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> I would want to know more about what they did at Google than at MIT. Yes but for many the reason they were at Google was because of the MIT degree. So not on

> I would want to know more about what they did at Google than at MIT. Yes but for many the reason they were at Google was because of the MIT degree. So not only do you get a great education, but then you go on to do solid work (hopefully) and get good experience. It's acceleration on ROI of the degree.

alephnerd 3y ago
It doesn't necessarily work like that anymore. I have 4 close friends of mine who did EECS@MIT who didn't get recruited at Google.
- ericmay 3y ago
  Overall it does work like that though. Google (or other tech companies/elite institutions) attends MIT engineering career fairs, it doesn't attend others. Corporations are not good at identifying promising talent outside of their traditional (Ivy League, etc.) recruiting grounds so they stick with their traditional recruiting grounds and then they'll favor "diverse" students from their traditional recruiting grounds. That's why they (corps) haven't made any substantial progress in "diverse hires" IMO. For example if "Google" wanted to make a difference it would actually ban hiring from Ivy League or top-20/30 universities (wiggle room on details here) and instead focus on universities that have higher admission rates (50% or so), large public universities, big time diverse populations relatively speaking.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    I'm not denying that, but you are ignoring the fact that Google would open that booth at a LOT of public schools as well. Just off the top of my head - UC Berkeley, UCLA, Mich, Iowa State, UIUC, UW, UW Madison, UCSB, Oregon State, UMass Amherst, etc. And honestly, I really don't think you understand how hiring whas changed at a traditional corporation. For management track roles, these companies (eg. Danaher, Abbvie, P&G, Coca Cola) would hire undergrads from regional schools for management track LDP programs. Traditionally (aka the 70s and 80s) they would recruit from Ivies only, but that basically ended by the 2000s when they saw they couldn't compete on the package.
    - user_named 3y ago
      I don't think it's true that companies disregard the ivies and instead look for leadership recruits at no name schools. Source?
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        Not Ivy =/= No Name School CMC has no reputation out East, but has a massive west coast PE/IB alumni network. Danaher's GM Development Program (leadership track program) targets Carnegie Mellon You need to attend an elite university to succeed, but an elite university doesn't have to be an Ivy. Selective public schools like Cal, Mich, UVA, UT Austin, UCLA, etc are feeders as well as Selective Privates like Tufts, UChicago, BYU, CMU, CMC, NYU, USC, etc.
        user_named 3y ago
        CMU is close to am elite school so that goes against the argument
        alephnerd 3y ago
        Yes, but it's not an Ivy, as you mentioned in your comment. Unless you are using Ivy to represent the 50+ top universities in the US which are a mix of public and private schools.
      - sheepybloke 3y ago
        I was a part of GE Aviation's Leadership Program and they definitely started looking towards especially more local schools towards the end of my program. They found that people who were from more local schools were more likely to stay longer term after the program finished. Most of the people they hired from the larger schools would leave pretty quickly after finishing the program.
    - ericmay 3y ago
