3 ms·

This may be an unpopular opinion: > Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected

by kodah 5y ago

This may be an unpopular opinion: > Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. Is tech really that different? * When evaluating senior candidates one of the criteria that candidates are selected on is the prestige of their previous companies, which usually hire from prestigious universities. * Much of what we look at is how many talks a senior candidate has done, their name recognition (aka brand), etc... all indicators of prestige, but not necessarily talent. * When evaluating junior candidates with a lack of job experience the candidate pool is often selected on collegiate prestige. * Hiring is often done by algorithm interviews which, if you went to a prestigious school, are what they spend more time teaching. I've been programming my whole life, but I'm a drop out and spent a chunk of my formative years in the military. The only way I got into being a full time SWE was working as a SRE-SE first. I would've never gotten one of these kush internships had I not spent years putting out other peoples software fires first.

teebs 5y ago
I agree with you that it's definitely about who you know - if you go to Stanford, you can get better jobs out of college compared to someone with similar skills who didn't. But I worked at a FAANG (or whatever it's called now) company and many of the senior engineers we hired were from small/less prestigious companies. These were people with ~10 years of experience who had become great software engineers but had never considered themselves in a class to work in big tech. Then, when given a chance, they got an offer and often accepted it because it paid so much better than their old job. If there weren't such high demand for software engineers, the company would just have hired from other big tech companies since it's safer, but they were forced to try to find people in unexpected places. On the other hand, these people were still negatively impacted by their backgrounds: they hadn't had the chance to join fancy tech companies out of college, which meant they missed out on several years of career opportunities. They were more likely to be hired at a Senior Software Engineer level, for example, when someone similar from a big tech company might be hired at Staff+.
- kodah 5y ago
  Thanks for adding that and you're absolutely right from what I've seen.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Jensson 5y ago
> I've been programming my whole life, but I'm a drop out and spent a chunk of my formative years in the military. The only way I got into being a full time SWE was working as a SRE-SE first. I would've never gotten one of these kush internships had I not spent years putting out other peoples software fires first. If you tried to get into journalism instead chances are you would be flipping burgers at McDonalds right now. Sure tech isn't perfect, but it is much better than almost any other field. The fact that you could work your way up that quickly is just proof how well we have it in this field.
Hermitian909 5y ago
> Is tech really that different? Every profession has problems around social social proof. There are limited resources for recruiting and so heuristics that work get used. But I really can't think of any field that does better than tech in terms of keeping those barriers low relative to possible income and prestige. I know people who dropped out of high school making >300k/yr as software engineers, and god only knows how many college drop outs (myself included) who are also making that kind of money. Conversely, people I know who went to law schools that are not one of the top 10 in the country are never even considered for high paying jobs in their industry. If a path to those jobs is available, it does not appear to be widely known, unlike the path to big tech. Yes, without social proof getting your start is harder, and all else being equal ivy league grads will always have a leg up on you, but these are some truly phenomenal opportunities for people to climb the ladder.
- kodah 5y ago
  Our experiences are fairly rare from what I've seen. Undoubtedly the door is open, but the weight of that door is still far too high and I would not give tech points in the category of meritocracy for that. Also worth mentioning that 300k is FAANG level compensation, and those salaries are fairly rare and not indicative of where most people with less-than-prestigious backgrounds end up (another commenter posted what I think is a fairly accurate average tale). Not to mention those salaries are often geo-centric.
  - Hermitian909 5y ago
    > I would not give tech points in the category of meritocracy for that Why? I'm not trying to argue here that tech is a meritocracy but so far as I've been able to discern it is more meritocratic than any other field offering middle class or above wages. If you disagree, I'd be super interested to hear which fields are doing a better job. If you agree, why not give credit to the industry for doing a better job at solving this very hard problem than anyone else? > and not indicative of where most people with less-than-prestigious backgrounds end up It's hard to tell how much this is an indictment of tech's process versus society at large. Anecdotally, I find a higher proportion of people from more prestigious backgrounds are more skilled at work. This should be unsurprising because people from those backgrounds have generally been given many advantages in life. In a former life I was an educator and was paid a lot of money to impart valuable skills to the children of rich families. If we view meritocracy as judging workers as they are, and not accounting for what they might have been in a more equitable society, that's the outcome I'd expect from a meritorious interview process. Again, I don't want to argue tech is some perfect meritocracy, just that I'm not aware that anyone's done better.

