<p>Timmy2 … Interestingly, we are located in San Jose/Silicon Valley … There is no doubt that starting out, a “name brand” engineering degree will open some doors that are not open to “lower schools” … that difference disappears quickly as you go through your career … this opinion is based on 25 yrs of experience in Silicon Valley. We are going through our promotion and review cycle right now and what school a person attended is not a consideration. Companies tend to hire regionally so the University of Missouri grad is more likely to work for Dell, AMD or IBM in Austin. BTW, I am not sure a U of Missouri grad would want to move to Silicon Valley now with $1M starter homes and 10% State income tax.</p>
<p>The monthly net income in the article, at a $22 an hour rate, does not imply a 40 hour work week.
$22 dollars an hour sounds very, very juicy, from where I come from.
All the more reason why I am not interested in subsidizing this young woman.</p>
<p>XTXN2CAL,</p>
<p>You know more about hiring in Silicon Valley than I do or probably ever will. However, you did not address one of the main points I made in post #217. Your Missouri graduate spends his first ten years working at Missouri Software Consulting. Your Stanford graduate spends his first ten years working at Google. Employers value experience at Google much more than experience at Missouri Software Consulting(theoretical) that no one outside of Missouri has ever heard of. While employers may have stopped looking at what school you went to, the indirect effects of what school you went to can last a lifetime.</p>
<p>XTXN2CAL: 20+ years of my experience in Silicon Valley says that the brand name does come up during review. It not only comes up during the review of first level managers but it does have a bearing on the higher level promotions. </p>
<p>It is true that companies tend to hire regionally but in Silicon Valley also a degree from top engineering institutes go much further over “San Jose State University” which is right in the Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>There might not be any difference between MIT/Stanford/UCB (EECS) but when it comes to U. Missouri, companies in Silicon Valley might prefer to call the grad from the trio for interviews or provide a bump in the promotions.</p>
<p>Timmy2 … your “thought” experiment’s conclusion is correct, but it compares apples and oranges … you should compare San Jose State to Stanford which is a better comparison … cross regional comparisons are not apples and apples. The original question is whether it was worth going deep into debt to go to a top “name brand” program versus going to a “respectable” state school and graduate debt free … your observation is a good one but speaks to the company one goes to work for, not the school one attended. I agree that if your first 3 jobs over 10 years are at no-name technology companies that go nowhere, your personal “brand” will be badly diminished as well as your judgement questioned. Keep in mind that there are hundreds of startups that top elite engineering graduates go to work for every year in Silicon Valley that do not become “Googles” of thier respective area. They are looking for work just like everyone else … We are interviewing a number of them. Over the long haul IQ does not equal earning potential. If that were the case all Phds from the top 10 would be rich.</p>
<p>Parent of Ivy Hope: You are telling me that when a performance review is performed on an employee, where they went to school is factored in whether or not they get a raise or promotion? Not their job performance? So you are saying that someone that contributed to the success of the company more but came from SJ State got a lower raise than someone from Stanford that didn’t perform as well? Where did you work?</p>
<p>
But very smart high school grads don’t get jobs doing manual labor or working at Wallmart. They use their intelligence and innate skills to get better quality jobs than that. (For example, a smart high school grad could probably get that $22/hour photographers assistant job that the NYU grad had-- that job didn’t require a degree.)</p>
<p>I mean… the reason that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs dropped OUT of college is that they were both so damn smart that they realized that they were wasting their time being taught old stuff when they were both so damn smart they had the ability to go out and invent new stuff. </p>
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</p>
<p>And like many people, I’ve chosen to diversify investments, making sure I had a very good cushion of “safe”, low-interest bearing money in savings to fall back on if the riskier investments don’t pan out.</p>
<p>If you take out more debt than you will be able to manage based on present earning capacity (at the time you take out the debt) – then you are taking on the same risk as if you withdraw all of your savings and invest in a speculative investment.</p>
<p>XTXN2CAL:
</p>
<p>yes, I’m telling you that if there are two candidates for promotion then your college do have a bearing on whether or not you get the promotion.</p>
<p>Also Yes, when it comes to raises and promotion a UCB engineer will get better than SJSU engineer for the same level of contribution. Let’s leave Stanford/MIT out.</p>
<p>POIH … Not sure where you worked or what industry you were in but I have been in Silicon Valley for 25+ years and have worked for large well known companies as well as small venture backed startups as a Sr Exec and Board Member. I am currently the CEO of a company listed on NASDAQ and have never seen what you described. I can tell you that at our company it definitely does not work that way and we have many UCB, Stanford, Michigan, UT, SJ State, Santa Clara, etc grads. Promotions, raises, and stock option grants are based on performance, not some percieved ranking of where you went to school. If our HR people were making the arbitrary judgements you mentioned I would fire them. Maybe you are noting that UCB grads are more driven and get promoted more often? Maybe you are referring to new grad hires? Maybe so, but the notion that if 2 people are contributing the same, the one that went to a “better school” gets a raise is a receipe for disaster in managing an engineering team. Managing people is about people skills and the ability to lead. Where you went to school is not correlated with people skills. In fact high IQ is inversely related in many cases.</p>
