12 ms·

Elite Disillusionment

106 points by apsec112 6y ago

ggm 6y ago
Elite University is not about the learning for many people, it's the networking and jumpstart up the ladder? If you want to learn, even pedestrian University and community colleges can do what you need but sometimes what you buy is not education but a 'foot in the door'.
- zwkrt 6y ago
  The point of the article is that Harvard and other such universities do get your foot in some special doors, but that those doors are mostly to self-serving jobs that enforce the status quo. Noam Chomsky was right to constantly point out that it is elites who are most “indoctrinated” in the sense that they have to be taught to disregard the general public interest.
  - hnmullany 6y ago
    I went to Harvard in the early 90's. The difference between the diverse interests and ambitions of entering freshmen and what 90% of my classmates ended up doing with their careers (law, medicine, some kind of asset mgt, academia) is profound.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      Harvard is as much of a safe space as taking an obvious career choice.
doonesbury 6y ago
I didn't do University until late 20s. And it was a C level state school. But darn it, it was the best 3.5 years of the best bang for buck dollars spent. My major was pure math. I loved it. No boss. No office BS. Just me and my homework. I came to love English the subject I sucked at throughout K-12. I'm forever grateful to Judy Newland (if memory serves that's her name) for holding the line on writing. She told me my semester English paper was a total F. Thank god by my 20s I'd matured enough to stop making excuses. For the first time I took the criticism and asked how can I fix it? Five drafts later I got a C and improved from there in time and more classes. I aced literature classes. I still remember laughing out loud during an Enlightenment Lit final about a quote from Voltaire (satire, "Candide"). Folks, second chances are great. I needed it. And when you're ready to grow Harvard may be great but so are many state Universities too. That's why I tell my older son who's in university now that it's more like a mirror. If you're on fire it'll reflect that back to you. And if you're just passing through uni will be a ok Las Vegas weekend at best: in-out-done as there was no long term vision anyway. I'm less and less convinced that human organizations can light kids up. We gotta come lit up and some hard knocks often helps get that fire started.
- titanomachy 6y ago
  "Candide" is bizarre, surprisingly many laugh-out-loud moments in that book.
  - Uhhrrr 6y ago
    It's especially apt today, because we are living in the best of all possible worlds.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  There's something you capture that I find interesting about the university system. > She told me my semester English paper was a total F. Thank god by my 20s I'd matured enough to stop making excuses I remember being laser focused on grades, so concerned about my ability to deliver on the assessments that sometimes (Especially in those high credit load semesters) I would completely shirk the academic duty of seeking understanding if there was an easier equivalent to get the same grade. It became "I can read half of three books and synthesize a passable Frankenstein's monster". It wasn't often that I sat down and focused on why this type of self-improvement (I was a good student, but not the greatest), the type of self-improvement which is only motivated by someone actually saying "This sucks" to your face and you trusting that they are telling the truth. I think the only saving grace was my lack of vision [0], ironically, as it forced me to do way more work which naturally forced me to apply myself more vigorously. > I'm less and less convinced that human organizations can light kids up. We gotta come lit up and some hard knocks often helps get that fire started For me, it was often my peers that aided in this. I took a few classes where it was much more focused on working as a cohort [1], and those situations connected me far more intimately with the material. I think one of the greatest parts of university that many of the incoming cohort will miss initially is the ability to form the type of peer groups in classes I was able to, which proved to be hugely impactful on my ability to learn the knowledge [2]. [0] two majors, done mostly sequentially in my 4 years at state school [1] No curves are one example of the type of policy that facilitates this [3] Or get research jobs, extracurriculars. Especially as as a first generation student who had no clue what they were navigating and a familial support system that did not have the expertise
codeslave5 6y ago
This is a rip off or duplicate of ideas from Malcom Gladwell
smitty1e 6y ago
