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0 pointsOldGuyInTheClub1y ago0 comments

Very interesting perspective, thank you.

>> Also, the contacts one makes at an Ivy or a Stanford are leagues ahead of what's available at a public school.

> As someone who attended an Ivy/Ivy Adjacent, I highly disagree, at least in Eng (and Eng adjacent roles like PM/EM/Sales/Entrepreneaurship and even VC to a certain extent)

In my long but undistinguished career, I don't see that my Berkeley undergrad classmates and I have set the world on fire and we're not powerbrokers by a very long shot. We were all (at that time) from the same chunks of middle-class Northern and Southern California with almost no out-of-staters. Many of us including myself commuted and there was almost none of the stereotypical college social life due to courseload and research (a very big emphasis).

Now, I am sure things have changed in the nearly 40 years since I graduated. Perhaps the increasing cost and explosion of Silicon Valley/CS has changed who came after, where they come from, and their family backgrounds.

> CS/Eng is much more driven by defense and private sector funding, which is biased towards National Labs, which are overwhelmingly managed by public universities.

That used to be true when UC ran LBL, Livermore, and Los Alamos but these days they are run (poorly) by "public/private" consortia. Stanford runs SLAC, Chicago for the moment runs Fermilab - both are private schools. I don't think wealthy families send their kids to any of these private schools with a view to jobs at LocMart, Boeing, or Argonne.

> Middle management turned upper management in most tech companies tended to attend flagship publics in the West Coast/TX/Midwest plus some elite privates like Stanford/Claremont Colleges/USC/CMU, which impacts recruiting as well.

The real surprise here is USC which was a scorned backwater when I was in college. "University of Second Choice" took great strides in the 1990s under Steven Sample. IMO it is far from an elite[0] place like Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. but the USC network is a Very Big Deal at least in So Cal. At my company, their alumni association virtually guarantees that an applicant will get a face-to-face with a decisionmaking alum while others are getting screened out by the AI or HR.

Edit:

[0] I mean elite in terms of academic quality vs. job/networking opportunities.

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alephnerd1y ago

> I don't see that my Berkeley undergrad classmates and I have set the world on fire and we're not powerbrokers by a very long shot

> I am sure things have changed in the nearly 40 years since I graduated

40 years ago maybe, but since the mid-2000s, UCB (and LA and SD) have become much more prestigious (or became more prestigious again - I think Stanford/USC were "inferior" until the 70s-80s due to political strife).

Now that tech (software and hardware) has been the 1st and 3rd highest margin industries for almost 25 years now, there is a lot more money sloshing around.

A plurality of Investment Bankers, PEs, and VCs you'll meet nowadays in the SFBA will have studied at UC Berkeley for either undergrad (usually Eng+Haas or Eng+Econ double major) or via the PT MBA at Haas. Wharton is up there largely thanks to the EMBA program they strategically placed on Embarcadero, and Stanford has never changed prestige wise.

Tech still has a regional bias (Dallas and westward), and most of the West is still public school dominated.

> I don't think wealthy families send their kids to any of these private schools with a view to jobs at LocMart, Boeing, or Argonne.

You're underestimating rich people (or maybe the rich people I know have a tech bias, given that we all work in the tech industry). The "Asian" parent and "Soviet/Israeli Jewish" parent archetype is strong in NorCal - and transplants from other parts of the US act the same way - and most of us 2nd gen members of these communities filtered into the tech industry because our parents worked in them.

Also, new grad salaries in tech outpace salaries in IB, PE, and Consulting when factoring hours worked as well as career longevity, because most IB/PE/Consulting/VC Analysts burn out or get managed out with 3 years, and have to do an MBA in order to pivot into tech. The downside with partner heavy systems is that they limit carry to a handful of mid-to-upper level types who are partner/MD or partner/MD track, and unlike NYC, there just isn't enough deal flow in the West excluding VC to make it easy to job hop in these sectors, and partner-track VC roles at the truly successful VC funds (BVP, Accel, A16Z types) are biased in favor of thematic experience.

