Harvard University consistently is ranked one of the top universities in the world. But what if you go to Harvard University and still end up a nobody?
When I say nobody, I’m just talking about being an average person working an average job. Not someone still living in mom’s garage playing video games all day at age 40. OK, a little harsh, but you get the idea.
A happy life is all about managing expectations. If you matriculate at Harvard, whether for undergrad or graduate school, great things are expected of you. And if you don’t do great things, are you a disappointment? Many would say so. More importantly, you might even think so.
Education has been on my mind a lot lately after my son got into preschool. If he likes the school, it goes through the 8th grade. However, Is it worth spending tens of thousands a year in tuition for the next nine years? I’m not so sure!
In addition, I was a private high school tennis coach for three years observing how the kids went through the pressure of trying to get into a good university. I sometimes wondered whether their grind was all worth it.
Supposedly my high school is one of the best in the city, yet not every graduate goes to a university like Harvard. In fact, most attend regular schools any high schooler could have gotten into.
Why Harvard University?
I pick on Harvard because it’s the most well known university in the world and also costs $51,904 annually in tuition alone if you receive no aid.
You can replace Harvard University with any expensive private university in the Top 20. Schools like Duke, Brown, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, Cornell, Dartmouth, all count.
I’m assuming if you went to Harvard or another Ivy League School, you won’t be offended by this article. The golden carpet was rolled out for you compared to a field littered with land mines for the rest of us commoners.
Using the word “nobody” is admittedly harsh, but I say I’m a nobody all the time and think it’s great! I went to public high school, The College of William & Mary, got my MBA from UC Berkeley and worked in finance for 13 years. Who cares. I’ve operated Financial Samurai since 2009. Ho hum. Being a nobody is just fine with me, partially because I went to public schools.
Being a nobody is par fo the course. Most of us are not curing cancer or coming up with a new vaccine for COVID-19. We just go about doing our business so we can make enough to provide for our family. Truly, how may of us really love what we’re doing and are also helping improve world?
On the other hand, if you attend a school like Harvard, you must go on to do great things. Otherwise, what’s the point? With an acceptance rate of only ~5%, you aren’t allowed to retire early and waste your potential either. You better hurry up and fix at least one of the world’s great problems.
Forget about being a stay at home parent and spending valuable time during your child’s first five years of life. Go out there and make a career for yourself!
Don’t you dare work at the same job as someone who went to State U. either. Now that you can learn everything online for free, the stakes for achieving greatness have never been higher!
The purpose of this article is to:
1) Challenge our unhealthy desire for prestige and money
2) Reassess the pressure cooker environment we put our kids through
3) Discover what actual Harvard graduates do for a living
4) Encourage our smartest people to do more productive things with their lives
5) Give folks who’ve been rejected from elite universities and coveted jobs hope that anything is possible
6) Go beyond the act of giving money by spending more time helping people directly
7) Encourage schools to encourage their graduates to broaden their career prospects beyond just banking, consulting, big law, or tech
8) Decrease the obsession with making a top 1% or a top 0.1% income
9) Not stress so much as parents about the future of our children
Profiles Of Those Who Went To An Elite School
We only hear about famous people who went to Harvard. You know, people like the 43rd POTUS George W. Bush, the “inventor” of the internet Al Gore, Chairman of the Fed Ben Bernanke, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Academy Award winner actress Natalie Portman, former First Lady Michelle Obama, the 35th POTUS John F Kennedy, unabomber Ted Kacznski and NBA basketball player Jeremy Lin.
But what about the thousands of graduating alumni Harvard spits out every year? What do they do? Let’s find out through a semi-random sampling of LinkedIn profiles online. To get my search started, I chose one person I know who went to Harvard and then clicked forward to see what her fellow classmates ended up doing.
My sample set is admittedly biased as someone with a finance background who therefore knows more finance people than average. But let’s see where the rabbit hole goes. I’ve changed some of the dates and tidbits to protect the identity of these random folks. If you think I’m talking about you, I’m not!
Harvard Alum Profile #1
Harvard College
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Occupation: Investment banking and private equity before b-school, private equity tech investor at TPG after b-school
Thoughts: She mentioned to me during a summer associate internship that she was not going to b-school for the main purpose of making money after I asked whether she’s going back to private equity after graduation. With an air of nobility she said, “Sam, life is not just about making money you know?”
She then decided to go back into private equity and is now a VP making even more money. This career profile is the quintessential and stereotypical pedigree of an elite private school graduate.
Harvard Alum Profile #2
Tufts University
Harvard MBA
Occupation: Clorox marketing manager, Twitter marketing manager, self-employed, brand strategy at a Willamette Valley vineyard
Thoughts: Not many people think about working at an old-school consumer products company after getting a Harvard MBA, but Clorox has one of the best management training programs. But if you think about it, how excited can you really be marketing a toilet bowl cleaning wand as your career?
She joined Twitter soon after IPO, but the stock did poorly soon after. The company went through several rounds of layoffs and I suspect she was a casualty given her year of self-employment afterward. But now, she has a pretty cool job marketing wine and living a relaxing life!
Harvard Alum Profile #3
Harvard College
Dartmouth MBA
Occupation: Goldman Sachs, CLSA MD
Thoughts: Another standard career path for those who attend Ivy league universities. He was a great guy who caught an error in my resume when I was interviewing. I got the dates mixed up. I’m just surprised he’s still working since he was at GS for years before GS went public in 1999, and has worked for 25+ years now. I wonder whether he went through a divorce or something else is going on.
Harvard Alum Profile #4
Philips Academy Andover (high school)
Harvard College
Occupation: McKinsey Consulting analyst, VP of Operations at failed e-commerce startup, founder of clothing startup that needs funding
Thoughts: McKinsey is one of the hardest places to get a job after college due to their infamous case study interviews and brainteasers e.g. how many jelly beans can fit inside a Boeing 747 and why? After McKinsey, he spent five years working at one of the biggest flameouts in e-commerce history where the company raised over $300M and was valued at over $1B before getting acquired for less than $30M.
Good for him for utilizing what he learned to start his own e-commerce company. But without another round of funding this year, it’s highly likely his business will dissolve and he’ll end up burning through lots of his own cash. Running in place for 10 years is tough.
Harvard Alum Profile #5
Yale University undergrad
Yale University Masters
Harvard College PhD
Occupation: Analytics for a startup, analyst for a mobile gaming startup, director of growth for a startup, head of growth for another startup, venture capital, self-employed
Thoughts: I’m absolutely blown away by his resume. I was strongly considering getting a PhD after I left the private sector in 2012, but realized I was too dumb and impatient. The weird thing is, after all his education, he went on to join companies that have nothing to do with what he learned.
I can do analytics and growth marketing with the best of them since I run my own site. His path makes me feel that getting a PhD is too costly a career move today. With his resume, I would be seriously disappointed with my career so far.
Yale Alum Profile #6
Yale University
Occupation: Forbes 30 Under 30, Started a social media advertising company that rebranded after six years because they needed a change in direction (code for things aren’t working as planned)
Thoughts: I’m always impressed with the Forbes X Under X crowd. Yale has a 6.3% acceptance rate and is right up there with Harvard in terms of prestige. The advertising technology space is very hard because the margins are so thin and Google and Facebook are the oligopoly players. I tried creating my own online advertising network and did OK for about two years before I got undercut.
It doesn’t look like her company will ever get acquired, which stinks b/c for six years, I’m sure she and her co-founders weren’t paying themselves a market rate salary. They could have worked in tech, banking or consulting and probably made 3X more in the same time frame. But all the same, props to anybody who starts a company and makes it last for over six years!
Harvard Alum Profile #7
Harvard University: Math major, Phi Beta Kapa
Occupation: Co-founder of the social media ad startup with the Yale main founder, but left to start his own fintech company providing cheaper retirement plans for companies. Y Combinator backed.
Thoughts: After he realized the adtech startup wasn’t going to flourish, he applied to the famous startup incubator, Y Combinator, got in and launched his own fintech company that serves to reduce 401k administration fees. He raised a $3.5M seed round in 2016. In 2020, his company continues to do well and he’s raised even more money.
I’m completely biased for people who start a company, get into an incubator, raise money, and try and create something out of nothing. The vast majority fail, even with smart backers, but it’s still impressive all the same. I just wonder whether it’s necessary to go to Harvard or Yale to start a company?
Harvard Alum Profile #8
Punahou: Hawaii private grade school
Harvard College
Occupation: TV anchor at Bloomberg
Thoughts: Punahou is the school I’d love for my son to attend if we move back to Hawaii. It’s K-12, which makes it much more convenient once you get in compared to schools in SF where you’ve got to reapply for high school after K – 8. The cost is about $23,000 a year, which is 60% cheaper than private schools in SF and NYC.
This Harvard graduate is doing a bang up job as the anchor of Bloomberg West. I like her profile because she always has a cheery disposition, kind of like your Facebook friend’s curated pictures.
Harvard Alum Profile #9
Harvard College
MBA from Harvard
Occupation: Credit Suisse before b-school, McKinsey after b-school
Thoughts: Most graduates just stick to the finance path or the strategy consulting path. So it’s rare to see him try both. It feels like he’s still trying to figure out what he really wants to do in life given he’s still in his 20s. Understandable, but once again, I’m left wondering how we can encourage the smartest people on Earth to do more to help other people rather than to chase money.
Harvard Alum Profile #10
Greenwich Academy: Private high school
Harvard College: Majored in Art History
Occupation: Reporter at The NYT, founded a subscription based tech news site
Thoughts: Pretty neat to have worked for The NYT and then do something entrepreneurial in her field of expertise. Subscription based news websites are tough because most of the news you can read for free or can be shared for free. But all you need is 10,000 subscribers paying $100 a year to earn $1,000,000 in revenue, and perhaps $500,000 a year in take home pay.
I’ve just decided to go the 100% free model because there’s only upside when you’re at the bottom! I really like people who take what they’ve learned from their day jobs and try to do something on their own. I wish more people did this because there’s so much inefficiency with larger corporations.
Harvard Alum Profile #11
I’olani School – Private high school in Honolulu, main competitor to Punahou
Dartmouth College
Stanford University Graduate School of Business
Occupation: venture capital fundraising, private equity fundraising, account executive for a software company (8 months), consultant for a small CRM company (9 months), business development manager at a food delivery startup.
Thoughts: I’m thoroughly disappointed. After 19 years of private school and $600,000 in tuition, the guy ended up at a company that has already raised a Series D round. Even if the company goes public, he’s unlikely going to make a large amount of money joining so late in the game.
