>And yet it's not uncommon to see job postings here on HN from time to time at pretty well-positioned places where it's basically stated in the ad that they won't consider you unless you're from an Ivy League institution or someplace equivalent like MIT.
Interesting - I never browse job postings here. Do you have a reference?
What's posted on HN is not at all representative of the rest of the country, though. I've certainly worked in places where they tend to prefer "top schools", but once again, that was for graduate degrees, where as I said, being from a wealthy background doesn't help all that much. And for engineering schools (Princeton would not be viewed favorably, for example).
>Tech isn't the only place this happens either.
In my experience, tech is probably where it happens less. In most of my peer companies, after something like 4-5 years experience, no one cares where you went to school. It's much more common for things like MBA and Law (one lawyer told me that many of his firm's clients stipulate that the lawyers working on their case must be from a top school, and graduated in the top N of the class).
>I've become convinced that part of the source of our inequality in the US is hypercredentialing. That is, your abilities and skillset are equated with your degree. You're not that competent if you didn't go to an elite college, you can't do task X unless you have this very specific degree in Y, etc. and so forth and so on. It's rampant and affects all sorts of realms, from unemployment to licensing laws.
I'd be interested in seeing studies supporting this. In my anecdotal experience, I've seen it much more acutely in other countries. But then again, those countries also tend to have much more inequality.