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Comment by drblast | Hacker News Reader

Paradox? How is this even the least bit surprising to anyone?

Does anyone seriously advocate getting a high GPA in the US anymore so that you can out-earn your peers?

Does anyone seriously think that the leaders of companies are the studious academic experts in their field of choice?

This is a paradox if you still pretend we live in a hierarchical meritocracy. To a certain point and income level we do; bad grades and no social connections won't help you.

But if you can choose entering a class of rich and powerful people or getting a higher GPA, and your goal is financial reward? Come on now.

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>This is a paradox if you still pretend we live in a hierarchical meritocracy.

Not really, no. It's a paradox if you think a single-minded concentration on grades is the right strategy to rise to the top of a meritocracy. People skills are learned, and that's one of the things organizations like fraternities will teach you.

In addition, I would much rather employ someone who I know personally or through a connection that can vouch for them than someone who came in through the front door. Organizational membership helps establish these weak bonds. Raw GPA will get your foot in the front door, but relationships will get you hired without needing to go through the front door.

You won't even get in the door at a fraternity if you don't have decent people (or social) skills to start with. It's another selector that keeps the membership fairly nondiverse.

> It's another selector that keeps the membership fairly nondiverse.

For those who have committed to the fraternal path, sure.

Then there are those who simply find associating with the Greek community to be morally degenerate...and those who don't have the financial means to satisfy mandatory annual dues...and those who can't reconcile value.

I had a fairly good GPA and got my Ph.D., and I made it all the way from leaving academia to retirement without ever once even being asked so much as to show my degree or my transcripts. At least not as far as I know.

The paperwork has been pretty much irrelevant.

I've always called my degree a $200k permission slip.

Also, I should have been more clear. They may have requested my transcripts when I applied for security clearance.

I'm not even sure where my physical diploma is. I'm sure it's in a box somewhere.

> How is this even the least bit surprising to anyone?

We are told or taught that the US is a land of opportunity and meritocracy. One of our great myths is that bloodline doesn't matter. It goes back to our founders and the fact that we fought against a bloodline royalty. This is what I was taught from kindergarten onwards. That america was special and exceptional. We didn't have royalty. Doesn't matter who your father was, we are all "kings" and equal.

But you leave school and join the real world and you realize all of that was nonsense. Your success in life has more to do with who your parents are than anything else.

George Bush with a C average is far better off than the valedictorian.

Ultimately, we aren't as special or different than any other nation.

I think this fact is surprising to most americans because we are taught something entirely different from the first day of school.

"The people that get Bs work for the people that get Cs, and the people that get As teach."

Where is this from?

Not sure. I think I heard it from a teacher in high school.

It's funny. I wonder if they took it from some other source. Thanks.

I heard it as "A students work for C students, and B students work in government."

For what it's worth, that hasn't been my experience at all, with the possible exception of the As. I suppose tech is in some ways an unusually functional industry overall, but all the leaders I've seen who weren't particularly smart but had people skills have failed pretty miserably. The successful ones have been almost universally the ones who are very smart (categorically as smart or usually smarter than their underlings) _and_ had excellent people skills.

As I said, it's entirely possible that tech (or at least the quality of company I've worked at) is something of an anomaly, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it as unrepresentative: it's not controversial at all that the importance of intelligence is rising fairly rapidly in the modern economy and tech may be more representative of the present and future than you'd think at first glance.

I've worked in finance in a finance capacity and tech in a technical capacity. There isn't much of a difference (at least in the sub-areas I've worked). Getting a job is different than holding it. My impression is that useless people get culled MUCH more quickly in finance because the work is frequently more transparent to those in a position to fire you, along with the labor supply and demand in the two industries.

I think people are simply conflating GPA and intelligence. This is especially true given the study is from the NE liberal arts schools who funnel into finance regardless of their major. My math/econ double major was completely irrelevant during my 3 month training program where the brightest person in the room was an english lit major.

> I think people are simply conflating GPA and intelligence

Yes, this is a very good point that I elided a little in my comment: I actually just wrote a different comment on this post about me not including my GPA on my resume because it reflected the fact that I miscalculated how much I could take on vs my actual intelligence (I ended up with a low-3s GPA and three degrees (all considered fairly challenging) in four years).

But I don't think that, at the population level, it's a conflation to recognize that the _correlation_ between intelligence and GPA (ceterus paribus) is pretty significant. The risk is in reducing the candidate to too few features, but that's not inherent to including the feature in your overall assessment.

That cliché needs to be updated. With modern grade inflation even the idiots hardly get Cs any more.

It’s not surprising, but it’s very important because all of the reasons are not obvious.

Sure, access to the network of peers that comes with elite schools has long been known to be one of the biggest benefits of admission.

But it’s also things like GPA not measuring EQ, or emotional intelligence. One example, at big companies that sell software, who do you think gets paid more (not counting founder status) the most talented and elite engineers, or the the most talented and elite sales people?

Some here don’t realize it’s common for an enterprise sales rep to make more, sometimes way more, than a developer. I don’t know who has higher average GPAs but I’m guessing it’s STEM majors over business administration majors.

I think you've hit a bit of a logical mistake here. The study doesn't show that members of rich and powerful fraternities get higher incomes. It shows that the average fraternity member gets a higher salary. This is moderately surprising to me. Instead of the rich, it is surprising that any grouping of people might raise salary expectations. Keep in mind there are plenty of fraternities who don't even have a fraternity house and I'm assuming they are included in the average.

You just need a 3.0 once or twice so you can tell recruiters "I get a 3ish depending on how spread thin I am by work and $academicclub".

I heard from a google recruiter that they all but throw out a resume for interns and developers coming out of school if it doesn't include transcripts.

EDIT: To clarify this was at a talk to a group of college students - almost exclusively geared towards prospective interns or fresh graduates.

Also this is something I was told by an employee at Google... I don't understand the downvotes. Maybe my wording was harsh... should I have said "seriously decreased chances of selection"?

I hope they explicitly ask for transcripts, or this is pretty stupid behavior...

I'm pretty sure this is wrong. I worked at Google for a few years and I don't recall sharing my transcripts or even putting my GPA on my resume. At not point in the process did they ask for my GPA IIRC.

It's entirely possible that this has changed, but I'd be pretty surprised. Competition for tech talent has heated up A LOT since then, and using transcripts as a blunt instrument to limit your talent pool seems like a move in the wrong direction.

I applied for Google ~8 years ago and they required that I send them a copy of my transcripts.

Huh, interesting, I applied (for an eng role) not _very_ long after you. There's a tiny possibility that they required my transcripts at some point later in the process and I forgot about it, but I doubt it, and I do specifically recall intentionally not including my GPA or transcripts[1] and being surprised that no one asked about them.

It's also possible (but prob unlikely) that they treat candidates in a more case-by-case fashion, and don't ask for transcripts for certain programs that are well-known to them (I got my degrees at Cal).

[1] I overextended myself in college and ended up with three degrees and a low-3s GPA

I went to Ole Miss so it's definitely possible someone looked at that and said "well, we're definitely not taking a 3.0 from there" and wanted transcripts.

It's also possible that they asked for transcripts and you politely declined while I felt it was a non-negotiable request.

Seriously.

Thank you! I love hearing “lower GPA” as if it’s a reflection of the people who join frats being less smart. It seems we can’t quite comprehend that innate “smartness” is more important than test scores.

Isn’t it obvious why GPA goes down? Social activity sky rockets.

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