6 ms·
The problem with prestige is that you, yourself, may not care about it, but those around it still do and still use it for social signaling. That affects the rat
by amb23 6y ago
The problem with prestige is that you, yourself, may not care about it, but those around it still do and still use it for social signaling. That affects the rationality of the decisions you make around your career in serious ways.
I think one of the problems around targeting prestige vs. targeting excellence is that we know what it takes to do something prestigious, but excellence is hard to define, and generally comes with much higher risk. Landing a fancy job at Facebook or Google means you tick the box on success without much risk. The criteria that defines success when you start a company, for instance, or work at a non-profit, is much less clear. That compounds the material risk of doing these ventures with a social risk of taking these jobs in the first place. So then what would would it take, in American society, to replace the prestige baiting with an emphasis on achieving actual excellence instead?
- andrewmcwatters 6y agoThis isn’t a problem we as Americans need to fix. It fixes itself. For instance, the average Ivy League graduate only makes marginally more money than your public school graduate. By the time you’re making even low 6 figures, the idea of interacting with an Stanford grad who has done nothing of note with their education and makes something comparable to you is quaint. Generally speaking, distribution of US income as a proxy for social standing gets you pretty far. At the end of the day, being associated with prestige is cute (working for a big name) and perhaps what many people desire, but holding it yourself manifests itself in different ways at the individual level. Those who really have any modicum of power don’t care about baseless associations. “Yeah you worked for a FAANG, great, but what have you accomplished?”
- whimsicalism 6y ago> the average Ivy League graduate only makes marginally more money than your public school graduate. Sorry, what? The average Ivy League graduate makes substantially more than your average non-Ivy graduate. I don't even understand what your second sentence is trying to say.
- sgerenser 6y agoI believe he probably got the statistic mixed up. The average Ivy League graduate does indeed make more than the average non-ivy college graduate. But they make about the same (or are about as successful, can’t remember the exact statistic) as someone who got accepted to an Ivy but went elsewhere.
- andrewmcwatters 6y agoNo, I mean the actual starting salaries based on employment data from universities themselves tell us there’s only a marginal difference in those who graduate between the institutions. If you look at the degrees themselves as a form of capital investment, Ivy League schools don’t translate into “paying off,” as it were.
- whimsicalism 6y ago> No, I mean the actual starting salaries based on employment data from universities themselves tell us there’s only a marginal difference in those who graduate between the institutions. Not only is that not true, but Harvard new grads make substantially more than the average BA holder, including people who are 2 decades into their career.
- hailwren 6y agoYes, and pairwise multivariate comparisons make the gap even larger. (i.e. considering two engineering students or two visual arts students etc)
- jcheng 6y agoHere’s one source that says the difference is significant, to put it mildly. Do you have a better source you can cite? https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?166027-Harvard-University https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?166027-Harvard-Unive... https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?240444-University-of-Wisconsin-Madison https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?240444-University-of... Edit: Actually the third state school I looked up is not far off! https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?236948-University-of-Washington-Seattle-Campus https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?236948-University-of...
- scarmig 6y ago> the average Ivy League graduate only makes marginally more money than your public school graduate I'm pretty sure that's not true. I doubt there's much of an actual value-add in going to an elite school, but the average incomes of graduates of them are substantially higher than that of random public school graduates. https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors
- hailwren 6y agoYes, and the gap grows even wider when you normalize for per-professional degree percentages (i.e. STEM/pharm/premed/prelaw/military inflating the bottom half of the curve)
- rhizome 6y agoI'd also be interested to see the rates of claiming unemployment benefits across that spectrum.
- nitrogen 6y agoMy mediocre high school used to give presentations about how pointless it was to go to a big name school. One of the claims was that, after ten years, all differences in median incomes were gone. Curiously they didn't break it down into percentiles. Everyone in the advisors' office bought into this public-school-to-public-university pipeline. My dream in junior high was to go to MIT. When I mentioned this to my guidance counselor, they said, basically, "Don't bother, you'll never get in." Self-fulfilling prophecy.
- n0nc3 6y agoHumans have always and will always seek standing in their community. At the moment, that standing is achieved by participating in institutions that serve the oligarchy (BigLaw, BigTech, etc.) This is a trivial problem to solve. Just create excellence-based communities, like the Linux kernel development community. The principal obstacle is that working folks don't have the spare resources to create financial stability for high achievers in these communities. We need the approval from the oligarchy, manifested through corporate sponsorship. It would be nice if Satoshi would come out of the woodwork and bankroll alternatives, the way Signal has been bankrolled.
- lumost 6y agoMonetary success historically flowed to founders, and those off the beaten path. 20 years ago startups provided a strong path to success with friends and family often getting excited when the next hot app/website was something you worked on. It’s difficult to replicate either the social or monetary prestige these days, as monetary rewards flow to VC and known consumer experiences are crowded.
- 8note 6y agoHistorically, hasn't monetary success gone to people who inherited the wealth? Monarchs and aristocrats and the like
- barry-cotter 6y agoWhat historical period are you interested in? Because the aristocracy and monarchs of Europe are not doing great compared to 1915 and they’re doing a lot better than the nobility of any other continent. There have always been the ways to be rich, make it, take it or inherit it. Take it is no longer common in the developed world. For the super rich the top ten of the Forbes Billionaires List has three Waltons. The rest either made their own enormous fortune (6) or grew it out of all recognition.
- ffggvv 6y agothe richest people in the world list is filled with bill gates, bezos, zuckerberg... none of which inherited it
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoMost wealthy families actually lose their wealth within two generations.
- mettamage 6y agoI seriously the generalizability of your claim. I used to think the same way, until I saw articles like this about Florence (Italy): https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/ https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Spooky23 6y agoGreat point. My cousin grew up in a nice northern jersey suburb. Circa 2003, everyone in her circle was trying to get into the same 6 schools to be a doctor or investment banker. It was weird but rational path to achieve a similar lifestyle. Of course my uncle was an accountant and my aunt a social worker... they bought into suburbia in the 80s when you did not need to be a doctor!
- samvher 6y agoEven in the non profit world senior management attaches a lot of value to prestige (not explicitly, but definitely in practice). If you want a high position in an NGO you might be better off starting your career at Facebook rather than at that same NGO.
- bumby 6y ago>That compounds the material risk of doing these ventures with a social risk I think part of the issue here is that people may be talking about optimizing different risks. For example, minimizing financial risk may lead to wholly different decisions than, say, minimizing the risk that you will have a fulfilling careers. At times, they may even be orthogonal. I don't actually think "excellence" is that hard to define. It basically boils down to effectiveness at solving organizational problems (and those may not always be technical in nature). The difficulty is when the problems the individual values doesn't align with what society values. If you can build excellence at a problem highly valued by society, you might be able to have high-status as well. Jonas Salk comes to mind, even though he didn't necessary get financial success. I personally think the "high prestige" path is followed because there is a clearer template. I couldn't find the excerpt from William Deresiewicz's book, but I remember a quote from a student who was relaying why some from elite colleges struggle upon graduation. The gist was that from kindergarten to college graduation to accepting their first post-graduation job, there was a relatively clear cut template of moving from scholastic excellence, strong extra-curriculars, elite internships, etc. But after graduating and accepting a job at one of the few "prestigious" fields like law, finance, medicine, or consulting. there was no longer a well-defined template and many struggle to know what to do next.