

Where are the Top 1% of Engineers (from Carnegie Mellon) - jchonphoenix
http://www.apeekatchu.com/post/19698690915/where-are-the-top-1-of-engineers-from-carnegie

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jarjoura
Bah. CS ("engineer") is a pretty rigorous and challenging curriculum at any
competitive school, whether it's state or private. So graduating with a CS
degree is enough of a level in my book. Of all the hundreds of candidates I've
interviewed coming into Apple, the brightest and most self-starter guys and
girls instead came from no-name schools in random parts of the world.

Sure in startup land you see Stanford come up quite a lot, because that's
where all the money is and so those guys get solid introductions and meetings
with all the right people.

Working at a company like Apple (or also Facebook/Google/Microsoft) means you
need to be product driven and capable of learning quickly and on your feet.
True, they are cushy companies in terms of benefits and pay, but they have
high bars of entry. If anything, the opposite is now true, where they cannot
afford to hire someone on a hunch, or experiment with them like a nimble
startup can since it's near impossible to fire them.

So if you yourself are in a state school (or small "unknown" school), do not
worry. If you want to work at a prestigious company out here in California,
the real trick is to find the one area you're able to really excel at and push
yourself to shine in it. When you're in the interview, make sure you talk
about that one shining aspect and really talk it up. When the interviewers see
your passion and how you overcame obstacles in it, you'll be a shoe-in.

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sohailprasad
As a CMU student who just took a leave of absence to join a startup, the one
thing that really disappointed me was the total risk-averse mentality that
exists at CMU.

Based on my conversations with other CMU alumni, I think there is a collective
feeling that CMU students need to be encouraged to take risks, not the other
way around. Fundraising campaigns like "Inspiring Innovation" and press
releases with headlines like "Greenlighting Startups" are wonderful, but
there's too much of a campus culture focusing on just doing whatever it takes
to "get a good job."

Personally, I feel that it's the one place where CMU stays true to its roots:
It was founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1900 as the Carnegie Technical Schools,
and till date remains best at doing just that: being a technical school.
That's why companies love to come to CMU to recruit: CMU students make great
employees. CMU's doing exceptionally well given its relative youth, but I fear
that if it keeps trying to be what MIT and Stanford were 10 years ago, it'll
always be playing catch-up. As a university it needs to take a risk - a leap
of faith.

On the bright side, having been in the Bay Area I've seen an increased
percentage of CMU alumni come here and realize that taking risks isn't so bad,
and then leave their nice job at Twitter/Facebook/Google/LinkedIn to go for
it. It just takes exposure to the right environment for them to realize it.
Hopefully as more and more CMU alumni are exposed to (and involved with)
startups, they'll help bring awareness to CMU as a whole - I know I'm going to
try my best.

Side note: In pg's essay, "How To Be Silicon Valley"
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html>), he says: "The university is
just the seed. It has to be planted in the right soil, or it won't germinate.
Plant it in the wrong place, and you just create Carnegie-Mellon."

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saalweachter
I'd be kind of curious to see more data, both for more schools & more years,
and also to follow this "top 1%" through the years. On the one side, I'm
curious if this is actually a good predictor of what hot companies are, and
three years and a dozen people isn't enough data to make that sort of call.
How many people were joining Google in 2005? How many were joining Microsoft?

On the second part, I'm a little curious to see how people's tastes in
workplace mature over time. A fantastically smart, driven, awesome guy just
out of school is still fundamentally a dumb kid with no work experience. Some
of the top CMU graduates from 2002/3/4/5 presumably switched jobs in 2011. Did
they go to the same companies as the graduates of 2010/2011? Which companies
from 2005/6/7 retained the most of their fresh-out-of-college top 1% hires?

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MattLaroche
Disclaimer: I worked for Palantir.

Palantir does a good job pitching the "We only hire the best and brightest."
The pitch worked on me. When I accepted the offer, the smartest person I knew
from the CMU CS class of 2006 (my class) was working at Palantir, and this
definitely reassured me on my decision.

~~~
bengl3rt
Ah, bummer. I was going to apply to Palantir but I'm neither the top of my
class, nor do I go to a particularly top school. May as well not bother I
suppose.

Glad I saw this and didn't waste my time!

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MattLaroche
Ha. You may have missed the past tense on "worked for Palantir."

I was the bottom half of my class at CMU, so if it floats your boat to work at
Palantir, apply away.

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alain94040
There is probably a little bit of confirmation bias: anyone who didn't end up
at a large-name company probably dropped off the radar. Maybe he wasn't the
top engineer, if he went to work for zarklxyr.com. Oh, but Facebook, that's
impressive, he must really be good.

~~~
jchonphoenix
I assume you're referring to starting their own startups or joining one
correct?

While I agree there likely is some confirmation bias, I can at least say that
I included those who joined startups.

The sad part is, there are very few of them. When I was thinking of starting a
startup at CMU, I was completely blown away by how little people there cared
about taking risks. In 2010, the only startups people knew about were really
Palantir and Facebook. In 2012, people at CMU actually still buy the tagline
that Facebook is a startup.

It would be great if someone could change this, but as of right now, I'm
relatively certain there is less confirmation bias than you think.

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eli_gottlieb
So the top coders from Carnegie Mellon are working on analytics for finance
and spy-stuff, or mostly at very famous firms or grad-schools.

And this is a good thing? It looks to me like yet another sign that our whole
social-proof-based talent-allocation economy is broken entirely. How can it be
that 15 different people all really and truly wanted to do more-or-less the
same stuff?

~~~
jchonphoenix
I'm actually quite sure you'll find much more diversity from Stanford on that
front.

CMU students tend to be a little clueless on the job search side of things, so
they tend to stick to firms that are well known or well respected because
they're safe.

~~~
sbisker
I see no reason to go so far as to call the actual students in question
"clueless" - but there is definitely serious bias in where certain companies
do and don't hire. Apple recruits heavily from Stanford for CS, but recruits
from MIT for ID, for instance. Some companies only look at MIT, or CMU, or
Berkeley - or hire there "first", for no other reason than the founders might
have gone there, and thus feel better equipped to evaluate the curriculums and
students from those schools.

It's interesting to see where the top 1% of CMU kids go, but looking at the
top 1% of every top CS school independently of each other would yield
dramatically different results.

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moocow01
Honestly its probably more like the top 1% didn't follow the crowd and didn't
want that job at (insert famous company here).

But thats my own definition of top 1%

