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I think that was another of many blows to the head and gonads that the California public Universities have suffered. Prop 13 forced the state schools to adopt

I think that was another of many blows to the head and gonads that the California public Universities have suffered. Prop 13 forced the state schools to adopt a private school model. Way back when, there was a tacit agreement that the public schools wouldn't tap private sources and in return, the private schools would be generally supportive of the state schools with respect to Sacramento. That all went by the boards and everyone is now selling off chunks of schools to private entities. In the early 1990s, the UC schools had to offer buyouts/retirements and a lot of very senior faculty left. Many were still in their prime and went to other Universities. Nasty brain drain. I'll defer to your assessment of CS programs. I studied a science but not computer science. In my experience, an Ivy league name is worth a huge amount in prestige. Edit: Also, the contacts one makes at an Ivy or a Stanford are leagues ahead of what's available at a public school.

alephnerd 2y ago
> I'll defer to your assessment of CS programs. I studied a science but not computer science. In my experience, an Ivy league name is worth a huge amount in prestige. Fair enough! I can't speak for the sciences - only Engineering/CS. CS/Eng is much more driven by defense and private sector funding, which is biased towards National Labs, which are overwhelmingly managed by public universities. At the federal level, the DoD and DoE has held this bias for decades due to a mix of pork barrel politicking as well as the fact that public university graduates tend to be overrepresented in career civil service roles. I personally know a couple SES types who purposely redirected CHIPS and IRA funding to flagship universites due to a bit of a grudge against the Private School IVorY tower (though lack of STEM research capacity also played a role) > Also, the contacts one makes at an Ivy or a Stanford are leagues ahead of what's available at a public school. As someone who attended an Ivy/Ivy Adjacent, I highly disagree, at least in Eng (and Eng adjacent roles like PM/EM/Sales/Entrepreneaurship and even VC to a certain extent) Middle management turned upper management in most tech companies tended to attend flagship publics in the West Coast/TX/Midwest plus some elite privates like Stanford/Claremont Colleges/USC/CMU, which impacts recruiting as well. Ime, other than Penn and Cornell, Harvard and other Ivies are not as well represented compared to a program like EECS@Cal, CS@UT, CS@UW, etc. Most upper level Ivy grads I end up meeting tend to have done grad school at an Ivy (MBA@Wharton/HBS/CBS/Johnson) but undergrad at a public university either domestically (state flagships) or abroad (IIT D/K/B/M to Wharton pipeline) Stanford and MIT are a different story, but they also have much more rigorious admissions and student body. In addition, a lot of my professional (not age - precocious little scamp ain't I [0]) peers in Eng/Sales/VC leadership are at the "sending kids to college" stage, and most of them are sending their kids to flagship public and private engineering programs - not Ivies. This has a downstream impact on the network, as parents will help their kids and their kids friends get jobs and referrals. I personally know a Tech Billionare who sent their kids to a top public CS program despite having the option to send them to MIT or Harvard due to the larger network of mid-level managers turned founders/VCs from that school. And as you can probably tell from this conversation, I'm probably not in favor of giving a leg up to hiring or funding Ivy/Ivy Adjacent graduates, and I am in a position to make that choice. There are plenty of others like me. Tl;Dr - the tech industry has made upward mobility easier by overemphasizing work experience over Ivy/Private pedigree to a certain extent. [0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uofjc65LEJM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uofjc65LEJM
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
  Very interesting perspective, thank you. >> Also, the contacts one makes at an Ivy or a Stanford are leagues ahead of what's available at a public school. > As someone who attended an Ivy/Ivy Adjacent, I highly disagree, at least in Eng (and Eng adjacent roles like PM/EM/Sales/Entrepreneaurship and even VC to a certain extent) In my long but undistinguished career, I don't see that my Berkeley undergrad classmates and I have set the world on fire and we're not powerbrokers by a very long shot. We were all (at that time) from the same chunks of middle-class Northern and Southern California with almost no out-of-staters. Many of us including myself commuted and there was almost none of the stereotypical college social life due to courseload and research (a very big emphasis). Now, I am sure things have changed in the nearly 40 years since I graduated. Perhaps the increasing cost and explosion of Silicon Valley/CS has changed who came after, where they come from, and their family