I did get to take a Unix Security Holes course with DJB. That was the first semester I was there, and that was kind of another mistake. When you're doing 400 level classes your first semester, it sucks when you have to go back to the basic 100 level classes to complete an arbitrary requirement for your degree. (Had to take "Intro to Java" taught by a chemistry professor. He did not know how to program. Huge waste of time and the state's money.) I have avoided a number of security pitfalls in my own work because of what I learned in that class, though, so it was definitely worth taking. Set me up for a career of accurate and bug-free code ;)
(Incidentally, what precipitated me dropping out was the Unix Security Holes course. The homework for the class was to find 10 security flaws in existing software. This was quite the easy task back in 2004. I found a bug in the course registration system. The vendor that made it was infinitely appreciative, patched it instantly, and sent me an iPod as a thank you. The school was very mad at me and tried to have me expelled for violating their computer use policy ("hacking"). It was a client-side XSRF issue though, so technically their computers weren't used, and I obviously investigated the flaw responsibly; the system wasn't destabilized, no production data was changed, etc. DJB fought hard for me and I didn't get expelled. Also got one of the highest grades in that class! The school did silently block me from using computers in computer labs and using the course registration system, though, after DJB's rage had blown over. I didn't have the will to fight it, so I just left.)
TL;DR: go to the best school you can get into and afford. You won't regret it.
A sad (albeit true) reality of democratised education adjusted for profit.
DJB = Daniel J. Bernstein [1]
UIC = University of Illinois at Chicago
You might be conflating class signaling with intelligence. I've dealt with plenty of people from Harvard that did not impress in the slightest, but oh boy were they good at getting their suits tailored.
One snobby rule there that some kids had was to always pretend like you know more than you do, and never show weakness. So you have to say "Whaaaat? You've never heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?" -- even though you only learned about it last week. You psych out the competition so that you don't have to compete on a level playing field.
Yeah, probably says I know something about normal distributions work.
He's essentially saying at a societal level/personal income level - a STEM degree from a mid tier school > generic liberal arts degree from a top tier school. Particularly if the recipient is not truly passionate about the liberal arts degree and is using it as a backup plan.
I think what you are experiencing is a bit related to survivorship bias. You are being exposed to the people who passed the gauntlet of getting into the top-tier school and graduating in presumably STEM. Of course those folks are smart and there are reasons you'd be blown away by them.
It may be a smart choice, but not all smart people who try to make that choice get in.
> The first time I was exposed to people from top-tier universities is when I entered the industry. I was absolutely blown away by the quality difference.
I’ve worked in software engineering with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT students. The only difference I saw was during their first couple of years out of undergrad where the people who went to prestigious schools had more confidence to jump in and solve problems. After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school.
But not all top students in mid-tier attempted to go to Harvard. So if you were basing the "smartness" of these two populations based on this single decision alone, then the low-tier students at Harvard would be smarter because 100% of them attempted to go to Harvard, which was a smarter choice than the choice made by some of the students at mid-tier universities who chose not to apply to Harvard.
> After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school.
In my experience, peoples' first few years out of college has a huge effect on their career trajectories. People I know who had high salaries out of school continue to have high salaries. People who didn't get good entry-level jobs continue to struggle (relative to the rest of the pack, they're not starving).
Have you considered that the students whom you are working with were among the bottom quartile at their alma mater? The very best tend to take unique paths.
In general the phds I've worked with were tbh below the average- they always seemed to be big on ideas but less so on actually implementing them and following through.
This was from my days in the finance industry, working in algo trading/hft, but I will admit I was definitely in a tier below the groups that were absolutely minting money, but these were coveted jobs.
Regarding phds, I totally agree that they are not effective workers usually. The desire to get a phd is almost like a mild form of ocd where people get obsessed with one particular problem and are willing to dedicate ungodly amounts of time to the topic. This is usually the opposite of what you want when trying to deliver something in the commercial sphere.
If they had had an "intro for beginners" and "accelerated intro", I would have probably stayed in the program. Also if their upper-level courses weren't like 60 hours of homework per week for one class. At a certain point I realized I just simply didn't have the stamina to do 60 hours for one class and all my other classes. So it was sort of like applying to be a doctor -- you know one of the prereqs is rotations where you don't sleep for 2 days straight, and if you can't do that, then for some reason, you can't be a doctor.
That other time, genius recreates the entire playing field and good habits are left sitting around staring at each other trying to figure out what the hell just happened.
In every successful startup I worked at (3 of 20ish), I observed the opposite.
Curious on your perspective why professionalism and good work habits beat "genius" at startups.
I would have assumed the opposite. My view of startup life was that it's about managing your money, your hiring/firing, your sales, and what you focus on.
That's about good prioritization and productivity per minute.
(a) is more probable. Sustainable business start-up success of the non-banal order requires high general intelligence. It does exist. But 9 times out of 10 hard work and people skills will win.
Perceived genius (or more appropriately, assumed genius) would be more accurate. The people who are the least scrupulous, most creative, and technically competent are very successful. Startups aren't usually successful because of sweat hard work, but realizing a combination of opportunity and reach, rather than contracting as much software development labor as possible.
You can’t tell from a high school transcript whether someone got an A because they’re brilliant and didn’t have to study at all, or whether they got an A because they studied hard.
Most of my friends who went into ivy leagues were outgoing and did tons of extracurriculars and studied hard. My friends who were naturally brilliant either stuck to the subjects they liked, and ended up getting their doctorate at a state school, or they had had their success derailed for some other reason.
When you know you are smart there is no reason to prove it to yourself by going to a fancy school.
Unfortunately you need to prove it to other people later, and going to the fancy school is a very simple signal.
I honestly think IQ scores primarily measure how much you want to score well on an IQ test. You can improve your scores by 10 points according to scientific papers just by being more motivated and not quitting, not being distracted and so on.
Real (ie. official medical) IQ scores seem to be heavily skewed around age and speed. So the same performance would get you a super high score in a 5-year-old and a mediocre score in a 10-year-old, which is weird because the questions are explicitly trying not to test language/knowledge type stuff that would change a lot between those ages. And the same answers would get a far higher score if you bashed them out in 15 minutes than if you took 2 hours on them. I haven't gone back to re-examine it but I remember thinking that you were way better off smashing through the questions as fast as possible and getting a few right than carefully considering the questions... which is an odd way to define intelligence.
Are there very smart people at Harvard, and other prestigious liberal arts universities? Absolutely. But there are lots of people who are merely above average and lucky, by dint of birth or chance, and some people who aren't even above average. (FWIW MIT and Caltech have much better claims to being filled with the smartest people in the world -- rigorous standards of admission, no legacies, NCAA Div3 athletics, etc.)