It really is a different world for the well-connected.
I was not connected, being the child of first generation immigrant parents who never heard of schools like "Princeton" or "Duke" until I was in 10th grade.
I had to make my own path and optimize for admissions, as a top tier program helped open doors that my parents could only dream of.
This story is common for most kids at these programs.
It is, but plenty of us at these programs went to average High Schools but had great grades, extracurriculars, and an actual goal we wanted to achieve.
What’s an example?
I worked at Amazon as my first job out of college - I don’t think you count that as a “well paying tech job” though. Not seeing much reflection on your part of the fairness of this “meritocracy” either.
What should people like me do if we are going to be considered inferior for the rest of our lives?
Anyways, to answer your question: just live your life man. If you wake up in the morning with a roof over your head (and no odious debt) and have a nice cup of coffee and can say "what a nice day it is," you win. How do these silly status games even matter? Who cares if you make $300k more than you can spend in a year?
I ain't looking down on you for your educational background. I'm just pointing out the bitter elitist truth outside the tech and accounting industries.
> I live my life but then I wake up realizing I have accomplished nothing
That's bullshit. You worked at AMAZON - one of the largest companies and brands in the world. Even kids at MIT and UCB and Stanford aren't getting new grad offers there anymore in 2023. Most freshman CS students would look up to you.
Pat yourself on the back, you worked at a S tier company. It sounds like you're in a mid-20s rut. Take a deep breath, go backpack for a bit, go live your bliss, and stop giving a fuck about external validation. Do what makes you happy. In 10 years you'll look back and see how much you have accomplished.
You choose the people to compare yourself with. There's really no point in choosing a group to compare yourself with if it makes you feel sad and inferior.
Maybe you're in a bad spot now (judging from your username) but don't let money and "career achievements" determine your worth. In the end, very very few people, even in tech, are able to accomplish actually meaningful things beyond getting a paycheck and feeding their families. (I mean, for example, would I want to be Mark Zuckerberg? Probably not, being responsible for creating a mostly toxic social network isn't necessarily something to be proud of as my legacy.)
You probably need to reorient yourself, trust that your value doesn't just come from the number in your paycheck or how high you climb the corporate ladder, and figure out your own reason for getting out of bed every morning.
I mean, I know it's easier said than done, but I can only say what I can say here. Good luck.
You don't have an alumni network. That is the issue. There's no major skill difference between a Mich undergrad or a MSU undergrad that couldn't be rectified in a year of training, but no employer wants to deal with that.
It's difficult to break into the following without an elite private school or public flagship as your Bachelors degree:
HFT, Consulting, Politics, Venture Capital, Investment Banking, Entrepreneurship
It's unfair, but it is what it is. These are industries that employ at most 3,000-10,000 people globally.
> I worked at Amazon as my first job out of college - I don’t think you count that as a “well paying tech job” though
It is a well paying entry tech job, but take a look at your class of fellow NCGs - most will have attended CS/EE/EECS/ECE at Cal, UCLA, Mich, Illinois, GATech, UW, etc which are extremely difficult and expensive to get into. If you can get into CS at that kind of school, you are equally capable to get into top private schools like USC or CMC or Chicago as well (like a couple of my EECS@Cal hs friends who chose that over UChicago or USC).
Tech (and Accounting) is also unique in that it is a massive equalizer. They are both white collar industries with MASSIVE margins, extremely high skill barriers of entry, and not as school prestige oriented.
> What should people like me do if we are going to be considered inferior for the rest of our lives?
Work in tech, cognizant that your starting TC is higher than that of a Senator or Chief of Staff, and recognize that your only options are to either play the game (prestige whoring/marrying up a la Toms Wambsagan) or make your own game (upskill in knowledge industries like Tech or Accounting, build your own thing).
The world is a dog eat dog place. Live with it. Those of us who's parents immigrated from Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa had our families instill this reality in us. It's high time for Americans and Western Europeans to recognize that too.
> cognizant that your starting TC is higher than that of a Senator or Chief of Staff
My starting TC was only $150k about 5 years ago so this is definitely not true.
> Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa had our families instill this reality in us.
My dude I’m literally Indian. There were lots of Indians at my cow college!
New College Grad
> UMBC, MSU, UTenn, Clemson, SDSU and Cal Poly SLO
Those are all decent Eng schools which are hard to get into. Sure they ain't "Harvard" but they are still prestigious. CS@SLO was my target school actually (though ended up getting rejected).
> My starting TC was only $150k about 5 years ago so this is definitely not true.
That is higher than most Chiefs of Staff working in the House or Senate (aka 15-20 YoE); and factoring in Base+Stock Appreciation you would have broken $170k, especially factoring the fact that WA didn't have income tax back then, which DC does.
What hope can I even have if I’ve already failed, either because I’m lazy or just incapable of being an overachiever?
For every kid whose parents bought the university a building there are hundreds who did nothing more than follow the cookbook process to optimize their transcript, extracurriculars, and then won the admissions lottery.
You don't have to be well-connected to plan your high school years with getting into a highly selective college in mind. Your family probably does have to be not poor, which is more common than being well-connected. If you're not poor, you're more likely to have good extracurricular opportunities available and to have time for them and for studying (vs. having to work an unimpressive job to help support the family and/or spend long hours commuting from home to a better high school).