Demand for talented engineers out of college who bring a different lived experience to tech has never been higher, yet companies are passing on precisely these students via traditional methods. Confounding the issue even further is the fundamental question of whether having attended a top school has much bearing on candidate quality in the first place
.. The focus of companies on elite schools has notable, negative implications for the diversity of their applicants. In particular, many schools that companies traditionally visit are notably lacking in diversity, especially when it comes to race and socioeconomic status. According to a survey of computer science students at Stanford, there were just fifteen Hispanic female and fifteen black female computer science majors in the 2015 graduating class total. In this analysis, the Stanford 2015 CS major was 9% Hispanic and 6% black.
.. the Harvard CS major was just 3% black and 5 percent Hispanic. Companies that are diversity-forward and constrained to recruiting at the same few schools end up competing over this small pool of diverse students. Meanwhile, there is an entire ocean of qualified, racially diverse students from less traditional backgrounds whom companies are overlooking.
.. “four in 10 students from the top 0.1 percent attend an Ivy League or elite university
.. The article finds that the few lower-income students who end up at elite colleges do about as well as their more affluent classmates but that attending an elite versus non-elite college makes a huge difference in future income.
.. Career-wise, it’s that first job or internship you get while you’re still in school that can determine what opportunities you have access to in the future.
.. Not having an internship at a top tech company already — quite the catch-22 — puts her at a disadvantage. Anthony has little to no chance of hearing back from employers via his applications online
.. Mason, the Harvard student, attends an event on campus with Facebook engineers teaching him how to pass the technical interview.
.. Given that technical interviewing is a game, it is important that everyone knows the rules, spoken and unspoken. There are many practice resources available
.. Because of our completely blind, skills-first approach, we’ve seen an interesting phenomenon happen time and time again: when a student unmasks at the end of a successful interview, the company in question realizes that the student who just aced their technical phone screen was one whose resume was sitting at the bottom of the pile all along.
.. With interviewing.io, a mid-sized startup can staff their entire intern class for the same cost as attending 1-2 career fairs at top schools… with a good chunk of those interns coming from underrepresented backgrounds
The secret to Germany’s happiness and success: Its values are the opposite of Silicon Valley’s
a magnetic 38-year-old named Christian Lindner, has openly expressed a desire to shake things up. In an August interview with the Economist, in which he called Germany’s economy “a prosperity hallucination,” Lindner also explained that in his country, “entrepreneurship has long been undervalued … and societies that are prepared to be more daring and have efficient capital markets have overtaken us on this.”
.. The vast majority of Germans don’t want it. For progressive and even centrist Germans, the startup-style definition of Erfolg (or “success”) is utterly incompatible with their values—which do not center on individual wealth, recognition, or even careers.
.. Germany’s cultural mores—which include a vehement defense of the country’s robust social safety net, largely credited for the relatively quick recovery from last decade’s recession—mean it is largely inoculated from the bootstrap fever that has long gripped the US.
.. In an off-script response to a heckler during a speech about startup culture’s positive attitude toward failure, Lindner memorably decried the fact that “people would rather go into public service than start something themselves.” He explained that, “when you’re successful, you end up in the sights of the social-democratic redistribution apparatus, and when you fail you’re sure to be the subject of mockery and derision.”
Lindner was correct on one point: Many Germans would rather go into public service than start a business themselves. But his theory about their motivation is all wrong. Lindner’s country-people simply don’t have the same enchantment with self-made financial success that he does.
.. Thanks in part to a general leftward tilt on economic issues after the student revolutions of 1968, most of them view the collective good, and the comparatively high taxation that accompanies it not as a sacrifice, but as a fundamental component of civilized society.
.. They are largely content with their take-home salaries, but not out of altruism. Rather, they view the role of wealth acquisition and consumerism in a fundamentally different way.
.. To Germans, caution and frugality are signifiers of great moral character. Sure, they favor high-quality consumer goods—but they deliberate on what to buy for years, and expect their possessions to last for decades
.. Moreover, for Germans, a good work-life balance does not involve unlimited massages and free meals on the corporate campus to encourage 90-hour weeks. Germans not only work 35 hours a week on average—they’re the kind of people who might decide to commute by swimming, simply because it brings them joy.
.. And a German wouldn’t be caught tot pounding down a bar or a glass of Soylent to replace a meal
.. just as Christian Lindner is obsessed with making money and driving sports cars, so have Germans been obsessed with making fun of Christian Lindner because they find his thirst for financial success so gauche.
Burning Man Staves Off Nihilism, If Only Temporarily
Burning Man is, in part, a quasi-religion of self-care. “Letting go,” the supposedly spiritual purpose of the Temple, is actually therapy. Healing emotional pain is a strategy for removing barriers to enjoyment. This isn’t a bad thing, of course. But hedonism becomes profane when it’s married to a “spirituality” meant to provide moral or mystical justification of living for oneself.
Breaking from tech giants, Democrats consider becoming an antimonopoly party
Barry Lynn, a monopoly critic and longtime scholar at the Google-funded New America Foundation, was leaving and taking his 10-person initiative with him.
.. Lynn, who has been critical of Google, had praised European regulators for hitting the company with a $2.7 billion antitrust fine. The foundation, which has received more than $21 million from Google, removed Lynn’s comments from its website.
.. Soon after, Lynn’s new project, Citizens Against Monopoly, launched with a website that asked people to protest “Google’s unethical behavior” and pledged that “Google’s attempt to shut us down will fail.” New America’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, pushed back, warning that Lynn was starting a family feud at a moment when Democrats could not afford it.
.. “Barry’s new organization and campaign against Google is the opening salvo of one group of Democrats versus another group of Democrats in the run-up to the 2020 election,” Slaughter wrote on Medium. “I personally think the country faces far greater challenges of racism, violence, a broken political system, and geographic and partisan divisions so great that we are losing any common sense of what we stand and strive for as a country.”
.. as Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, strongly supported the president, and the FTC abandoned an antitrust case against the company. Over the years, Schmidt gave $842,900 to Democrats
.. as Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, strongly supported the president, and the FTC abandoned an antitrust case against the company. Over the years, Schmidt gave $842,900 to Democrats
.. In April, Hart Associates conducted polling, circulated among Democrats and think tanks, that found an enormous opening for antimonopoly politics.
The polling, which surveyed 1,120 voters overall and 341 from the decisive Rust Belt states, found just a slim majority saying Democrats favored “average Americans” over “large corporations and banks.”
.. “There was a growing awareness that corporate monopolies were a big problem,” explained Zephyr Teachout
.. The Democrats’ long detente with monopolies was good for fundraising, especially as more money from energy and banking companies slid toward Republicans
.. “If you take a thoughtful position and are able to justify it intellectually you won’t lose support from tech leaders,” Khanna said. “My experience has been that the community is pretty open to robust debate.”