<p>XTXN2CAL,</p>
<p>The problem is that some states don’t have any schools that are respectable on a national scale and also have few big name companies located there. People who go to those programs have trouble getting jobs at big name companies. That problem follows them for life. If you are going to a top 20 school out of state at sticker price, then you are already going into significant debt.</p>
<p>XTXN2CAL: I’m neither CEO nor a Sr. Exec or Board Member but in all the companies I’ve worked for, the college an employee went to is part of the review process. It is listed as part of the profile provided to the managers. I’ve never seen a case where same number of experience with same effort a SJSU have been promoted over UCB.</p>
<p>Generally a SJSU engineer have to have 2 to 4 years more experience in the same field than a UCB engineer to be doing the same work. </p>
<p>Maybe we work in different field but in my area of work i.e. in R&D a SJSU need a strong 4/5 years of experience in the field before (s)he get a chance to work on the team. So getting the same raise or promotion is out of question.</p>
<p>Generally the companies I’ve worked for SJSU grad get hired in QA or in the IT or application software while grads of UCB make it to the R&D. </p>
<p>And the raises of R&D engineers are much higher than QA engineers.</p>
<p>With respect to Calmom’s post, </p>
<ol>
<li> So are we supposed to advise the average high school senior what to do based on the experiences of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates?</li>
<li> Since most people only get one or two college degrees, you can’t really diversify your college education the same way you can diversify stocks and bonds.</li>
<li> You keep talking about debt being based on present earning capacity. Since many college students don’t work during the school year and those that do are not self sufficient, they aren’t even able to pay their living expenses. Based on that theory, students should not have any debt and hence should not go to college.</li>
</ol>
<p>POIH … I suspect you are referring to the R&D team you manage and did you attend UCB by any chance?</p>
<p>Re post #232:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The high schooler needs to be advised to search for options that don’t involve an inordinate amount of debt. My point wasn’t that a degree was worthless, its that (a) it doesn’t enhance earning capacity in the linear way that you suggest, because it is just one of many variables, and (b) the prestige private colleges are overly hyped. </p></li>
<li><p>My point was that you shouldn’t sink too much MONEY in the college degree, not that you should spend money on a lot of different college degrees. The reason a portfolio is balanced between low and high risk investments is to provide a foundation to protect against risk. When the issue is college financing, the “fouh ndation” is the individual’s innate earning capacity (not degree-enhanced earning capacity). If you are looking at degree-enhanced earning capacity you are essentially spending the fruits of an investment before they have been realized. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Real world example:</p>
<p>My son with no college degree earned $25K. My son with a college degree earned $40K. So college degree was worth +$15K annually. </p>
<p>That does NOT mean that he should have borrowed $40K for his college. It does mean, in my estimation, that it would have been reasonable for him to borrow $25K. </p>
<p>As it happens, my son borrowed roughly $6K for his first 2 years of college, and did his final 2 years at an in-state public which he financed out of his earnings, and need-based & merit-based financial aid. He paid off whatever loan debt he had remaining immediately upon graduating from college. This is a good thing, because within 2 years out of college my son was married and a father, so its a good thing that he isn’t saddled with a lot of debt.</p>
<p>If my son didn’t have the family obligations and wanted to finance grad school, and asked for my advice – then I would look at his current earning capacity of $40K and advise him to borrow no more than that. </p>
<p>I am looking at the current earning capacity as if it was collateral for the loan. Future earning capacity is speculative – and excess borrowing may make it harder to reach that capacity for practical reasons. For example, the person with a lot of debt may have to turn down a job with greater growth potential in favor of a job that pays more at the outset but has fewer options for advancement and salary increases. </p>
<ol>
<li> You have confused “earning capacity” with actual earnings. To use my son as an example again. He knew that he could earn $25K a year because he could always go back to his old job. When he was in college he did not earn very much, because he worked half time or less at lower paying positions while in school. But he knew his “capacity” was at least $25K.</li>
</ol>
<p>Timmy2 … I agree … If someone went to a no name college in the middle of nowhere and got an engineering degree, they would be ruined for life, since they would not be able to get a job with a big name company.</p>
<p>About me personally,
I don’t have the temperament to be in management or a leadership position. My goal is to have a solid middle class lifestyle as a technical engineer. In high school, I had a ~3.5 unweighted GPA, an SAT math score in the 95%, a SAT English score in 89%, and made 5/5s on most of my AP exams. I doubt I could have made it into MIT, but I believe I could have gotten admitted somewhere in at least the top 25 engineering programs. I went in state where it was cheap and with some parental support managed to graduate debt free. I didn’t do any internships or co-ops. I did undergraduate research for a professor for one year. Then, in grad school, I was fully funded as a MS student. Now, I have a temporary software job that pays a grand $10/hour. I feel somewhat lucky to have that and realize that when it ends in a few months, I could possibly end up applying to Walmart. Obviously, I am unintelligent. Besides, my way of thinking is responsible for both sinking the Titanic and the BP oil spill.</p>