> People get there, and realise that they’re not the best, the smartest, or the most hard-working anymore. At USNA, we said: "You're always someone's boy", meaning: "No matter how great you are at X, there is always someone who can school you."
- Supermancho 6y ago
  I dont understand why anyone would foster that defeatist message. Sounds as hollow as most us vs them mantras. Success and opportunity is not as likely to depend on what metric someone is "best" as who has the right opportunity at the right time while having a broad set of skills (almost any level of expertise).
  - rimjongun 6y ago
    Less “defeatist” and more “humbling”.
    - smitty1e 6y ago
      Nailed it.
- groby_b 6y ago
  "If you're the smartest person in the room, find a better room" is popular in my circle :)
wrnr 6y ago
Based on the title I was expecting an essay that honestly examines the root cause of the anti-establishment, anti-intellectual and anti-elitism slow-rate backlash we are experiencing, and I am not entirely disappointed with this.
roenxi 6y ago
One of the issues this piece gets to is so big it is easy to miss. Kids, essentially, are getting walked through the accumulated written knowledge of humanity (well, large chunks thereof since the whole written knowledge is rather large). And on the one hand it is good to do that before they are 25 because their brain will still be developing and it is a great time to be pushing in new knowledge. On the other hand the school system is so large and slow the good students probably don't have a lot of real-world grounding to figure out what they are interested in or what the education is useful for and it is much easier for a more mature student to enjoy an education and think critically. Also; this article doesn't mention debt. That is linked to these people taking high-paid, low risk jobs. I had a friend who went to Harvard and the costs sounded crippling.
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  And Harvard doesn't even need to charge tuition with its endowment.
- 0wl0 6y ago
  More than half of students are on financial aid and the average aid at Harvard is $53k per year. Only the really wealthy pay full sticker, so I don't think debt at Ivy Leagues is generally an issue. It seems they are really best-placed to take risks. I like your point about required maturity. Certainly many of my texts read in high school English need to be revisited. Maybe students should be cycled in and out of formal education.
Pils 6y ago
This article is weird. It was published in six months ago, but the author recently expanded on the argument in a piece for Palladium[0]. Palladium of course being the Thiel-funded long form magazine co-founded by alt-right anti-semite Jonah Bennett[1], who has since moved on from the magazine. What's interesting is that while the blogpost feels like a more personal narrative about disillusionment with a specific institution (Harvard), the Palladium article concludes with a much more concrete point: "Elite stagnation," "institutional decay," etc. Which is to say, fair cop. HYP+MS produce too many consultants, finance bros and tech PMs is not exactly a unique POV. What is interesting to me is that Palladium has seemed to have cornered the market on "Student/new grad disillusioned with <elite institution>" articles[2]. Apsec112, is there a reason you decided to post this older blogpost rather than the more recent publication? [0]https://palladiummag.com/2020/07/27/harvard-creates-managers-instead-of-elites/ https://palladiummag.com/2020/07/27/harvard-creates-managers... [1]https://splinternews.com/leaked-emails-show-how-white-nationalists-have-infiltra-1837681245 https://splinternews.com/leaked-emails-show-how-white-nation... [2]honestly too many to list: https://palladiummag.com/2019/08/05/the-real-problem-at-yale-is-not-free-speech/ https://palladiummag.com/2019/08/05/the-real-problem-at-yale..., https://palladiummag.com/2019/01/07/western-academias-activism-gridlock-threatens-its-status-as-challengers-rise/ https://palladiummag.com/2019/01/07/western-academias-activi..., https://palladiummag.com/2020/06/18/the-new-managerial-class-is-not-a-class-at-all/ https://palladiummag.com/2020/06/18/the-new-managerial-class...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
lowiqengineer 6y ago
Pretty remarkable that the "elites" are still demanding pity (or at minimum asking people to discuss their "disillusionment") but there's nary a peep for people like me who didn't have the privilege of membership in elite institutions. What do I get? All I see is constant disrespect from society and from places like HackerNews. Where's the sympathy for a state school grad like me struggling to get a top job, or struggling to be taken seriously?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  I don't see anything about "demanding pity" in that article? The gist of his argument is that, instead of using their incredible accumulations of wealth and talent to change the world, elite schools are mostly churning out options traders and management consultants whose careers will be spent squeezing 0.1% extra profit for some even richer dude, and that's a pity (for the world, not the well-paid people doing the work).
