Whether it’s right or not, prestige and notoriety of a college count for a huge amount in employment and earnings. Why should my family not get that chance if they worked just as hard to earn it?
Not really. Most studies show that what college you go to only matters for a few professions.
Way back when I graduated, 3 years in, I was making just as much as people that went to prestigious schools for my same area (computer science) and I paid less for one year of college than they paid for four - and no debt.
If I were graduating today and wanted to work in Big Tech, I would spend six months to a year preparing for white board interviews.
Especially in tech. What college you go to only makes a slight difference and that’s only for your first job. Being able to do algorithms and data structures is the great equalizer for Big Tech.
It looks like you quickly copy/pasted some articles from a Google search, but unfortunately your linked articles don’t back up what you say, rather they only indicate it’s somewhat complicated.
For example from the first link:
> “ However, another expert, this one from The Atlantic, says that where you go to school does matter, and he also has a study that backs up his point of view. There are institutions, especially ivy league schools and those with name recognition, that can improve someone's earning and employment potential, especially in the cases of graduate work. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, both someone's grade point average and their school of choice are determining factors in their earnings.”
which includes embedded links to The Atlantic and NCES research on it.
You also are confusing the question of whether school choice at large is correlated to earnings vs whether specific schools produce graduates who earn more, which is a different statistical question.
> “ The median annual earnings for an Ivy League graduate 10 years out amount to well over $70,000 a year. For graduates of all other schools, the median is around $34,000.
But things get really interesting at the top end of the income spectrum. The top 10 percent of Ivy League grads are earning $200,000 or more by the time their 10-year college reunion rolls around. The top earners of other schools, on the other hand, are making just a hair under $70,000.”
It’s not too related but I also disagree hugely with you about algorithm hazing trivia in tech hiring. It’s not correlated with career success and it is used to play politics to do gatekeeping on the candidate pipeline (eg Steve Yegge’s classic on interview anti-loops).
I’ve been a senior architect and engineering manager for a while. I have never noticed any correlation between people who whiz through algorithm interviews and people who are effective at achieving business outcomes and project success once in the role.
On a tech site I’m talking specifically about tech jobs.
If you are making only a median of $70K after spending tens of thousands of dollars at an Ivy League school. That’s not actually a good investment.
You can make $70K graduating from your run of the mill state school as a an enterprise CRUD developer in any major city in the US that’s not on the west coast.
Other studies have shown that there are no difference in salary between people who were accepted in an Ivy League school and didn’t attend as those who did go.
Also, in tech, you can make $200K within two or three years easily - regardless of college you attended.
I’ve been a senior architect and engineering manager for a while. I have never noticed any correlation between people who whiz through algorithm interviews and people who are effective at achieving business outcomes and project success once in the role.
I agree, and actually submitted tweet on HN a while back.
Whether it is correlated with outcomes or not, is irrelevant to the fact that you can get into big tech by being able to do algorithms and make $200K relatively early on in your career.
I personally didn’t “get into a FAANG” by doing a whiteboard interview. I got in as a “cloud consultant” where I had to have a history of achieving business outcomes.
You simply aren’t engaging with the conversation in good faith. The same strata apply to tech jobs. If the median is say $120k, you’ll see the same doubling of median for Harvard grads, or close to it.
It seems like you’re deliberately trying not to engage with the point of the article, and instead trying to claim some bizarre specific standard of tech salaries you are making is supposed to be comparable to the data from eg the Boston Globe article (which explicitly refutes the point you’re trying to make).
Anyway, I can’t help you if you have your mind made up and you’re reading confirmation bias articles as tea leaves.
No. I’m saying in tech, whether you or I agree with algorithm type interviews. They are the great equalizer.
If you are applying for your standard CRUD jobs where you go to school isn’t going to matter. They are in my experience going to ask you techno trivia and may have you doing coding problems slightly above FizzBuzz level of complexity and are going to pay you the same regardless. The interview is the equalizer.
If you are applying for a company that wants “smart people” (tm) like the Big Tech companies and the big tech wannabes, algorithms are going to be the great equalizer.
We are on a tech site with plenty of people who work or have worked for BigTech. Almost all of the people here know how interviews and hiring works at Big Tech. Many know how hiring works at your standard CRUD jobs.
Way back when I graduated, 3 years in, I was making just as much as people that went to prestigious schools for my same area (computer science) and I paid less for one year of college than they paid for four - and no debt.
If I were graduating today and wanted to work in Big Tech, I would spend six months to a year preparing for white board interviews.
Especially in tech. What college you go to only makes a slight difference and that’s only for your first job. Being able to do algorithms and data structures is the great equalizer for Big Tech.
https://www.collegechoice.net/will-what-college-i-attend-mat...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/do-elite-colleges-lead-to-highe...