as you think. you're very fortunate to realize this at your age. I wish you all the best and hope you keep writing insightful stuff like this.
> Why are Google and Facebook so attractive to prospective engineers while Stripe and Nvidia are never brought up?
This has nothing to do with prestige and everything to do with Google and Facebook having 100 times the headcount. From my experience, unicorns actual tend to be more selective than FAANGs (except maybe Netflix) even if they don't pay any better.
This has nothing to do with prestige and everything to do with Google and Facebook having 100 times the headcount. From my experience, unicorns actual tend to be more selective than FAANGs (except maybe Netflix) even if they don't pay any better.
Also depends on who you ask. I know lots of people who consider stripe more attractive than Google.
I think students internally identify the prestige trap. They are aware that they studied in the hollow pursuit of an “A” rather than for the sake of mastering the topic. They know that they traded excellence for prestige. They gained a signaling currency, and they aren’t confident that they have the excellence needed to gain more.
It may be a prestige to be in a big firm in many places, but in the valley it is a prestige to be in a successful company. And luckily for techies in the valley, there are quite many great blow-out companies of much smaller size. In fact, I would cringe if a company's goal is to grow from 300 engineers to thousands in a year, as Uber's CTO used to boast. I would not join a big tech either because well, where is the 10X return?
Don't get me wrong, though. All I'm saying is that techies in the valley have a lot of amazing choices. Some people are definitely great at navigating big tech's dynamics, and they should join big techs and enjoy phenomenal success. It's just for even more people, joining a small company has a better chance of becoming successful, at least in terms of money and job satisfaction.
Don't get me wrong, though. All I'm saying is that techies in the valley have a lot of amazing choices. Some people are definitely great at navigating big tech's dynamics, and they should join big techs and enjoy phenomenal success. It's just for even more people, joining a small company has a better chance of becoming successful, at least in terms of money and job satisfaction.
I had been programming since I was 10, but had decided that I had learned all their was to know (typical adolescent ego) so I decided to go in physics as it was what I thought would be the most challenging thing to do. Did well in undergrad, graduating in 3 years and got a fellowship at a good grad school. Studied theoretical high-energy particle physics. In the background of all this I was programming the whole way, worked in the computer lab, etc. Ultimately I decided to drop out of the Ph.D. program with my M.S. and dive into software engineering, my real love. Haven't really looked back since the choice to drop out. Still program everyday as a VC. Having your favorite hobby as your job I still think is as good as it gets. Even better if it grew up with you and is now lucrative and as exciting as ever.
I have a similar story, except I never made it past physics undergrad and joined a big tech firm right after graduation. That was my dream job since I was 10, prestigious or not, and I loved the first five years there.
But the prestige trap is real. My last career move was a big step down in prestige, but a huge step up in job satisfaction. I wish I didn’t, but I do miss working at a company that everyone knows.
For me I think the key has been that my friends have a random assortment of cool jobs and don’t care much about working somewhere prestigious. I just don’t click with people who do. Because as much fun as it would be to play the comparison game, I just couldn’t shake that existential angst that none of that stuff fucking matters, and the only thing that matters is to be happy and do good to those around you.
But the prestige trap is real. My last career move was a big step down in prestige, but a huge step up in job satisfaction. I wish I didn’t, but I do miss working at a company that everyone knows.
For me I think the key has been that my friends have a random assortment of cool jobs and don’t care much about working somewhere prestigious. I just don’t click with people who do. Because as much fun as it would be to play the comparison game, I just couldn’t shake that existential angst that none of that stuff fucking matters, and the only thing that matters is to be happy and do good to those around you.
Prestige is also "legible" in the sense introduced by "Seeing Like a State". It's valuable in eg. socially, if someone sees Harvard/Goldman, they can instantly bucket you in a particular social class, even if they're in a wildly different field and couldn't assess your actual merit. Whether you want to be perceived as a member of that particular social class is a mixed bag which I wont waste space on here, as if you're interested in reading more about it, I'd direct you to literally any issue of The New Yorker.
I think one point the author misses is that a lot of college grads see these prestigious companies, rightly or wrongly, as being the best places to learn to hone their craft. Yes, there may be some self-selecting and self-perpetuating cycle here where the most ambitious seek out the best, but I do think that there's a higher chance you'll find great or even best-in-the-world [software engineers|investment bankers|consultants] to learn from at these prestigious firms than smaller boutique companies.