- mac01021 6y ago
  I'm a state school grad without much desire for a job at a prestigious FAANG company. I do not feel any disrespect from HN or from people I meet on the street. Is that really your constant experience?
  - lowiqengineer 6y ago
    I work at a FAANG (albeit the least respected one) and yes, I do feel this way.
    - groby_b 6y ago
      Consider switching. (Maybe even just within your company, if you like the place) Working at FAANG as well, for ~10 years now, and nobody has ever given a lick about my degree. Good thing too, because I don't have one :) Neither do plenty of colleagues. There are plenty of colleagues from state schools too. AFAICT - nobody really cares, so it's not discussed that often. It's not a big question when evaluating interviews or hiring, either. (I've seen by now a high three-digit number of interviews) And, seriously: Get rid of that handle. You're telling yourself a story every time you see it.
abvdasker 6y ago
Saffron is still in school. This is patronizing, but she doesn't know anything about real disillusionment yet. Real disillusionment comes after the elite education. The stuff that crushes your spirit comes later when you go to work at a FAANG and realize that the modern tech sector is fueled not by lofty ideals of innovation and altruistic visions of technological utopia, but by the same cynical profiteering, exploitation and rent-seeking as every other capitalist enterprise. Your attitude changes once you understand that the high-paying tech sector jobs you spent years of your life training to perform all require you to compromise your beliefs about what is good/fair/just. The jobs require you to build things which hurt people for people who only care about money. Imagine working 40-60 hours a week to make good money doing something you know is at best a complete waste of time and talent. Real disillusionment comes after you've lived in San Francisco for a while and you realize everyone you know also works in tech and thinks, looks and talks the same way you do and likes the same things you do. And maybe on your way to work at the glossy tech campus that gives you free lunch that your coworkers are always complaining about you pass a tent city littered with needles and human shit. Eventually you realize that an enormous number of the public figures who went to your university and succeeded in "changing the world" didn't change it for the better. And you may wonder if a lot of the things you've been told about meritocracy and the virtues of intelligence and achievement and wealth accumulation are true at all.
- moultano 6y ago
  This sounds like it is written by someone who has never worked at a large tech company, and understands them primarily through the FUD spread about them by other large tech companies.
  - rimjongun 6y ago
    It really doesn’t. It sounds super detailed and convincing to me, somebody who knows nothing to prove or refute GPS comment. If it’s a lie, god damn it’s a good one.
    - moultano 6y ago
yyyuutt 6y ago
Interesting thought about closing doors rather than opening. With Elite schools it is almost a burden that everyone gets a choice of great 6 figure jobs on graduation. Its the guys that dont get those have the most freedom to do real innovative stuff.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Anyone who needs a job in a capitalist economy is by definition not elite.
totemandtoken 6y ago
I was expecting a mention of Peter Turchin, though I guess this is a more human approach. Huang's mention of exclusivity for some reason jumped out at me. So much of the college experience seems to be designed around a false scarcity be it pointlessly exclusive clubs, waitlists for seats in corona induced remote learning, semesters as the only amount of time you have to understand a subject or even the idea of grades as proxies for understanding. And it's strange how much fuel this provides both sides of the political aisle... Even in the comments to this article, I'm seeing both populist right anti-elite links and populist left analysis framing the college experiences in terms of class... Not sure I'm making sense, I'm kind of just writing this out as a form of thinking out loud...
- ta1234567890 6y ago
  > So much of the college experience seems to be designed around a false scarcity be it pointlessly exclusive Exclusivity is a hell of a drug. It's what gave in big part the large initial push to Facebook (being first available only to top universities in the US and then expanding). It's also what luxury brands try to communicate (even though in reality they also try to be as massive and non-exclusive as possible, all the while staying very expensive). Exclusivity drives FOMO.
scaramanga 6y ago
