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A comment on The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new computer model confirms. Parent comment

Re:The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new c... by akhilcacharya on Monday October 21, 2019 @12:55PM (#21314490)
> Did the guys who went to work for Google take any additional risk? Yet, they are now millionaires.

They probably are smarter though! If they weren't, they wouldn't get in.

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Re:The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new c... by drdeadringer on Monday October 21, 2019 @01:29PM (#21314883)
I'm not particularly smart.

I've contracted with Google a couple times, just like >50% of their workforce.

Would I like millions? Sure. Do I have that? No. Would I work myself to death for it? No. Do I believe Google [or whatever FAANG company you want] is The Greatest Everest Of All? I'm smarter than that and you should be as well.

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Re:The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new c... by ttul on Monday October 21, 2019 @01:00PM (#21314552)
Haha. They are all smart. Not everyone chooses to apply for a job at Google.
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Re:The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new c... by throwaway_bad on Monday October 21, 2019 @01:38PM (#21314984)
I think it's pretty typical for schools like CMU. Look at their post graduation survey: https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/scs/1-P...

Out of 170 graduates, 27 went to facebook, 21 went to google, 13 went to microsoft, 6 went to amazon, 2 went to apple, etc. That's basically half the class including a lot of people from the bottom half of the class (the best people I knew usually didn't choose FAAMG and their outcomes were a crapshoot).

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Re:The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new c... by akhilcacharya on Monday October 21, 2019 @02:03PM (#21315291)
Really cool report. Looking through the list the Google and FB numbers go up including Waymo, DeepMind, and WhatsApp.

Out of about ~150 graduates at my undergrad, I think 3 went to Amazon (including myself), 1 went to Facebook, 1 went to Microsoft in a support role and the rest went to Cisco, IBM, and consulting companies.

I wonder why CMU only had 6 to Amazon. That seems low! I think trading firms like JS, Two Sigma, Jump and Ansatz had more combined...

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Re:The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new c... by throwaway_bad on Monday October 21, 2019 @02:06PM (#21315328)
It seems kind of asshole to say this but Amazon is considered low-tier at CMU so people don't choose it unless they got rejected from everyone else. =/

I am looking at MIT's salary survey and they have similar ratios: https://capd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/about/files/GSS2017...

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Re:The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new c... by akhilcacharya on Monday October 21, 2019 @02:12PM (#21315383)
> It seems kind of asshole to say this but Amazon is considered low-tier at CMU so people don't choose it unless they got rejected from everyone else. =

Why is that?

Also, MIT's distribution seems very different. Amazon and Facebook are near equal and GM takes a big chunk, which is not what I would have expected. Oracle is also around the same as my undergrad.

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Re:The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new c... by throwaway_bad on Monday October 21, 2019 @02:20PM (#21315481)
You work there so you probably have a better idea than I do but they have a terrible reputation externally: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17062782
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