Question to HN folks: how valuable is it to have FAANG on your resume?
Quite a lot in salary negotiations. FAANG tend to down-level people from less prestigious companies. 5 years at a FAANG will usually land you a senior engineer position at other FAANG's, 5 year at non prestigious will land you one step lower. The difference is about $50-$100k a year.
There is some truth to what's being said, though leaves out several other factors mentioned in these comments.
> Prestige, like the social status it serves as a proxy for
This illustrates to me that it's not really about prestige--merely a correlation. Having a FAANG on your resume is not a proxy for social status. It clearly indicates that you got into a competitive technical position. It's like getting an otherwise useless degree that indicates that you can stick with something and come out on top.
> Prestige, like the social status it serves as a proxy for
This illustrates to me that it's not really about prestige--merely a correlation. Having a FAANG on your resume is not a proxy for social status. It clearly indicates that you got into a competitive technical position. It's like getting an otherwise useless degree that indicates that you can stick with something and come out on top.
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I am definitely guilty of chasing some fusion of prestige and money, with no greater goal. It has recently become a concern to me that I really can't pick out anything more worthwhile than my current FAANG role as a "thing to do with my life"... and yet observing from the inside has shown how underwhelming and borderline dysfunctional these companies can be.
> Why are Google and Facebook so attractive to prospective engineers while Stripe and Nvidia are never brought up?
This is certainly not true. Students are in high pursuit of a startup like Stripe(+ those on the breakoutlist) and Nvidia is viewed very positively. Visit /r/csmajors for a datapoint.
This is certainly not true. Students are in high pursuit of a startup like Stripe(+ those on the breakoutlist) and Nvidia is viewed very positively. Visit /r/csmajors for a datapoint.
You should not underestimate one’s need for prestige/place in the informal hierarchy of people. We have the same biochemic mechanism for this as crabs (!!). Good luck avoiding this.
Prestige is not what you make or where you work..but who you know and what they will do for you when you ask for a favour.
Even better..who will approach you for a favour.
Even better..who will approach you for a favour.
Try getting a new job without a prestigious job on your resume and then learn what the real trap is.
I have had absolutely no issue with this, personally. I have gotten multiple FAANG offers and have turned them down every time, and I still don't have any on my resume. What's the rush? They're always hiring -- niche, smaller, lesser-known, earlier-stage companies are not.
> What's the rush?
FIRE is one reason. External validation is one reason. Life after school nonclarity is one reason (this ticks a box). Even if you have ideas to start a new company or venture, there is the brand value(e.g you will see many article like "Ex-FAANG employee quit their XXX,XXX 6-figure job to pursue Y)
Lots of PR value there. Many new startups literally use the fact that their current employees previously worked at a FAANG company as part of their recruiting info, about-page, pitch.
FIRE is one reason. External validation is one reason. Life after school nonclarity is one reason (this ticks a box). Even if you have ideas to start a new company or venture, there is the brand value(e.g you will see many article like "Ex-FAANG employee quit their XXX,XXX 6-figure job to pursue Y)
Lots of PR value there. Many new startups literally use the fact that their current employees previously worked at a FAANG company as part of their recruiting info, about-page, pitch.
Even YCombinator advocates on flashing (team) prestige when pitching you startup.
https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8d-how-to-build-a-great-...
Section: Team
https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8d-how-to-build-a-great-...
Section: Team
I have yet to meet a funded startup (YC or otherwise) that wouldn’t match the cash component of salary to within $20k of a FAANG salary+RSU schedule, so long as you have said offer in hand when negotiating (and thus, the equity becomes much more of potential bonus than lottery ticket you depend on ). Maybe pre-seed-stage startups pay much less, but I really haven’t run into any issues around feeling like I’m missing out on significant salary benefits, so FIRE seems to still hold.
External validation and PR — eh. My own experience differs, in tech and outside of tech. Personally, way back when, I turned down multiple Ivies to attend a small liberal arts college relatively few have heard about and have absolutely no regrets — people who have actually affected my life have heard of it, and I think it’s gotten me to where I am much faster and easier than going the conventional route.
