Martelsham is the place where Tommy flowers used to work its the equivalent of ATT labs.

One of 6 particular universities.

A similar term in the USA would be something like Ivy League:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandstone_Universities

It's a phrase that someone from the associated region of the world can generally go "Oh, you attended a <terminology> school?" and immediately have certain stereotypes and assumptions (accurate or not) come to mind.

But it's quite strong for CS/AI, as they have the largest CS department in Europe, producing the largest amount of world-leading research (according to the latest government-organised Research Assessment Exercise).

For undergrads that means there is an unparalleled variety of courses you can take, both in depth and breadth. I remember I had a choice of about 25 courses in my 3rd year and over 50 in my final year. For most British universities, your choice is rather limited - usually between 8-12 courses each year. Another bonus is that you get to work with leading researchers on your final year project. E.g. some of my friends were supervised by Phil Wadler - the guy was one of the principal inventors of Haskell and, with Gilad Bracha and Martin Odersky, designed Java generics and the extensions of the Collections framework.

So, Edinburgh is quite special and CS/AI is a particular focus at the University, so it's a shame not enough people know it.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university

Finance pays a fair market wage, which seems high by comparison to all the unfair players out there, but isn't actually that unreasonable.

Startups pay a theoretically fair wage (if you accept valuations at face-value and exclude liquidation preferences). It's when you see the equity/cap table (2% for useless VPs and 0.03% for engineers)-- as well as what the founders have done to ensure their careers no matter what happens to the business-- that you pick out the classism of the well-connected. If you look at salaries alone, though, you won't see it.

Outsiders complain about finance "bonuses" (finance salaries are only at-market) while failing to account for the fact that that's a much fairer compensation system than whatever they get at their corporate jobs. Granted, the banking bonus system is horribly corrupt in practice; but in theory there is nothing wrong with it, and I'd rather have a corrupt profit-sharing system like that in finance than none at all.

If, stipulating the dollar value of the whole comp package, a comp package appears fair, it is still fair no matter what that company pays anyone else. Wages are "fair" or "unfair" based on prevailing rates and supply/demand.

And of course in the real world, wages are not based on supply and demand. They're based on leverage and BATNA.

Simply put, given two equal employees (hypothetically, if it were possible to measure this), it's not "fair" to give one $50k and one $300k. It's not about the prevailing wage, it's about the contribution relative to what is coming back.

You're a $100k/yr FTE dev. A VP above you makes $200k/yr. You believe that VP should be making $50k/yr. But your position isn't improved at all if they do. You're still making $100k/yr, and someone else is taking the $150k/yr premium.

So you say, "no, I should get a share of that $150k/yr premium." Well, OK, why aren't you? What you're saying is that you're worth more than $100k/yr. You already have a way of demonstrating that: demand a raise, then start interviewing.

The flip side of this, if it helps make the point clearer: you're a $100k/yr dev. The VP at your company is already making $50k/yr. This is good how? By any logic you could employ in the above scenario, you're worth more than $100k/yr in this scenario too.

What other people in your firm make is an orthogonal concern to what you make. Clinging to the belief that pay equity is an important part of your compensation is as likely to harm you as help you; stipulating that we are all especially high-functioning professionals, the notion of pay equity is part of what puts a ceiling on what you earn now.

What other people make is definitely not an orthogonal concern, and is hugely relevant. Your justification of not caring about other people earning more is incredibly short-sighted. Yes, it does improve my position if other people earn less, because that money is then available for the company to use on other things, such as paying me.

Furthermore, to suggest that this is "irrational" is offensive and irrational in itself, and would not be inconsistent with psychological propaganda.

The word "irrational" doesn't mean "idiotic", by the way.

Here is an analogy: the business has $150k to spend. Would you rather have it spent on a pair of paintings for the meeting room, or in company-wide renovations? I think it's rational to choose the latter, though it doesn't immediately affect your bottom line.

