

How Wesleyan’s Counter Culture Came To Rule New York’s Tech Scene - jrlevine
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/10/12/how-wesleyans-counter-culture-came-to-rule-new-yorks-tech-scene/?show=all

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noname123
As a Wesleyan graduate of CS, I have to say that this piece amuses me. None of
the people mentioned in the article actually are CS majors (there were only 5
of us the year I graduated), but are "McKinsey consultants" and "[guys] where
Hollywood didn't really work out for us, but now are trying our luck in
Hollywood." And the picture of the urban rooftop party featured in the article
vaguely reminds me of the NYC rooftop party at the hedge fund office where I
worked for previously staffed with attractive hipster receptionists, HR people
and managers who dressed the part and were quite clueless about the technology
or the domain area we were involved in - but were very good at making mixed
drinks and dj-ing. These guys in essense, are very much part of the "party
people" that look and play the part, complete down to the prep school pedigree
and the sensibly choosen retro flannel mix-and-match - that a lot of
programmers both in the Valley/Alley are looking up to.

There was a phase in my life when I drank the kool-aid, partook in the
festivities and read James Joyce and attempted to think deeply about the
Hegelian dialectic but then I realized that these "lofty" concerns belied a
more pressing issue, how Joyce or that indie band might have impressed that
hipster chick that I ran into at the MGMT show last Saturday and had the hots
for - because she was French (and therefore social-consensenually hot).

Fast forward to present-times, I work in IT and my co-workers consist of one
guy from Belarus and another guy from India both on H1B but both of them could
write amazing code and we are three months ahead the schedule in shipping out
a informatics platform with about 100+ users. It's not the sexiest work a la
"changing the way one shops on the Internet" but we ship, get paid and have
free time to pursue our other interests - because impressing programmers/tech
bloggers isn't really my concern as you can't get laid anyways by doing it. It
took me awhile to love and embrace the atom bomb but I have to be grateful for
my alma matter for teaching me unexpectedly to distinguish between what's crap
and what's substance. So while I am unfortunately no longer part of the
"Wesleyan mafia," I try to keep my head up and am confident that I'll be
around when the IT/startup market crashes in the next cycle.

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necubi
As with the other Wesleyan students in this thread, I find this article pretty
bizarre. I'm one of 6 current CS seniors and our "department" (actually part
of the Math department) consists of only five professors. Furthermore, there
is almost no emphasis on programming in the major; all of the core classes
(and most of the electives, which are few and far between) are focused
strictly on computer science. While I personally appreciate this rigorous
focus on theory as it complements my own practical experience, for most
students it means never seeing a real, large programming project or the tools
to manage it.

As a result of all this, many Wesleyan CS graduates go to grad school instead
of start ups. This isn't helped by the single-minded focus of the career
center on careers in finance and consulting, which leads to a complete absence
of technical recruiting on campus. I and several other students including
@samdk and @rubergly have tried to change this to some degree by offering more
outlets for students on campus to program, but it's definitely an uphill
battle.

That said, if NY/Boston startups feel like making the commute up to central
Connecticut, they'll find many smart students with a strong grounding in
computing theory and math. I just wish the school was more interested in
making that happen.

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msciola
Hi folks - director of the Wes Career Center here. Happy to see this article
is getting some notice.

On campus recruiting is a game of yield - the companies that come back to
campus year after year have multiple positions to fill and consistently get a
good turn out from Wes students. Google returns every year because we get a
great response from students. Other, less well-known tech firms that have
tried haven't gotten a big enough response to keep coming back for on campus
recruiting.

BUT - most people will not get a job through on-campus recruiting in the first
place. We have lots of resources for folks interested in tech fields, and, as
the article underlines, we have a great network of alumni out there that we
can help you connect to. Indeed, the whole point to Digital Wesleyan is to
create awareness and real networking opportunities for alumni and for students
that turn into business opportunities and job opportunities. That's why the
career center jumped at the change to work with Jake to get it launched.

Come on down to Butterfield A - happy to work with you!

