The fact that people can be rejected for jobs over stupid reasons (too young, too old, too many prior jobs, too few prior jobs, not enough or wrong pedigree, to

The fact that people can be rejected for jobs over stupid reasons (too young, too old, too many prior jobs, too few prior jobs, not enough or wrong pedigree, too much pedigree) indicates a surplus. In a real talent shortage, you don't need a PhD from Stanford to do interesting work. Where you're from doesn't matter, because there's so much demand for people to work on hard things. There were plenty of smart state-school grads working on NASA programs with much more at stake than a fucking VC-funded web app. When demand for talent is high, that image stuff doesn't matter.