      Berkely, UCLA, Michigan, Washington, are some of the best universities in the country. They exceed Ivy League schools in some fields and compete across the board. These aren't great examples in this context. UIUC, Wisconsin (CMU as well for example) have really strong engineering programs and "fit the mold". UCSB (UCI too for example) and Oregon State are based on the west coast. You can get the kids who didn't get in to Stanford or Cal for one reason or another here. I'm guessing UMass fits this profile as well but for MIT/Harvard/etc. Iowa State is the only one here that's surprising and I'd be curious to find any sort of info online about Google attending their career fairs. It's probably an experiment on Google's part. They typically do not recruit at these types of universities or the footprint is minimal. Overall the point isn't "has Google ever sat foot on this campus? I guess they recruit there!!" it is "Google primarily recruits at Ivy League Universities (and of course the top 10 or 20 or so universities including public) and that is their bread and butter so to speak. Are you suggesting that Google recruits Harvard the same way it recruits Iowa State? You initially said "Google didn't recruit my four friends", but Google still goes to campus in-person and recruits there. Google didn't show up at any of the career fairs for my big public universities in Ohio, though I've interviewed a few times based on my own sheer will and luck. (just to be clear, I'm not picking on Google specifically and these comments can be applied generally to all the top hedge funds, tech companies, non-profits, etc.)
  - jmchuster 3y ago
    New grad talent is a huge pipeline for Google or any other FAANG, and they'll recruit at every well-rated and large engineering program they can find, the large majority of which aren't just MIT. And tons of engineering programs that aren't those, though they may just do all their recruiting through the colleges' online resources, since they have a limited number of humans to physically travel.
    - ericmay 3y ago
      Online recruiting isn't the same as in-person recruiting though. Note that Google (just using them as a stand-in) recruits in-person at MIT but doesn't at other places where they "recruit online" from.
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        I gave a non-exhaustive list of universities Google does on-site recruiting at.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    > For example if "Google" wanted to make a difference it would actually ban hiring from Ivy League or top-20/30 universities (wiggle room on details here) and instead focus on universities that have higher admission rates (50% or so), large public universities, big time diverse populations relatively speaking. I would love to see a company do this experiment. It would really put their self-proclaimed focus on diversity to the test! Too many companies helplessly say "Oh, we really want to hire a diverse workforce, but by golly it's so hard and we just can't find diverse candidates from our candidate pipeline of only Ivy-league and top-tier schools!" Focus on hiring from mid-tier state schools and see if that's still true.
Aromasin 3y ago
Exactly this. I now work in a team with a bunch of Ivy League UK equivalents (Oxford/Cambridge), but I'm about 5 years older working at a similar grade/comp ratio. I had to hop around 4 different teams at 2 companies, and build a pretty extensive portfolio of work, before I got a foot in the door they did straight out of university.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  After graduating from a bog standard state school, it took me 20 years of job hopping from one non-name-brand company to another before I finally got into a FAANG company. And once you're inside, you can see why this is: You're surrounded by a monoculture of Stanford and MIT and Berkeley graduates, because those (and a few others) are where they do all their university recruitment. Not to pick on graduates of those great schools in particular. They're generally very smart and capable folks! It's just that big tech seems to focus on a small number of schools and practically ignore all the other ones.
  - daniel_reetz 3y ago
    I also came in through the side door, and also saw this happening.
  - alexpotato 3y ago
    I have a similar story but replace "FAANG" with "hedge funds".
o_nate 3y ago
Agree with this. Even if it only opens that first door, that's a pretty darned important door.

