
Why Are Harvard Graduates In The Mailroom - kqr2
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/why-are-harvard-graduates-in-the-mailroom.html?_r=1
======
redthrowaway
I'm constantly reminded that we, as programmers, have excellent opportunities
in both fields: we can both shoot for the stars in a startup, and have a
comfortable fallback in enterprise. I can't think of many other professions
with this great a degree of both opportunity and security.

~~~
brandnewlow
For now, that is.

The robots came for the content creators last decade. They're coming for the
educators now. They will come for programmers, too, eventually.

~~~
benmathes
We are the ones making the robots, though.

~~~
smackay
The sense of solidarity between the robot makers and the lower ranks of the
profession might not be a strong as you might like.

~~~
bwarp
The higher ranks of the profession are still the bearers of all the keys. We
will probably go all Luddite and smash the tools before this happens.

~~~
arjunnarayan
Speak for yourself. I have no intention of preventing the robot revolution.

~~~
bwarp
Until you are replaced with a very small shell script...

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tpatke
There is another aspect to this which the OP fails to mention - moving the
needle. If you think about how much money you need to retire (f u money if you
are under 30) then figure out how much money you need to save in order to
achieve that...well, chances are you are not going to retire anytime soon.
Now, say you were given a 20% raise. How would that affect our retirement
prospects? Well, chances are you are not going to retire anytime soon. Even a
large raise on an “employees” salary will not make a big difference on a, say,
$2m retirement target.

If you are working a 9-5 you are fighting for a 5% raise that just will not
have any effect on your life. The "lottery jobs" offer a way out. Of course,
it is not a perfect system so if you have any better ideas...

~~~
shin_lao
You make it sound like the purpose of life is retiring. I find that a little
sad.

~~~
pedrolll
HN is a freaky place sometimes. Accumulating a pile of money is actually the
purpose of life for many commentators here. It has often been stated here that
there are easier ways to accumulate money than doing startups. This article
also seems to enforce this point.

~~~
cellis
The fact of the matter is that, for technologists, there _isn't_ an easier way
to become _rich_ than doing a startup. Living a comfortable life (e.g. making
$100 - $250k) by working for someone is not the same thing as having $5, $10
or $100mm in the bank. It's not even close. If you're making $250k, chances
are the work you do is extremely hard, you're always on point, and if you
cease performing at that level, you'll be fired, whereupon you won't be able
to maintain your lifestyle. So I question the premise that there are actually
easier ways to get rich than doing a startup.

~~~
onemoreact
If you actually look at the people that went from the middle class to 10+
million a tiny fraction of them got there though start ups. If your goal is to
actually have a good shot at 10million by mid 40's there are plenty of
professions that can give you better than 10% chance of getting there and even
if you fail your still making 3-5 or more times what the average Programmer at
Google makes.

~~~
foobarqux
The only professions that I can think of that have that possibility are:
doctor, trader (finance) and investment banker (finance) and possibly lawyer.
Anything I missed?

~~~
bilbo0s
That about covers it.

But his point is still valid...tech people could easily have gone to med
school. If they had...they would have had a more solid chance at accumulating
that USD10Million than working startup after startup.

~~~
rayiner
> tech people could easily have gone to med school.

Some, but mostly not. The non-tech professions that offer high pay (medicine,
law, banking) all have very different barriers to entry than tech. There are a
lot of folks who made a ton of money in tech who didn't have the 4.0 +
ridiculous extracurriculars to get into med school, or the Ivy-league
background to get into a bank. I think those barriers make those professions
less meritocratic than tech, don't get me wrong, but they are what they are.

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retube
> Wall Street, however, is a special case. It offers extremely high entry
> salaries and enormous potential earnings.

Ha ha. No wall street in fact fits this analogy perfectly.

1) The number of "producer" roles vs suport/finance/tech/legal/admin etc is
small. 90% of employees are toiling long hours in the hope of making the jump
across.

2) And even in "producer" roles you're still playing the lottery system. While
grad/starting salaries may seem high - say $120k, do you know how many hours
you'll work? Double a regular 9 - 5, and often on the weekends. On an hourly
basis it's really not high. And you'll need to put in many years of this to
get to a position where you're "winning the lottery". I dare say the few that
make it that far feel they deserve it.

