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Comment by laidoffamazon | Hacker News Reader

MIT students expect (not unfairly) to work at Jane Street/HRT/Jump/Citadel Securities/OpenAI/Anthropic and then "settle" for Google or Facebook. They're not going to work for Fidelity or Raytheon.

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That's a bit of a charcacture of Course 6 at MIT. Course 10 is chemical engineering and plenty of them go into industry at all the major oil companies. Lots of MIT students go into aerospace and defense (Lincoln Labs is directly federally funded) and MIT holds a yearly Soldier Design Competition that also helps students go for SBIRs. Raytheon is a big hirer of course 2 (MechE) MIT grads.

That's only true of the ones on ROTC or similar military related programs, everyone else goes straight to Wall Street, big tech, or MBB or med school.

At the annual Fall job fair, 80% of students queue up to less than 10% of employers. Most companies never show up because it's simply not worth the cost and time to try to recruit spoiled brats of MIT

Most MIT Mech E grads work at Boeing. Most Chem Es work at Exxon, Merck and Intel. Most Aero Astros are at Boeing. Etc. Etc. You just aren't accurate.

I find this specious - why would they do that when this is basically the composition of the MechE, AeroE, and ChemE (except no Intel for ChemE, we send our EEs to intel) at my public school undergrad?

Why would they work with people that they perceive to be beneath them and have worked far less hard than them?

>Why would they work with people that they perceive to be beneath them and have worked far less hard than them?

Because you aren't actually modeling their thinking correctly?

Perhaps I don't. I don't know why someone would expend 100x the effort and be labeled at minimum 10x the person by MIT admissions to end up at the same place that people with 1350 SATs from Auburn or 1450's from NC State or 1420 from Binghamton would go to after graduating MechE.

So I was accepted to MIT long, long ago and couldn’t afford to go and ended up at an (excellent) state school. If I’d gone to MIT I would be the same person right? Stereotypes don’t work, and never have — see people, not labels.

It's about being able to get in, not going. You're a superior human to people like me despite going to a state school.

As someone who's worked at Lincoln Labs, I do wonder if the poster here has considered this. Although, it is worth noting that LL requires citizenship for many/most of its divisions.

MIT kids get part time jobs waiting tables or working retail while in school, just like other college kids. My first job out of college was non-elite aircraft manufacturer... guy on my left was MIT, on my right was CalTech.

> MIT kids get part time jobs waiting tables or working retail while in school

I seriously doubt that. This doesn't fit the class they come from. Maybe it would have in 1985 but not today.

I absolutely second that - MIT students of 70's, 80's and even early 90's were from different social class, demographics and personality types, than todays students.

Today, MIT is nothing but a shadow of its better known academic cartel up the Mass ave. Those who hire MIT students know that and plan accordingly. The only reason to hire MIT students is for branding propaganda, you get nothing more from them.

I get why they might have a certain expectation. It kinda depends on the job market. The guy in the cube next to me at Fidelity had a degree from MIT.

As an MIT reject (technically waitlisted), my very first post-graduation job was at Raytheon and much later in life, I ended up at Facebook, where I managed a team that had several engineers that joined directly from MIT. While I can't speak to the entire MIT grad cohort, fFacebook was the first-choice for everyone in this particular group.

Facebook is still much higher status than Amazon or IBM or any other company the people from my undergrad join after college

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