backgrounds. > CS/Eng is much more driven by defense and private sector funding, which is biased towards National Labs, which are overwhelmingly managed by public universities. That used to be true when UC ran LBL, Livermore, and Los Alamos but these days they are run (poorly) by "public/private" consortia. Stanford runs SLAC, Chicago for the moment runs Fermilab - both are private schools. I don't think wealthy families send their kids to any of these private schools with a view to jobs at LocMart, Boeing, or Argonne. > Middle management turned upper management in most tech companies tended to attend flagship publics in the West Coast/TX/Midwest plus some elite privates like Stanford/Claremont Colleges/USC/CMU, which impacts recruiting as well. The real surprise here is USC which was a scorned backwater when I was in college. "University of Second Choice" took great strides in the 1990s under Steven Sample. IMO it is far from an elite[0] place like Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. but the USC network is a Very Big Deal at least in So Cal. At my company, their alumni association virtually guarantees that an applicant will get a face-to-face with a decisionmaking alum while others are getting screened out by the AI or HR. Edit: [0] I mean elite in terms of academic quality vs. job/networking opportunities.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > I don't see that my Berkeley undergrad classmates and I have set the world on fire and we're not powerbrokers by a very long shot > I am sure things have changed in the nearly 40 years since I graduated 40 years ago maybe, but since the mid-2000s, UCB (and LA and SD) have become much more prestigious (or became more prestigious again - I think Stanford/USC were "inferior" until the 70s-80s due to political strife). Now that tech (software and hardware) has been the 1st and 3rd highest margin industries for almost 25 years now, there is a lot more money sloshing around. A plurality of Investment Bankers, PEs, and VCs you'll meet nowadays in the SFBA will have studied at UC Berkeley for either undergrad (usually Eng+Haas or Eng+Econ double major) or via the PT MBA at Haas. Wharton is up there largely thanks to the EMBA program they strategically placed on Embarcadero, and Stanford has never changed prestige wise. Tech still has a regional bias (Dallas and westward), and most of the West is still public school dominated. > I don't think wealthy families send their kids to any of these private schools with a view to jobs at LocMart, Boeing, or Argonne. You're underestimating rich people (or maybe the rich people I know have a tech bias, given that we all work in the tech industry). The "Asian" parent and "Soviet/Israeli Jewish" parent archetype is strong in NorCal - and transplants from other parts of the US act the same way - and most of us 2nd gen members of these communities filtered into the tech industry because our parents worked in them. Also, new grad salaries in tech outpace salaries in IB, PE, and Consulting when factoring hours worked as well as career longevity, because most IB/PE/Consulting/VC Analysts burn out or get managed out with 3 years, and have to do an MBA in order to pivot into tech. The downside with partner heavy systems is that they limit carry to a handful of mid-to-upper level types who are partner/MD or partner/MD track, and unlike NYC, there just isn't enough deal flow in the West excluding VC to make it easy to job hop in these sectors, and partner-track VC roles at the truly successful VC funds (BVP, Accel, A16Z types) are biased in favor of thematic experience. On the other hand, if you consistently upskill and show a strong track record of execution, you can remain relevant in the tech industry for decades earning very comfortable salaries. > The real surprise here is USC which was a scorned backwater when I was in college Henry Samueli (Broadcom), Andrew Viterbi (Qualcomm), and Aerospace (Northrop, Grumman, BAE) helped massively, as they tended to hire from UCLA, CalTech, and USC due to proximity. SCU [or USC back in the day ;)] remained an insular parochial Italian Catholic college, though their IP Law program is decent because of the part time JD and some well placed alumni at Fenwick&West, Cooley, Wilson Sonsini, and Google's in-house counsel. > I mean elite in terms of academic quality vs. job/networking opportunities 40 years ago maybe but not anymore in engineering/CS. Excluding MIT/CMU/Stanford, most breakthroughs in the last 30-40 years were done by professors at the top CS/EE public universities. Heck, at Harvard it's fairly common for Eng and CS students to take courses at MIT due to a lack of course offerings at Harvard SEAS. And anyhow, both MIT and Harvard can't compete with SJSU's MSEE which has actual GMs and Product Leaders at Micron, Intel, Samsung, AMD, Applied Materials, Nvidia, etc teaching part-time If you don't get a scholarship (which most Californians end up becoming ineligible for due to household income restrictions - a 2 income household where both parents are earning $75k/yr is ineligible for no-strings attached aid at a notable Ivy), the math starts making sense to go to a decent public.

