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Comment by patcon | Hacker News Reader

> for fresh graduates who know effectively nothing at all about what they talk about

Assuming they are akin to grad students, these "fresh graduates" likely have more intersectional knowledge than long-time deep domain experts. I've worked in grant funding landscape, and one of the biggest challenges is that:

1. Experts have deep knowledge, but don't keep up outside their field, and yet have the most power in distributing funds that bet on future innovation and 2. Grad students have very little power to direct funds, but straddle more fields and are better positioned to see new intersections emerge.

Each have strengths. Being naive has advantages to the learner that the expert can extract from simply by having them around

So I'd argue that keep an abundance of "fresh grads" isn't just cynical cost-cutting, but part of the secret sauce of why these big orgs generally operate as effective institutional ecologies

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> Assuming they are akin to grad students

I think that's the problem. They're not. I know some folks who went to consulting shops like this. They're invariably 2 types of people: people who got very high GPAs but cannot actually code a working program, and people who got pushed into the degree for various reasons but have zero passion. Note I'm not saying you need *passion* to be in this industry. But these people literally did not care if what they were doing was programming or washing dishes (beyond the pay delta and their parents (financier's) opinions).

And to some degree that's the point of these places. They take in the 40% of each CS class that can't fizzbuzz, put them through an internal bootcamp in their generic crud framework they fork every time they get a new customer, then unleash them on the world, either as "staff augmentation" or doing contract work.

Yeah sadly I have a similar experience from my school. People going into consultancy were either people that just did software engineering to quickly move into a management position and make more money, or people that were not passionate about the domain or the students that under performed. We’d have consultancy agencies come advertise basically saying “don’t worry we have LOTS of positions open”.

> Assuming they are akin to grad students, these "fresh graduates" likely have more intersectional knowledge than long-time deep domain experts. I've worked in grant funding landscape, and one of the biggest challenges is that

This is generous. I have worked with these consultants. These aren't mom-and-pop startup consultancies. These guys charge extortionate rates and provide bottom-barrel talent. One agency, who will not be named, sweet talks you with product managers and then exports 90% of the technical labor overseas to the lowest bidder. You pay expert prices for this. Even their MBAs are tacit manipulators. I remember one project before we canned them - the PMs were constantly revising their "go to market strategy" conveniently around the time the contract would be up for negotiation.

> So I'd argue that keep an abundance of "fresh grads" isn't just cynical cost-cutting, but part of the secret sauce of why these big orgs generally operate as effective institutional ecologies

Realistically, new-grads are willing to work 14x7 and shower and sleep in the office. That's why.

These consultancies are a malignant cancer on business and the health of their employees.

It's pretty clear you've never met any of these graduates.

I had a bunch of friends at uni who went into these roles, from a range of degrees.

They do not have that capacity, they know nothing about the real world, and they brought no insights.

And later in life, they will openly tell you that. That they knew nothing, we're a complete waste of everyone's time if involved in real work, but most often were being charged out at ridiculous figures to sit in a room and photocopy stuff that didn't need photocopying. Because that was chargeable.

"but part of the secret sauce of why these big orgs generally operate as effective institutional ecologies"

Nah

the secret sauce is "who you know"

it's a tale as old as time

> grad students

No, fresh 22 year olds with bachelor degrees.

> effective institutional ecologies

More so, they act as liability sponges. Leadership can blame them for any problems, poor decisions etc.

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