External validation and PR — eh. My own experience differs, in tech and outside of tech. Personally, way back when, I turned down multiple Ivies to attend a small liberal arts college relatively few have heard about and have absolutely no regrets — people who have actually affected my life have heard of it, and I think it’s gotten me to where I am much faster and easier than going the conventional route.
Those startup are equally (if not harder) to get in. So I am not sure what you are trying to compare against.
> people who have actually affected my life have heard of it
I mean that is probably true and will be true for many. This also means that you are in a social network of people who are sort of knowledgable and somewhat well off.
I am sure the undergrad education at Grinnell or Haverford is on average pretty much the same at Harvard or Princeton. More so with computer science, nobody is learning more exclusive algorithms at these more name brand schools.
But clearly, you can't deny the name brand factor that positively influences many other ventures.
> people who have actually affected my life have heard of it
I mean that is probably true and will be true for many. This also means that you are in a social network of people who are sort of knowledgable and somewhat well off.
I am sure the undergrad education at Grinnell or Haverford is on average pretty much the same at Harvard or Princeton. More so with computer science, nobody is learning more exclusive algorithms at these more name brand schools.
But clearly, you can't deny the name brand factor that positively influences many other ventures.
I prefer to sum it up more succinctly with "there's more to life than work".
power
money is power. or, capital is power. social capital seems to be our driving force these days. money is cheap, followers are harder to come by [en masse].
socialism becomes this monolithic vacuum which eventually devours it's participants. mostly for the reasons you're pointing out; prestige, or the pursuit of power.
as you point out, even a high level of financial and social capital is not enough. we've created a vacuum of unrealistic perception.
i think this is where media comes into play... the opiate for the masses. your 15 minutes of prestige is not even near good enough to compete with the monolithic personas we've allowed to vacuum up all the power. gates, jobs, Trump, rockefellers, even the house of windsor [how do you even complete with the outside of a monarchy?].
power corrupts. absolute power corrupts absolutely. chasing prestige is very quickly becoming a pipe dream. a race to the bottom if you will. eventually, the only way to gain prestige will be to topple these monoliths. else we wait/fight/plot/etc for the next monolith.
... which will be a space miner ceo, ai breakthrough ceo, fusion power ceo, or quantum programmer ceo.
money is power. or, capital is power. social capital seems to be our driving force these days. money is cheap, followers are harder to come by [en masse].
socialism becomes this monolithic vacuum which eventually devours it's participants. mostly for the reasons you're pointing out; prestige, or the pursuit of power.
as you point out, even a high level of financial and social capital is not enough. we've created a vacuum of unrealistic perception.
i think this is where media comes into play... the opiate for the masses. your 15 minutes of prestige is not even near good enough to compete with the monolithic personas we've allowed to vacuum up all the power. gates, jobs, Trump, rockefellers, even the house of windsor [how do you even complete with the outside of a monarchy?].
power corrupts. absolute power corrupts absolutely. chasing prestige is very quickly becoming a pipe dream. a race to the bottom if you will. eventually, the only way to gain prestige will be to topple these monoliths. else we wait/fight/plot/etc for the next monolith.
... which will be a space miner ceo, ai breakthrough ceo, fusion power ceo, or quantum programmer ceo.
ugh/ I appreciate the article, but I could not have gone to Harvard and could have told you that. It ain't that hard.
What a cloistered view. At my undergrad a total of 3 people joined FAANG companies (of which 2 were Amazon), none joined consulting firms more selective than Accenture, and nobody joined big finance.
How much ink needs to be spilled about Harvard undergrads anyway? Aren’t there other groups of people that deserve respect and attention?
How much ink needs to be spilled about Harvard undergrads anyway? Aren’t there other groups of people that deserve respect and attention?
I think one of the problems around targeting prestige vs. targeting excellence is that we know what it takes to do something prestigious, but excellence is hard to define, and generally comes with much higher risk. Landing a fancy job at Facebook or Google means you tick the box on success without much risk. The criteria that defines success when you start a company, for instance, or work at a non-profit, is much less clear. That compounds the material risk of doing these ventures with a social risk of taking these jobs in the first place. So then what would would it take, in American society, to replace the prestige baiting with an emphasis on achieving actual excellence instead?