alephnerd 2y ago

> I'll defer to your assessment of CS programs. I studied a science but not computer science. In my experience, an Ivy league name is worth a huge amount in prestige. Fair enough! I can't speak for the sciences - only Engineering/CS. CS/Eng is much more driven by defense and private sector funding, which is biased towards National Labs, which are overwhelmingly managed by public universities. At the federal level, the DoD and DoE has held this bias for decades due to a mix of pork barrel politicking as well as the fact that public university graduates tend to be overrepresented in career civil service roles. I personally know a couple SES types who purposely redirected CHIPS and IRA funding to flagship universites due to a bit of a grudge against the Private School IVorY tower (though lack of STEM research capacity also played a role) > Also, the contacts one makes at an Ivy or a Stanford are leagues ahead of what's available at a public school. As someone who attended an Ivy/Ivy Adjacent, I highly disagree, at least in Eng (and Eng adjacent roles like PM/EM/Sales/Entrepreneaurship and even VC to a certain extent) Middle management turned upper management in most tech companies tended to attend flagship publics in the West Coast/TX/Midwest plus some elite privates like Stanford/Claremont Colleges/USC/CMU, which impacts recruiting as well. Ime, other than Penn and Cornell, Harvard and other Ivies are not as well represented compared to a program like EECS@Cal, CS@UT, CS@UW, etc. Most upper level Ivy grads I end up meeting tend to have done grad school at an Ivy (MBA@Wharton/HBS/CBS/Johnson) but undergrad at a public university either domestically (state flagships) or abroad (IIT D/K/B/M to Wharton pipeline) Stanford and MIT are a different story, but they also have much more rigorious admissions and student body. In addition, a lot of my professional (not age - precocious little scamp ain't I [0]) peers in Eng/Sales/VC leadership are at the "sending kids to college" stage, and most of them are sending their kids to flagship public and private engineering programs - not Ivies. This has a downstream impact on the network, as parents will help their kids and their kids friends get jobs and referrals. I personally know a Tech Billionare who sent their kids to a top public CS program despite having the option to send them to MIT or Harvard due to the larger network of mid-level managers turned founders/VCs from that school. And as you can probably tell from this conversation, I'm probably not in favor of giving a leg up to hiring or funding Ivy/Ivy Adjacent graduates, and I am in a position to make that choice. There are plenty of others like me. Tl;Dr - the tech industry has made upward mobility easier by overemphasizing work experience over Ivy/Private pedigree to a certain extent. [0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uofjc65LEJM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uofjc65LEJM

OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
Very interesting perspective, thank you. >> Also, the contacts one makes at an Ivy or a Stanford are leagues ahead of what's available at a public school. > As someone who attended an Ivy/Ivy Adjacent, I highly disagree, at least in Eng (and Eng adjacent roles like PM/EM/Sales/Entrepreneaurship and even VC to a certain extent) In my long but undistinguished career, I don't see that my Berkeley undergrad classmates and I have set the world on fire and we're not powerbrokers by a very long shot. We were all (at that time) from the same chunks of middle-class Northern and Southern California with almost no out-of-staters. Many of us including myself commuted and there was almost none of the stereotypical college social life due to courseload and research (a very big emphasis). Now, I am sure things have changed in the nearly 40 years since I graduated. Perhaps the increasing cost and explosion of Silicon Valley/CS has changed who came after, where they come from, and their family backgrounds. > CS/Eng is much more driven by defense and private sector funding, which is biased towards National Labs, which are overwhelmingly managed by public universities. That used to be true when UC ran LBL, Livermore, and Los Alamos but these days they are run (poorly) by "public/private" consortia. Stanford runs SLAC, Chicago for the moment runs Fermilab - both are private schools. I don't think wealthy families send their kids to any of these private schools with a view to jobs at LocMart, Boeing, or Argonne. > Middle management turned upper management in most tech companies