It helps with reading comments on HN that discuss tiers of schools. Shared context and all, even if the tiers themselves are meaningless (see Big 3 CS companies etc).
Re:Inside Palantir
by blahblah12 on Sunday May 08, 2016 @06:42AM
(#11653492)
What ar the big 3? This seems like a meaningless distinction. I always see Big 4 on Reddit. I don't think anyone has ever said Bi4 4. And even Big 4 makes no sense. It should be Big 5. Wait or Big 10? Isn't that a football conference?
Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon have prestige, but more importantly, recruit and hire the most heavily out of college.
These days, I think the big 3 are Google, Apple, and Facebook.
Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc... are all great places to work, but are definitely on the backup-list of the best college grads.
I don't think Apple recruits as many SWE out of college as my original 4.
If we're talking about where college seniors want to work, it'd look more like a list of unicorn startups (Airbnb, Uber, and yes, Palantir) - reasoning is you actually get to build something instead of end up a cog in Google. But necessarily these places hire fewer college grads.
Just out of curiosity, what is it that you do that you need to know this?