The number of Stanford Juniors with 1 summer internship at a VC posting 'deep' Startup insights or advice is shocking. Like what do these kids with literally no experience running or starting anything know about companies? It's mind boggling.
Wait until you find out the work experience of people consultancies send out to clients. It's often one experienced person with a bunch of grunts pumping out "work."
In a previous life I worked for a health insurance company that paid a million dollars to the Boston Consultancy Group on if we should use agile or not for development. The best part was seeing the half dozen or so people in our offices working so diligently to argue for something we were already doing, even better when speaking to these consultants they had zero experience programming or developing software.
I often wonder what it takes to win these contracts over McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte; because it sure feels like it's not aptitude that's the defining quality but more quasi-legal corruption.
IME it's not like McKinsey and friends are necessarily sending highly qualified people either. So it wouldn't take much to "beat" them on merit. It's frustrating to watch them get paid so much to recommend the thing we already recommended in house, except their version is missing all the hard parts because they never bothered to check whether the required infrastructure exists or can even be legally installed at the project site.
McKinsey is about as close as it gets to cartoon supervillains in real life. And they must know it, right? Maybe they hide their role from the rank n’ file, but I doubt it. Truly a useless industry, and a significant symptom of our corporatist malaise.
The amount of money the government spends on useless contractors… shudders
VC Internships are intense, and not every Stanford student can land one. While some advice might be a bit meh, a lot of it is information that has value.
And, no offense, but there is a massive difference in calibre between a Stanford/Cal/MIT/T10 CS program (they tend to have 2-4% acceptance rates to either the college or the CS department) and other programs. This doesn't mean that there aren't high calibre candidates at non-T10 programs (I've known plenty of successful SJSU, CUNY, UMinn, etc founders, EMs, SWEs, PMs, and yes even a couple angels and VCs), but it seems that you have a chip on your back.
> Like what do these kids with literally no experience running or starting anything know about companies
A lot HAVE tried starting something or are in the process of starting a company. Most VC Analysts are hired explicitly so when those Analysts hit the 2 year mark, they can start their own startup.
Yes and no. Ability to enter a selective school sorts people based on a specific collection of attributes. Those certainly include intelligence and execution ability. But they also include the ability to slavishly follow rules and optimize ones' life to a specific college acceptance formula between the ages of 14-18. (Being at least reasonably wealthy and having educated parents helps too!) The cost is that this approach filters out a lot of extremely brilliant, creative people who don't want to "slavishly follow the formula", or just have normal teenage problems with authority.
Does a low acceptance rate necessarily say anything about the calibre of the students? These schools can be filtering for a great many things that have nothing to do with intelligence or competence. Legacy admissions as an obvious example.
Majority of the T10 CS programs have deprecated legacy admissions. Most are public universities.
> These schools can be filtering for a great many things
The de facto bare minimum you need to get into a BSCS at UIUC, UCB, or CMU is a high (3.8+ out for 4) GPA and a high SAT/ACT (1500+ or 34+).
In reality, these are minimums, and most applicants have taken college level CS courses in high school either at your local flagship or community college, taken 6 or more AP classes, and have a fairly robust roster and background in Extracurriculars like sports, non profits, and even a couple founders. One of my peers at my undergrad literally sold his bootstrapped company for $1m while he was in high school and he was from Cincinnati.
The point is, because admissions are so rigorous, you end up with very prepared students who already know the ins and outs of the major and industry they are targeting, and as such are able to hit the road running (getting internships in their freshman summer, participating in research from freshman year, graduating early or accelerating MS admissions).
If I need to take a financial bet on someone (which is what VC and hiring is), I can justify my choice based on the data provided above.
This does NOT mean that life ends at college. I know a lot of T10 grads who did dick (no internships, minimal research) and probably would have been better off going to another school or another program. I also know and am friends with plenty of people who went to non-T10 programs who had an AMAZING career trajectory because of how driven and hard working they were.
That said, your credentials are very important - having a successful academic and professional career will open plenty of doors.
> (they tend to have 2-4% acceptance rates to either the college or the CS department)
This leads me to a broader question: What does their acceptance rate of high schoolers have to do with anything? We're always using that as some kind of proxy, but high schoolers (even the top ones) don't know much...
They probably meant universities (bachelor or masters program), but yeah I agree with you. People place way too much faith in institutions and take it as universal endorsement of ability, meanwhile many competent people are "misfits" that have all the brains and ability but can't stand the rules and mind games of these institutions; and those accepted are not significantly better than the ones below the acceptance line.
Nope. I meant departments. The T10 programs handle CS admissions at the College (Engineering) and Department level.
When you apply for a BS EECS at Cal or BSCS at CMU, it is the CS department (or School of Computer Science) that handles the entire application review process.
Only more traditional LACs (the kinds modeled after Harvard College or Dartmouth College) put all applicants in the same bucket.
I think we agree, my point was that you are not talking about high school (15-19 year old children where I live).
But now I see that their reply could also mean that the people are highschoolers at the time they are applying. I understood it as acceptance to high school itself.
> Nope. I meant departments. The T10 programs handle CS admissions at the College (Engineering) and Department level.
Stanford at least doesn't for undergrads. Admissions is handled at the university level and you're encouraged not to even declare a major (CS included) until after your freshman year when you've had a chance to explore options for a major.
Stanford is a more traditional LAC though, so falls under your last paragraph.
I'm sorry but your quality as a student does not qualify you to advise companies on how they should be growing given that they have no experience seeing how a company grows...
Would you be ok with a undergrad with no more experience than a single internship coming in and dictating how your Engineering Org should be run? Or generally writing blog posts about how to be a great engineer when they have probably never seen a great engineer let alone become one themselves?
