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Comment by _hardwaregeek | Hacker News Reader

Y'know, as someone who went to a very competitive public school, there were a particular brand of driven, studious kids who knew exactly how to paint along the lines, play the game, and get into the college of their choice. They understood the precise combo of grades, extracurriculars and essays to get into a "good" school.

I definitely see some of those kids doing the same tactics to get into a "good" company. The steps are slightly different but the philosophy is the same: grind Leetcode, participate in tech clubs and take bullshit jobs juuust long enough to get an internship, get said internship and parlay it into a return offer. Put your head down, play the game and reap the rewards.

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I mean it's all a game as much as it sucks. One of my best friends in high school was a salutatorian because the school didn't wait grade. She took zero AP classes and very few honors classes. She knew what she was doing.

Friends in college took less challenging majors to boost GPA for med school (business admin, environmental policy, etc) to boost grades and there core classes were easy so it gave them more time to focus on med school pre-reqs.

It has been and always will be a game. Few things in this world come down to meritocracy because the way we socialize and the way we interview does not beget that in absolute terms.

Tech did a better-than-most job as a meritocracy for while, but I believe those days are done. Most areas f tech are too mainstream with too much obvious money at stake.

I don't understand why you are discrediting people who are taking the better path to med school. Work smarter, not harder.

There is also short game vs long game. For example, if you cheat on a test without learning the material. You might win the short game, but if that material was important and you need it later you're losing the long game. That said, if the material was just fluff and no one really cares. It's actually smart just to cheat and get by.

People who take the easy way or cheats to get around bureaucracy will do the same thing after you hire them at the job. They will do things like avoid password salting for your database unless you explicitly tell them to do it etc.

In other words, I don't want to hire "smart" people, I want to hire intelligent people who take pride in what they do and don't try to take shortcuts to make their lives easier at the expense of others.

That's how most kids get into prestigious universities. Rarely, if ever, do kids just "stumble" into HYPS or Oxbridge, out of sheer intellectual power and luck.

If you want to get into those schools, you gotta know how to game works, and practice specifically for that match.

I went to a school like that, and the majority of my classmates were from upper-middle to upper class families that had poured money into their education since they were young, with the specific goal of getting them into top schools.

Yeah, that's unfortunately the thing, when you start throwing in a ton of different criteria / measurements. The people that know how the system works, will study to maximize those points.

My honest opinion is that you kinda of end up with smart people that are very good at test-taking, but may not be the best people when presented a set of problems with non-obvious solutions, or any guides or road maps on how to solve the problems.

Part of the problem is how little time one has to prepare for college. If we encouraged people to apply to college after a few years of adult life, I have a feeling the playing field would be a little better. But instead we expect kids to gain the credentials of much older adults while going to school and getting fantastic grades. Unless you understand the game going in, it's too easy to slip up and fall behind. Even then, you don't have time for mental health or sleep.

You're absolutely right, unfortunately here in the Bay area it's those kids winging it and getting in.

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