Ah, I think this explains the disagreement. That kind of "rational" has nothing to do with fairness, and everything to do with maximizing individual payoff. I think you've conflated the two, when they're almost completely incompatible. I knew you were a closet republican ;)

This is why I get supremely annoyed at claims that a specific non-mathematical argument is "irrational".

(Examples of non-computable things: company spends resources on R&D and makes more long-term profit; company spends resources on higher pay for everyone else and boosts morale; reputation of company increases and you attract a wider pool of potential employees; etc.)

In more mathematical terms, greedy optimisation algorithms in the name of short-term "rationality" most often lead you to a local, not global, maximum.

For what it's worth, I have made substantially more than my coworkers in almost all of my jobs (based on what I could infer from watercooler talk after being around a while), and I don't think that's fair either. I actually chewed out one of my managers once when I found out a coworker was making half of what I was.

Why wasn't he paying him more? Because he could get away with it, not because it was fair. He was a hard worker, very smart, but rather timid. Put this guy against the alpha male manager, and unless the manager wants to be charitable, that guy is not getting a dime more than the manager can bully him into taking. What's worse, the guy will probably come out thinking he got a good deal.

If a company has 5% to give to employees in a certain year, VPs getting 1% does increase the odds an engineer will get 0.03% instead of 0.1%.

The difference is in one scenario you're talking about a company that can pay out 300k a year, and in the other it's only 150k. Fairness is not about absolute numbers, but relative numbers in proportion to the total available.

Because the market cannot operate, it is suppressed by the class system.

If you're smart enough to be an engineer, you're smart enough to realize the only way to win is not to play. So you either go into finance, or leave the UK, or grit your teeth and accept that in order to do the work you enjoy, you're going to be poor compared to someone who couldn't do your job in a month of Sundays, but has the "right" connections.

Is the UK class system still that bad? (I'd heard horror stories but assumed they were at least somewhat overblown).

Same in out politics too actually. Might not be Lord-this or Lady-that running the show, but they all graduated in PPE from Oxford...

I presume the US wouldn't have as strong a class system as the UK. There's a bit in Mad Men, where the British character (Lane Pryce) complains to his wife that "I've been here over a year and no-one's asked me what university I went to!"

You like it or not, breeding matters a lot. What all those companies buy is not grades, it is not even a particular phenotype, it is a few generations of fine breeding, well-educated parents and relatives, etc.

So, most of those guys "with a sociology degree" worth it, you like it or not. It is just one of these small unpleasant truths about life.

In general, people with well-off, well-educated parents tend to do better than people who have undereducated poor parents. If you ask me, that's an argument for making sure we have less poor parents and for making sure that more people have a proper education, and not an argument for unfounded admiration for supposedly superior genes.

It's an argument for socialism, not for elitism.

Of course, "genes" does not mean the destiny, even if preferences and abilities are "encoded" there. There are long and boring debate about role of genes and IQ score and the consensus is that "almost everything is inherited but without proper environment, training and fertilizing the potential could not be fully expressed".

Well-off, well-educated parents, in a few generations back, is what could be called the environment. And what it amounts for is not just self-esteem and developed, refined mind, but also non-verbal behavior, which, like looks (a signal of good genes) are much more powerful drive that people like to admit to themselves.

As for ideas of so-called equality, be it socialism or equality between men and women, these are just theories. In reality (at least what we could see in labs) genes are the vehicle of evolution process, which is all about inequality.

It is correct to say that these theories, being intellectually attractive, are in contradiction with the very process which made us. So, it is better to check ones premises.)

For example, people might like it or not, a good-looking person (due to genes) will receive much more attention from people in all his endeavors, be it studying or carer building, or simply having a good time. Too much attention could ruin, and it is well-known in the field of personality disorders.

Please, do not even mention that nonsense that what is considered good-looking varies from culture to culture, from age to age. Good looks are youth, health and lack of deformations ("average" face considered the most beautiful) or signs of good genes.

Actually, any modern psychology textbook treats those subjects is very clear.