Food delivery companies have come under siege lately (Bento Now went under, Sprig went under, Munchery laid off a bunch of workers etc). If his company was figuring out how to deliver food more efficiently and profitably to help feed people at the bottom of the pyramid, that would be amazing. But it’s not.
Harvard Alum Profile #12
Phillips Exeter Academy
Harvard College
Stanford University Masters, Computer Science
Occupation: Goldman Sachs (1.5 years), international gaming company (3 years), Blizzard Entertainment producer (3 years), founder of own game company (3.5 years) before it shut down, founded another game company (4 years) but its game is still in beta.
Thoughts: I went to middle school with him and thought he was a great guy. His parents were wealthy and he was super smart. He had a great gig at Blizzard, the producer of the mega hit game World of Warcraft. He could have stayed and got paid extremely well. But he decided to go the entrepreneurial route, which is always admirable.
Because his family is wealthy, he can afford to go for seven years without making much money. This is one of the key competitive advantages of the wealthy, being able to take risks without financial ruin. But frankly, it’s a disappointment that after almost four years, his game is a bust. Being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart.
Harvard Alum Profile #13
Georgetown Preparatory School
Yale University
Yale Law School
Occupation: United States Court Of Appeals for the District Of Columbia Judge 2006 – present. Now incredibly famous for sniffling, ranting, and talking about beer during his job interview in front of a bunch of Senators. OK, this Supreme Court Justice is not in my LinkedIn network. I just thought it was interested to highlight.
Thoughts: With his mom as a judge and his father as the CEO of a company, this person grew up with an extraordinary amount of privilege. Despite having a relatively low salary for most of his career, he was able to pay off $200,000 in credit card debt, join a country club that had a $90,000 initiation fee, and take out a $1.1M+ mortgage due to the help of his parents.
Harvard Alum Profile #14
San Francisco University High School
University of Pennsylvania (B.A.)
Harvard Business School (MBA)
Occupation: Created a subscription newsletter about life hacks after spending a couple years at a large consumer internet startup (post MBA), a couple years as a VC associate (post MBA), product manager at another internet startup (pre MBA), and two years as a strategy consultant after undergrad.
Thoughts: This Harvard MBA and U. Penn grad has done literally every job that such graduates would love to land e.g. strategy consulting, VC, internet startup.
However, despite working at all the go-to industries and companies and attending all the prestigious schools a go-getter would want, at 35-years-old, she left it all behind to try and build something of her own. I get it because it is much more rewarding to build something of your own than build someone else’s dream.
The thing is, you don’t need all that education and experience to start a newsletter or your own website. You can start both for free. Yes, you will need something to write about and experience certainly helps. However, regardless of the road you take after high school, you will ultimately learn fascinating things about yourself and life.
Overall Harvard Alumni Snapshot
Now that you’ve read my not so arbitrary profiles of Harvard and other Ivy League alumni, let me share with you the Harvard graduate data provided by LinkedIn. It’s a good idea to type in your school of choice and read their snapshot before attending. Let’s take a look.
There’s a lot of misinformation in the graphs due to mislabeling, but we learn the following:
* The Boston Area is ranked first in terms of where most Harvard alum end up working. So you’ve got to wonder why Boston isn’t more of an economic powerhouse like New York City, London, or the San Francisco Bay Area. Boston is relatively cheap compared to other major international cities.
* New York City, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles are the main cities of employment for Harvard alum.
* Google, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, IBM, BCG, Morgan Stanley, Amazon, and Bain are the most common employers. All the others listed in the employers column have to do with education.
* Business Development is the most common role. Business Development basically is a catchall phrase for those who try to build new business partnerships with other companies to grow revenue, profits, and exposure.
For example, the Business Development role at Financial Samurai may entail building new advertising relationships with products in the retirement space. Biz Dev requires financial acumen, social skills, negotiating skills, and product knowledge. It’s a good role to be in before you start your own company. I’m surprised Education is higher than Entrepreneurship, since everybody wants to be their own boss.
William & Mary Alumni Profile
In contrast, take a look at the graduate profile on LinkedIn of my alma mater, William & Mary in Virginia. Again, William & Mary is a public college. There’s a definite geographic bias towards the East Coast and it looks like consulting companies are the main employers.
I’m proud to see Education and Community and Social Services right up there in the What they do column. Check out your school’s profile as well.
An Ivy League Education Is No Longer The Golden Ticket
One of the most peculiar situations I found myself in was rejecting Harvard University and other Ivy League applicants for summer internships or financial analyst jobs at Goldman Sachs between 1999 – 2001. Goldman made all employees, regardless of their seniority, actively participate in the interview process in order to maintain our tight culture.
Here I was, a guy who absolutely would not have gotten into Harvard if I had applied, rejecting guys and gals who would run circles around me in school.
I’d most likely whip them on the tennis court, but tennis wasn’t a prerequisite to get a job in banking. There’s something to be said for hiring well-rounded individuals instead of robots.
Google, McKinsey, Microsoft, Goldman, Amazon and the likes are all amazing companies with plenty of elite university graduates. But at the end of the day, what exactly are you doing with all that education and your top 0.1% brain?
Is your life’s purpose to figure out how to best optimize an online ad? Is your calling to provide senior management reasons why they should fire 25% of their work force to optimize profits? Do you really want to make pitch books or woo wealthy entrepreneurs all your life?
Are you seriously pumped to wake up each morning to figure out how to best improve on-demand food delivery times? Come on. There’s got to be more to work than making lots of money.
Be Somebody Instead
The most fulfilling work directly helps someone in need. Compared to someone who works mainly for money and prestige, you will feel less burned out if you are making a difference in someone else’s life.
For example, helping people in need is what Haben Girm, a legally blind (best corrected visual acuity with glasses or contacts is 20/200 or worse) and deaf Harvard Law graduate is doing.
She has dedicated her life to making the workplace, technology, and life in general more accessible to the roughly 49 million disabled people in America (~15% of the population). Respect!
Perhaps being a somebody is being a doctor, a scientist, a NICU nurse, a professor, a social worker, or a firefighter is as well.
The joy I observe from my fellow teachers is next-level compared to the joy and excitement I witness from my finance, consulting, law, and techie friends. I wasn’t lucky enough to realize this truth until I was in my 30s. Better late than never.
Although it’s nice to donate money once you’ve made enough money, the people who are most inspiring are those people deep in the trenches doing good work. They are the ones who often help the most, but curiously get paid the least, e.g. educator.
If you didn’t get into a school like Harvard, its OK! Once you’re in the vortex, it’s almost impossible to break free given massive expectations.
And if you did attend Harvard or the like, major props to you! Be proud of your accomplishment and don’t let this article o someone like me diminish your achievement. Instead, utilize your intellectual gift by doing something the rest of us could never imagine!
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I just stumbled on your article via Google. I have 2 ivy league degrees and have been working in non-profit for awhile now. Many of my peers are a lot more “successful” than I am and I often struggle with whether I wasted my ivy league education. It was easy to get into nonprofit causes when I was younger and didn’t have any responsibilities. Now with a mortgage and kids, it’s hard not to compare myself with others who seem to not only be a lot more financially stable, but who are have important titles, working at big name companies. Do I get satisfaction thinking that I’m helping the world in some way? I do, but I’m also a lot less idealistic now and I see that many of the people at large NGO’s and in government who are calling the shots are mostly those who accumulated wealth and experience in the private sector before transitioning to public service.
Thank you for your perspective. And I do want to thank you for the good work you are doing!
Yes, as we get older, we get jaded. And you talking about those people at the top usually already got their money.
I don’t think you wasted your time because you got into the best school you could (max potential) and are doing something meaningful. More people need to do what you do.
Personally, I enjoy writing about personal finance to help people improve their financial situation so they can do more of what they want.
If you’re looking to improve your finances, I think you’ll enjoy reading my new book, Buy This, Not That: How To Spend Your Way To Wealth And Freedom.
Thanks again for your good work!
Once you get some real world experience under your belt I doubt if the school you went to really matters that much. In all of the companies I have worked at, once you get your foot in the door showing success in real world projects is what really matters.
I have a hard time thinking that any of the alums profiled are nobodies, but admittedly I’m not an American and my perspective may be skewed. They all seem to be doing things that it would be a bit more of a rarity for graduates of run-of-the-mill institutions to be doing, and consequently not quite “average jobs”, which is the criterion adopted by the author. Even those who became entrepreneurs – if you think about it – might have found their feet within their field more easily thanks to connections made at Harvard or at earlier stages of a not quite average career. It would be interesting to know how many of these people are doing better than their parents were at the same age. Also, how many settled in places, shall we say, more bustling or cosmopolitan than their hometowns?
I say this as someone who probably amounts to an actual nobody. I went to Oxford as an undergrad. That was the best life ever got. Now I practice small-town law in a pretty wretched part of the world serving whackjob clients that come in via the internet. My standard of living is easily behind where my parents’ was at the same age. So if you accept the premise that, given the right material, an elite university is meant to put its graduates at least a leg or two above where they began, and certainly to give them access to a broad choice of ways to accomplish this, then you’d have to conclude that something went seriously wrong somewhere in my case. That is not, I think, a conclusion which one could fairly draw of the profiles in the article. There’s a difference between lacking a wikipedia page and being a nobody. I wonder too if the author does not equivocate between “average jobs” writ large and and “average jobs [among Harvard grads]”. The latter would be a somewhat surprising discriminant of nobodies. All of which is to say, if these profiles are representative of the average Harvard or Ivy League grad, then Americans can rest easy knowing that their elite universities do what they say on the tin.
Elite schools should require their students to continue to commit to the community services they were engaged in during their high school years, and/or do another year of community service after graduating college. We’ll see how many of the applicants will change their minds quickly, and go apply to other schools.
I know kids that went to UVA despite being admitted to Duke, Cornell, MIT, Harvard. Also some were wait listed at the ivies. Had they chosen a different major then prob. would have gotten accepted. Not sure all the reasons but for some it was cost as they did not qualify for aide and received in state for UVA or full ride. Did not want huge school loan. Only one turned down full ride UVA for an ivy league school (and he did nothing impressive for years after attending the ivy. ) Not sure where everyone ended up, but know a few have good jobs and work for companies that are tough to get into (tech sector and space sector). Some of their co-workers went to the ivies or other high level elite . They all went to public HS. Would they be anywhere different now had they gone to a more elite school? No (though only out of college 5-7 yrs). Would it make a difference on their resume for their next jobs or career advancement? Prob not because they are all high achievers and probably proved their worth and will continue to achieve. The students were all happy with the decisions to go state college (though some parents were not as happy). Some of their parents friends/coworkers felt these kids made a terrible decision where as other parents felt the student was very mature choosing the school they felt was the better fit vs being caught up in the name or for bragging rights. (everyone has an opinion despite being asked). OF the people I know that are 10+ out of college, two are teachers (MIT and Univ Chicago grads) and another worked a short time before deciding to stay home with kids (william & mary/Harvard). No one went to an elite k-12 private school.
