On the other hand, in 2004, I was... not that much older than the author... and making not that much less than the author said microsoft was offering them (of c

On the other hand, in 2004, I was... not that much older than the author... and making not that much less than the author said microsoft was offering them (of course, instead of 4 years of school, I had ~6 years of post highschool work experience) I totally would have qualified for the next tier down from the author in industry... while in school? I'd have qualified for the very bottom tier. The point may simply have been that while the microsoft job might have seemed special to someone without family/friends in the industry, it wasn't that much better than what was available to someone the educational establishment would see as bottom-of-sight, while a computer science PhD at MIT is certainly something very special, something I almost certainly will never have the opportunity to get. (I am currently trying to get into a good school... and it's super interesting and different from anything I've ever tried before, in that the good schools? they judge you as much on your failures as on your successes. In industry? it seems to be the other way around; my failures, if anything, are bonuses. I failed at this that or the other and I learned these things and you should hire me because of it. In getting into college, though? as far as I can tell, they want someone who hasn't failed, because they are afraid of you failing at this, too, and ruining their stats. Of course... I guess that's part of why I want to get into an elite program, too; I figure that if you have a 90+% graduation rate, you are setup so that people don't fail. I mean, I know you pick good people on the frontend... but I know these people from work, and they aren't superhumans who don't fail in the real world when it comes to tasks that I personally consider quite a bit easier than academia.)