Hacker News Reader

Comment by laidoffamazon | Hacker News Reader

My assumption is most Ivy leaguers (specifically undergrads) generally have no monetary constraints after graduating so this very much reads to me as a bohemian “by choice” decision to be more interesting than an actual tragic story.

View on HN

I graduated from an Ivy and, after graduation, I was (and continue to be, to this day) dirt poor.

I have some doubts about this, or at least what your definition of dirt poor is.

The ability required to get into an ivy is so significant I don’t see how someone could fail to make substantial sums if they wanted to.

I grew up in NYC and was lucky enough (or smart enough, I suppose) to get into one of the top public high schools in the city. Because of that (and doing well enough in that school), I was able to squeak into Cornell via its wait list.

But I don’t come from connections: my mother was a receptionist and my father was a sanitation worker. For a while after college, I managed to find work doing backend development for various local businesses, but nothing fancy. But even that has dried up due to various reasons (including a major health issue I developed after graduating).

For some reason, it seems people in authority positions are irked by me due to my humble beginnings & my insistence on continual learning, even after graduating from school. If I had a penny (or I guess now, nickel?) for every time an interviewer asked me, “How did you learn that when you majored in Industrial Engineering,” I’d be a very rich man.

Or at least able to afford all the books I want to read. :(

This generalization is very, very wrong. I can tell you, from my personal college network, many students had monetary constraints coming in, and many certainly had monetary constraints coming out. Some of that was choice of career path; some was not.

I don’t understand how someone coming out of Brown or Yale would have constraints coming out. Their degree is basically free, basically any degree can get them an analyst gig on Wall Street if they so choose, and at worst they can go down the law school path.

You don’t become one of the wealthy just by going to school with them. You’re still an outsider, lesser, just one of the little people, not their sort.

As someone too inferior to get into one it sure doesn’t seem that way

Statistically, you're correct. That said, the thing about statistics is that outliers exist.

Also, imo the "Ivy" advantage is moreso a "family background" advantage - traditionally high social prestige and high entry barrier vocations were gatekept by Ivy and Ivy-adjacent membership.

The rise of competitive salary and low barrier of entry vocations like Software and Accounting helped dampen the value of that "Ivy" premium.

I guarantee (as I have before and you’re well aware) every Yale 2017/2018 grad in CS (or likely any quantitative degree) out earns me and my public school undergrad from 2018 and likely has a multiple of my net worth if they decided to pursue private sector employment instead of academia (though exit opportunities for the academic track are pretty lucrative too)

> I guarantee (as I have before and you’re well aware) every Yale 2017/2018 grad in CS (or likely any quantitative degree) out earns me and my public school undergrad from 2018 and likely has a multiple of my net worth if they decided to pursue private sector employment instead of academia

What "public school" did you attend?

I can assure you that if you did some form of STEM at a top/mid UC, UIUC, UWash, GT, UT Austin, UMich, UNC Chapel Hill, and other similar caliber public schools in 17-18 you would have had the exact same opportunities and earning potential as a Yalie or Harvard grad. Most CS/ECE departments offer salary data for you to look at, and at least for my HS peers who attended Cal and UCLA their outcomes were the exact same if not better than my HS classmates at Yale.

I understand layoffs can be traumatic, but I've noticed a persistent negative streak in your comments here on HN and this mindset isn't going to help you.

The accept rate of my university was 50% a full tier below UNC

The only people getting Yale like outcomes from my undergrad is one person with exposure to the SpaceX ipo, one that’s a principal eng at Broadcom, and one that’s a senior or perhaps staff at Facebook. That’s 3 people.

> The accept rate of my university was 50% a full tier below UNC

So is UIUC, but UIUC CS/ECE placements are the same as Yale if not better.

> The only people getting Yale like outcomes from my undergrad is one person with exposure to the SpaceX ipo, one that’s a principal eng at Broadcom, and one that’s a senior or perhaps staff at Facebook

Most CS Yalies aren't getting hired at SpaceX, Broadcom, and FAANG. Heck, circa 10 years ago, CS@Yale was dependent on MIT, Harvard, and UConn's CS departments for classes and on-campus recruiting for CS roles.

---------

As such, my question is

1. Are you located in the Bay Area/Seattle/NYC? - if not, you need to find a way to end up working there even if you have to take a hellish commute.

2. How long has your career gap been? - if it's been more than 6 months you need to find a way to spin unemployment and the bad job market into an opportunity (eg. Worked on my own bootstrapped startup, active contributor to OSS projects, attended grad school - highly recommend GT's OMSCS because it's cheap and lets you transfer to on-campus if you so wish)

3. How do you present your career? - Resume and LinkedIn writing/designing is an art

4. Are you picky about salary? - any white collar job is a good job in a bad white collar job market. A bad white collar job is better than being structurally unemployed

For the record, I was never laid off from Amazon despite what my username says. I've always been employed, I just switched jobs. I work remote and make about 15% more than the average Google E5 SWE and maybe 85% of a FB E5 SWE according to levels.fyi. We'll see how long that lasts given Google's stock trajectory.