On the other hand, if you consistently upskill and show a strong track record of execution, you can remain relevant in the tech industry for decades earning very comfortable salaries.

> The real surprise here is USC which was a scorned backwater when I was in college

Henry Samueli (Broadcom), Andrew Viterbi (Qualcomm), and Aerospace (Northrop, Grumman, BAE) helped massively, as they tended to hire from UCLA, CalTech, and USC due to proximity.

SCU [or USC back in the day ;)] remained an insular parochial Italian Catholic college, though their IP Law program is decent because of the part time JD and some well placed alumni at Fenwick&West, Cooley, Wilson Sonsini, and Google's in-house counsel.

> I mean elite in terms of academic quality vs. job/networking opportunities

40 years ago maybe but not anymore in engineering/CS.

Excluding MIT/CMU/Stanford, most breakthroughs in the last 30-40 years were done by professors at the top CS/EE public universities.

Heck, at Harvard it's fairly common for Eng and CS students to take courses at MIT due to a lack of course offerings at Harvard SEAS.

And anyhow, both MIT and Harvard can't compete with SJSU's MSEE which has actual GMs and Product Leaders at Micron, Intel, Samsung, AMD, Applied Materials, Nvidia, etc teaching part-time

If you don't get a scholarship (which most Californians end up becoming ineligible for due to household income restrictions - a 2 income household where both parents are earning $75k/yr is ineligible for no-strings attached aid at a notable Ivy), the math starts making sense to go to a decent public.

OldGuyInTheClubOP1y ago

>> I don't think wealthy families send their kids to any of these private schools with a view to jobs at LocMart, Boeing, or Argonne.

> You're underestimating rich people (or maybe the rich people I know have a tech bias, given that we all work in the tech industry).

I didn't think the HN community considers big aerospace (and I work in one of them!) to be tech in the sense of startups on the one side and FAANG on the other. Some have even said as much. Yes, my shop hires from UCLA and USC, slightly less from Caltech in recent years but the promotions go predominantly to USC people. Can't be because of technical or managerial quality, either.

I must have been at Berkeley and then Stanford (grad school) during downturns. I finished up the latter in 1990 before the dotcom boom changed everything and apparently the former has grown in reputation although along different axes as well.

When I was an undergrad, Berkeley's powerhouse rep. in the physical sciences and elsewhere were good for instruction and research opportunities. Lots of Type A profs didn't like to be bad at anything so they taught well or at least tried hard at it. Research opportunities speak for themselves since the labs were well equipped with hardware and people and LBL was nearby. Helped me get into grad schools and with a nice external fellowship to pay for it but from the late 1990s on, that background has never helped in job searches or advancement.

Edit: I should also note that Berkeley may be placing people in the SF Bay Area (your post) but that the Ivies/MIT/Stanford have name recognition and influence far beyond their regions.

alephnerd1y ago

> I didn't think the HN community considers big aerospace (and I work in one of them!) to be tech in the sense of startups on the one side and FAANG on the other

Depends person to person, but I strongly believe Aerospace is tech as well, and the overlap between Aerospace, EE, CE, and CS is massive. Most of my peers would agree as well, and one of HN's most prolific poster JumpCrisscross is a significant investor in Aerospace.

> the promotions go predominantly to USC people. Can't be because of technical or managerial quality, either

Yea, the Trojan network is very strong. The only other similar cliques I can think of are UT Austin, the Claremont Colleges, and the BIG10.

> I finished up the latter in 1990 before the dotcom boom changed everything and apparently the former has grown in reputation although along different axes as well

I'm curious how much of an impact the Nixon and Reagan era culture wars at UC Berkeley had in that perception back then. I wasn't around so I'd love to hear your thoughts.

> Berkeley may be placing people in the SF Bay Area (your post) but that the Ivies/MIT/Stanford have name recognition and influence far beyond their regions

In the West Coast (Dallas westward imo), I haven't noticed a significant leg up as an Ivy compared to other similar programs. If I attended USC or Stanford I think I'd have a much stronger network in the West.

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