George W Bush went to Yale undergrad/Harvard MBA and Michelle Obama is Princeton undergrad/Harvard law
Interesting how the Harvard mystique perpetuates.
Twenty years ago, when I was a professional journalist (newspaper and magazines) in NYC, so many of the editors came from the big three Ivies. Standard convention–and I still see this today–is when writing about individuals to add Harvard, Yale or Princeton. I.e. “Sam Dogen, 42, a corporate lawyer and a Princeton graduate….” This, even though their education was not the focus. Alas, it was NOT applicable for other “elite” schools, say, Amherst, or Cal Tech, etc. — no need to add.
There’s also the wedding announcements of the NYT Sunday Styles section (which I’ve written for), which was parodied when someone published a numeric coding system that gave “points” that counted towards inclusion. According to The Knot, which tracked the couples featured, reported that Harvard was the number one college attended by grooms.
With status comes expectations, and or judgments. Hence, people I know refrain from “dropping the H-bomb” out there.
“Princeton graduate,” I gotta admit, I like the sound of that! Hah. But you can’t dog Amherst and Cal Tech. Such hard schools to get into!
The NYT wedding snippets are quite entertaining.
It’s funny, but here in the SF Bay Area, I will always know when someone went to Stanford when we first meet because they will tell me within their first three sentences!
That’s my point! This plug doesn’t extend to other super elite schools. Amherst and Caltech are excellent schools and same pool of talent as the Ivies and probably turned some down to attend them. I remember the first time when my editor added that into “XXX, a Princeton graduate,” my copy, I was like, why?? Of course he himself was a Princeton alum. After that I noticed it over and over again when I ready articles everywhere else in the media…always Harvard, Yale, Princeton. I hadn’t even realized because I unconsciously internalized all this until I was forced to include these things in my copy. It also goes both ways when media writes about people who have failed/ended up homeless, etc and they trot out their pedigree as some sort of betrayal of early promise/potential destiny for success.
Regarding Stanford…funny. I guess being coy (“back in college in Palo Alto…”) doesn’t have the same ring to it like when people on the East Coast want to name drop their Ivy background without being seen as bragging.
All in all though, most people I know who went to elite schools never talk bring them up, but other people mention it because they find it more impressive since they didn’t attend.
I’m Harvard College class of 2007 and a few years ago I attended my reunion wondering, like you, what sorts of amazing careers my classmates had achieved. Truthfully, I couldn’t help but quietly compare my own achievements against theirs (which just goes to show how deeply the pressure and competition of years ago is ingrained).
While a few stars in the class of ~1500 had reached peak entrepreneurial heights – ie exiting 9 figure companies and reaching 0.1% wealth – most were just steady high level professionals – plenty of corporate lawyers, orthopedic surgeons, and tech managers, in addition of course to the wall street guys. These are people who at that point I would guess had accumulated 3-5m net worths and were chugging along to 15-25m after 25-30 year careers. In other words, they will comfortably settle out at top 1% to 0.5%. A surprising fraction of them were married to other high achievers so the combined family assets project to be significant. For every three of these people there would be one professor or government/non-profit worker, even some folks in the arts. Their stories would be far more interesting. Overall it was actually quite a mix of professions, far less homogenous than the preceding 2 centuries of grads surely were.
Cool. Combining of family Wealth and the high dual income figures are very helpful.
You forgot to mention what you do and how you’re doing?
I am now 2 years retired from a career at a proprietary trading firm. I more or less burnt out at the end but by that point had financially achieved more than I ever imagined for myself (middle class roots). In retrospect the results were probably owed to something like 75% luck / 25% talent + effort, though I am comforted by the fact that the 25% was indeed every bit that I could give. The pandemic threw off whatever nonspecific retirement plans I had, so now hoping for an enjoyable journey ahead.
I’ve been checking in on your blog for several years now, cheers for all the good work.
Good for you for thinking about high school and college now! Our kids are now in college, but although when my kids were in elementary, I started to realize how crazy high school would be, I didn’t know how hard it would be to resist getting caught up in the crazy. I did a lot of research, and have come to the conclusion that the current college admission practice are destroying our children’s mental health. Guess what? Harvard and Stanford agree!
BUT even though their esteemed, elite, professors have warned both Harvard and Stanford of the danger, neither is brave enough to change their applications in response.
Harvard alum here. Wife is as well. Not everyone who gets into Harvard wants to change the world. The majority of people will not and cannot. They may have a positive effect on it though. Why would you fault someone for wanting to earn a lot of money? I recall many people in undergrad saying they would go into a money making endeavor so they could become rich and then impact the world when they were wealthy. They understand that money makes the world go round and if you have a lot of it, you can use it for great things.
Personally, I just wanted to earn a good living with a relaxed lifestyle, which I have been able to achieve. My wife and I both came from poverty stricken backgrounds, so even getting to a 1% income felt like an amazing achievement. I don’t believe you need to go to an Ivy league to achieve this though. Most of my colleagues did not go to an ivy league. Most of my wife’s did, but she is in biotech.
I think the worst part of this article is calling someone who is out there working a nobody. That is pushing the stereotype that you need we all need to be flashy and be millionaires to be somebody. If we all felt better about our role in the world, we would be happier.
Thanks for pointing out the worst part of the article. I was hoping a Harvard alum would!
May I ask you, as a Harvard alum who earns a top 1% income, are you offended by the title despite all your good fortune? Do you not feel like you could have or should do more than others who graduated from lower-ranked schools?
As I wrote in the beginning paragraph, “When I say nobody, I’m just talking about being an average person working an average job. Not someone still living in mom’s garage playing video games all day at age 40.”
And I continue..
“I’m assuming if you went to Harvard or another Ivy League School, you won’t be offended by this article. The golden carpet was rolled out for you compared to a field littered with land mines for the rest of us commoners.”
I believe I am a nobody and say I’m a nobody all the time. See: The Joy Of Being A Nobody
What is it that you do to earn a top 1% income? You mentioned your wife is in biotech. Further, does coming from poverty-stricken backgrounds make you want to lift others who are currently in your safe boat?
My point is to question what’s the point of working so hard to get into an elite university to just earn a good living with a relaxed lifestyle. Kids can go to lots of other schools and take it easy after. My goal is to also encourage all of us, including myself, to keep on fighting to help other people any way we can.
Thanks!
I’ll be curious to know what V does too!
It’s sometimes easy to forget where we came from. Once we got ours, we sometimes forget about others.
It’s just human nature. But that results in societal unrest.
Great you brought up this topic. It’s something I think many of us have thought of before, but are too afraid to say.
Risking offending rich and smart people is worth the risk!
I’m a physician. I help people everyday. Many of my friends went into law or medicine, not just finance. Some are public prosecutors.
Harvard is just one school that people happen to get into. I probably would have gone into the same field, despite the college. I guess I am unsure what is it that you want Harvard grads to do, specifically?
We only have one life to live; if we want to relax after working so hard, why is that a bad thing? After all, you yourself were all about FIRE at one point. Why does going to a prestigious college mean you should automatically be saving the world?
That is a great profession! Be proud! It is one of the professions I included in my conclusion.
I think physicians and doctors and nurses are all underpaid. For the amount of education and training that you guys do, I think you guys should get paid at least 100% more on average.
The biggest supporters of Ivy League education are alumni of Ivy League education. There are doors you’ve saw open to you as a grad of Harvard that others who went to State U. didn’t see and couldn’t attest to.
I recently watched a Netflix documentary on the recent college admissions scandal that put some famous people behind bars for a few months. I think it all boiled down to this:
Most rich people want to brag to their rich friends that their kid goes to Harvard or some other prestigious school. It makes them feel better when comparing themselves to others.
When their kids don’t have the grades to get in, they figure they’ll just write a check and buy admission. After all, money solves most problems in other areas of their lives.
Personally, I think outside of the Ivy league – which have fabulous alumni networks – other prestigious schools aren’t worth the costs. A few years after you graduate, it doesn’t really matter anymore where you went to school – your career will be defined by how much you learn, your ability to get along well with others, and hard work.
Other prestigious non-Ivy schools have fabulous alumni connections as well. Example: MIT, Stanford, caltech, uchicago, Duke
Excellent post. I’ve been lurking for a while. I graduated 2 years ago from a solidly ranked public engineering college. I landed a job as a project engineer in a medium sized municipal infrastructure consulting firm that has a nice mix of backgrounds at the firm. For a while I was feeling like a dumbass for taking this job because it was only paying 55k and It didn’t feel like it would let me quickly become ‘somebody’. But what I’ve realized is that the work life balance piece is just so ridiculously important. I’m a young single man and I value the shit out of my freedom, so being able to work 45-50 hours a week instead of 60+ gives me lots of time for myself, my family, and my girlfriend. Am I a nobody? Absolutely. But do I directly contribute to cleaning up water and wastewater in my local community? Yup. And it feels good. Money will never make you feel like that, at least I don’t think.
Thanks for the good articles and keep it up.
I think there’s a fine line between
Money comes with experience in Engineering and Water/Waste Water is a great focus allowing job security for sure. You will surely triple your salary and then some in the coming years so for now enjoy your life work balance. I would just focus on learning all that you can and work on your brand in the industry. The more involved you are in professional organization outside of your work hours, the more doors you will see open. Always separate yourself from the company, you want people to want to work with you regardless of your company logo.
Sam,
I recommend 4 years in the military after high school. Gain a military bearing and life skills which can’t be taught anywhere else.
Sam
Character matters!
The whole going to College to have a career thing is getting outdated. There are so many technical routes that save time and earn more than college degrees. There are federal and state jobs that offer pensions, job stability, and early start to your career. So college is overated and outdated in my humble opinion. I know a 19 year old making 200k after taking some techincal IT course he is really good at. Should he quit his job and waste 4 years in college so he can have a degree? I know another 40 year old soon to retire because he took a union job with solid pension at 19. That being said, my kids will go to Public schools and encoraged to pick practical Majors. I am.not saving any money for their colleges. If they are smart and driven enough, they will be fine going to CUNY or SUNY here in NY.