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benwerd
This is neat. But it also leads me to a tangential question:

 _Where are the publicly-educated tech moguls?_

We continually hear about Stanford, Harvard, and places like Wesleyan. There
are plenty of entrepreneurs who came from state universities or other public
institutions, as well as those from less wealthy backgrounds. It's time for
you guys to speak up and inspire the next generation, for the good of our
economy, and for the health of our entrepreneurial ecosystem.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Sergey Brin: BS, University of Maryland

Mark Cuban: University of Pittsburgh/Indiana University

Just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more.

~~~
rdouble
Larry Page went to the University of Michigan.

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tobobo
I'm currently a student at Wesleyan, and seeing this article was awfully
surprising to me. If we really do rule the tech scene in one of the largest
cities in the US, I certainly wouldn't know it from being here. Our CS
department is tiny (but excellent) and is focused almost entirely on the
science of computing rather than applications of the craft. I've heard of some
Wesleyan grads going on to high positions in the tech world but I assumed
these were exceptions to the rule.

I came to Wesleyan not because I thought it would have the best programs for
what I wanted to study, but because of the student community. I have never
seen such a high volume of creative output from any group of people, and it
inspires me daily. If there are programmers somewhere on campus that exhibit
this level of excellence and inspiration in their work, they've been quiet
about it.

Jake, what advice would you have for a current Wesleyan student who wishes to
be active in the tech world?

And if you're reading this, other Wesleyan students, can we hang out? I like
web development a lot but I'm not smart enough to do it all by myself. Let's
build stuff!

~~~
cmhamill
Recent Wes grad, here.

I think a lot of the lack-of-visibility is because of the Career Center's
complete-and-utter-mindless-focus on placing folks into consulting, finance,
or legal jobs.

The Hollywood Mafia we've got operates almost entirely independently of the
Career Center; the Film Studies department is practically their own placement
agency.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the reasons are. I'm around on campus, working, if
you want to build something. Lemme know.

cmhamill at wes...

~~~
philco
Sorry you feel that way...I'm part of the career advisory board and hosted
about 15 students every year to speak with execs at Bloomberg (on the tech
side). I can assure you that if you want to get a job at google, etc, the
career center is just as happy to help you and can make inroads there.

Would love to talk to you more about this...pcortes at wes....

~~~
necubi
If you look at the list of companies doing on-campus recruiting this year,
there was only one (WH Trading) that was even vaguely related to
tech/programming. Why is that? Is it because our compsci department is less
well known (and smaller) than at other schools? Is it because the CRC doesn't
do outreach to tech companies?

I've found the CRC really unhelpful in finding tech internships, and I assume
it's the same for finding tech jobs. However, I understand it's probably not a
priority given that the Econ department, for example, is about 20 times our
size.

~~~
jrlevine
Startups don't have the resources of large companies to invest in on-campus
recruiting efforts, and the CRC doesn't have the time/money to bring together
a bunch of small companies. It's just easier to bring in the big players and
try to employ as many students as you can.

That means it's up to you to speak up, use the tools at your disposal
(linkedin, wescan) to find the people who are more than willing to help, and
to make the opportunity for yourself.

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alexmr
[Disclosure: I went to wes and didn't major in CS (though wish I had taken
more classes in it)]

I think the main point from this article is that the type of thought wesleyan
teaches has proven itself well-suited to the creative, innovative thinking
valued in the tech and startups especially. While this isn't necessarily
programming focused, there are other roles in the industry Wesleyan is showing
it has done really well in.

Also, while more grads move to NYC than anywhere else, I will say there's
plenty of wesleyan tech talent out here in the bay area (CEO of rdio, a bunch
of folks at google, and startups).

The school would definitely be well served by beefing up it's CS department
and trying to attract more talent. With a solid programming community on
campus, I bet we'd see some awesome projects emerge especially as tech mixes
more with the strong arts and music scenes.

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draggnar
Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks as mentioned in the article.
<http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks.pdf>

