Much of this blog post speaks to my experience (probably because we went to the same school at pretty much the same time).
That said, I think the thesis is a bit overstated. The reason many more Harvard CS students talk about Google > Stripe is not because Stripe is not prestigious (it obviously is, and plenty of super talented students go there). It's because Google hires a ton of Harvard CS grads, whereas many late-stage startups do not hire as many new grads, nor do they have as large of hiring pools. They're going to have an obviously larger impact on the sorts of jobs people discuss.
The same thing with GS, Jane Street, or Citadel, because they actively recruit at Harvard through on-campus recruiting and hire a comparatively large portion of Harvard graduates.
This is related to the other reason that companies like Google are talked about much more than mid-stage startups: the school on your diploma has much larger impact at these big, more calcified companies than it does on startups where individual hires could help make-or-break the company. And places like McKinsey or Bain basically hire many students so they can tell clients they have a team of Harvard grads working on the problem.
> they assume their intelligence insulates them from peer pressure.
If you come into Harvard with this notion, I can't really see how you stay with it after your first recruiting/punch season. And, honestly, Harvard undergrads aren't that smart.
> the school on your diploma has much larger impact at these big, more calcified companies than it does on startups where individual hires could help make-or-break the company
Google and Facebook hired almost exclusively from Ivy League and equivalents during their "make or break" phase.
>Google > Stripe is not because Stripe is not prestigious (it obviously is, and plenty of super talented students go there).
I think Google is a pretty clear step above Stripe. They have legitimately changed the world and billions of people use their products. Stripe is a payment processing firm. A very successful one, but ultimately a pretty boring b2b business. Im not sure anyone would really miss it if it were gone.
It's hard to argue against what Google has accomplished in the last 20 years. But in my Bay Area social circle, working at Stripe is considered more prestigious. These days Google is big, boring, bureaucratic, and maybe a little evil. Stripe is successful, growing, pays at least comparably well and has way more potential financial upside. They're also known to have a high hiring bar and a great dev culture. I've heard nothing but good things about the company or the people who work there.
Google has changed the world, and it likely will change it in the future, but will you get the job that does the changing, or will you just end up working on a project that's going to be cancelled in 3 years because it only attracted hundreds of millions of people instead of billions?
That said, I think the thesis is a bit overstated. The reason many more Harvard CS students talk about Google > Stripe is not because Stripe is not prestigious (it obviously is, and plenty of super talented students go there). It's because Google hires a ton of Harvard CS grads, whereas many late-stage startups do not hire as many new grads, nor do they have as large of hiring pools. They're going to have an obviously larger impact on the sorts of jobs people discuss.
The same thing with GS, Jane Street, or Citadel, because they actively recruit at Harvard through on-campus recruiting and hire a comparatively large portion of Harvard graduates.
This is related to the other reason that companies like Google are talked about much more than mid-stage startups: the school on your diploma has much larger impact at these big, more calcified companies than it does on startups where individual hires could help make-or-break the company. And places like McKinsey or Bain basically hire many students so they can tell clients they have a team of Harvard grads working on the problem.
> they assume their intelligence insulates them from peer pressure.
If you come into Harvard with this notion, I can't really see how you stay with it after your first recruiting/punch season. And, honestly, Harvard undergrads aren't that smart.