Chasing status or massive wealth is a race very few actually win. Many people from these backgrounds are constantly comparing themselves. We had a term for this among my peer set “compare and despair’” this article definitely feeds the anxiety.
Better to find a job you like that pays well but also has really good hours and gives you time to be with friends and family. If you can do this, you won and time to celebrate being a nobody!
Some of the most petty, vicious and shallow people I know went to ivy leagues because their daddies found a loophole to get them in. Without the label of going to that school, you wouldn’t have been able to pick them out from the average person in terms of intelligence. To contradict myself, there are also people I have met who come from fabulously wealthy backgrounds that went to these schools. They have shown intelligence and kindness that your average person who needs to make a living can’t afford to have. At the end of the day, the schools themselves are profiting off of a false dream that they can produce tomorrow’s leaders. Regardless of educational background, many who made it to the top have done extremely unethical things so if an Ivy League alumni decides to being a normal person making a decent living and not partake in the rat race; it is not an insult by any means and I don’t think it’s a sign of bad return on investment for the education they put themselves through.
A college degree is the quintessential logical fallacy as outlined in the book “crimes against logic”. I didn’t realize college was just a way to get more authority and be more marketable. I can attest that anything I did in college, I could have easily done in high school.
School was all the same. Read the textbook, understand the concepts, memorize a few things (and be honest with yourself that you did memorize it), and you’ll at least get a B in the class.
Yet, I get paid more than a high schooler me who could’ve easily finished out the degree just as well. That’s the epitome of using authority to emotionally but not logically convince someone to do something. Whether I get a degree from Harvard or whether I get a degree from a good state school, the last time I checked, 2 + 2 is still 4. Can only teach that in so many different ways between colleges.
I’ve met dumb MD, PhD, MBAs from Harvard. I’ve met really smart people without a single degree. The difference is that the prestige and degrees get your foot in the door to jobs, networking, and other opportunities. It doesn’t mean you are smart or competent. I have also found a strong overlap between trust funds / intergenerational wealth and Ivy League school acceptance. If you think we live in a meritocracy, I have an oceanfront property in Idaho to sell to you. There is a fire inside the self-made that I have not seen in trust funders.
Time is important to this discussion. Here in the Bay Area, anyone could get into Berkeley in the 1970s. It is far more prestigious to get into such a school in 2021 and beyond. Unlike some of my older peers, I am cognizant of and humbled by the challenges and pressures faced by the younger generations. It’s harder to get into schools and get promoted due to the simple fact our population is growing and making everything far more competitive – not to mention the skyrocketing cost of education that is not addressed by either side’s pandering.
There definitely is a high high correlation with wealth and going to Ivy League schools etc no doubt. Hence, at the margin, hiring people from public schools like Berkeley may be a more sure fire way of guaranteeing merit was the predominant factor in getting in. That hunger and tenacity is very desirable!
Same! I’ve met people who I thought only had a high school diploma based on their own merits, only to find out they graduated from Stanford with a masters. I’ve also met people who graduated from Chicago University with an MBA, were extremely book smart, but could not look me in the eye to say hello in hallway (no social skills). I’ve met people who had an MBA and CPA, but also know they will never succeed due to a lack of EQ.
My favorite story is when I was at a table of new hires for orientation and discovered we were all from the local Bay Area. Somehow we started discussing which high school we attended, and everyone had gone to either a private or a highly ranked public high school, except for me. I was from the “East Side”, aka the ghetto. I realized we all ended up at the same place even though my parents didn’t have the money to send me to a private high school or live in a rich area. Having a great education will definitely open up doors but it doesn’t define or limit who you really are and what you’re capable of achieving.
I’m with you all the way on this – except I would phrase the conclusion differently. During my MBA, I saw too many of my classmates drank the cool-aid that they had to be somebody. What is the use of your life if no one ever writes a case that features You, the CEO of Corp Inc, staring pensively out of the window?
The pressure to ‘be somebody’ will make you chase the straightforward goals: career, title, social validation, fame.
Instead, I wish we coached each other to Do Something! – regardless of whether that something will make you impressive in someone else’s eyes.
Thanks for sharing. But didn’t everybody in your graduating close do something? I only know a couple people in my network who decided to get married and quit work after 2-3 years post MBA.
What did you end up doing?
I guess I should specify that with “Do something that you’re proud of. Take actions that move the ball in a better direction than it would otherwise have gone.”
If you’re talented, you can get a job that lots of people want, by keeping your head down and working to please others. You’ll be somebody that people look up to, and even are jealous of. But you are not necessarily using your skills and education to have an impact.
I graduated 2 years ago and joined a growth-stage startup in a field I’m passionate about. But I don’t think I’ve met my own bar yet. :)
Gotcha. I would say the first three years doesn’t really count. People are just thrilled to get a good job that pays good money. They dream about climbing the ladder.
After about three years, you should know whether you’re doing something meaningful or not.
Are you proud enough to say what your startup does right here? That could be the real test!
That’s interesting context.
My startup is in the fintech space, getting consumers access to better financial products with less hassle. I’d rather not be more specific because at that point it could be searchable and I’m shy.
As a Harvard Law grad with three kids with multiple Ivy degrees (Harvard, BS &MD, Yale BA, UCSF Med.MD, UC Berkeley PhD, MIT Ph.D). the hardest thing after graduation is to follow your passion and turn down the temptation for so-called “security” (its not secure at all) working for a “name brand”. Barrack Obama, number 1 Harvard Law review, turned down wall street to become a community organizer in Chicago because he followed his dream. Gates and Zukerberg never finished because they followed their dreams. The Ivy’s don’t make people do great things, they take people who are going to do great things no matter what. Go to the best school reputation wise you can, get your ticket punched, and then do your own thing afterwards. The degree prevents people discounting you, but it doesn’t really make you who you are.
Impressive! How much do you think genetics versus nurture/grade schooling had to do with all the kids going to these schools? Is there another factor too, like alumni, alumni donations etc?
What are your kids doing now with their degrees?
don’t know the root cause of kids success, but stable family with emphasis on higher education didn’t hurt. mom was a U of P / Wharton Mass wiz as well. They are all doing well today, upper middle class, kids of their own, etc. Happy, for the most part, as best i can tell.
Thank you for your responses, Mark. I would agree that a stable family with an emphasis on education makes all the difference.
I dropped out of high school, but finally wound up at Emory, then Stanford and Harvard (paid for mostly through loans and scholarships). While I had a lot of catching up to do, my family’s lifelong emphasis on the value of education for its own sake made all the difference.
Another reason for going to a competitive school: We learn a great deal from our fellow students, not just professors. When most all students around you are smart and well-trained, it ups your game for life. It certainly did mine.
How long was the time. Before you dropped out of high school and then went to university? What was the reason why you dropped out and what did you end up doing during that time? Thanks
I dropped out the day I turned 16 (the minimum age to leave school). I just felt like there was a big world out there to experience, but not in my town. Spent two years hitchhiking around the country, panhandling and doing odd jobs. I finally decided to finish high school, and completed two years of school in a year by going day and night.
Then spent a year working on an assembly line making doors. That mind-numbing and dead-end job convinced me to go to college–four years after I dropped out. It was in college that I finally learned to love learning.
Graduate school at Stanford (Latin American literature and history) then medical school at Harvard were years later. Finally finished residency at age 40, and have enjoyed years of very satisfying work with underserved communities (including working in prison–a great learning experience).
Many of these schools offer excellent financial aid, and provide a supportive environment for obtaining a high quality education. Are they necessary or sufficient to get a good job? No, of course not. Do they serve an important function in our society for research and broad and deep academic study? I believe they do.
Well said. Thank you.
Barack Obama did community organizing before he went to Harvard Law. After Harvard he went into teaching at U Chicago, legal practice and running to become a state senator. He also interned at BigLaw where he met his wife.
So it’s not like he turned it all down – he had a comfortable middle class life after law school.
Actually, elite schools sell those stories too.
How many times did I hear follow your dreams while doing an MBA ? This is just the generation Y/millenial version of a shallow prestige. Before it was working for banks or management consulting.
They won’t highlight that Mark stole an idea, Gates was a prick but from a family that were wealthy and highly involved in their community, not that Barack was soul searching for his position as a mixed person in Black America before going back to law.
Luckily, most people will define their own success criteria over time and they will end up being decent people. Having a nation of Mark/Gates & Co would be an horrible place to live
Thank you for your support in education. I have been teaching at a public school in the LA area for the last 22 years. I love teaching, and I think it is the best profession in the world. I have seen so many tired students who do not sleep, and study until 4AM trying to get straight A’s, and only to find out that they don’t get accepted into the elite schools. Many public high school students don’t have any clues about the legacy kids, how they already have their foot in the door at Harvard. Also the private elite high schools are well connected to those elite universities such as Harvard. At our school, we have maybe 1 or 2 out of 1,700 students that get accepted into Harvard or Stanford.
I was never an “A”student when I was in high school. I tell my students that I only went up to Geometry in high school, and I had to take it 3 times because I didn’t get it. I didn’t even take any AP classes. After high school, I went to Jr. college and managed to transfer to UCLA, and earned my BA, and MA from a local state university. I make almost $X00,000 a year, + 3 months summer off, and 2 weeks in winter, and 1 week in spring. My husband who went to a public engineering university in Canada makes about $X00,000 a year with 4 weeks paid vacation, but it is difficult for him to take a chuck of vacation time, but we squeeze in a few vacations a year. So our combined income belongs to the top 5% of the highest earner bracket in the United States. We live in an affluent neighborhood of LA, and our neighbors are Stanford and Harvard graduates. We don’t feel any better off or worse off compared to those people who went to Harvard. I feel that we make just as much money as they do. I have a teacher’s pension, and have a great 403 portfolio. My husband’s 401K has done well, so we can retire today if we want to. But, I like teaching, so I will continue to work for awhile.
