The Great Man Syndrome: Big Fish in a Small Pond

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.

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.

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)