This is an interesting, thoughtful and highly relatable read. But I can't help thinking that the title should, more accurately, be "Elite Illusionment" :)
IMAYousaf 6y ago
I find a lot of the skepticism and disillusionment rather unwarranted and whiny. I went to a well regarded public college for Undergrad. I am now at one of the most well regarded private colleges in the country. I can absolutely see the difference in the quality of instruction and opportunities afforded to Undergrads here compared to my public college. A lot of this seems to be much ado about nothing. To add some context, I'm an immigrant to the US. I came here for opportunity. A lot of people are uncomfortable with what that means. It isn't some Eddie Murphy "Welcome to America" kumbaya, happy-go-lucky thing. I came here with my family to out work and out compete everyone for the shot at a better life. If you look at any STEM class, as opposed to any non-STEM class, the makeup of people in those classes in both Undergrad, and especially Graduate levels, is much closer to being representative of people who look like me rather than the general public/college demographics. In immigrant populations there is no disillusionment with the elite institutions in America, and more broadly, the American Dream.
- emptyparadise 6y ago
  You're fighting tooth and nail for that shot at a better life and that's admirable. But I think the author has different aspirations. Those ideas of "changing the world" are perhaps born out of the privilege of at the very least getting to call a first world country their home, but I think they're still worth discussing - though any changes proposed must not close doors to people like you.
  - IMAYousaf 6y ago
    With all due respect, while I know that you didn't mean to come across as such, some may find those comments a bit patronizing. My "fighting tooth and nail" isn't complete when I went from a 3rd World existence to a 1st World existence. I'm very much here to win "in the big leagues". Without trying to sound too much like a Bond villain, I too am seeking to change the world in ways that I think are meaningful, without giving a damn what others think. I too have aspirations of being at the top of the world and molding it into the way that I think that it should be. I find the ideas of people who approach the world with this discontentment, which seems sophomoric to me instead of insightful, to be rather milquetoast. The elite are disillusioned because they're comfy. They convince themselves that they need to derive more meaning and get caught up in the performative nature of their life which is directly a result of their privilege. Most people who actually do change the world, at least in a capitalistic manner, bring an edge and killer instinct, often refusing to accept that they're not the best, or even if they aren't that they are required to act differently in accordance. This whole story came across to me as someone who folded at the first sign of any self-inflected psychological query. Much of the rest of the world would kill to get to Harvard, whether for the pure reasons of seeking knowledge at the world's most renowned college, or to play the game of life to get ahead. I want to also bring up one more observation that addresses the psychological aspect that the author addressed when he said elite colleges close doors psychologically, by describing manual work as beneath them. I've gotten to know some people who come from the world of the elites, and I've found it farcical and disturbing how often people do performative bullshit like send their kids to work construction jobs in the summers before college to learn about things like "the meaning of hard work". If I was to send my hypothetical children to work in construction, it'd be to learn construction with the view of deriving real world capitalistic value from it, not as some performative mind-body exercise. John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers, said: "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." This quote illustrates to me perfectly why wealth is typically destroyed in 3 generations, or at least why that stereotype exists. The rigor and knowledge disappears as the elites become more concerned with the optics of what they are doing, instead of the actual work at hand. It's precisely why I brought up my lens of being an immigrant. My future kids will probably never have the hunger and edge with which I work, but I hope to distill in them rigor, and hope that they can bring that intensity that I still lack today.
seigando 6y ago
The point that stuck out to me which I haven't seen people comment on is the difference noted between those who stayed close to home vs. somebody who travels across the world for prestige. It's a fact that dependability matters. Somebody who will leave you or your community for something that seems 'better' to them is a constant issue in our culture.

