It’s an interesting phenomenon how young people create pecking orders of which companies are the best to work at while at the same time having very little experience to make such conclusions.
Disclaimer: I work at Amazon.
In high school, I thought it was insane how some of the smartest people I knew pinned their entire future on getting into MIT or whatever. The ones that did get into “ivy leagues“ are working junior roles at consulting firms, which seems like a very predatory line of work to me, but whatever.
In college, I thought it was insane that second years were resume hacking and leetcoding, only to apply to FAANG companies. When they didn’t get in, they basically gave up it was FAANG or bust (!). Many of them graduated with no internship experiences to speak of, at companies big or small. Those that “got in” got a lot of street cred amongst friends, but seemingly have no idea what to do with their lives.
My hypothesis is that their houses are not free-standing. I think they genuinely do not know what they want out of their lives or careers, so they autopilot in to chasing after some vague sense of prestige. The longest line at the career fair must be the best, and I want to be the best, so there shall I go.
Some will say they want to work at Google, so that they can “work anywhere”. OK, then what? crickets, or something something change the world. I don’t know how you can structure your career or life around something so ephemeral, but maybe I’m the weird one.
If there are any ex members of this cult reading this, can you shed some light for me, on how this works out?
Maybe the path of all top-paying secure white collar professions start resembling each other at some point. Excess competition breeds people gaming the applications process and focusing on it for its own sake to get in, instead of figuring out what they want to do once they’re in- besides get paid high salaries, of course.