My husband’s older brother has a MBA from Harvard, but he was laid off, and started his own business for a while and failed. He managed to find a job again, but went through divorce, and now he is a financial advisor in his hometown. His other brother skipped a MS degree in chemical engineering, and without a MS degree, he earned his PhD. This brother’s wife won $XX0 million dollars in lottery, so he retired at age 55. Should you go to Harvard? No, because I am just as happy or happier than my husband’s older brother who went to Harvard MBA. Should you win $X00 million? No, because they are the same people, and their lives haven’t changed that much. I took her out for lunch, and I paid for her because I wanted to, and it made her happy since everyone expects her to pay for everything. Should your children go to Harvard? If your kid wants to go, and you have the money, sure. Do I encourage my kids to go to Harvard? No, because you can study pretty much anything at any schools, and you will be OK. Why go to a place where all the arrogant people hang out? I would want my kids to go to a college because it gives them an aura of confidence. I see my students killing themselves to get into a good college, but they really don’t know why they want to go there. The elite class in our society created a few exclusive schools, so most people think that going to Harvard can help you open the door to an elite circle, and you will be happy forever.
I tried to teach my high school students about personal finance because they have no idea how to pay for their school. They can get an “A” in Calculus AP, but they have no idea how much they will be spending in the next 4 years. One student had a full ride to UCSD, or pays $9000 a year tuition at UCLA, I advised him to go to UCSD, and he picked UCLA. I said, why not free education? My husband and I didn’t have any student loans, so at age 28, we were maxing out our 401K and 403B contributions. When our children were born, we started their 509 plan. Now, each child has over $X00,000 in their 529 plan, so they can pick any university of their choice.
The problem stems from our obsessions with being rich which leads to the ultimate happiness. A teacher doesn’t make you happy because teachers don’t make enough money, and you will never be rich. It is unfortunate that our society doesn’t value the teachers. Many parents want their kid to go to Harvard to become rich and happy. It is not about Harvard, but it is the illusion of Harvard education equals a happier life. I don’t need my children to go to Harvard because I know they will be happy with their career choice, and they will be financially comfortable. If you think about it, why would you want to go to the same school as Jared Kushner, Ted Cruz (Princeton/Harvard), or Alan Dershowitz. Wow, they make a great contribution to our society. The good book to read is Frank Bruni’s- “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania”
goodreads.com/book/show/22675976-where-you-go-is-not-who-you-ll-be
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! As a parent, I think we just went our kids to be happy. Given the odds are against them of getting into tough schools, we should explain that there are many wonderful opportunities that provide even more opportunities.
Sam, Thank you for taking your time to reply to my post. Susan Adams from Forbes magazine wrote in her article;
“The growing criticism of admissions tests is part of a larger debate about access to higher education in America. “College has become the capstone in an inequality machine that raises and perpetuates class and race hierarchies and sinks the lower classes,” writes Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce in his 2020 book, The Merit Myth, which lays out the ways that America’s most selective colleges foster and perpetuate wealth disparity. Carnevale, an economist who served on commissions for Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, says the College Board deserves some of the blame.”
Susan Adam’s article:
forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2020/09/30/the-forbes-investigation-how-the-sat-failed-america/?sh=14b166c553b5
Anthony Carnevale’s book- The Merit Myth: How Our Colleges Favor the Rich and Divide America
amazon.com/Merit-Myth-Colleges-Divide-America/dp/162097486X
You can advocate the change in our education system by helping the general public understand that Harvard helps perpetuate wealth disparity. Your blog can really spark an interest that Harvard is not the best in the America, but Harvard is a tool to maintain the America’s status quo. Please do more research on the College Board, elite universities, young people’s mental health problems. When
they don’t get enough extrinsic rewards such as not getting into Harvard or working at Goldman Sachs, or not making a ton of money, they are nobody. Although your blog supports that even you go to Harvard, you become nobody. Please write more blogs like this one. Thank you again for your time!
You’re welcome to write a guest post if you wish.
Have you seen these posts?
https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-rapid-depreciation-of-a-harvard-education-how-private-school-grads-can-still-save-themselves/
https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-wide-implications-of-the-college-admissions-bribery-scandal/
Dear The Service Guy,
I’ve been a project manager for multimillion dollar projects (80M+) for the last 5 years. I started in the construction industry building resorts and transferred into the software industry managing deployment and production teams. I got my undergraduate from a private university in Dominican Republic (no name in the US) and came to the US after marrying my wife, and had a seamless transition to the US market.. I’m making way more money in the tech sector than I was in civil engineering.
The best advice I can give you is to NEVER rely solely on the experience gained from your full-time role. It’s competitive out there, so make sure you’re positioning yourself for success. Remember, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease”.
Here’s multiple ways you can get into Project Management or any other business orientation you’re shooting for.
1) Obtain relevant education/credentials. There’s many credentials that could get your foot in the door.. PMI certifications (Golden standard credentials), Scrum Master, Project Management Post-grad/certificate ($2k-$4k), etc.. Remember, luck favors the prepared.
2) Proactively develop relevant experience. You can always shadow a project manager at work or try to volunteer to do unpaid Assistant Project Management/ Project coordination work. There’s hundreds of volunteering opportunities to get into PM on weekends/part-time. If your employer doesn’t have these opportunities, you can always help various non-profits managing their projects. Aim for quality experience.
3) Create a professional network. Once you have some credibility (see #1), it’s time to do some networking at local meetups. It’s a numbers game. You only need someone to grant you the opportunity to become a project coordinator (entry level) or assistant project manager role. With you having enough technical knowledge, who’s better suit to manage teams if not someone who has been in the trenches and that experience under his belt?
I Hope this can be of help!
6 figures as a teacher and yet your union still doesn’t want to go back into in person learning well knowing that it is leaving a negative impact on the most vulnerable students
Your assertion that if you go to an Ivy, you’d be wasting your potential to work the same job as someone who attended a state university is egregious. There are multitudes of high school students with the same qualifications who either get denied entry simply because the stack of applications is too tall or don’t apply because they don’t believe that the prestige outweighs the price tag. There are also vast swathes of the population who don’t have access to the kinds of resources that set one up for admittance to the top private schools. Most families don’t – I went to an extremely rigorous and high-pressure high school and I matriculated from not one but two state universities. And then I was recruited by one of the most prestigious organizations in my field paying twice the median household income before I even finished my second degree. My second degree was from a no-name school with an acceptance rate of over 50%, by the way. I went there because it was a mile away from my house. Don’t tell anyone that I went to *gasp* community college for the first two years of my first degree! THE SHAME!
I agree that it’s the student and the choices that the student makes while in school and afterward that make the person, but this REEKS of elitism. Good on the kids who choose to work hard for that Ivy League acceptance – it takes enormous discipline and Herculean effort. Good on the kids who don’t go that route and end up in the same jobs as those who have the flashiest degrees.
I have a feeling you may be missing my point? Or maybe not. Your logic kinda made sense, thn didn’t. How is not going to an Ivy League school reeking of elitism? I’m encouraging parents and students not to sweat going to an elite school, especially if they can’t comfortably afford to attend.
If encouraging students to attend a public university instead, I guess we have different definitions of elitism.
Nice work, dude! I definitely think this is one of the best articles on the topic. It’s surprisingly difficult to find good articles that even sort of brush on “Good College but Bad After-College Experience”
My story: Graduated from Duke, decent grades (~3.4 gpa in Biomedical Engineering) , but didn’t really know what I wanted. Thought I wanted academia (so no company internships in college), but realized I’d like private sector better. Academia just seemed like a publish or perish bubble where teaching was secondary, and teaching was my favorite part. Unfortunately, I realized this senior year (2013) so I didn’t have any internships. No internship = no work experience, so I couldn’t get a good job out of college.
All I could seem to get was a Field Service ‘Engineer’ (FSE, read: Technician) role out of school. I was making okay money and had a job, but the technical service work experience I was getting only set me up for (You guessed it!) more tech service.
Three years of hustle (and 150k+ MILES of driving) passed. I eventually landed a product support ‘engineer’ (read: slightly more boutique service technician) role. It gave me more free time and higher pay, which is nice. On paper, I help FSEs and customers keep their ultrasound equipment running. In practice, I work for a for-profit corporation and service is a business. I got my master’s in Engineering (online, but good program), but I am still consistently shot down for any non-service role. I’d love to be a project manager or test engineer, or anything that really uses my brain but no dice… for SEVEN. YEARS.
Critique:
It’s clear that I’m a nobody.
How can I tell? Well that’s easy:
1.) In college, I was treated like I had so much potential and would undoubtedly be a future leader or do great things. When I was a FSE, I had no less than 5 different people ask me “If you went to Duke, how’d you end up in this job?” I even had a client directly ask me what his college-attending son could do to not end up like me (on our first meeting!). I’ll admit I stopped telling people where I went to school for this very reason. Let’s be real, no kid wants to be in service when they grow up. Nobody in service WANTS to be in service. They are just … there.
2.) Our company is clearly run by R&D, marketing, and sales. ALL service employees are treated like second class citizens. The world around me treats me like I’m a nobody, and we all know how credible the argument “I’m not crazy, everyone else is!” is. Why else would service roles all have such obscene turnover?
2b.) This problem in 2.) isn’t better at other companies. When there are job openings for higher roles other than customer service (e.g. project/program manager, key accounts something or other, business dev, etc.), NONE of them ask for service experience. Only sales or development (business or technical) experience.
3.) Your article tacitly appeals that for the top percent, their options are a.) the Harvard funnel of consulting/banking/stuff that has money and prestige but doesn’t help society, or b.) the big help to society (see: inspiration blind woman in your article) but forgoing the easy wealth. I am clearly neither of these things. I could see myself being the latter, but the people offering these good-for-society roles want the former group of people, not guys like me who ‘ended up in service’ despite ‘having every advantage’ (white, male, straight, good schooling) on paper.
Even in your case, your blog carries authority BECAUSE you were in finance for 13 years first. You get to make a difference now because you did things that people cared about and looked up to. People care what you think because of your background. In my case, no one cares about my background, so all I get to do is yet more tech service…and I don’t make enough to retire substantially early. I can’t teach, because what would I teach that people want to learn? Tech service? Please.
I think your working definition of a ‘nobody’ needs work, in the sense that it’s perfectly possible to have nothing worth talking about. No high pay, respect, prestige, career advancement opportunities, the option of ‘doing something more rewarding’ later on one hand AND not really be doing society a favor (which again, I’d rather have than the pile of money) on the other. I should know, that’s me right now and there’s no clear way for me to change it. I’m stuck rationalizing deep and profound personal failure with gems like ‘work is just a means to live’ and ‘be happy on different terms.’ There isn’t a more fulfilling thing to do later, and the work right now is a bad joke … and it’s all I have experience in.
In other words: I went to great school and ended up a nobody.
