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by xkcd-sucks 3150 days ago
MIT is a very good school, but shouldn't be fetishised. After several years of hiring people in the Boston area, I've seen just as many mediocre MIT grads as mediocre BU grads. In fact, the only person at my company to be fired for incompetence was an MIT graduate
2 comments
csa 3150 days ago
Indeed.

Dirty little secret -- no more than 30% of elite school grads are really "smart" (here meaning they can grasp, apply, and extend complex new ideas quickly). The others are usually bringing in some sort of social capital (athlete, highly skilled and aggressive hoop jumper, etc.).

One thing I try to tell people about elite school grads is to set the expectations early and clearly. The really smart graduates get bored really quickly, and if you have routine work for them, it likely will not work out well. That said, the hoop jumper grads may be exactly what you need as long as you have a long series of hoops. The athletes have their strengths and weaknesses, too (n.b. the elite school varsity athlete totally-not-a-club club is a thing, and that thing has value in the right contexts).

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sabujp 3150 days ago
was the person incompetent or did he/she not get along
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SiempreViernes 3150 days ago
> fired for incompetence

Surely that was clear enough?

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trendia 3150 days ago
In defense of the person you're replying to, a lot of large corporations have "employee improvement plans" that are designed specifically to create documentation that can justify a firing, especially when that firing is for some other reason (e.g. "not getting along"). The improvement plans have nothing to do with getting the employee back on track, but rather to either 1) show that the employee is unable to keep up with artificially high work demands, or 2) get the employee frustrated enough to quit.

That means that when a person is fired, the stated reason for that firing is not always the same as the real reason.

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xkcd-sucks 3149 days ago
Surprisingly they were hired because they got along. It took a while for people to get their heads around the fact that such a nice guy simply was not capable of learning new things
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