~~~
lix2333
I was going to say the same thing. It's very much the same. Making 120k sounds
like a lot, but when people realize how much we're giving up, you can see that
its not worth the money. But people (like me) do it anyway to get great
experience and get ahead of the game. If it was only for the money, I'd be out
in a heartbeat.

The people that do want to do it for life are gambling that by the time
they're 30-40, they'll be an actual investment banker with relationship and
closing deals. Chances of that are slim these days.

------
cperciva
He's right about the "Plan B" at least where I'm concerned: I wouldn't have
started Tarsnap if I hadn't received a job offer from Google to prove to me
that I had a safe fallback plan.

~~~
Drbble
Are you sure that job offer would be open in a year or few down the road?

Why not bank the Plan B security money first before launching a startup?

~~~
gwern
I don't think Colin means he takes the offer as a guarantee of a position at
Google in a few years if he so chooses - although I doubt his Tarsnap and
other work have hurt his chances - but rather that it's proof that he can get
'a high paid tech job _somewhere_ '.

~~~
cperciva
Yes, that's quite right.

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sskates
"The Oscars make clear that there is only so much room at the top."

I hate when people make this fallacy. It may be true to some extent for
entertainment but there doesn't seem to be any limit to the number of
businesses that can be created. As long as people want stuff then there is
opportunity.

~~~
_delirium
Since wealth is at least in part relative, there's _some_ limit for how many
people can be at the very top in tech as well. If _millions_ of people had as
much money as Sergey Brin has, then having $15b dollars wouldn't mean as much,
or buy him as much. One way of thinking of it is how many people you could
hire to work for you, which depends on the ratio between your wealth and their
salaries.

~~~
Drbble
But don't confuse money (which can be inflated an has no inherent unit of
conversion to the material world or labor) with material wealth. If everyone
had, say, a Star Trek 3-D printer and power/atom supply, we'd all be pretty
well off.

~~~
_delirium
I agree they're different, but I think something like labor-wealth is what a
lot of people aspire to when they say they want to be wealthy. They don't just
want to have a lot of stuff, but want to not have to work anymore to have it
(i.e. own 100% of their own time), _and_ they often want to be able to hire
significant amounts of services from others (hire a personal chef, stay at
fancy full-staff resorts, have a personal trainer, etc.). At least for now;
perhaps as high-level robotics advances the wealthy will no longer be as
interested in hiring human services.

I think it'll remain true at the higher levels of wealth, though, because if
you have a lot of wealth, what it _really_ translates into isn't just material
goods (there's diminishing returns on how many of those you really need past a
few hundred million $s), but the power to significantly change what a non-
trivial number of people work on. You can start a company and hire 5,000
people to work on a project you think should be worked on; you can take a
different route by initiating a prize like the X-Prize to encourage people to
work on it that way; you can start a foundation or grant program; you can
singlehandedly decree that [movie genre] is going to be a significant new
segment, by promising to plow $1 billion into it; etc. The main thing _huge_
sums of money buy you, imo, is this relative power in the economy, to push
people to work on what you think should be worked on--- which necessarily
requires that your wealth has to be large in relative terms, as a fraction of
the economy.

------
timcederman
This article is representative of why I dislike Planet Money so much -
anecdotes and conjecture presented as data.

------
csomar
The author forgets market demand. If the society needs 1 Oscar winner, then
there will be 1 Oscar. After all, it's the viewer who finance Hollywood. There
is a need for talent in the Tech (and other related industries) industry.
Youth bootstrap startups so they get paid the right price for their talent.

If you have the right talents and skills (programming, some design, marketing,
market analysis, costumer support, networking...) there is little reasons that
you fail your business. There is always some demand in the market, in some
field. You have to figure it out and solve the problem.

It's the problem here in Tunisia. We don't have a decent infrastructure
(roads, schools, houses...) and we have a huge number of art, language, IT...
graduates who can't find a job. They complain about the poor infrastructure,
but solving it is actually finding a job, and a new business. There is a
demand for workers in that field, and there are people with lots of money
despite the country being a poor one.

