I know, I know, mostly just undergrads care about undergrad prestige (except resumé bots on LinkedIn scanning for “MIT”) but I’m curious about the average Lemming, who might lie less often than Redditors and probably isn’t a hyper outlier. Though I still expect selection and response bias :3

Let me start with my own wall of anecdotes.

  1. An old American embedded systems mentor I once had had had like two master’s degrees, but in his words,

Just get a Bachelor’s and a good internship. If the company will let you do it on their dime, then get the Master’s.

So the college-then-job thing wasn’t quite cause-then-effect.

  1. Another friend I had said “All of the higher-ups in the chip engineering dept I’m gunning for have a PhD. Wanna contribute meaningfully? Probably gotta have one too” (Somewhere in the entirety of Asia, exacts hidden for privacy). So grad school matters more in that case.

  2. My old econ teacher told me that, if you want a job where undergrad is just a stepping stone, then your undergrad “prestige” mostly doesn’t matter (e.g. pre-law, pre-med). And saving 50k in undergrad student loans to then dump into matching the S&P is a cheat code at age 18, worth far more than “initial salary”. not financial advice lol In this case, the “get your job” isn’t even that important.

  3. An acquaintance I once had pipelined from Cornell to DeepMind. There, prestige and its opportunities probably/definitely/maybe had an effect.

  4. A second acquaintance says his Canadian public school (iirc) only mildly helped him, so he went all-in on making his own networks outside of school to get into AI (Is he a hustler bro or something?). So he dodged the idea of college choice mattering.

  5. A Harvard acquaintance I knew says both their dad and granddad agreed that going to Harvard played into getting their positions. (No need to believe me. I forgot what position tho – finance/big business probably)

  6. The managers and manager managers my parents knew often only had community/state school undergrads, sometimes with MBAs.

  7. I don’t care about CEOs. All outliers anyway.

So what have you empirically found? And where? (inb4 “American elite school obsession bad” and “CS is skill-based, not school-based, thread over” – heard all of that already)

You can be vague if needed c:

  • IHave69XiBucks@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    I dont. I did highschool thats all. Then i got a job. So ill give you my perspective on stuff like this as someone who didnt do any of it.

    I had undiagnosed ADHD in highschool and never did any homework or studied or anything. Only reason i graduated with Ds and Cs is that id basically get a 90-100 on every test or quiz without trying. I hated school. So as soon as i could i got a normal job. Ive worked in retail, warehouses, industrial sectors, etc all in the about 10 years since graduating highschool. Now i work in a more clerical position. Not physically demanding work. Which is nice.

    Honestly as a poor person i see all of this stuff with higher ed, and knowing the right people as… silly? I guess. Its like watching all of you play this big game of theatre pretending to be meritocratic while clearly being fully commited to nepotism. The biggest factor in how much money someone makes is how much money their parents made.

    I think all of you underestimate how many of us poor people dislike you too. Maybe not you in particular but the system you participate in. That manifests itself in the form of chud Trump supporters and neo-nazism a lot. They were created by this economy that has left them behind. So they fell for Trumps lies when he promised to destroy all of you, but i digress.

    Nobody talks about school at the places i work. What matters is if you do a good job. I have no idea what education my coworkers have. Ive never even had to show someone my highschool diploma i didnt even get it cuz i skipped graduation day. So i assume the school threw it away. When applying for a job i type or check a box that i did highschool and thats that. They dont care. They want to know about experience and if ill be good at the job. That’s how it works when your poor.

    As for my future plans as someone without a degree i want to get a cheap sailboat and live off the grid on it. Spending as little money as possible and enjoying nature.(solar for power, fish to supplement food, collect and filter rain for water, etc) Plus once the inevitable happens and theres massive civil unrest i can get outta dodge easier than most.