-----

The UIUC comparison feels a bit misleading given that CS at UIUC has a <10% or lower accept rate, no different than getting into Yale or Duke or whatever generally.

If CS Yalies aren't working at SpaceX or Broadcom or FANG I'm genuinely unsure of where they'd be working. I'm imagining most work at HRT, Jane Street, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI getting $750k-$1.5m at 29. The "average" ones work at Google and Facebook. If you go to Yale's LinkedIn, Google is the 3rd highest employer of alumni, after Yale and Yale SOM. That is _not_ the case at my undergrad.

I know they aren't working at IBM or Amazon or GE or GM or other lower tier companies.

> work remote and make about 15% more than the average Google E5 SWE and maybe 85% of a FB E5 SWE according to levels.fyi

You're making on par if not higher than most Ivy League grads.

> you go to Yale's LinkedIn, Google is the 3rd highest employer of alumni

Look at their profiles. The overwhelming majority did the terminal Yale MSCS [0]. Back when Yale CS was in a tailspin a decade ago [1], they were admitting almost anyone with a pulse in the terminal MSCS to help rebuild the alumni network. Penn did something similar with Wharton SF 20 years ago when they missed the biotech train.

> If CS Yalies aren't working at SpaceX or Broadcom or FANG I'm genuinely unsure of where they'd be working. I'm imagining most work at HRT, Jane Street, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI getting $750k-$1.5m at 29

Not really. They end up doing the same jobs as you. Yale has a similar amount of grads at Amazon.

Also, based on the hiring practices of portfolio companies and my friend's startups - the plum jobs end up going to CS/ECE/EECS alumni from Stanford/MIT/Cal/UCLA/UW/UIUC/UT Austin/CMU or regionally well connected programs like SJSU, CalPoly SLO, and mid-tier UCs.

It's the same way if you did decent in accounting or finance at StevensTech or Baruch, you can end up in high finance in a couple years.

> Broadcom

I am intimately aware of their hiring practices. I can safely tell you that Broadcom is not hiring new grads from Ivies (or the US at all). Broadcom is following a strict "fire-and-move-to-India" strategy and paying $90k-140k TCs in Hyderabad, or bringing talent on L1/2s.

[0] - https://engineering.yale.edu/academic-study/departments/comp...

[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-06/want-a-jo...

People have such an odd belief that the Ivy League is all trust-fund babies, even though for years and years, these schools have shown that they recruit disadvantaged people and make it affordable for them to attend.

What about what I said made you think I said everyone there had a trust fund? I have a problem with homeless to Harvard as much as I have a problem with billionaires kids at Yale. Do you not understand this? How can I be more clear?

This is definitely incorrect. If you graduate with a low-value degree from an Ivy League, you're still going to be just as unemployable as somebody that graduated from Party U with a low value degree. The only real difference is that at top schools there are less people that are completely directionless in life (since you're less likely to get admitted in such a case) so if somebody is graduating with e.g. a philosophy degree, then they're probably doing it explicitly with the intent of going to e.g. law school or on an academic path, whereas many people at lower ranked universities end up there largely through inertia and may pursue degrees of minimal value with no real thoughts beyond taking the easiest path to achieving a college degree, which is the direction they were pushed onto without ever really thinking about it.

And even for valuable degrees, the advantage yielded is far less than you might think. It's not like the movies where you have dozens of companies begging you to come work with 6 figure starting salaries and fat bonuses up front. You open a few more doors, and people have a better than average initial impression of you, but at the end of the day - it's not a world-shifting advantage. The overall edge in outcomes is not because of the university, but because of the sort of people that the university admits. The sort of guy who graduates class president, valedictorian, wrestled at state, and with a near perfect score on his SAT is going to do disproportionately well in life completely regardless of whether he ends up at MIT, Party U, or just skips university altogether.

There are plenty of directionless people in Ivy League who aren't emotionally invested in the paths their parents sent them, they just go into Finance or Consulting. And in those places, pedigree does matter alot, the actual skills are not as important as the cultural compatability.

BCG consultants and traders at Five Rings are very much not financially constrained after undergrad (about $100-200k difference between them but either way)

Once again this is just playing into silly stereotypes. The sort of positions you're describing, at least in cases where it's remotely desirable, are stupidly competitive - substantially moreso than e.g. FAANG positions. And these positions, particularly in finance are absolutely brutal, and completely unfit for the overwhelming majority of people. It's not like you flash a degree and you're off to a life of luxury.