alephnerd 3y ago

It doesn't necessarily work like that anymore. I have 4 close friends of mine who did EECS@MIT who didn't get recruited at Google.

ericmay 3y ago
Overall it does work like that though. Google (or other tech companies/elite institutions) attends MIT engineering career fairs, it doesn't attend others. Corporations are not good at identifying promising talent outside of their traditional (Ivy League, etc.) recruiting grounds so they stick with their traditional recruiting grounds and then they'll favor "diverse" students from their traditional recruiting grounds. That's why they (corps) haven't made any substantial progress in "diverse hires" IMO. For example if "Google" wanted to make a difference it would actually ban hiring from Ivy League or top-20/30 universities (wiggle room on details here) and instead focus on universities that have higher admission rates (50% or so), large public universities, big time diverse populations relatively speaking.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  I'm not denying that, but you are ignoring the fact that Google would open that booth at a LOT of public schools as well. Just off the top of my head - UC Berkeley, UCLA, Mich, Iowa State, UIUC, UW, UW Madison, UCSB, Oregon State, UMass Amherst, etc. And honestly, I really don't think you understand how hiring whas changed at a traditional corporation. For management track roles, these companies (eg. Danaher, Abbvie, P&G, Coca Cola) would hire undergrads from regional schools for management track LDP programs. Traditionally (aka the 70s and 80s) they would recruit from Ivies only, but that basically ended by the 2000s when they saw they couldn't compete on the package.
  - user_named 3y ago
    I don't think it's true that companies disregard the ivies and instead look for leadership recruits at no name schools. Source?
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      Not Ivy =/= No Name School CMC has no reputation out East, but has a massive west coast PE/IB alumni network. Danaher's GM Development Program (leadership track program) targets Carnegie Mellon You need to attend an elite university to succeed, but an elite university doesn't have to be an Ivy. Selective public schools like Cal, Mich, UVA, UT Austin, UCLA, etc are feeders as well as Selective Privates like Tufts, UChicago, BYU, CMU, CMC, NYU, USC, etc.
      - user_named 3y ago
        CMU is close to am elite school so that goes against the argument
        alephnerd 3y ago
        Yes, but it's not an Ivy, as you mentioned in your comment. Unless you are using Ivy to represent the 50+ top universities in the US which are a mix of public and private schools.
    - sheepybloke 3y ago
      I was a part of GE Aviation's Leadership Program and they definitely started looking towards especially more local schools towards the end of my program. They found that people who were from more local schools were more likely to stay longer term after the program finished. Most of the people they hired from the larger schools would leave pretty quickly after finishing the program.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    Berkely, UCLA, Michigan, Washington, are some of the best universities in the country. They exceed Ivy League schools in some fields and compete across the board. These aren't great examples in this context. UIUC, Wisconsin (CMU as well for example) have really strong engineering programs and "fit the mold". UCSB (UCI too for example) and Oregon State are based on the west coast. You can get the kids who didn't get in to Stanford or Cal for one reason or another here. I'm guessing UMass fits this profile as well but for MIT/Harvard/etc. Iowa State is the only one here that's surprising and I'd be curious to find any sort of info online about Google attending their career fairs. It's probably an experiment on Google's part. They typically do not recruit at these types of universities or the footprint is minimal. Overall the point isn't "has Google ever sat foot on this campus? I guess they recruit there!!" it is "Google primarily recruits at Ivy League Universities (and of course the top 10 or 20 or so universities including public) and that is their bread and butter so to speak. Are you suggesting that Google recruits Harvard the same way it recruits Iowa State? You initially said "Google didn't recruit my four friends", but Google still goes to campus in-person and recruits there. Google didn't show up at any of the career fairs for my big public universities in Ohio, though I've interviewed a few times based on my own sheer will and luck. (just to be clear, I'm not picking on Google specifically and these comments can be applied generally to all the top hedge funds, tech companies, non-profits, etc.)
- jmchuster 3y ago
  New grad talent is a huge pipeline for Google or any other FAANG, and they'll recruit at every well-rated and large engineering program they can find, the large majority of which aren't just MIT. And tons of engineering programs that aren't those, though they may just do all their recruiting through the colleges' online resources, since they have a limited number of humans to physically travel.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    Online recruiting isn't the same as in-person recruiting though. Note that Google (just using them as a stand-in) recruits in-person at MIT but doesn't at other places where they "recruit online" from.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      I gave a non-exhaustive list of universities Google does on-site recruiting at.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  > For example if "Google" wanted to make a difference it would actually ban hiring from Ivy League or top-20/30 universities (wiggle room on details here) and instead focus on universities that have higher admission rates (50% or so), large public universities, big time diverse populations relatively speaking. I would love to see a company do this experiment. It would really put their self-proclaimed focus on diversity to the test! Too many companies helplessly say "Oh, we really want to hire a diverse workforce, but by golly it's so hard and we just can't find diverse candidates from our candidate pipeline of only Ivy-league and top-tier schools!" Focus on hiring from mid-tier state schools and see if that's still true.

Aromasin 3y ago

Exactly this. I now work in a team with a bunch of Ivy League UK equivalents (Oxford/Cambridge), but I'm about 5 years older working at a similar grade/comp ratio. I had to hop around 4 different teams at 2 companies, and build a pretty extensive portfolio of work, before I got a foot in the door they did straight out of university.

ryandrake 3y ago
After graduating from a bog standard state school, it took me 20 years of job hopping from one non-name-brand company to another before I finally got into a FAANG company. And once you're inside, you can see why this is: You're surrounded by a monoculture of Stanford and MIT and Berkeley graduates, because those (and a few others) are where they do all their university recruitment. Not to pick on graduates of those great schools in particular. They're generally very smart and capable folks! It's just that big tech seems to focus on a small number of schools and practically ignore all the other ones.
- daniel_reetz 3y ago
  I also came in through the side door, and also saw this happening.
- alexpotato 3y ago
  I have a similar story but replace "FAANG" with "hedge funds".

o_nate 3y ago

Agree with this. Even if it only opens that first door, that's a pretty darned important door.