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Comment by runawaybottle | Hacker News Reader

I made the point in another comment that one of the reasons other industries kind of suck is because of the heavy gate-keeping. You want to be an investment banker? There is no path but to have gone to an Ivy League school. Stuff like this is a tragedy. Industries that are cordoned off in this way are extremely selfish.

I understand the need for the elite to be brain surgeons, but for a vast majority of professions, the filtering for elite is not conducive to a healthy village.

Leetcode is fine, but the trend I’m hearing is that it is getting more and more absurd and somewhat becoming our version of the same gate-keeping that makes finance, law, politics, etc bad.

I’m hopeful overall since you can’t bullshit good software. Over time, the less elite can make better products and make the gatekeeping look stupid when it’s all said and done.

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That's very dependent on whether the definition of “good” can be yanked around by what the rest of the industry does, for example by ease of compatibility with other software APIs or by UI and behavior models that are familiar to lower friction for people who have already used something popular.

> You want to be an investment banker? There is no path but to have gone to an Ivy League school

This is mostly, but not completely true. There are other paths. I was recruited by a large bank to come interview for an IB position from a recruiter that specifically looks for talent outside of the Ivy's. What made me stand out from my peers was the fact that I served 7 years in a Special Operations military unit, had a perfect GPA, and multiple high recognition internships all while a dual major.

I turned down the offer as I had friends that went that route and either burned out or simply hated their jobs and I didn't want that, but the point is that there are other paths into IB then going to an Ivy.

> I understand the need for the elite to be brain surgeons, but for a vast majority of professions, the filtering for elite is not conducive to a healthy village.

Filtering for surgeons really is:

- Who can afford a completely unrelated undergrad before even applying to med school

- Who can afford to fly and meet with hospitals for residency spots

- Who can be the most sleep deprived during residency (completely useless)

> Leetcode is fine, but the trend I’m hearing is that it is getting more and more absurd and somewhat becoming our version of the same gate-keeping that makes finance, law, politics, etc bad.

Really, it's possible to bypass leetcoding by just taking a good algorithm and data structure class.

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