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It's actually quite hilarious to me this Prestige by Association.

I've worked at a couple very high-profile companies in the Valley and have never felt this prestige primarily because I don't hang out with complete douchebags.

If people get all starry-eyed when you announce the company you work for; run in the opposite direction. Also, don't kidd yourself, you and I know both know you're not working on anything that cool. Especially because almost everyone works on a team so responsibility is pretty spread out.

And even if you are working on the very algorithm that determines which ads are shown when, you're still buried in seventeen layers of process and bureaucracy for a change or product that will probably never ship or will take years to market.

The day-to-day is about unglamorous as it gets. People need to realize the big "names" in the Valley are simply large corporations.

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Or you have family/friends that aren't very technical and don't know any better. I saw people's faces change as soon as someone mentioned where I worked to others in my circle while I was at Google. I had never seen that before. It was weird at first and then I just accepted it. Then having to explain why I wanted to/did leave there was just a major PITA.

I'd be lying if there wasn't some reservation or me doubting myself a bit at first when I realized I just wasn't happy there and needed to get out and I'd also be lying if I said some of it wasn't because of the above reaction of family/friends.

I don't know how many non-tech people you hangout with - but these are over reaches:

- That it's wrong to judge using school etc. when you have no other way of judging. For example, if I give you a choice of a cardiologist from hopkins vs someone from a podunk university you haven't heard of, barring no other information - I can put money on your choice being the hopkins dude:)

- The fact that you are working on crud in google is the same as crud in xyz company: No. At least in a true scotsman way, the good teams I have worked on have always had better crud apps than the worse ones.

- That they are complete douchebags. May be a few are, but that's not exclusive to non-tech. (you might not have meant this though)

IOW your familiarity might have bred some contempt / diluted the glamour. For me, I still am very proud of my history of companies.

As someone who works at one of the very high profile companies, on something cool, that people get in contact with every day (and sometimes discuss publicly), I respectfully disagree.

Bureaucracy and process often exist, but it varies extremely. Sometimes it can be quite direct.

(I certainly don't think that "working on the very algorithm that determines which ads are shown" is cool, though, as I work on products.)

Ever had any friends who went to a public (private in the US) school.

One of my mates who went to a mid tier public school and he commented he made sure when sending out his cv the fact that he was a old bedfordian was prominent.

And if I had stayed in Birmingham (UK) and my mum's plan to use family connections to get me into King Edwards had come off dam right I would use that - btw this is the school that is always in the top 3 in the rankings.

he made sure when sending out his cv the fact that he was a old bedfordian was prominent

That’s not prestige exactly, it’s a signal to the Old Boys Network that he can skip the usual process. Some people might describe this as corruption.

> I've worked at a couple very high-profile companies in the Valley and have never felt this prestige primarily because I don't hang out with complete douchebags.

> If people get all starry-eyed when you announce the company you work for; run in the opposite direction.

Get over yourself and out of your bubble. American culture constantly pushes the value of prestige and the way of obtaining that being going to good schools and working at popular companies. If you are a person who didn't go to an ivy league or work at Facebook, it's easy to believe that the person who did is better than you in some way. It is more rare to attain that status, so therefor many people both in and outside of the industry look starry-eyed at them.

I don't work at one of the big tech firms and nor do I want to, but I know for a fact most people in my family would think highly of me if I told them I worked at Google, because it is prestigious whether you like it or not. Does that make them douchebags?

It’s one thing for friends or family to think where you working at is cool and another thing for random people to be inflating your ego. Or you may start to think you’re better than other people because of where you work.

I’ve seen this phenomenon in San Francisco quite a bit. That is where the person and their entire social circles become cliques that serve simply to reinforce their ego.

It’s sad and weird to observe first hand.

I think many people ask that “So... where do you work?” or “What do you do for a living?” question as a polite way to figure out where to stack you on their social status totem pole. At least in the Bay Area and likely other places, you kind of have to go out of your way to find people who dont do this. Usually I just say I’m an exotic dancer, which often gets a chuckle, breaks the ice and subtly sends the message that I’m not interested in being silently judged based on where I work.

He's (likely) Chinese-American. Chinese culture is HUGE on prestige.

Because Americans and Europeans didn't judge people by their schools or careers at all before Chinese came along /s.

As are all others I’ve encountered too.

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