
Ask HN: How do some people build their careers so fast? - mrdependable
I was browsing LinkedIn out of curiosity and saw a pattern of people that had timelines that go something like this.<p>1) Graduated Harvard with degree in [random non-business related major]<p>2) Worked at [random company] as business analyst for 1 year<p>3) VP &#x2F; Director at [multi-billion dollar brand name corporation] for 2 years<p>4) Seed investor at [unicorn tech company]<p>I&#x27;m just generally curious how people are able to climb like that so quickly. Does anyone know people like this and have some insight into how it happened? Are they just wunderkind that get groomed by billionaires or something?
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arandr0x
1) Mom wants you to take the time to become an adult and find yourself

2) Dad wants you to develop the discipline of waking up at 8 every morning and
cheerfully greeting your company president

3) [multi billion dollar corp] has 5,000 directors, one just retired, and Dad
plays golf with their boss

4) An acquaintance from high school/college bacchanalia with richer, cooler
parents that just gave him his trust fund without requiring 1) and 2) is
starting his seed fund because he doesn't want to wake up at 8 and play golf
with old people, and you were fun enough at parties to make the cut. Plus you
know directors at [multi billion dollar corp]!

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thiago_fm
With the money one must spend to study in Harvard, they can possibly live
forever in a third world country without ever needing to work.

Not to mention that people frequently have parents and build very powerful
networks in a institution that all the rich people send their kids to study. I
would be actually impressed if they would take any time at all to build their
careers.

Instead of focusing on those unicorn people, go get good examples of people
for YOU. The ones that perhaps work as hard as you do and have similar
outcomes and upbringings, they are the ones that together, you can possibly
send your kids to study at Harvard.

The most important lesson I've learned in life is that what matters is how you
are viewed and compared to your PEERS, not to how you are compared to someone
from a different background than you. It takes a lot of time to build ones
career, you will need to fluctuate in many social circles until you finally
make it, don't make the mistake that there is a corner to cut.

~~~
afarrell
> With the money one must spend to study in Harvard, they can possibly live
> forever in a third world country without ever needing to work.

Harvard claims to cover 100% of financial need for attendees. If the situation
is similar to MIT, then this really isn't true.

[1] [https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/types-
aid/scholars...](https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/types-
aid/scholarships-grants)

~~~
thiago_fm
Well you should go to a class in Harvard and make a questionnaire about
everyones upbringing and see how diverse the class really is. I bet that it
will be horrible and they will ask which yatch do you ride before they are
even willing to answer your questions.

~~~
afarrell
I went to MIT, down the street from Harvard. We had folks from all over. Among
my social circle, I counted folks that grew up poor in poor suburbs of NYC,
guys who grew up on farms, a pretty wide range.

> they will ask which yatch do you ride before they are even willing to answer
> your questions.

Yachts are really expensive. Like, stupid expensive in terms of total-cost-of-
ownership. From the Harvard people I knew, I really think this is false. They
might not want to answer your random questionaire because people get annoyed
at being asked about their background all the time, but I'd be very surprised
to see someone gatekeeping based on owning something so rare.

~~~
thiago_fm
> among my social circle

You could have ended your reasoning as soon as you wrote this. It is obvious
what I said is an exaggeration, but it carries out some truth. Go ask around
the people in America itself, outside a city like SF/NY, what do they think
about it. I'm not even American. That's not what I see/read about. A country
with some big time inequality, with little to none social mobility, possibly
the worst social mobility since the country was founded. But no, everybody can
get into Ivy League.

~~~
afarrell
> But no, everybody can get into Ivy League.

I didn't say that. I said that the universities offer scholarships which cover
their assessment of financial need. They still have limited slots and are very
selective.

> It is obvious what I said is an exaggeration, but it carries out some truth

I genuinely didn't know that you were exaggerating. I thought that was your
perception.

We live in a world where lots of things are true in degrees. There is _some_
amount of snobbery at elite US universities and there s _some_ quantity of
social mobility. But exaggeration makes it really hard to talk about how much
or how little and that quantity _matters_ to understanding the problem.

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rchaud
Bill Gates' career trajectory:

\- Access to a computer lab in high school, something not common at all in the
'70s, was making small computer apps before his freshman year

\- Attends Harvard, meets Paul Allen (working at Honeywell nearby) and Steve
Ballmer (Math + Econ).

\- Gets a chance to pitch Basic (or whatever it was) to a higher-up at IBM,
since Gates' mom was on the board of United Way and could arrange an
introduction.

There's a lot of stuff that goes unsaid in a LinkedIn profile.

~~~
dawidw
He was just very lucky that MS-DOS was chosen in one particular moment. More
in the first comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624887)

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expertentipp
It's the elitist career path of the people from oligarch/aristocracy/magnate
circles. Might be quite surprising for someone believing in the US' "rags to
riches" myth (dead by now) but it doesn't surprise anyone in countries with
strong family clans of various kinds (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden -
just replace the Ivy league with Oxbridge, grandes écoles, etc).

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taprun
One surefire way I've seen is to work at a company in which your bosses keep
quitting. I've seen people jump from IC to VP over the course of a handful of
years.

Another is to start a startup and then get acquihired into a large company.

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muzani
The tallest tree grows from resilient acorns. It also grows from abundant
light and water, lack of competition, and good soil.

There's a whole mix of nurture and nature. They don't necessarily have the
best upbringing, but some have the ideal amount of bad conditions killing off
potential competitors.

Gladwell's book, Outliers, covers all this in detail.

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rajeshmr
I have seen many similar profiles over at linkedin, but i would like to ask
you not to get carried away.

They are outliers who, if you carefully observed, had got some stroke of
beginners luck or an influence that guided them correctly or it could be any
of the many advantages of being privileged.

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Spooky23
Friends and family.

In many cases they are super-smart too. That’s optional. More often they’re
good at relationships and have a great network.

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e9
This usually happens when you join a startup that either gets acquired by big
co or it becomes billion dollar company itself. They key is to be lucky enough
to join rocket ship early, which is mostly luck so most ppl fail.

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p0d
I think we need to plough our own field and not be too concerned with other
people’s fields...especially in an age when all the best fields are on
display.

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usgroup
Resourceful parents and/or luck.

Example of the latter:

Plenty of noobs joined the dev scene in London at its most under supplied.
They suck at what they do for 70k/y and drop off like flies, the survivors,
but a few years later, become managers / heads of / etc.

~~~
expertentipp
> They suck at what they do for 70k/y and drop off like flies, the survivors,
> but a few years later, become managers / heads of / etc.

They suck at staying overtime regularly, commuting daily 1h one way with an
overcrowded train costing an arm and leg, and at bearing the pressure from
cocaine ingested manager.

