<p>^Funny stuff my fellow beaver. My first job out of MIT was working for a consulting group employed by lobbyists for the nuclear industry. Our main task was to meet with senators and congressman and convince them of the industry’s viewpoints for a number of different issues. Our work was totally boilerplate and required almost no engineering skill. What was important was that we could be introduced to government officials with “MIT” or “CalTech” behind our names. Prestige was everything. You had to be from a very elite private…No public school graduates need apply. It didn’t even matter what your degree was in or if it was an advance degree or not. The people we were dealing with wouldn’t know the difference anyway. It was all about impressions. It was truly depressing work, albeit financially rewarding.</p>
<p>Such a relief when I left that world for research and development, where, like you say, it very quickly became your contributions that mattered. Moral: sometimes prestige is everything, sometimes not so much.</p>