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robyates
"many graphic designers have been replaced by Photoshop" ... I'm not sure
that's how it works.

~~~
jackalope
Like his example of TurboTax, it's a DIY alternative to hiring a professional.
For example, my 80's band hired a graphic designer and professional print shop
to produce a poster with a blank spot to hand write information for our latest
gig. Today, I could easily create a unique poster for every gig and print it
out myself. I'm confident the quality of the design would be better (the
printing itself would probably be inferior, but good enough).

~~~
dfxm12
I think the point OP is trying to make is that just because you have
Photoshop, that does _not_ mean you have graphic design skill (and artistic
skill it is not as simple as following directions on a tax form).

~~~
a_a_r_o_n
There's another point in there: just because you have a need for graphics
doesn't mean you have a need for a graphics professional. Without Photoshop
you needed a graphics professional for anything beyond a cardboard sign. Now
you can do very well on your own, well beyond some definition of "good
enough," before you need to pay a graphics professional.

------
dasil003
I don't like the playing the lottery analogy. I get that your odds of joining
the ranks of a mega-corp and climbing the ladder to one day become CEO are
infinitesimal, but it's not dumb luck either. Unlike the lottery, many things
are under your control, and if you have the proper drive and dedication you
will quickly pull ahead of all the people who are there for an easy paycheck.
When applied to startups, the assertion is downright offensive. At a startup
the point is you take equity and you play a key role in the success of the
company. There is luck involved as with anything in life, but chances are if
you are en early employee, many parts of your success or failure can be traced
back to specific actions that you personally decided and acted on. It's not
easy and it's not always fair, but it's as close to a meritocracy as humanity
has achieved so far.

~~~
ht_th
Yes, but there are also a lot of things not under your control. You might be
able to pull ahead quickly of the easy paycheck people, but then you're
surrounded by other people with proper drive and dedication. To get ahead of
them you need luck to have been given the right opportunity (in hindsight)
that payed out, or to be liked more by those who promote you than your
colleague, or to be the right sex (which is often irrelevant for the job), or
be more beautiful (which often is irrelevant for the job), or being promoted
just before the economic down turn and getting another turn when the economy
comes up again, or having a family with some problems (like a sick child or
spouse), and so on. A lot of these things will have unconscious effects on
yourself, your colleagues, and the people that can promote you. It isn't a
clear cut choice to perform well anymore to get ahead.

~~~
paulhauggis
Maybe so, but a person that truly wants to succeed will continue on and find
other opportunities and act on them when one passes them by or they fail.

~~~
bartonfink
If that's not a one true scotsman, I don't know what is. Life happens. No
matter how hard you try to roll with the punches, sometimes you get hit, and
it's foolish to say that you really didn't want to dodge the punch that
knocked you out.

------
jonnathanson
I worked in the mailroom at a major Hollywood talent agency after graduating
from a top school. Granted, the literal "mailroom" phase of my employment
lasted all of a month or two, after which I was promoted to assistant. As an
assistant, you're basically a secretary to one of the agents in the firm.
Eventually, you prove your competence and rise to the ranks of the training
program, in which case you're still doing secretarial work -- but you're doing
it for one of the firm's partners. And you're steadily accruing other
responsibilities, such as script evaluation, client scouting, studio
networking, and so forth. Depending on the agency, your workday is usually a
minimum of 10 hours (mine were typically 14 to 15 hour days, and the
occasional 20 hour day was not unheard of). The pay was in the $20-30k range.

There were plenty of Ivy League grads in my mailroom class. Even a few MBAs,
and a Harvard JD. Landing the mailroom gig at this particular agency was
extremely difficult, and the folks playing the "lottery" all could have taken
six-figure (or close to it) entry-level jobs elsewhere.

Why did we do it? For no better reason than the fact that "it's always been
this way," and "this is the way it is." (Or the more economically rationalized
supply/demand explanation: there are 500 bazillion gajillion people lining up
at the door to get these jobs, so demand always exceeds supply, and thus wages
are low and the work brutal).

