[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]So every career on FLUs dream list are Wall St. banking activities. Personally I don’t consider those legit careers, certainly not for living in Socal. But sure those guys can get rich if that is your only goal in life and don’t mind selling your soul. Realistically, do you even need a college degree to be an investment banker? Probably more important who you know and what is your ethnicity.[/quote]

I’m sure doctors do pretty well mid-career, better than engineers, don’t you? And how long can doctors practice for?

I’m sure a decent attorney can still practice when their in their 60ies.

I’m sure a decent real estate broker/agent can still work in their 60ies.

You think you can practice in your engineering job when you are 70? Have you seen many 60-65 year old engineers?

I know you’re going to say, well most of those doctors/real estate brokers/agents/attoronies don’t do well… Well guess what? Most of the engineers these days that aren’t really good, don’t do really well either. They usually are the ones that get outsourced overseas first. So if you want to make a comparison, compare best case scenario to best case scenario or worst case scenario to worst case scenario. Also, if you felt engineering is so great, why do you continue to complain about H1-Bs being a threat? just curious

[Coronita]

[quote=AN][quote=flu]Off the top of my head…

Reddit (Yale)
LinkedIn (UPenn Wharton)
Google(Ok, it’s Stanford but close enough)
Yelp(Harvard)
Yahoo and beloved Marissa(Stanford)
HP (Meg is Princeton and Harvard)
eBay: Stanford
Juniper Networks: Stanford
Tesla: UPenn (Musk is a Wharton Alumni and was undergrad in physics)
Amazon (Princeton)
Apple (Duke. It’s not ivy, but elitist enough :))

I’m sure there’s many more I missed, even the startup ones that aren’t well known. I guess we can argue now what is considered tech and what is considered not tech.[/quote]
Base on that list, I say, go to Stanford, not Ivy :-P.[/quote]

Stanford is harder to get in 🙂 At least if you do get in, tuition is free if your household income is less than $150k. In the bay area, I did run into a bunch of Stanford grads, and they were pretty capable. The school runs like an incubator

[Coronita]

[quote]
Okay, give me one example of a Tech company that is run by Ivy grads? I just picked two of the most important San Diego companies, not cherry picking.
[/quote]

Off the top of my head…

Reddit (Yale)
LinkedIn (UPenn Wharton)
Google(Ok, it’s Stanford but close enough)
Yelp(Harvard)
Yahoo and beloved Marissa(Stanford)
HP (Meg is Princeton and Harvard)
eBay: Stanford
Juniper Networks: Stanford
Tesla: UPenn (Musk is a Wharton Alumni and was undergrad in physics)
Amazon (Princeton)
Apple (Duke. It’s not ivy, but elitist enough :))

I’m sure there’s many more I missed, even the startup ones that aren’t well known. I guess we can argue now what is considered tech and what is considered not tech.

[Coronita]

[quote=AN][quote=flu]Starting salary is irrelevant. It’s earning potential, doing the same thing throughout the years. You’ll find that short of getting into a VP or Director position, you’ll probably top out at a much lower ceiling than any other profession, relative to

1. Investment banking
2. Hedge fund
3. VC
4. Management consulting at companies like Bain and Company and McKinsey & Co…[/quote]
I don’t know those fields. How much does a 10 years veteran make in those fields? How would their salary compare to salary at Google and FB? Can you break out and make it on your own like tech and start your own start up?[/quote]

Don’t ask, don’t tell 🙂 And you’re asking the wrong person. You probably want to ask someone that made it.

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Okay, give me one example of a Tech company that is run by Ivy grads? I just picked two of the most important San Diego companies, not cherry picking.

Reality is getting an Ivy degree does not give you a leg up in any type of tech career. Certainly not if you want to live/work in Socal which everybody here obviously does.

Also FLU, you are the only person I have ever heard that complained about Engineering not being a well paid profession. Can you name another white collar profession that you can pull nearly six figure starting salary immediately after a 4 year degree from a lowly state school? Pharmacy is the only profession that pays better starting out, but usually that is a 5 year or more degree nowadays.