tended to attend flagship publics in the West Coast/TX/Midwest plus some elite privates like Stanford/Claremont Colleges/USC/CMU, which impacts recruiting as well. The real surprise here is USC which was a scorned backwater when I was in college. "University of Second Choice" took great strides in the 1990s under Steven Sample. IMO it is far from an elite[0] place like Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. but the USC network is a Very Big Deal at least in So Cal. At my company, their alumni association virtually guarantees that an applicant will get a face-to-face with a decisionmaking alum while others are getting screened out by the AI or HR. Edit: [0] I mean elite in terms of academic quality vs. job/networking opportunities.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > I don't see that my Berkeley undergrad classmates and I have set the world on fire and we're not powerbrokers by a very long shot > I am sure things have changed in the nearly 40 years since I graduated 40 years ago maybe, but since the mid-2000s, UCB (and LA and SD) have become much more prestigious (or became more prestigious again - I think Stanford/USC were "inferior" until the 70s-80s due to political strife). Now that tech (software and hardware) has been the 1st and 3rd highest margin industries for almost 25 years now, there is a lot more money sloshing around. A plurality of Investment Bankers, PEs, and VCs you'll meet nowadays in the SFBA will have studied at UC Berkeley for either undergrad (usually Eng+Haas or Eng+Econ double major) or via the PT MBA at Haas. Wharton is up there largely thanks to the EMBA program they strategically placed on Embarcadero, and Stanford has never changed prestige wise. Tech still has a regional bias (Dallas and westward), and most of the West is still public school dominated. > I don't think wealthy families send their kids to any of these private schools with a view to jobs at LocMart, Boeing, or Argonne. You're underestimating rich people (or maybe the rich people I know have a tech bias, given that we all work in the tech industry). The "Asian" parent and "Soviet/Israeli Jewish" parent archetype is strong in NorCal - and transplants from other parts of the US act the same way - and most of us 2nd gen members of these communities filtered into the tech industry because our parents worked in them. Also, new grad salaries in tech outpace salaries in IB, PE, and Consulting when factoring hours worked as well as career longevity, because most IB/PE/Consulting/VC Analysts burn out or get managed out with 3 years, and have to do an MBA in order to pivot into tech. The downside with partner heavy systems is that they limit carry to a handful of mid-to-upper level types who are partner/MD or partner/MD track, and unlike NYC, there just isn't enough deal flow in the West excluding VC to make it easy to job hop in these sectors, and partner-track VC roles at the truly successful VC funds (BVP, Accel, A16Z types) are biased in favor of thematic experience. On the other hand, if you consistently upskill and show a strong track record of execution, you can remain relevant in the tech industry for decades earning very comfortable salaries. > The real surprise here is USC which was a scorned backwater when I was in college Henry Samueli (Broadcom), Andrew Viterbi (Qualcomm), and Aerospace (Northrop, Grumman, BAE) helped massively, as they tended to hire from UCLA, CalTech, and USC due to proximity. SCU [or USC back in the day ;)] remained an insular parochial Italian Catholic college, though their IP Law program is decent because of the part time JD and some well placed alumni at Fenwick&West, Cooley, Wilson Sonsini, and Google's in-house counsel. > I mean elite in terms of academic quality vs. job/networking opportunities 40 years ago maybe but not anymore in engineering/CS. Excluding MIT/CMU/Stanford, most breakthroughs in the last 30-40 years were done by professors at the top CS/EE public universities. Heck, at Harvard it's fairly common for Eng and CS students to take courses at MIT due to a lack of course offerings at Harvard SEAS. And anyhow, both MIT and Harvard can't compete with SJSU's MSEE which has actual GMs and Product Leaders at Micron, Intel, Samsung, AMD, Applied Materials, Nvidia, etc teaching part-time If you don't get a scholarship (which most Californians end up becoming ineligible for due to household income restrictions - a 2 income household where both parents are earning $75k/yr is ineligible for no-strings attached aid at a notable Ivy), the math starts making sense to go to a decent public.