106 points by apsec112 6y ago

ggm 6y ago

Elite University is not about the learning for many people, it's the networking and jumpstart up the ladder? If you want to learn, even pedestrian University and community colleges can do what you need but sometimes what you buy is not education but a 'foot in the door'.

zwkrt 6y ago
The point of the article is that Harvard and other such universities do get your foot in some special doors, but that those doors are mostly to self-serving jobs that enforce the status quo. Noam Chomsky was right to constantly point out that it is elites who are most “indoctrinated” in the sense that they have to be taught to disregard the general public interest.
- hnmullany 6y ago
  I went to Harvard in the early 90's. The difference between the diverse interests and ambitions of entering freshmen and what 90% of my classmates ended up doing with their careers (law, medicine, some kind of asset mgt, academia) is profound.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    Harvard is as much of a safe space as taking an obvious career choice.

doonesbury 6y ago

I didn't do University until late 20s. And it was a C level state school. But darn it, it was the best 3.5 years of the best bang for buck dollars spent. My major was pure math. I loved it. No boss. No office BS. Just me and my homework. I came to love English the subject I sucked at throughout K-12. I'm forever grateful to Judy Newland (if memory serves that's her name) for holding the line on writing. She told me my semester English paper was a total F. Thank god by my 20s I'd matured enough to stop making excuses. For the first time I took the criticism and asked how can I fix it? Five drafts later I got a C and improved from there in time and more classes. I aced literature classes. I still remember laughing out loud during an Enlightenment Lit final about a quote from Voltaire (satire, "Candide"). Folks, second chances are great. I needed it. And when you're ready to grow Harvard may be great but so are many state Universities too. That's why I tell my older son who's in university now that it's more like a mirror. If you're on fire it'll reflect that back to you. And if you're just passing through uni will be a ok Las Vegas weekend at best: in-out-done as there was no long term vision anyway. I'm less and less convinced that human organizations can light kids up. We gotta come lit up and some hard knocks often helps get that fire started.

titanomachy 6y ago
"Candide" is bizarre, surprisingly many laugh-out-loud moments in that book.
- Uhhrrr 6y ago
  It's especially apt today, because we are living in the best of all possible worlds.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
alextheparrot 6y ago
There's something you capture that I find interesting about the university system. > She told me my semester English paper was a total F. Thank god by my 20s I'd matured enough to stop making excuses I remember being laser focused on grades, so concerned about my ability to deliver on the assessments that sometimes (Especially in those high credit load semesters) I would completely shirk the academic duty of seeking understanding if there was an easier equivalent to get the same grade. It became "I can read half of three books and synthesize a passable Frankenstein's monster". It wasn't often that I sat down and focused on why this type of self-improvement (I was a good student, but not the greatest), the type of self-improvement which is only motivated by someone actually saying "This sucks" to your face and you trusting that they are telling the truth. I think the only saving grace was my lack of vision [0], ironically, as it forced me to do way more work which naturally forced me to apply myself more vigorously. > I'm less and less convinced that human organizations can light kids up. We gotta come lit up and some hard knocks often helps get that fire started For me, it was often my peers that aided in this. I took a few classes where it was much more focused on working as a cohort [1], and those situations connected me far more intimately with the material. I think one of the greatest parts of university that many of the incoming cohort will miss initially is the ability to form the type of peer groups in classes I was able to, which proved to be hugely impactful on my ability to learn the knowledge [2]. [0] two majors, done mostly sequentially in my 4 years at state school [1] No curves are one example of the type of policy that facilitates this [3] Or get research jobs, extracurriculars. Especially as as a first generation student who had no clue what they were navigating and a familial support system that did not have the expertise

codeslave5 6y ago

This is a rip off or duplicate of ideas from Malcom Gladwell

smitty1e 6y ago

> People get there, and realise that they’re not the best, the smartest, or the most hard-working anymore. At USNA, we said: "You're always someone's boy", meaning: "No matter how great you are at X, there is always someone who can school you."

