Comment by benten10 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by benten10 | Hacker News Reader

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YES!

And I don't want to piss of the uhh, bros among us, but it was extremely unfair as an international student to see mediocre fraternity brothers party through the semester, and then using their 'frat-connections' (basically the DL on all the old questions sets, collected over decades, and detailed coaching by fellow brothers on likely questions and answers) due exceedingly well in the exams, and then use their frat connections to land exceedingly awesome jobs. Blame the Chinese all you want, it hurts because they're the 'other'. (/rant. Sorry. Makes me really mad. I WORKED HARD TO LEARN AND ENJOYED CLASSES.) Funnily enough, I did exceedingly well in those exams that were open book (instructors knew the 'sharing of past papers happened, so they changed questions types) to which I didn't any scrap of paper. /humblebrag. But yeah, the system is unfair as it is.

Having said that, dear Americans, as broken as things are (despite those gosh darned 'cheatin' Chinese', as Trump would say), the system is better than anywhere else. Thanks for that : )

> and then use their frat connections to land exceedingly awesome jobs

That happens everywhere though. It's not endemic to "frat bros"—a lot of people find jobs through connections rather than only grades. Most of the time it's through a family friend or family member, or in CS through open source or meet ups. It sucks when you don't have any connections but it's not unfair; it's just how it is. Should I not tell an undergrad friend that my company is hiring interns and recommend her?

Of course an international student will have less connections which is why they sometimes struggle getting internships.

But yeah, the cheating stuff is messed up!

"it's not unfair; it's just how it is"

It kind of is unfair. Why should someone get preferential treatment just because you happen to know them? Also there's a difference between recommending someone for a job and "Hey this is my buddy, don't look at her resume and we can also skip most of the interview process". There's different degrees of nepotism, they are all usually a bit 'unfair'. But then, life is unfair and so you just deal with it and do the best with whatever resources you have.

> Why should someone get preferential treatment just because you happen to know them?

Because I know what sort of work they will produce, their attitude towards work, and their general behavior/personality and whether that will fit into the team without causing disruption or loss of productivity. That's why.

Business isn't about making everyone feel loved and accepted, business is about making money as efficiently as possible by providing a product or service that your customer want/need. Anything which furthers those goals is absolutely fair, especially things which are discriminatory only on the basis of knowledge.

Most business owners don't hire an employee 'just because you know them'.

They try to find the best candidate through the people they already know.

It's all about risk/reward. A random candidate will most likely be a higher risk than a know candidate.

Would you rather be roomates with a random person on craigslist or a friend of a friend?

After my first job after college, my personal social network is how I've gotten all my jobs, and I wouldn't have it any other way. When I get a new job, the company hiring me knows what I can do, because someone they trust told them. No silly technical interviews required.

Sometimes those frat bros are just exceptionally smart, too. My fraternity president got blackout drunk nearly every day playing pong, and graduated with a 4.0. Another guy who had a similar dedication to pong paddles and Keystone Light scored a perfect score on the MCAT. We had no super-secret archives of past homeworks or exams.

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