<p>The message I wish I received when I was 18-19 would go something like this:</p>
<p>Look, you live in a state without that many engineering jobs. Hence, you are probably going to want to work out of state when you graduate. Outside of this state, people will look down on your degree. Therefore, your grades, GPA, and ECs should all be above the pack if you want to actually get a job in your field after graduation. Being average at this school simply will not cut it.</p>
<p>Timmy,
I am sorry you are having a hard time getting a job right now.</p>
<p>But a college degree, even from a prestige job, won’t get a new grad a job. Every employer wants to see experience.</p>
<p>I know that from first hand experience. For one thing, I’ve hired people. The experience part is always much more important than the college degree part. But I’ve also seen my 2 kids graduate from college and apply for their first jobs – and all the jobs that were at all desirable wanted to see EXPERIENCE. Both of my kids got good jobs straight out of college that were directly connected to specific experience they had gained via previous jobs or internships. Also, with the previous jobs/internships they were able to provide good references --and they were keyed in to the internal language and culture of their career fields. They knew the names of the people who were important in their fields; they knew the jargon – so when they sat down for an interview they could find a point of connection with their interviewers and sound knowledgeable about the requirements of the job they were interviewing for. </p>
<p>You sound like a smart young man, but I am guessing now that you went to college for 4 years straight and then straight on to get your master’s degree… but somehow didn’t have the time or opportunity to pick up relevant work experience along the way. I did not say that you were “unintelligent” – I just said that you can’t compare the average outcomes of MIT students with average outcomes of Podunk U students because, on average, MIT students are smarter to begin with. </p>
<p>I think you might be right that your employment prospects might be slightly improved if you had gone to a more prestigious – affordable – school – but I think you are looking at things the wrong way. Right now you are marginally employed and have -0- debt. You could be marginally employed and have $60K of debt instead. Of course you could also have $60K worth of debt and a terrific job – but taking on the debt would not have guaranteed that outcome. </p>
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<p>That’s good advice – but it applies to the top schools as well. Both my kids did very well at their respective colleges. My d. went to a prestigious college and graduated near the top of class; she has classmates who have had a much harder time finding work. She is being hired to replace someone who went to a much lower ranked college, but apparently did very well there and won a prestigious fellowship. My son graduated from a lower-ranked public college, and earned some honors while he was there. So definitely being “above the pack” is helpful, at any school. </p>
<p>Tim, you can’t undo your past or choose a different path – you have to make the best of the path you are on. I think right now you need to explore whatever options are available to you to fill in the experience part – that may involve looking at some avenues for employment that are a little off the beaten path. Since I don’t know what your area of specialization is and I don’t know anything about engineering in any case – I can’t tell you what that might be. </p>
<p>But I can give you a pointer. Instead of trying to debate someone like XTXN2CAL maybe you can try listening. Right now, here on CC, you have made a potential networking connection with someone who could mentor you or at least point you in the right direction. If I were in your position and met someone online who claimed to be the CEO of a Nasdaq listed company… well, I wouldn’t put “trying to prove that person wrong” at the top of my agenda.</p>
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<p>XTXN2CAL, I’m afraid you are fighting a losing battle. As you probably know, some people on here are almost pathologically obsessed with school ranking. It’s hard for me to believe that some of these people have ever managed or hired anybody. Everywhere I have ever worked, experience and contribution to company goals trumps school pedigree after a couple years in the work force. And I have worked as an EE in several areas of the industry for many years. It’s basically the same everywhere.</p>
<p>On the other hand, we could also claim we are many things on the internet, and it may not be the case with XTXN. Only through “discussion” could we get a better sense who someone is, even with that, we have discovered many posters to be not what they claimed to be.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think many points brought up by Timmy were very valid, especially that analysis of salary differences between engineering graduates of top tier school vs a no name in state school in a middle of no where. It applies to many other fields outside of engineering. It’s the same reason that Dartmouth graduates have higher long term salary than most other LACs.</p>
<p>Anybody who thinks mid career engineers are hired based on their alma mater has obviously not looked on Monster or spoken to a head hunter lately. Companies are looking for specific skills. That’s what they advertise for. I see plenty of ads for mixed signal RF or VLSI designers. I have yet to see an ad asking for a UCB graduate.</p>
<p>Entry level it may matter somewhat. Mid-career, that’s patently absurd. </p>
<p>And it might be nice not to imply people are liars because you disagree with them. Just because someone has 12,000 posts doesn’t make them more credible than anyone else.</p>