For those who really love the entertainment business, and who are ambitious
enough to "pay their dues" in the toughest epicenter of it -- the agency world
-- it's the best way to get a foot in the door. If you survive the agency
meatgrinder, you are highly sought-after among other Hollywood firms: be they
studios, networks, production companies, or what have you. It's not unheard of
to hit the mailroom at 22, make junior agent by 25 or 26, and be making a very
respectable living somewhere by 30. And for those truly ambitious, ruthless
souls who go on to be big-time producers or studio heads, you can be making
obscene amounts of money in your late-30s to 40s.

It's definitely a "lottery ticket" model, with some echoes of the ancient
apprenticeship model thrown in for good measure (all the bigshots in Hollywood
were, themselves, in the mailroom back in the day). The model burns out
probably greater than 90% of the hopefuls who leap into it. And that seems a
pretty inefficient way to find a small handful of Katezenbergs, Geffens,
Dillers or Eisners in the haystack.

More important, the model burns through a lot of would-be superstars who
simply don't have the tolerance for the indignity, BS, and luck-dependency[1]
that comes along with the dues-paying years. These are people who may leave
the business and go on to do some pretty amazing things in other industries
(tech, for instance). Seems to me that you could still find your Dillers and
Katzenbergs in a more tech-style model -- i.e., putting people to work
actually making product, rather than answering telephones -- while probably
finding a lot more of them in the process.

The problem with the Hollywood hiring model, as it currently exists, is that
it selects solely for the most ruthlessly ambitious candidates -- the ones who
can survive years of toil in pursuit of a big paycheck. If they are also great
thinkers, or innovators, or creative geniuses, that's sort of a secondary
consideration. The model gets what it selects for, and often nothing more than
that.

[1]Ultimately, what burns out most people _isn't_ the indignity of the work,
but the dependency on dumb luck: the fact that there is no guarantee of work
in / reward out. You may kick serious ass in your apprenticeship, only to find
out that there are simply no spots open at the next level up. (It's
understandable that someone who's just spent 4 of the best years of her life
as an indentured servant, only to be told that she needs to put in another 4,
would opt out altogether.)

~~~
dfxm12
_There were plenty of Ivy League grads in my mailroom class. Even a few MBAs,
and a Harvard JD._

Was this type of prestigious degree more or less required? I get that a
gajillion people are trying to get these jobs, is this what employers are
looking at to differentiate candidates, and is an MBA or JD program the best
to prepare for the type of work you'll be doing?