Supermancho 6y ago
I dont understand why anyone would foster that defeatist message. Sounds as hollow as most us vs them mantras. Success and opportunity is not as likely to depend on what metric someone is "best" as who has the right opportunity at the right time while having a broad set of skills (almost any level of expertise).
- rimjongun 6y ago
  Less “defeatist” and more “humbling”.
  - smitty1e 6y ago
    Nailed it.
groby_b 6y ago
"If you're the smartest person in the room, find a better room" is popular in my circle :)

wrnr 6y ago

Based on the title I was expecting an essay that honestly examines the root cause of the anti-establishment, anti-intellectual and anti-elitism slow-rate backlash we are experiencing, and I am not entirely disappointed with this.

roenxi 6y ago

One of the issues this piece gets to is so big it is easy to miss. Kids, essentially, are getting walked through the accumulated written knowledge of humanity (well, large chunks thereof since the whole written knowledge is rather large). And on the one hand it is good to do that before they are 25 because their brain will still be developing and it is a great time to be pushing in new knowledge. On the other hand the school system is so large and slow the good students probably don't have a lot of real-world grounding to figure out what they are interested in or what the education is useful for and it is much easier for a more mature student to enjoy an education and think critically. Also; this article doesn't mention debt. That is linked to these people taking high-paid, low risk jobs. I had a friend who went to Harvard and the costs sounded crippling.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago
And Harvard doesn't even need to charge tuition with its endowment.
0wl0 6y ago
More than half of students are on financial aid and the average aid at Harvard is $53k per year. Only the really wealthy pay full sticker, so I don't think debt at Ivy Leagues is generally an issue. It seems they are really best-placed to take risks. I like your point about required maturity. Certainly many of my texts read in high school English need to be revisited. Maybe students should be cycled in and out of formal education.

Pils 6y ago

This article is weird. It was published in six months ago, but the author recently expanded on the argument in a piece for Palladium[0]. Palladium of course being the Thiel-funded long form magazine co-founded by alt-right anti-semite Jonah Bennett[1], who has since moved on from the magazine. What's interesting is that while the blogpost feels like a more personal narrative about disillusionment with a specific institution (Harvard), the Palladium article concludes with a much more concrete point: "Elite stagnation," "institutional decay," etc. Which is to say, fair cop. HYP+MS produce too many consultants, finance bros and tech PMs is not exactly a unique POV. What is interesting to me is that Palladium has seemed to have cornered the market on "Student/new grad disillusioned with <elite institution>" articles[2]. Apsec112, is there a reason you decided to post this older blogpost rather than the more recent publication? [0]https://palladiummag.com/2020/07/27/harvard-creates-managers-instead-of-elites/ https://palladiummag.com/2020/07/27/harvard-creates-managers... [1]https://splinternews.com/leaked-emails-show-how-white-nationalists-have-infiltra-1837681245 https://splinternews.com/leaked-emails-show-how-white-nation... [2]honestly too many to list: https://palladiummag.com/2019/08/05/the-real-problem-at-yale-is-not-free-speech/ https://palladiummag.com/2019/08/05/the-real-problem-at-yale..., https://palladiummag.com/2019/01/07/western-academias-activism-gridlock-threatens-its-status-as-challengers-rise/ https://palladiummag.com/2019/01/07/western-academias-activi..., https://palladiummag.com/2020/06/18/the-new-managerial-class-is-not-a-class-at-all/ https://palladiummag.com/2020/06/18/the-new-managerial-class...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

lowiqengineer 6y ago

Pretty remarkable that the "elites" are still demanding pity (or at minimum asking people to discuss their "disillusionment") but there's nary a peep for people like me who didn't have the privilege of membership in elite institutions. What do I get? All I see is constant disrespect from society and from places like HackerNews. Where's the sympathy for a state school grad like me struggling to get a top job, or struggling to be taken seriously?