I don’t think you need to flash a degree you simply need to get in to get a life of luxury. It’s not like I can go to the Yale club in NYC.

No, you need to be (1) absolutely top tier talent and generally be willing to (2) live your job. Finance is not cushy. It's cut-throat, ridiculously competitive, extremely intensive, and very results oriented (to a fault - see: Taleb). Obviously having a nice school and a good network will obviously give you a better than average chance at getting your foot in the door, but nothing beyond that.

The main reason you see a disproportionate number of people with nice sounding names on their resume in high positions is because to get that nice sounding name on your resume, you already needed to be an elite academic outlier before joining them.

Like imagine I started a basketball school - and was able to get a disproportionate share of people 6'6" or taller to enroll. I'm going to be pumping out a disproportionate share of NBA professionals, regardless of what my school does. Not because of my school, not because of some special hook-up with the NBA, but because of my ability to grab a disproportionate share of 6'6" types who, in turn, make up a disproportionate share of world class basketball players.

> Not because of my school, not because of some special hook-up with the NBA, but because of my ability to grab a disproportionate share of 6'6" types who, in turn, make up a disproportionate share of world class basketball players.

But you need to be clear about what that actually means in the context of finance or consulting. Because if it's building relationships and bringing in clients, your major has very little to do with it than a function of your social class as the accumulation of the enviroment you're brought up in. There are millions in China or India who could probably do the grunt work in IB, but it's highly doubtful their cultural differences, especially if they come from working middle/working class will impress clients in the same way as someone with a marginally worse working ethic but speaking the same language and a charismatic personality that can pull in others. That's talent in it's own way, but unrelated to academic achivements.

You're going to need to define what you mean by class. It's an exceptional amorphous term and I don't see your perspective here. You will find people from countless "class" backgrounds at top schools, and even in industry there's a wealth of actual diversity on this front. For instance Tim Cook, the progeny of a shipyard worker, graduated from the prestigious Robertsdale High School [1] whose Wiki leaves me with few nuggets of knowledge about the school other than "During a school football pep rally for the Robertsdale Golden Bears to go against the Spanish Fort Toros, students were seen holding Trump flags and a sign that read 'Put the panic back in Hispanic.'" Even at places like Goldman, Lloyd Blankfein [2] is the former CEO and still the senior chairman at Goldman. He grew up in the projects in NYC. Daddy was a postal worker, mommy a receptionist.

The only common denominator you find in these individuals is being the academic equivalent of our school of 6'6" types.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Cook

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Blankfein

There are still a lot of jobs that (for maybe debatable reasons) require a college degree. Major is far less important. So if you have that degree, you at least have a larger job pool to work in. Of course, having a degree can overqualify you for some jobs, so it's not a purely better situation in all cases.

And (so I'm told) at least half the value of an Ivy degree is the people you meet while you are there. I guess that assumes you do some network-building, which maybe not everyone does.

Your first point is true, but an entirely different topic than ivy vs no-name schools. And yeah the networking benefits of top schools is absolutely their single biggest strength. See Microsoft or Apple for obvious examples. Highly capable people making a few highly capable friends, dropping out, and profiting.

This is something people just do not understand and is absolutely critical for reforming education. Elite schools do not create elite students, they enroll them. Around the pandemic numerous top schools chose to do away with standardized tests as a requirement for DEI type reasons. They're rapidly bringing them back - I know at least MIT/Dartmouth/Yale already have. And the reason is simple, which I'll quote Yale on:

"Yale’s research from before and after the pandemic has consistently demonstrated that, among all application components, test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s future Yale grades. This is true even after controlling for family income and other demographic variables, and it is true for subject-based exams such as AP and IB, in addition to the ACT and SAT." [1]

[1] - https://admissions.yale.edu/test-flexible

Your assumption is ignorant.

Most Ivy League schools have free tuition if your parents household income is below $200-$100k and full ride room and board if below $100-60k.

Rich kids can get cut off from their parents.

Rich kids do get cut off from their parents but that's usually when they get off the rails, e.g start doing drugs or drinking heavily, drop out of school. When attending university most of them get some form of support from their rich families.

I want to improve my communication skills so I’d love pointers on this.

Where exactly did I imply that it was the cost of the degree that is the constraint? Everyone knows poor kids and even middle class kids don’t pay anything to go to elite schools. I simply don’t think that means they face financial constraints exiting undergrad (or during undergrad). Why would they when HRT is paying $500k for new grads?

There’s this weird belief that I should feel sorry for people that didn’t come from means but got into Yale or Brown or Stanford. Sorry, they’re just as alien and inrelatable to me as Jeff Bezos’ kids. These people are in an entirely different plane of existence and ability so I have a lot of trouble thinking they wouldn’t have unlimited opportunities exiting university that I can’t even dream of.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com