[Disclaimer: Overall, I really like this article. I just think it still (on a different level) buys into the Harvard bubble and a tacit understanding of who/what a somebody or nobody is]
Thanks! How did you find this article?
maybe things will get better once you have a little bit more experience? Surely, you are not going to be stuck forever doing what you don’t want to do. Keep on applying to do new things. Eventually, something will open up.
And congratulations for getting into Duke! I know I surely would not of been able to get in. That said, I’m proud of being a William & Mary alum!
Thank you for taking the time to reply to my comment! I found this article by chance on a google search. I used the terms “went to great school but didn’t get good job” and found you near the bottom of the first page. On that note, nice work getting on the first page of a search that wasn’t specifically for you.
[The original purpose of my search was to see if I could find anybody who started in a job like mine and moved to better things & (more importantly) HOW they did it. I can’t find anyone in my current employer that started in service and moved to another department I’m interested in. I don’t know anyone from Duke who got stuck in service. All of my alum friends more or less got the job (or at least type of job) they went for, so I’m alone on this one for now.]
The ‘more experience’ thing is kind of a double-edged sword. On one hand, yeah a few years of experience (vs fresh grad) can convince employers that you’re generally capable of sticking to a job with understood/set hours. It implies many positive traits that college on its own doesn’t necessarily imply. The downside is that it can typecast you as your degree collects dust and your current work experience becomes the thing you’re offering the market right now. This is a bigger problem if:
1.) Your degree (Duke) implied far more potential/talent/prestige/etc than your job (service) and
2.) There are no better job openings that desire your work experience (i.e. you’re getting ‘bad’ work experience).
I appreciate your optimism. It’s hard to believe it since I’m 7 years into a flatlined career, but the alternative (giving up) is much worse. I’m hoping that post-Covid and post-Election will get companies hiring again. I’m also hoping that more roles with transferrable skills (test engineer, service PM of some sort) will open up and companies will actually want my experience.
Nothing at all wrong with William and Mary. It’s a solid school. Honestly, if I could do it all again I’d save the Duke tuition money and get in-state tuition / whoever had a full-ride scholarship. I’d probably end up with the same job so my ROI would be way better and the college fund would’ve made a great house down payment, investment account, or hell probably both haha
William & Mary cost us $2,800 a year in tuition in 1995-1999. I knew that if I graduated college and only got a minimum wage job, I could still pay my parents back. I didn’t bother to apply to Duke b/c I knew I wouldn’t get any scholarships and I probably wouldn’t get in. My parents were middle class government workers. Duke back then was about $23K a year. It was just too much for us.
Did you come from a wealthy family or get grants/scholarships? How much was Duke when you attended?
See:
Private Or Public School? Depends On Your Guilt, Fear, And Sense OF Awareness
Would You Accept $1 Million To Go To Public School Instead of Private School?
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Dear The Service Guy,
You’ve probably already thought of this, but are you not able to contact someone from Duke’s alumni services or careers office to find jobs and opportunities specifically intended for Duke graduates?
I would have thought that they would have a fairly long list of potential employers that are specifically seeking individuals like you who have obtained a degree from Duke. Perhaps you can use these resources to find entry level positions with more room for growth and advancement.
I hope this helps.
Best of luck!
Anon
Thanks for weighing in!
I had left this part out since my post/diatribe was already massive, but yes I did visit the career center senior year. They basically sat down with me and let me know what online job portals and alumni cold-emails are available to me as a Duke student (and what will be there once I’m a recent alum). I asked about things like specific people/employers I could talk to, and was given nothing. [I’m NOT alone on this one, many alums and students have a dim view of Duke’s Career Services]. I did try these cold-emails out, but never got an alum to respond (which makes sense because how would/could someone I don’t know vouch for me. also they were likely being bombarded by requests from people with better records). The jobs on the portal were unrelated to engineering and frankly just…didn’t look good. Surely, I could do better?…
I went to the Duke student career fair in spring 2013 and the only role I got ANY traction for was a technical support role at Cisco. I didn’t go further with it because I hadn’t given up yet (remember this is pre-graduation).
Another thing Duke did was split up the Student Career Fair and the Alumni Career Fair. The student one had all of the big name employers (Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, Deloitte, Accenture, so on and so forth). Once I graduated, I no longer had access to this. The Alumni one had a bunch of companies I had never heard of hiring for … service, sales (not the good/promising sales roles, the bad ones). It was very obvious from the air of the place that they weren’t looking for high-potential people / didn’t see potential in you as a candidate. Completely different from the student fair’s tone. Rather, they were looking for the desperate who needed a job. They needed to fill a seat for a little while during a recession/’recovery.’ Call it a gut feeling, but I did not feel that these guys were good employers.
I ended up in service anyway…, but the employer is at least a major medical device manufacturer with a positive corporate mission. I thought I could pivot within the company, but service experience means I’m never the best candidate for a non-service role. It’s always gonna be better to hire the intern with 3 months of test experience because that’s 3 more months of test experience than I have and they’re younger (more optimized, basically). I eventually kinda did pivot. I’m now a service project manager but for a Duke alum at 30 this is pretty bad.
make a deal with an employer:
if the salary he’s offering for a position is 90k per year, tell the employer that you will work for 60k per year! a financial tradeoff for experience.
tell him that you will even work extra hours for free as long as he gives a written recommendation so that the next employer will be more than glad to hire you.
“Make a deal” implies the employer was willing to talk/negotiate directly in the first place. If you aren’t what the req calls for (ie you’re Service and 30 and your resume clearly shows you blew it in college because you went from Duke to service somehow) and there are plenty of people who are what the req wants (22ish new grad with 3 months of test eng experience via internship and no clear mistakes …market is absolutely SATURATED with engineering grads), you won’t even get past the ATS system much less any initial physical review of the resume.
Even internally, the only conversation I got from my employer was the recruiter giving me an unequivocal ‘NO.’ Salary hadn’t been discussed, and I was already lower salary than the roles (so they could have just kept my salary as-is, effectively doing what you describe). I eventually got promoted to a service PM recently, which is better but I’m so far behind where a Duke alum should be…
I’m hoping finally having a decent title (PM) will give me access to roles where good pay and treatment are on the table. Catching up with my fellow alums is unlikely but I can at least do better than I was.
Hey! If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you apply for some interships or whatever you missed out bc you only found out abt your passion in your senior yr in college, after college? I would think that even after graduating college you would still be able to score a good intership role given your alma mater and other credentials (from your comment the only thing that seemed to be stopping you was a time discrepency?), even though its not exactly a job ppl expect to have after graduating, if you’re in it for the experience of the role, why did you opt for a job you didn’t really like instead? Really curious. Thanks!
Great question, and I have a few thoughts/responses to it:
1.) It was less that I ‘found my passion’ and more that I had a broad idea of what I wanted to do. I was aware academia wasn’t for me but I didn’t have that one role that I would give anything to do (which may have been part of the problem). To this day, I still don’t really have any one thing that’s best described as my passion or something that I’m REALLY good at. I like a lot of things (and am decent at a lot of things), but being a generalist in today’s economy is a death sentence.
2.) Many (I’d argue most) internships do explicitly require that you are still in school. If you aren’t, you get auto-selected out by ATS when you apply.
3.) Those internships that don’t explicitly require you to still be in school still de facto prefer active students. I was in the back of the line behind the rising seniors during a post-recession recovery, hence the lack of traction.
I applied for jobs that looked good from mid senior year of college to almost a year after graduation, using various methods. I got a couple interviews, but no offer. Student loan payments were becoming due, and at some point you just have to get a job because if you don’t it’s an employment gap (which is also a huge disadvantage vs other job seekers). Also, I have to pay bills and generally…live at some point.
4.) The alma mater is nice, but most employers really want experience. I was competing against applicants with internships. Alma mater and no exp vs alma mater with exp is an uphill fight…and I wasn’t able to get uphill.
5.) College is just one of those things you have to get right AT THE TIME or else its a snowball effect into your future.
Man, your story really hit me. Details aside, mine is eerily similar. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard, “You went to XXXXXX??”, meaning “What are you doing here?” And you’re spot on about getting everything right in college (the internships above all) or else derailing the rest of your career. I even tried kicking the can down the road with more school, but recruiters aren’t stupid – they can smell a failure to launch and don’t take a chance on it.
I’m about the same age as you. We would have been right in the path of the great recession tsunami. Don’t know about you, but I can empathize a lot more with what normal people of our generation go through in life, because educational prestige hasn’t succeeded in insulating me from it the way people think it’s meant to.
As to what to do about rationalising personal failure, you already know it’s not susceptible to sugar-coating. You mentioned having more free time since your promotion. Try and use that to do things that you find worthwhile (easier said than done, I admit). In this context, worthwhile just means something like this: “Here’s what I can realistically be/achieve (professionally, intellectually, personally, etc) by the time I’m 50; this is what I need to do now to get there.” At the end of the day, when you come from a good school, being a nobody is a pretty lonely place to be, so it helps to remind yourself that there are others out there in the same boat.
Your examples of these Harvard and other top school grads are still very impressive, even the ones that you thought were “nobodys.” That’s your social circle? They’re mostly startup or other company founders! I knew you went to William & Mary, but I guess I didn’t remember you got an MBA from UC Berkeley. That would explain your social circle more.
I went to a very underrated Public Ivy – prestigious among people who know universities, but generally thought of as much less than it is.
There’s a lot of reasons why people succeed or don’t succeed on varying levels. What people generally don’t realize is all that holds some people back due to undeserved stigmas and stereotypes.
One guy with a PhD in an impressive science has always been very unemployed in low-level research or tech/analyst roles, far below what people with his fields of study should be getting. And he often went through difficult periods of unemployment because employers refused to hire him after they saw him in person at the interview. He’d go to interview after interview without getting hired because employers looked down on him due to his awkwardness that he could’t control, no matter what. And he didn’t have a network because he came off odd and awkward, and seemed to have a disability. He’s extremely kind, gentle, well-read, and smart, but people just refuse to interact with him, hire him, or promote him due to his outward awkwardness.
So in all your posts, you’re forgetting (or not knowing) about severe societal stigmas against hard-working, smart, and talented people who don’t deserve to be on the bottom rungs of society.
“ So in all your posts, you’re forgetting (or not knowing) about severe societal stigmas against hard-working, smart, and talented people who don’t deserve to be on the bottom rungs of society.”