~~~
jonnathanson
_"Was this type of prestigious degree more or less required?"_

Yes and no. It's kind of funny, actually. My degree certainly helped get me in
the door. But once in, I encountered a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism
that runs pretty rampant in Hollywood. More often than not, my Ivy degree was
viewed with disdain by various bosses and co-workers. Somehow it made me soft,
or "entitled." (The latter claim being patently absurd, precisely because I
earned entrance to my college by dint of having sacrificed my entire waking
life to studying and grinding in high school).

~~~
andrewem
That anti-intellectualism seemed to be more or less the theme of "Barton
Fink", a Coen Brothers movie where John Turturro is a socially conscious
Broadway playwright who gets lured out to Hollywood where he agonizes over
writing a script for what the producer intends to be just a dumb formulaic
wrestling picture. (Though the movie eventually gets really weird, and it's
been several years since I've seen it, so maybe I've gotten something wrong.)

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101410/>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barton_Fink>

------
Drbble
I worked in the mailroom as a Harvard undergrad. It paid overtime for 7am
shift and paid a 3 hour shift even if we finished work in 90 minutes. Best
workstudy gig ever, if you don't mind crossing the bridge over the Charles
River at 6:45am. I apologize for sending Chauncy mail to Quincy, I didn't know
Chauncy was real.

------
mirsadm
Right now I earn $200 a month but it is doing something I love. Not long ago I
was earning more than twice that a day. I wish there was a nicer balance
between the working for someone else with a nice salary and working for
yourself. It seems to me the start up scene is loaded with people looking to
strike it rich. What about ones that would be happy with an average salary but
working for themselves? What could you do to achieve that balance?

------
sritch
I think that people these days are being taught or encouraged to only do what
you love, and the thing is, we all can't. You have to take the crappy job at
one point or another or you'll end up unemployed if you're too picky.

However, in the case of this article, it's funny that the crappy job is the
one that is most sought after.

------
fasteddie31003
I believe industries where workers need to "Pay Dues" to get to the higher
echelons are ripe for disruption. It is a sign that the big players they
"Think" they have monopolistic power in their economies and run their
businesses such. However, this is a sign that they are complacent and could be
disrupted.

------
rmc
Of course there are people now who have a much better chance of getting to the
top now than they did in the Good Old Days™. Women, black people, asian
people, etc.

------
jdc
Fluff piece with a catchy title.

The author conveyed as much by saying "we have a 'winner takes all economy'
which might not be a good thing if employees realize this and lose their
interest in working hard."

------
yabai
Does this article point to a failure in capitalism?

------
zaidrahman
The title was catchy. Misleading in the end. No Harvard grad works in the
mailroom, sir! Even if they do, it is for a very brief period of their lives.

------
kahawe
> _In their book "Freakonomics" Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt
> explain, among other things, the odd economic behavior that guides many drug
> dealers. In one gang they described, the typical street-corner guy made less
> than minimum wage but still worked extremely hard in hopes of some day
> becoming one of the few wildly rich kingpins. This behavior isn’t isolated
> to illegal activity. There are a number of professions in which workers are
> paid, in part, with a figurative lottery ticket. The worker accepts a lower-
> paying job in exchange for a slim but real chance of a large, future
> payday._

This example is indeed listed in "Freakonomics" and was contributed to the
book by a sociologist called Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh. What this paragraph
fails to say, however, is that the chapter in the book makes it clear the
"soldiers" slinging on the corners either had the option of taking a minimum
wage job working 9-5 plus overtime or taking the minimum wage "job" slinging
and have a chance at making it big time PLUS the gang provided certain social
services and security to their members and their families - something the
minimum wage 9-5 job also did not have to offer. So while they were clearly in
a tight spot, they took the more economic of the two options. And the guy
leading the gang was described as very capable, social, if I remember
correctly he even had finished school or was working on a degree and was
capable of handling all financial matters of the gang. So his skills,
qualifications and killings got him the job but ultimately his performance
kept him there - otherwise he would have been replaced long ago. Clearly he
had something more to offer over his soldiers.

A point this chapter was making was that these jobs take practically zero
skill, have no entry-level barriers and there is an abundance of people
willing to do them who don't have other options - that's why they the pay was
so absolutely terrible while the job of being injured or killed on the job was
ten-folds more likely than the most dangerous, "regular" job in the States.

~~~
jeffcoat
I picked up Venkatesh's book _Gang Leader for a Day_ on the strength of the
work cited here ... and ended up throwing it out.

He's not an economist: he has a very clear idea of which jobs are useful in a
society and which jobs aren't, and no interest at all in what the market has
to say.

I'm sure he has useful data, but everything he writes goes through that
filter, and there's no way to trust what he says about people dealing drugs,
because he makes it so clear that everyone doing anything outside the law is
Evil, and so everything they do is tainted.

~~~
kahawe
Interesting... I just knew him through "Freakonomics". Well, I think he
provided the information and the data used in that one chapter and
Levitt/Dubner ultimately wrote it, probably also for lack of better sources.
How many scientists hook up with gangs and prostitutes? To be fair, Venkatesh
is a sociologist.

I guess both (all three) of them are leaning more toward the "infotainment"
side of things in those works - after all, they want their books to sell and I
wouldn't be surprised if he absolutely had to make that point "it is evil" so
often, otherwise the bible thumpers/moralizers might have gotten to him that
he promotes gangs? Levitt/Dubner had to go out of their way to make clear they
aren't trying to promote abortions in their "legalizing abortions reduced the
crime rate" chapter... which I found extremely peculiar, given that it was
nothing but an analysis and a convincing theory for the data at hand.

------
wavephorm
You'd think an article about top tier graduates working in mailrooms might
have an interview with one such person, or some rough numbers to back up this
claim.

Then they go on to state this will create a situation where people no longer
need to be innovative or creative... which these jobs didn't require in the
first place.

This article is fluff and full of fallacies.

~~~
jessriedel
I'd definitely take the numbers, but I'll pass on the interview. A few
soundbites from a college student who fits the mold imagined by the author is
the only thing I can think of that would be _less_ useful than the fluff and
conjecture filling the rest of the article.