But no, you are not going to get rich being an Engineer or most any other profession. Most wealthy people are trust funders. A fortunate few get lucky with IPOs, real estate etc. but I don’t consider those careers.[/quote]

Starting salary is irrelevant. It’s earning potential, doing the same thing throughout the years. You’ll find that short of getting into a VP or Director position, you’ll probably top out at a much lower ceiling than any other profession, relative to

1. Investment banking
2. Hedge fund
3. VC
4. Management consulting at companies like Bain and Company and McKinsey & Co…

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Regarding my point that Ivy league is irrelevant for a tech career, I just checked the Bios of the Officers at Viasat and just like Qualcomm, not a single one attended an Ivy school at any point. Also interestingly, the CFO has a BS degree from SDSU (no masters or mba), a school that most of the “elitist” folks on this board don’t seem to hold a very high regard for.[/quote]

For every company you can find without any sort of ivy league or degreed people running the company, you can find plenty of them that are run from ivy league degreed people. What does that mean in terms of ivy league or non ivy league? I don’t know. Maybe San Diego isn’t the best place to be if you’re a techie, because most of the innovation happens elsewhere? Maybe San Diego is just a small town when it comes to tech, and if you’re serious about wanting to get ahead, go somewhere else first where it can open your eyes to things you haven’t seen or will see here?

I think often times I hear that techies in san diego complain that the community is so small, there aren’t many startups, aren’t many different choices in employers, it’s not competitive here for engineer comp packages,etc. And that’s probably true. You ever wonder why? I mean, locally, we probably are graduating a lot of STEM degreed kids that are equally capable. Why is the local tech market still, as some of you say, “suck”? Why, in San Diego, is your only talked about big tech company success story still Qualcomm only?

Also, follow the tech money trail. Example….
http://www.kpcb.com/teams
http://www.accel.com/#people/jake-flomenberg

Tell you what… Get in front of Accel or Klein Perkins or Sequoia or any other likewise group in the Valley, and try to pitch your ideas to them…

Here’s a list
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242702

Talk to one of their partners about your ideas. Then you can probably get a better feel for what matters or doesn’t matter, what degree from where matters doesn’t matter, what experience matters or doesn’t matter, what is for show or doesn’t matter, and about just about every other intricate detail that matters or doesn’t matter. It might open your eyes to a completely different world, once you look beyond being an employee for a company in San Diego(which I can see your point to an extent for many “jobs” out there, that it doesn’t matter as an employee, no matter how well paid that employee is)

In my more youthful days, been there, done that, and failed miserably at it, and that’s why I’m an employee now. 🙁 Good luck to the ones that are trying everyday. Hope it works out for others. It’s cool to see people who actually make it. There are probably a lot more easier/better ways to make more money doing other things than going this sort of roundabout way trying to do tech. But for me, personally, it’s hard for me to do things that I don’t enjoy doing even it can be more financially lucrative.

My viewpoint kinda differs from people. And it’s probably hard to explain. I don’t disagree that all these for things actually help keep the status quo on the 1% and what fancy titles and details might give you a slightly edge up to those aspiring to be.. It’s just that as an individual that isn’t already there, a lot of these things have to come together for them to all work out, and some of this stuff isn’t even within your control. For me, things didn’t work the way I had hoped. And life is full of disappointments, when that effort comes crashing down, because you just realize you wasted years of your life and that it didn’t produce anything… But for others, with the right personality, luck, experience, attitude, and motivation, etc, it could be a completely different story. I guess, it boils down to how tolerant are individuals to disappointments and setbacks along the way, versus being just “content” to doing the easier, less disappointing path. For the longest time, I thought I had a pretty high tolerance of adversity, setbacks, and disappointments. It took awhile to realize that my tolerance for it is lower than a lot of people. One colleague I asked how he managed to succeed, and he laughed and said he just learned how to fail fast and kept failing fast until something finally stuck, getting drunk all along the process.

Personally, I don’t know what’s worse. Not knowing what’s out there, or knowing what’s out there and realizing it wasn’t obtainable for you. It’s like being given the keys to a Ferrari, even getting lap time in it for a few hours, and at the end of the day, being told you have to return the keys and here’s your POS miata. And no matter how much money you put into the POS miata, at the end of the day, it’s still a POS miata. Lol…That’s one of the reasons I’ve never stepped foot in an auto show so far..ever… What is the point of seeing, touching, experiencing things temporarily, that most likely you know will not be unobtainable during your lifetime? Ignorance can be bliss! It’s worked for me so far. I’ll take the blue pill please. Someone else can eat the red pill.

[Coronita]

[quote=Hatfield]Oh I had no idea you got caught up in all of that. I have a few friends who got caught up in that also. :([/quote]

My favorite part was when one of the VPs was assuring us that he/she was going to stay with the new ericsson, and at the last moment, bolts back to Qualcomm…Lol…..Can’t blame that person. I would have done the exact same thing.

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]

Why would your company pay extra (full competitive salary plus H1B headache) to hire a foreigner? Do you honestly believe there were not any U.S citizens willing or capable of doing this work? I find that extremely hard to believe. I know this opens the whole immigration debate topic but frankly it doesn’t pass the smell test.[/quote]

News flash: look at some of the good engineering schools that churns out good masters students? What percentage of graduates are foreign students? If you think that’s a problem (I don’t), then why don’t you try to address that thing first.