What are they? Can you elaborate? And what is it that you do? Thanks
See: https://www.financialsamurai.com/rich-spoiled-clueless-work-minimum-wage-job-at-least-twice/
In my previous comment, I described some of them in the PhD guy example in my 2nd to last paragraph. Employers and all people are extremely stigmatizing towards people who come off odd or awkward due to shyness, social anxiety, Aspergers, or other disabilities. And it’s even much worse if the person is Asian or maybe other POC – multiple stigmas. It continues to be an extremely unjust society, even in SF.
Some of us are very underemployed, and our employment history doesn’t reflect our talents, skills, knowledge, character, and education. It’s people’s stigmas against us that hold us back, so we don’t have a network and people refuse to hire us for jobs we deserve.
I knew of an awkward, shy Asian American who went to an Ivy but struggled getting any job at all because employers and others looked down on him for coming off weird and awkward. And he was a totally decent, smart, hard-working person who deserved as much as the rest.
As an Asian person, I didn’t realize life was much worse for an Asian person in America.
Asian Americans are the highest earning racial group and the racial group with the highest chances of becoming a millionaire.
I think we’re doing OK. But I’m also biased because I feel really appreciative that I was able to retire at 34 and do what I want.
What is it that you do?
Life varies for different Asian Americans, depending on the individual. Awkward, shy Asians are penalized much more than awkward, shy people of other ethnicities because that fits into the stereotype of Asians, and no one likes stereotypical Asians.
If you go online to Asian sites on Reddit, Quora, or Plan A mag, you’ll see the everyday and complex stigmas, stereotyping, hostility, and injustice many Asian Americans suffer from.
Maybe your life is very good because you come off very confident, decent, and respectable, so people treat you well, and you’re able to get the jobs and life you deserve. But Asians who come off more shy or awkward are treated much worse and stigmatized much more than non-Asians who come off even worse.
Yes, Asians have the highest income, but that’s misleading – Asians are most likely to live in multi-generational and larger households, so that’s household income with often multiple earners. Asians probably don’t make that much per capita. And any Asian still needs to try much harder than a white or other person, all else being equal. Asians getting into any school are of much better quality than other ethnicities because they’re much more stringent in letting Asians in, whether officially through affirmative action, or just through subconscious biases.
Asians are actually the poorest in many areas of the US, with the highest income equality. Just Google. Even in SF, if a study were done, it would show a significant percentage of poor Asians, and Asians would definitely have the highest income inequality of all ethnicities in SF.
Got it. Are you Asian? If not, did you major in Asian studies or work in a capacity that studies Asians in American society? If not, what exactly do you do and where are you on your financial journey? I’m trying to understand more about where you are coming from.
I didn’t realize there is so much generalization about Asians. But I’m glad you recognize that life varies. I’d be careful stereotyping Asian people after knowing one awkward Asian guy who went to an Ivy League school.
Let me more about yourself.
thx
Yes, of course I’m Asian American. I thought anyone could read that based on what I’ve said in my last few comments.
I’m an observer of life. Through all my experiences as well as what I’ve heard/read from others, including from studies – I’ve come to a lot of realizations. And yes, I’ve read/watched many Asian American/Asian Studies stuff in my life. But most of this stuff are my own insights that are correct – just from my own experiences, observations, and the experiences of others. I’d consider myself pretty academic, so just because people don’t read or hear about everything I say doesn’t make it fake or invalid.
I haven’t had the good jobs that you’ve mentioned in various posts based on your circle and the people you know. I’ve been underemployed in various positions that I don’t wish to state. But I grew up in an education-oriented household, so my siblings and cousins are more along the lines of your social circle. I’ve been penalized unfairly in life due to being shy and awkward (social anxiety), so I never got anywhere near what I deserved.
I relate to a lot of what you write in your posts that people of other ethnicities would not say or think quite in the same way. There seems to be a lot of nuances and insights in your posts that I’ll never read in other financial blogs or other content in general. But we do still have great variation in our worldview due to our experiences, the lives we’ve lived, our own family’s values, and the fact you grew up as higher-class TCK in Asia, while I was born and raised in the US.
Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.
I also have never heard of TCK and had to look it up. Seems like there is some negative connotations wrt identities?
I identify as American and appreciate Taiwanese, Japanese, and Chinese culture.
Sorry things have been hard for you. Is there anything you think your parents could have done differently to help you with social anxiety?
My son went to Harvard. He dropped out without graduating. Perhaps he disillusioned out. He survived.
High school was more like college with 14 AP classes, and all the pressure trimmings. I’m a public school teacher—I didn’t take AP classes in high school; I worked part time at Sears. I learned a lot about people.
So my son is 25; what is he doing? Well, he skied a lot last winter. He worked briefly in real estate & landscaping. He worked at a grocery store part time.
Thoreau, a Harvard graduate, is one of his role models. Thoreau, as you may remember, was a bit of a handyman for Emerson who wrote some essays his buddies helped get published.
Don’t make more out of glitter than it deserves. Don’t make more out of gold than it deserves. Shine is not all sunshine & life can be very short as the high suicide rates at many of those top schools will testify to. Pray your sons and daughters grow up happy, ethical and grounded in solid values—kind and thoughtful—real people—caring people. The rest of it are just shallow trimmings.
I know someone who was a Harvard graduate. He works as a Learning Specialist at a Middle School, running Advisory classes. His class is useless — he basically wastes a ton of kids’ time, year after year; and if kids don’t pay attention, he demands respect by marking Kids down for his class. Nasty! How pathetic!! This guy is very narrow-minded and stupid. What a disgrace to Harvard’s name!! The Principal really likes him though because he gets a Harvard guy to work under him! Both are disgusting and pathetic — I say that because they try their hardest to damage good kids and great minds just so they can abuse their little power!
They are not educators; they’re tyrants, and big bullies! Criminals in fact!!
I know the type. They bully students to comply with their stupid and arbitrary rules and their likings, and they demand respect while showing no respect to students, and to their rights. I can understand why this type of “advisor” is dangerous because they are very damaging to children and society. This could be a very serious problem, and it is indeed a shame.
I glad I’m in the medical field where we give 2 shits where you went to school. Your skill set will reveal itself as well as create your reputation. Each new hospital is another opportunity to grow and create yourself.
oh summer child…
‘we give 2 shits where you went to school’. It isn’t because your field lacks elitism, it is because your field does not respect your labor and hard work- or anyone else’s.
I don’t think you understand what that means…winter child?
I could go into a lot of comparative differences because it really is green apples to red oranges. For example, I’m not a doctor but make more money than many doctors by a big margin. I am rewarded this because of my skill set and work ethic. It has almost nothing to do with where I went to school. Although, I went to an excellent school that set me up with this work set of skills and work ethic that was honed to a student that had the prerequisites to benefit but my employer didn’t know that by school name or reputation. The doctors I work with also respect me as do patients. I arm rewarded trifecta.
What do you do? What did you study? I live in a small time where most kids go to Community College or to a factory. I’m always interested in hearing about other careers besides doctor, lawyer, teacher, nurse to share with these very sheltered kids. I’m trying to get more to look at trades.
The better students go to the local commuter school. I find full ride scholarships for any if they have 3.5 and a 30+ ACT score. I’ve only had three in 8 years apply to a school with a full ride because they don’t believe it’s real.
One kid is accepted to Harvard for free due to being poor. He’s the son of an evangelical preacher. They are very conservative. I’m worried this kid won’t fit in with kids who have everything, including excellent private educations. And Harvard is no hot bed of conservatism. The other choice is a full ride at an out of state decent flagship with a record of getting kids into med schools which is what he wants at this point. The whole town is pushing Harvard because, you know, it’s Harvard. Money, worldview, education are all so different.
It’s a great article, however I disagree when you describe yourself as a nobody, but then mention you held a banking job for 13 years. You weren’t a nobody, you had a JOB. Some of us (like myself) went to Ivy League institutions, but don’t have jobs. Granted, I’m only a year out of college, but still you shouldn’t look down upon yourself when some people do have it worse.
John, what do you want to do for a living and what has this past year taught you?
Yes, I had a job, but I still think I was and am a nobody. No biggie. 13 years in the business only to burn out is not impressive. Many people work for decades.
But I’m trying to be a somebody by helping other people with their finances and their lives with this site.
Thank You, Sam!
You helped me to understand that I am not poor immigrant anymore.
I found your blog because of my research on our financial standing. Yes, top 10%.
By income and savings(by age also, if include PENSION in to account) .
22 years ago we came to US with two suitcases per person( 6 total, one of them was with different books and my son was holding a globe for a 4th grade) and 2 month rent money. We suspected, that educated people earn more money then blue collar worker in US, compare to USSR, were any blue collar worker can say to the doctor “u r nothing”, because of wage disparity.
We did not go to any college in US.
Over 15 years we work for the state in IT.
We payed for our son’s in-state public education(UVA) with no savings in 529 “Pay as you go”out of pocket. He took a loan for a law school. He is 4 generation went to college from both side.
We knew words Harvard and Princeton, but not Ivy League or William and Mary.
Our educated opinion- Harvard is overrated. Bragging point for the parents.(especially immigrants) Consider Harvard as a breeding ground for the blue-blooded girls and white-boned boys.
Sam, interesting post and definitely thought-provoking. Whether we like to admit it or not, we are all guilty of this type of social comparison. Two thoughts:
I sensed a strong expectation for immediate career success. In my mind, a career is a marathon. I am impressed by those who achieve success fast, but they aren’t the norm, even for folks from this high-performance pool. Most people (even from solid backgrounds) have some false starts and horizontal movements before they find that trajectory
It’s all the data you had, but Linkedin profiles can be deceiving. My b-school has informal polls with comp benchmarks. From a comp standpoint, I know that I out-perform my friends in finance or consulting, but you wouldn’t know it if you decided to profile me.
Great 2018 update. I’m sure you were as bummed as I was when the Senate Judiciary Committee didn’t care to question the anonymous now-justice’s household Debt to Washington Nationals tickets ratio (D/WNTicks). Not that it would play as anything other than immaculately and paradigmatically American. Right up there with “I got into to Yale” as a character defense.
Side note- I’m now on my 19th year of government and scholarship-funded school. Earning a terminal degree without having spent a dime of my own or my parent’s money on education (except, for I think, a single laptop that lasted me nine of those years) will be extra-satisfying, even if I’ll probably never get to tout my love of beer to the Senate.
Hi,
Thank you for all your posts, first of all. I enjoy reading them. It’s always food for thought.