by kodah 5y ago

teebs 5y ago

I agree with you that it's definitely about who you know - if you go to Stanford, you can get better jobs out of college compared to someone with similar skills who didn't. But I worked at a FAANG (or whatever it's called now) company and many of the senior engineers we hired were from small/less prestigious companies. These were people with ~10 years of experience who had become great software engineers but had never considered themselves in a class to work in big tech. Then, when given a chance, they got an offer and often accepted it because it paid so much better than their old job. If there weren't such high demand for software engineers, the company would just have hired from other big tech companies since it's safer, but they were forced to try to find people in unexpected places. On the other hand, these people were still negatively impacted by their backgrounds: they hadn't had the chance to join fancy tech companies out of college, which meant they missed out on several years of career opportunities. They were more likely to be hired at a Senior Software Engineer level, for example, when someone similar from a big tech company might be hired at Staff+.

kodah 5y ago
Thanks for adding that and you're absolutely right from what I've seen.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Jensson 5y ago

> I've been programming my whole life, but I'm a drop out and spent a chunk of my formative years in the military. The only way I got into being a full time SWE was working as a SRE-SE first. I would've never gotten one of these kush internships had I not spent years putting out other peoples software fires first. If you tried to get into journalism instead chances are you would be flipping burgers at McDonalds right now. Sure tech isn't perfect, but it is much better than almost any other field. The fact that you could work your way up that quickly is just proof how well we have it in this field.

Hermitian909 5y ago

> Is tech really that different? Every profession has problems around social social proof. There are limited resources for recruiting and so heuristics that work get used. But I really can't think of any field that does better than tech in terms of keeping those barriers low relative to possible income and prestige. I know people who dropped out of high school making >300k/yr as software engineers, and god only knows how many college drop outs (myself included) who are also making that kind of money. Conversely, people I know who went to law schools that are not one of the top 10 in the country are never even considered for high paying jobs in their industry. If a path to those jobs is available, it does not appear to be widely known, unlike the path to big tech. Yes, without social proof getting your start is harder, and all else being equal ivy league grads will always have a leg up on you, but these are some truly phenomenal opportunities for people to climb the ladder.

kodah 5y ago
Our experiences are fairly rare from what I've seen. Undoubtedly the door is open, but the weight of that door is still far too high and I would not give tech points in the category of meritocracy for that. Also worth mentioning that 300k is FAANG level compensation, and those salaries are fairly rare and not indicative of where most people with less-than-prestigious backgrounds end up (another commenter posted what I think is a fairly accurate average tale). Not to mention those salaries are often geo-centric.
- Hermitian909 5y ago
  > I would not give tech points in the category of meritocracy for that Why? I'm not trying to argue here that tech is a meritocracy but so far as I've been able to discern it is more meritocratic than any other field offering middle class or above wages. If you disagree, I'd be super interested to hear which fields are doing a better job. If you agree, why not give credit to the industry for doing a better job at solving this very hard problem than anyone else? > and not indicative of where most people with less-than-prestigious backgrounds end up It's hard to tell how much this is an indictment of tech's process versus society at large. Anecdotally, I find a higher proportion of people from more prestigious backgrounds are more skilled at work. This should be unsurprising because people from those backgrounds have generally been given many advantages in life. In a former life I was an educator and was paid a lot of money to impart valuable skills to the children of rich families. If we view meritocracy as judging workers as they are, and not accounting for what they might have been in a more equitable society, that's the outcome I'd expect from a meritorious interview process. Again, I don't want to argue tech is some perfect meritocracy, just that I'm not aware that anyone's done better.