Comment by caeril
1 year ago
The world has gone mad with status-seeking behavior. It's not even about the money, it's about "what will they think?"
A Harvard/Stanford/MIT education used to be about the rigor, the education, the knowledge, the tutelage. Now it's about having that name attached to yours. Same goes for FAANG.
It’s kinda why I don’t boast about my affiliation with an Ivy. I am proud of everyone from the plant science department to the sprint football team and the food service worker’s union. I don’t want anyone to think that I am better than anybody else or I think I am better than anybody else because of it though.
I had a conversation with my advisor some years ago, who did his doctorate at MIT in the early 70s. I opined that MIT was now trading on their name harder, standards were slipping, people weren’t as hot shit now as they obviously were in his day.
“No, it’s just, it’s survivorship bias. There were plenty of people like that there then too; you just haven’t heard of them because they’ve done nothing with their lives since.”