Agreed. At this point, I usually like to point out that hierarchical societies have their advantages. A huge asset for France is it's elite schools -- the "Grandes Écoles".

These schools are outstanding in a way that few Americans can even fathom, and their students are educated to a point that I didn't think possible until moving to Paris.

If you want the best engineers in the world, hire out of those schools. As a bonus, they aren't the sort to hop between jobs.

But I tink that’s really what it is. The best engineers I have seen didn’t care for ‘burning’ years of their life in half military schools or old institutions, they went directly to CS courses to get a diploma faster and go abroad or start their own project.

Put another way, people who don’t care about prestige and having a super broad education don’t go there, and in our field I tink a ton of super talented people fit that description.

To be fair, so do I, and I think you make a good point. The profile you can expect from a GE is:

- Extremely well-learned. They know a lot of stuff.

- Solutions implemented by GE engineeres will be principled, rather than ad-hoc.

- Not self-starters. They very much have an employee mindset.

And to be faire, there are plenty of outstanding employees (not to mention freelancers or entrepreneurs) who haven't gone through a Grande École.

Let me put it another way: you may not need a GE-graduate to build the next iPod, but you certainly need them for the next EuroTunnel.

But just like Americans go to ranked universities, as a student you learn how to play the game and go to the best (fit) one you can enter.