And yes, because 4 of us did the actual hiring. We were looking for someone that ideally had already worked 2-3 years and was working on finishing their masters. Someone that had had embedded knowledge and someone that had dabbled in linux kernels, either for hobbies or personal interest, and someone that actually took the initiative to dabble in the then scrappy “Android operating system”….We didn’t want anymore senior people, because there were already 6 of us, and just getting all 6 of us senior people to agree on shit was challenging enough.

Starting salary at the time was $100k I believe, which in reality you could negotiate up. We ended up hiring 2 people that year plus one intern as a backup. One kid that didn’t have an H1-B and on that did. And we didn’t care if they had H1-B or not.

Anyway, engineering will never be the best paid profession, unless you are fortunate enough to work at a company that happens to hit it pretty big with an IPO or the like OR unless you invent/do something on your own. If you are so hell belt at thinking engineering is a lousy pay/lousy position, stop being an employee. My dad tried to teach me that and constantly asked me “are you sure, are you sure”

I’ve already hit my glass ceiling as an employee since I just turned the old fart 40, have no interest in trying to actively manage people, and really don’t want to spend the time and effort to go back and try to incubate new apps on my own as an independent with friends. As long as I can continue to directly report to my current director/vp and no one gets slotted between me and them, I just want to play at this point. Can’t really blame anyone else at this point, except myself…. Wish I bought more real estate when that was easier, though.

[Coronita]

That reminds me, 4 things that I was really proud of that I learned when I was at an ivy league school

1. How to steal dining room trays as a snow sled down a steep slope

2. How to buggie jump of a bridge without getting arrested

3. How to shoot a .357 properly in an ROTC sponsored class

4. Jumping out of a plane with a parachute to try to impress a blond chick from Connecticut that also wanted to go wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

[Coronita]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Or the bumper sticker that says “my child is an outstanding student at some crap elementary school.”

Or Navy Mom license plate frame.[/quote]

I love the bumper stickers that say “your kid might be a genius, but you are still a moron”

[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic]

well, I know the data on aervage salaries from my ivy league school. the numbers not all that impressive, low 100k. but its just so misleading, as to whats going to realistically happen to you, because there’s some outliers with such massive numbers that they bring up the average for the reaminder of the schlubs. not sure where i saw that stat, but, it includes hedge fund guys and law partners making well oevr a million, and ordinary working drones like me…and much worse…

if i could do it all over again and get a higher gpa and major in econ and step into investment banking and work like a do g and hit it just right…

well, in that case, i wouldnt be me…that would be some other dude…[/quote]

Well, part of the reason for this, at least back when I was “starting”, older alumni did train me at an early age to “screw the salary” and go after the thing called “stock options”. So when I was just starting out, I never negotiated my salary, but I did ask for more grants.

[Coronita]

[quote=FlyerInHi]How about using a .edu email account? Is that douchy?[/quote]

I don’t know, for the longest time after I graduated and moved to SD, I kept my student id, so I can get student tickets at the movies and elsewhere.

The funniest thing was more than once, some people that actually looked at it asked, “oh, I never heard of that college, where is it?” And I would say, oh it’s just a small for-profit JC in san diego….I kept my mouth shut.. Hey, if they that it was local, and I got my discounted tickets… yeah it’s a JC….

[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic]just recently got my diploma from college framed, 30 years out. can finally afford it.

they had a sale on frames from the college bookstore online. has a nice little mat. kinda dumb. but there it is on the wall…[/quote]

I forget where I put mine 🙂

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Sure because the candidates from India will work for half the salary of the MIT grads (or UCSD grads for that matter).[/quote]

Actually, we gave the same compensation packages for the candidates from there as we extended to the college grads here. And furthermore, our company had to pay more to handle their visa status, that we wouldn’t have to do for a few of the college grads that weren’t already here on student visas. (most of the grads that were here, were on student visas and also didn’t have problems finding multiple offers).,

In the past, If we really were interested in saving money for those positions, we wouldn’t even bother hiring anyone here, H1-B or not… Simply because it would be much cheaper to hiring overseas and have them work out of our remote office rather than bring them here and do their H1-B application. Just saying.

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Yeah maybe that is a stretch, but seriously my point is not that individual workers would show prejudice, just that generally Ivy schools may not be on the radar for corporate tech recruiters, certainly not for companies based on West Coast.
[/quote]

Well, in the past, we flew people in from IIT from India to interview. In addition, I think we dud try to recruit from MIT and Stanford and some Ivy’s in the past. We weren’t really successful, because well, the really good candidates already had a few offers lined up.

[Author]

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