

The Great Man Syndrome: Big Fish in a Small Pond - turnersauce
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/04/the-big-fish-in-the-small-pond-and-the-students-who-dont-realize-its-a-small-pond.html

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mahipal
The article makes a good point, and I think it's one that can be applied
pretty well to our industry. Companies often get hyped up in the echo chamber
of the Valley, even though they haven't established themselves in the broader
world. A few months ago, FourSquare might have been a good example of this.

On a separate note, I got a kick out of the phrase, "the real world of
philosophy." I know what he's getting at, but it still sounds oxymoronic.

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HappySushiCo
The echo chamber of the Valley - great point. There are a lot more companies
than we care to admit that fall into this category IMHO.

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scottdw2
The article is somewhat flawed. It starts with the notion that placing too
much weight on "important people" is bad, because those people may not be that
important afterall, if you take a broad view. That seems reasonable. The flaw
however, is his suggested remedy: take a broader view to figure out who the
important people actuall are.

What he misses is the real problem: in academia there is more of a value
placed on who you are, than on what you do. People place more emphasis on
institutional afiliation than they should. Rather than judge people on the
merits of their work, too much weight is given to where you trained, and who
trained you.

Nothing the author says actually addresses the core issue. In fact it seems
like his issue is not being the important person. It should, however, be with
how work is evaluated. Fixing that would solve the core problem.

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carterschonwald
This reminds me of a relevant dual attitude, namely that in the sciences (or
at least computer science, physics, math, etc) it is considered to be a good
idea to pursue graduate studies at a school different from ones undergraduate
program. (Presumably that prevents the phenomena described in the article from
persisting beyond undergrad)