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
I don't see anything about "demanding pity" in that article? The gist of his argument is that, instead of using their incredible accumulations of wealth and talent to change the world, elite schools are mostly churning out options traders and management consultants whose careers will be spent squeezing 0.1% extra profit for some even richer dude, and that's a pity (for the world, not the well-paid people doing the work).
mac01021 6y ago
I'm a state school grad without much desire for a job at a prestigious FAANG company. I do not feel any disrespect from HN or from people I meet on the street. Is that really your constant experience?
- lowiqengineer 6y ago
  I work at a FAANG (albeit the least respected one) and yes, I do feel this way.
  - groby_b 6y ago
    Consider switching. (Maybe even just within your company, if you like the place) Working at FAANG as well, for ~10 years now, and nobody has ever given a lick about my degree. Good thing too, because I don't have one :) Neither do plenty of colleagues. There are plenty of colleagues from state schools too. AFAICT - nobody really cares, so it's not discussed that often. It's not a big question when evaluating interviews or hiring, either. (I've seen by now a high three-digit number of interviews) And, seriously: Get rid of that handle. You're telling yourself a story every time you see it.

abvdasker 6y ago

Saffron is still in school. This is patronizing, but she doesn't know anything about real disillusionment yet. Real disillusionment comes after the elite education. The stuff that crushes your spirit comes later when you go to work at a FAANG and realize that the modern tech sector is fueled not by lofty ideals of innovation and altruistic visions of technological utopia, but by the same cynical profiteering, exploitation and rent-seeking as every other capitalist enterprise. Your attitude changes once you understand that the high-paying tech sector jobs you spent years of your life training to perform all require you to compromise your beliefs about what is good/fair/just. The jobs require you to build things which hurt people for people who only care about money. Imagine working 40-60 hours a week to make good money doing something you know is at best a complete waste of time and talent. Real disillusionment comes after you've lived in San Francisco for a while and you realize everyone you know also works in tech and thinks, looks and talks the same way you do and likes the same things you do. And maybe on your way to work at the glossy tech campus that gives you free lunch that your coworkers are always complaining about you pass a tent city littered with needles and human shit. Eventually you realize that an enormous number of the public figures who went to your university and succeeded in "changing the world" didn't change it for the better. And you may wonder if a lot of the things you've been told about meritocracy and the virtues of intelligence and achievement and wealth accumulation are true at all.

moultano 6y ago
This sounds like it is written by someone who has never worked at a large tech company, and understands them primarily through the FUD spread about them by other large tech companies.
- rimjongun 6y ago
  It really doesn’t. It sounds super detailed and convincing to me, somebody who knows nothing to prove or refute GPS comment. If it’s a lie, god damn it’s a good one.
  - moultano 6y ago

yyyuutt 6y ago

Interesting thought about closing doors rather than opening. With Elite schools it is almost a burden that everyone gets a choice of great 6 figure jobs on graduation. Its the guys that dont get those have the most freedom to do real innovative stuff.

082349872349872 6y ago
Anyone who needs a job in a capitalist economy is by definition not elite.

totemandtoken 6y ago

I was expecting a mention of Peter Turchin, though I guess this is a more human approach. Huang's mention of exclusivity for some reason jumped out at me. So much of the college experience seems to be designed around a false scarcity be it pointlessly exclusive clubs, waitlists for seats in corona induced remote learning, semesters as the only amount of time you have to understand a subject or even the idea of grades as proxies for understanding. And it's strange how much fuel this provides both sides of the political aisle... Even in the comments to this article, I'm seeing both populist right anti-elite links and populist left analysis framing the college experiences in terms of class... Not sure I'm making sense, I'm kind of just writing this out as a form of thinking out loud...

