I completely agree with you that you can get fantastic educations in a number of places.
But I think part of the problem is how much of a walled garden there is associated with these elite institutions in terms of top positions.
Tech isn't the only place this happens either.
I've become convinced that part of the source of our inequality in the US is hypercredentialing. That is, your abilities and skillset are equated with your degree. You're not that competent if you didn't go to an elite college, you can't do task X unless you have this very specific degree in Y, etc. and so forth and so on. It's rampant and affects all sorts of realms, from unemployment to licensing laws.
The comments in this thread make it sound like if you aren't born in the top 1% and don't spend every minute planning your application to uni then you will end up homeless on the street. If that is true then I highly recommend moving somewhere sane.
Interesting - I never browse job postings here. Do you have a reference?
What's posted on HN is not at all representative of the rest of the country, though. I've certainly worked in places where they tend to prefer "top schools", but once again, that was for graduate degrees, where as I said, being from a wealthy background doesn't help all that much. And for engineering schools (Princeton would not be viewed favorably, for example).
>Tech isn't the only place this happens either.
In my experience, tech is probably where it happens less. In most of my peer companies, after something like 4-5 years experience, no one cares where you went to school. It's much more common for things like MBA and Law (one lawyer told me that many of his firm's clients stipulate that the lawyers working on their case must be from a top school, and graduated in the top N of the class).
>I've become convinced that part of the source of our inequality in the US is hypercredentialing. That is, your abilities and skillset are equated with your degree. You're not that competent if you didn't go to an elite college, you can't do task X unless you have this very specific degree in Y, etc. and so forth and so on. It's rampant and affects all sorts of realms, from unemployment to licensing laws.
I'd be interested in seeing studies supporting this. In my anecdotal experience, I've seen it much more acutely in other countries. But then again, those countries also tend to have much more inequality.
I'm not sure I see a problem. You can get a great education in most non-elite schools. You can do well in undergrad and it makes it easier to go to an elite grad school (it's a much more level playing field to get in there). It's not as if the landscape of education has a sharp cutoff at the elite level.
I know this is going to rub people the wrong way, but your comment reminds me of a documentary I saw where a couple tried to live on food stamps to show how difficult life is (as in that food stamps don't provide for much food).
The couple insisted on buying everything organic.
Yes, that is going to make life difficult!