Perhaps in this case educational background is a proxy for "family's connectedness to network of influential/rich people." It's much easier to get your foot in the door when your pops can make a call to have someone open it.
When it’s insanely competitive to get into a school, schools may also use previous student recommendations as a proxy. So you end up with a echo chamber.
Tech seems to be converging to the norms of other highly paid professions. I'd bet that at least 40% of Goldman Sachs' hires come from Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
How about the big law firms? I know they don't really hire much outside of the Top 14 law schools, and I wouldn't be surprised if the top few schools provide 40%-50% of their hires.
I think the discussion has to be broader than just tech ... America is looking an awful lot like an oligarchy with a caste system. Especially when you consider the recent articles about Ivy League admissions policies.
And this seems to have accelerated in the last 30-40 years. It seems to me that in the past it was much more common to see very successful and highly placed people from humble backgrounds, with degrees from schools I've never heard of, or good regional schools which aren't the Ivies. Now it is dreadfully monotonous, with a huge percentage of people in leadership roles from Yale, Princeton, Harvard or Stanford and whose parents have similar backgrounds.
So the majority of the people trusted with the money went to two of the best schools in the world? And this is surprising how? And news how? And wrong how?
Come on, its HARVARD! HARVARD!!!! Seems like the system os working pretty well to me.
Really? Although the Ivys turn out many great people, they also graduate many stinkers. Several of the most useless people I've worked with or hired have been from "top" schools, and some of the very best have come from "no-name" schools or even no school at all. A fancy degree really means nothing, especially in today's world where simply getting in virtually guarantees both graduation and the inculcation of a poisonous attitude...
Is this a joke? Check any ranking system of "top cs/business" schools and you will see that they are all extremely close with any small change to the weight of the features resulting in different orderings.
The only way to explain these stats is that there is some simple-minded tribal behavior that skews the ratio. Not what you want to see from the people trusted with the money.
Absolutely. I'm sure a place that hell-bent on equality and fairness would never allow themselves to be hypocrites by not practicing what they preach. /sarcasm.
Maybe not SV, but being an economic migrant who currently works as an independent contractor with a foreign company, I'd want to say that at least in my and my peer experiences, it's far easier to traverse the cast system in an upwardly manner when working in the tech sector than in most other sectors. Of course, knowing people will always be beneficial, as in any situation in life, but for instance in Marketing, you either know someone or have an exceptional portfolio, or you've got the exceptional experience that means that people know you.
Pro sports is a weird one... I follow American football and over the years I've seen various players who by all accounts have the talent, but for whatever reason have short careers, don't get much playing time, etc. I remember watching this running back a few years ago, where every time he got on the field would get 7+ yards at a time, but the team only sporadically put him on the field, let alone gave him the ball. Likewise, there are plenty of players who get on the field because they were a first round draft pick and thus the team has a lot riding on them financially - which may or may not actually pan out. So while yes, professional sports are mostly about merit, I'm not sure we can say that's the only thing at play.
Never said it was. But the implication was that Sports are more meritocratic than Tech. You don't win MVP of your league through Nepotism but you could easily get $20M+ in VC funding that way.
And likewise, my point wasn't to put words in your mouth, but rather to implicitly agree that nepotism (or something like it) manifests even in something seemingly so merit-oriented as pro sports.
This is from memory, but baseball scouts historically rely heavily on athletic appearances (what they think a good pitcher, hitter, etc looks like), more than hard stats.
Wasn't the whole point of Moneyball that the A's were able to perform far above their level and salary cap based on evaluating players on hard stats and not appearances? Not sure what your point is.