ta1234567890 6y ago
> So much of the college experience seems to be designed around a false scarcity be it pointlessly exclusive Exclusivity is a hell of a drug. It's what gave in big part the large initial push to Facebook (being first available only to top universities in the US and then expanding). It's also what luxury brands try to communicate (even though in reality they also try to be as massive and non-exclusive as possible, all the while staying very expensive). Exclusivity drives FOMO.

scaramanga 6y ago

This is an interesting, thoughtful and highly relatable read. But I can't help thinking that the title should, more accurately, be "Elite Illusionment" :)

IMAYousaf 6y ago

I find a lot of the skepticism and disillusionment rather unwarranted and whiny. I went to a well regarded public college for Undergrad. I am now at one of the most well regarded private colleges in the country. I can absolutely see the difference in the quality of instruction and opportunities afforded to Undergrads here compared to my public college. A lot of this seems to be much ado about nothing. To add some context, I'm an immigrant to the US. I came here for opportunity. A lot of people are uncomfortable with what that means. It isn't some Eddie Murphy "Welcome to America" kumbaya, happy-go-lucky thing. I came here with my family to out work and out compete everyone for the shot at a better life. If you look at any STEM class, as opposed to any non-STEM class, the makeup of people in those classes in both Undergrad, and especially Graduate levels, is much closer to being representative of people who look like me rather than the general public/college demographics. In immigrant populations there is no disillusionment with the elite institutions in America, and more broadly, the American Dream.

emptyparadise 6y ago
You're fighting tooth and nail for that shot at a better life and that's admirable. But I think the author has different aspirations. Those ideas of "changing the world" are perhaps born out of the privilege of at the very least getting to call a first world country their home, but I think they're still worth discussing - though any changes proposed must not close doors to people like you.
- IMAYousaf 6y ago
  With all due respect, while I know that you didn't mean to come across as such, some may find those comments a bit patronizing. My "fighting tooth and nail" isn't complete when I went from a 3rd World existence to a 1st World existence. I'm very much here to win "in the big leagues". Without trying to sound too much like a Bond villain, I too am seeking to change the world in ways that I think are meaningful, without giving a damn what others think. I too have aspirations of being at the top of the world and molding it into the way that I think that it should be. I find the ideas of people who approach the world with this discontentment, which seems sophomoric to me instead of insightful, to be rather milquetoast. The elite are disillusioned because they're comfy. They convince themselves that they need to derive more meaning and get caught up in the performative nature of their life which is directly a result of their privilege. Most people who actually do change the world, at least in a capitalistic manner, bring an edge and killer instinct, often refusing to accept that they're not the best, or even if they aren't that they are required to act differently in accordance. This whole story came across to me as someone who folded at the first sign of any self-inflected psychological query. Much of the rest of the world would kill to get to Harvard, whether for the pure reasons of seeking knowledge at the world's most renowned college, or to play the game of life to get ahead. I want to also bring up one more observation that addresses the psychological aspect that the author addressed when he said elite colleges close doors psychologically, by describing manual work as beneath them. I've gotten to know some people who come from the world of the elites, and I've found it farcical and disturbing how often people do performative bullshit like send their kids to work construction jobs in the summers before college to learn about things like "the meaning of hard work". If I was to send my hypothetical children to work in construction, it'd be to learn construction with the view of deriving real world capitalistic value from it, not as some performative mind-body exercise. John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers, said: "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." This quote illustrates to me perfectly why wealth is typically destroyed in 3 generations, or at least why that stereotype exists. The rigor and knowledge disappears as the elites become more concerned with the optics of what they are doing, instead of the actual work at hand. It's precisely why I brought up my lens of being an immigrant. My future kids will probably never have the hunger and edge with which I work, but I hope to distill in them rigor, and hope that they can bring that intensity that I still lack today.

seigando 6y ago

The point that stuck out to me which I haven't seen people comment on is the difference noted between those who stayed close to home vs. somebody who travels across the world for prestige. It's a fact that dependability matters. Somebody who will leave you or your community for something that seems 'better' to them is a constant issue in our culture.