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nope not the case, I know a bunch of people at these various schools, and the crux of the problem is that theres a huge culture at MIT (and moreso than many pe

nope not the case, I know a bunch of people at these various schools, and the crux of the problem is that theres a huge culture at MIT (and moreso than many peer schools) of celebrating herculean last minute efforts that get the grade. This is great for experimental hacking on a weekend, and "good enough" for research, but it does not encourage an incremental design sensibility, owing to its last minute nature. This is not to say that any of these people are bad at what they do, they just have bad habits that they need to walk off, but first someone needs to tell them!

rdouble 17y ago
the crux of the problem is that theres a huge culture at MIT (and moreso than many peer schools) of celebrating herculean last minute efforts that get the grade That's a very astute observation. I work and have worked with many MIT people, and even TA'd an MIT course. The "all nighter" hazing ritual culture was very prevalent. To this day, my friends who went to MIT prefer to work 24 hour shifts, late nights, and on weekends - even though they've been out of school for a decade. In addition, MIT had a culture of boot-camp style negative reinforcement. "You suck, are not smart enough and are lazy, work harder" was the driving attitude. (at least it was in the late 1990s) In contrast, when I moved to the west coast, all the Stanford people I met were more about basking in their obvious awesomeness and mastering time management. Get the project done early, schedule everything around ultimate frisbee team and rock climbing club, go to the outdoor concert on Friday night and still make it up to Tahoe for the weekend.