Is harvard engineering (Biomedical especially) famous?

sakky
Mon, 24 Oct 2005 04:17:35 +0000

As I mentioned before, they would laugh at those who choose Harvard over Purdue for graduate study in engineering because they look down on such attitude, not because of their better-off position. You may have your opinion on why those engineering students chose Harvard while others may have theirs. Look, you are entitled to argue why choosing Harvard over Purdue/Michigan is not a bad choice, but it is the fact that some people who laugh at this decision (based on their own reasonings) do exist, whereas nobody laughs at those who choose Princeton over Cornell for CS. Why?



Yeah because the people doing the laughing are jerks. I already explained this.



Comparing Michigan vs. Harvard for graduate engineering is like comparing Cornell vs. Yale for CS. No, it is not fairly close. It is far and away.



If that’s really true, then there’s no reason to laugh. So why laugh?



Are you kidding me with this example? What is the previous position that Rosing held before Google recruited him? a bum? Do you think Google would have recruited him if he was just a fresh high school grad? And what he’s hired for? Core search engine design? Hey, your position and company matter much much more than your alma mater once you start working. But these fresh PhD grads may not have anything to prove beside their PhD theses. Furthermore, in engineering PhD thesis matter more than anything else for employability, a criterion which put many Harvard engineering PhD at disadvantage. On the average, I would argue that Michigan grads in engineering are more marketable than Harvard grads (for graduate level). I don’t have hard data on this, but it’s just a personal judgement based on my exposure in engineering field.



Look, I already said that I believe that Michigan grad engineers are better than Harvard grad engineers. When did I say otherwise? So what are we arguing about?

What I am asking is why should people feel the need to laugh? Again, if the Michigan grad engineer is really better off than the Harvard grad engineer, then he should feel no reason to laugh. Like I said, to me, laughter is really a sign of lack of confidence. If you’re sure that you’re in a better position than somebody else, then you should not have to laugh at them. Do rich people go to the ghetto to laugh at poor people? I don’t think so. Rich people already know that they have a better life than poor people do, so what’s the point of laughing?

And take Wayne Rosing. Sure he got experience before. A lot of it, specifically at Sun and then at Apple. But how? He didn’t have a degree back then just like he doesn’t have a degree now. So how was he able to get hired at Apple in the very beginning? Why didn’t Apple just look at his lack of degree and laugh at him and throw his application away? Here you are saying that people with Harvard grad eng degrees won’t be hired over people with Michigan grad engineering degrees, yet in the past, Rosing got hired with no degree at all. Explain that. Was Apple being stupid?



What matter is whether you get the job or not. You never know if he’s a jerk or not.



And how long do you really think a guy who is a jerk is going to last in a management position anyway? I would argue not very long. And he’s certainly going to lose out on key talent.

For example, if that same jerk was working at Apple, he probably would have refused to hire Wayne Rosing. Rosing would have then worked for somebody else. Believe me, there are PLENTY of brilliant high-tech employees with degrees from only mediocre schools, or no degree at all. Larry Ellison got his start at Ampex despite having no degree. Bill Gates and Paul Allen used to work at Honeywell part-time despite having no degrees at the time (and still not having any). After dropping out of Reed College, Steve Jobs got hired at Atari, and after dropping out of Berkeley, Steve Wozniak got hired at Honeywell. Were Atari and Honeywell stupid to have hired these guys with no degrees?



You have any link on that? I thought that only those with high management positions at CityGroup may make over 500k. I’m not familiar with the management hirearchy in investment banking, but 3-5 years is typically enough to become principal engineers in engineering and this position is generally not yet regarded as a management position. Make sure you compare orange with orange



3-5 years to become a principal engineer? I don’t know about that. That would make you 25-28. Most engineers of that age are nowhere even close to being a principal engineer making 150k. Heck, I know plenty of engineers who are twice that age (and thus have ~30 years of experience) who are still not making 150k.

Since you wanted links, you got 'em.

http://www.careers-in-finance.com/ibsal.htm

As you say, you want an apples-to-apples comparison. So think about an engineer with an MBA, doing tech management. How many of them have a shot at making the kind of money that a similar bulge-bracket banker can?



This logic is very wrong. Management consulting jobs on the average require higher qualifications and work hours. This is why they’re ‘better’ than typical average engineering jobs. Lawyers and doctors on the average make much more money than engineers does this mean that it’s a better path than engineering too? The fact is that average lawyers, doctors, and i-bankers have better qualifications than average engineers. It’s not about the profession, it’s about the quality of the person. How about taking Larry Page, Gordon Moore, or Kai-Fu Lee as an example, wouldn’t you then say engineering paths that they chose are more rewarding.



Moore and Page, yes. But Lee? No. Is he a billionaire? I don’t think so.

Moore and Page had great careers not because they were engineers, but because they were ENTREPRENEURS. Moore didn’t just rise out of the realms of engineering. His great move was that he was one of the so-called Traitorous Eight that left Shockley Semiconductor to found Fairchild and then left Fairchild to found Intel. If he had stayed at Shockley, do you really think he’d be a billionaire?

I have always agreed that being an entrepreneur is a great way to go. But that’s a far cry from saying that you want to be an engineer. The question is, if you don’t have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and you have the choice to work as a banker or an engineer, what would you do?

Think of it this way. Like I said, plenty of MIT and STanford engineers get offers to be bankers and consultants (and get into law/med school or whatever). Many of them take those offers instead of becoming engineers. Not all, but many. You’re saying that it doesn’t really matter because these people are ‘better’ than the average engineer, so they would enjoy success either way they go. Are you really sure about that?

Look, the truth is that it is strongly perceived that those other career paths give you greater room to shine. A star investment banker/consultant tends to have more opportunities than a star engineer. Even if that’s not true in reality, the perception of it is out there. That’s why lots of elite engineers tend to drop engineering in favor of banking/consulting.