Regarding this topic, I saw many comments containing the phrase “it doesn’t matter where you go to school.” Well, there is a book called “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be” by Frank Bruni that I would highly recommend. As far as my humble opinions are concerned, I think prestige does matter to an extent for graduate schools, but undergraduate education is more about finding a good fit for the student and the family (academically, financially, culturally, etc). For some, Ivy League/consensus elite schools work just fine, but they are neither the be-all-end-all nor paths to some guaranteed success in life.
I’m 64 years old and retired. I graduated from an elite, private university (little Ivy) with a degree in general engineering. I didn’t do well there academically, but I got heavily involved in the college radio station and spent my entire career on the technical side of the television broadcast industry. I spent about half my working years as a technician/drone in union-represented positions. Due to a high savings rate, I am now comfortably retired. I left full-time work at age 60 and worked a few years part-time before calling it quits completely about eight months ago. When I see the alumni magazine from my college it makes me wonder if I didn’t spend my entire career under-employed.
I read something about a guy who went to an Ivy League school and had friends who did also that were very unhappy in their finance, law and other prestigious professions. He got out and started doing work that helped others. He said he is happier and more fulfilled while his friends are miserable. He said do not chase money but focus on being useful and helping others. I agree with him. The reason I started a finance blog was to help others. There are no guarantees in life. Even if you get an excellent education. But doing the right thing and helping others is its own reward. Putting the smile on a child’s face: priceless.
Fascinating post. I graduated from UVA a couple years ago and have since been working at Treasury. I would have to agree with the old saying “its not where you go, its what you do when you are there that matters.” My high school is one of those boys prep schools in the DC area. One of my best friends was our valedictorian and he went to Princeton. College didn’t go so well for him because while he was naturally/book smart, he was not ready for the independence and necessary discipline of college. He coasted through high school but hit the wall in college. He struggled through and graduated late. He managed to get a typical web development job at a company in DC.
The Ivy League is no guarantee.
It’s definitely disappointing on a human scale that so many of the supposed brightest go into the finance field. There are so many human problems that deserve smart, innovative attention. I went to one of those small liberal arts colleges you mentioned. I now own a business that is for the public good. I don’t have the weight of expectations on me that an Ivy League may have offered. I want to do good and I do.
Hi Sam,
As always, great writing. Been a reader for years now. I am one of those elite college graduates you mentioned, having gone to Duke. My first few jobs out of college were marketing internships, before I ultimately landed a full-time job at a fin tech startup (which failed) and then spent the next 2.5 years at a family office.
The finance track is hard to move out of for elite graduates. I’ve definitely felt the pressure to accomplish a lot in my career because of where I went to school. And I still do, but I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. It is a privilege and it opens up a lot of doors for me.
That being said, I want to use that privilege to help people.
Last year I quit working for someone else and started working for myself (not the best financial decision, but my happiness is paramount), and am freelance consulting (finance, sales & marketing) while I also build a career as a musician and writer. A big goal of mine is to create a holding company that allows me to focus on my own interests and make change in the world.
I am learning that finance can be an effective tool for social change. One of the more interesting projects financial modeling projects I’ve worked on recently involved a juicing enterprise in Africa that proposed providing benefits to smallholder farmers. I hope to do more projects like this, as well as to inspire through my music and my writing.
This was a post I needed to read. Cheers!
Congratulations for taking a risk and pursuing something more than just money and prestige! If it doesn’t work out, you can always fall back on the money. But at least you’ll know you will never wonder what if.
Interesting perspective. I thought this was going to go in a different direction. One more focused on (1) the hedonic treadmill these universities place you on, and (2) why you should have to do anything with your degree (why not just be lazy?).
I went to one of the military academies for undergrad, and a top 3 MBA for grad school.
#1. From my perspective, each time you place yourself in a cohort (e.g. an undergrad class), you are by default placed onto that group’s hedonic treadmill. Some treadmills are better than others. The military guys spend time being ‘manly’, discussing leadership, focusing on physical prowess, and being interested in being a bad ass. The MBA class placed me squarely into a group of people pretty obsessed with power and money (oversimplification for brevity.).
Now you can step off these treadmills, but it’s HARD. It’s a much better idea to do your research, and either avoid treadmills you don’t want to be on or have a plan to get back off of them.
#2. Why can’t you just do whatever you want? This post kind of implies that “with great power comes great responsibility” to do something meaningful. Maybe. But this position is part of the hedonic treadmill. Because I chose to strive, and get into this select cohort, I now have pressure to either be wildly successful (in something) and/or ensure that I continue to work as hard as possible to make a meaningful impact.
What you lose is the ability to choose all options. What if you no longer want to be a ‘striver’? What if you want to do something that doesn’t have a large impact or make a lot of money? Is it inherently wrong or “disappointing”, or should less type-A decisions be an option, even if you’ve been through Harvard?
Thanks Eric. What is it that you’re doing after your MBA?
My timeline:
– seven years military
– two year b-school (trying to get IM/HF, which didn’t happen. Interned in ER at BB bank)
– After a long search, pivot to RE – 1.5 yrs in commercial RE at a REIT
– ~6 months in an ER firm.
– Finally accepted finance was not a personal fit, and asset management is a shrinking industry.
– Vendor Mgmt /Biz dev at a top tech firm.
– Now product management at same firm.
Enough false starts post-MBA to warrant a lot of reflection. And plenty of lessons learned. No idea on long-term trajectory. I’m trying to rebuild my self confidence by holding down a job for a few years.
Leaving NYC helped (a little) with the hedonic pressure, but it’s there. Especially when I’m around MBA types.
Living in lower cost areas makes it easier to not jump to jobs your hate so you can make rent (Equity research is the worst.).
Enjoyed the article – I went the Ivy League way (Exeter, Penn, Wharton Grad) but no way could I get in today – You don’t mention the herd effect, where the people at great schools head into businesses that have worked for the last five or ten years – but where the future prospects are diminished. I spent the last 19 years as a Private Equity investor. The returns on a go forward basis are at best high single digits if everything goes right, which inevitability they don’t. On the other hand, I’m an active investor right now in public equities because I really enjoy it. If one does for the money, it is a miserable existence. I also know plenty of Ivy League graduates who got great places on the starting track but didn’t finish because they were check the box types or arrogant or both
Impressive resume! Did you make a killing in PE? Why do you think people in PE make so much when the returns are similar to the S&P 500 or less? Leverage?
For those interested in digging into this topic a little further, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a pretty interesting book, David and Goliath, that touches on this subject. I just went through this dance with my daughter. She chose Penn State over Wisconsin-Madison, University of Washington, Michigan State, Arizona and Florida. She starts in 4 weeks.
https://www.businessinsider.com/malcolm-gladwells-david-and-goliath-2013-10
I’ve never read the book or the article, but it’s pretty funny that we’ve come up to the same conclusions and have even use the same institutions Eh Google and Goldman Sachs.
I think my article is better because I provide 12 real life profiles with some thoughts and analysis, as well as overall data. But then again, his book is probably better because it’s a book!
It’s true, if you go to an elite institution, you’re always going to compare yourself to your peers. And there’s a high chance that some of your peers are just gonna really crush it out of the ballpark, making you feel miserable in comparison.
I agree with you. I loved your real world examples. I’d also make another point that once you get to college you need to really think about your activities outside of the classroom. I went to a school that is listed among the Top 25 Public Universities but I was a C+ student, not because I was an average student but because I spent a lot of time outside of the classroom involved in a multitude of clubs and student government, including VP of the Student Body my senior year. When asked by recruiters about my grades, I pointed to my extracurricular accomplishments and discussed all of the activities and lessons learned outside of the classroom and how those better prepared me for the real world than an accounting or econ class ever could. According to our placement office, I was offered one of the best starting salaries of all business majors my senior year and even better than several of the other higher profile colleges like engineering and architecture.
Just to also prove my point about my academic capabilities, 25 years later I went back for my MBA at a decent school in Chicago and finished at the top of my class, just to prove I did have it in me when I was so inclined to make academics a priority ;)
I am not in the same league as any of you, Ivy or not. But it is quite an interesting post as are the comments. I would love to sit down and talk a while with many of the commenters here–fascinating stories and views. It is worth noting the plethora of perspectives from which people view this post.
Sam, some people’s goal really is to make money, hang the “helping people” idea. I agree with you, that the most fulfilling work is directly helping people. But many certainly do not see it that way. (Btw, it’s easy for people to say “It’s not all about money” if they don’t have to be concerned with how they will manage to pay the electric bill this month.)
Some comments here reflect an angst about education and/or careers that have been chosen. I am a great one for getting lost because all I usually see are individual trees around me rather than the forest as a whole, but it’s helpful to step back and look at the big picture.
What are your goals? How will you reach them? More important, are the goals worthy goals?
So if one’s goal is to attend Harvard, why? Is that a worthy goal? What is the goal beyond that makes Harvard essential? Or if it isn’t essential, should one follow a different path to that “beyond goal”?
My “achievements” will never even be on the same chart as most of the commenters (zero fame, zero community acclaim, and negative income), but my job has been vital–at least to the ten children I have birthed and home educated. As that job winds down (3 years to go after 30+ years behind me), what shall I do for a second career?
One further comment. I’m puzzled by the comments about schools not mattering much *other* than the alumni network or *once* you get into the job market. The comments greatly minimized the significance of those two factors, whereas others gave the proper credence to their importance. Of course, your employer cares how you do your job and not where you went to school. But how did you get the job? How did you get the interview in the first place? How did connections help you along the way? You cannot say those do not matter.
Did you say you birthed 10 children? If so, that is amazing! Was it an intentional call? I’m struggling with raising just one, seriously. What is your partner do for a living?
How is the cost of raising 10 children?
Though a college grad (we met in college), my husband worked in manufacturing for 20 years, moving into management the last 2. When the company was sold, he was “laid off” with several others; the next year the new company closed the plant. He’s worked at libraries, for a cable company (tier 3 customer rep), another factory job at manufacturing plant…”Retired” now, working part-time. You can see why I say we’re not in the same league as other readers. (The cashed-in paltry retirement account kept us afloat during the 2-year post-layoff unemployment.)
Cost of raising 10 children? God always has provided our needs. We can’t provide in the way some of the readers have been provided for or provide for their children, but we’ve never gone hungry because we have no food. We have owned our home for 15 years (no mortgage) and I cannot recall the last time we had a car payment.
I was drawn to comment, maybe as a fellow mom who stayed home with kids (but not nearly as many.) Ten kids is AMAZING. And with the pandemic I bet a lot more parents have a lot more respect for your job. And if you’ve got a house PAID for with no car payments? I bet you are doing better than LOT of college grads. That shows amazing, and practical, money management.