Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was at an Ivy starting 2002, and everyone my freshman year knew what’s up, even the middle class ones. And Internet was already a thing then.

+100

Same here. Graduated from HYP in 2006.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thread has obviously moved on from OP’s specific situation to a general conversation about what information sharing looked like in the late 90s when it came to the job hunt.

I’m a millennial who will concede that the Internet wasn’t as helpful back in the late 90s. It was immensely helpful to me in the late aughts. But I haven’t seen anyone answer the question of whether or not they noticed tons of kids (juniors in the spring, seniors in the fall) interviewing en masse at all there big employers. Was OCR not a thing in the 90s? Even when I was in school, my top 10 university frequently boasted about how many of its students went to Goldman or JP Morgan, McKinsey or Bain, Harvard Law or Stanford Med. Were they not doing that either in the 90s? Genuinely curious.

Those jobs are all pyramid schemes. For everyone who starts around 10% are there 10 years later...

PP. 100%. And even those that make partner don’t have a guarantee that they’ll have their jobs forever. You build the book or you get cut.

But! Those jobs are great credentials and springboards. I knew several kids who did banking > PE/hedge fund. Or people who did Big Law > in house at a well paying company. That’s why I’m always perplexed when people deride people for taking them because they “only care about money”. Money is a factor no doubt, but those jobs open amazing doors and opportunities. They create a high floor - that’s the real value in doing those jobs for a few years out of school.

Yet another thing UMC student might know, but for someone who had first heard of investment banking AT THE JOB FAIR, probably not on their radar. The only banker I knew gave us a toaster for opening an account.

PP. I was a MC kid of color who learned this freshman/sophomore year attending job fairs and speaking with other students. Again, in the aughts, but the information was there if you were willing to be proactive. (I heard kids in class talking about it and I wasn't even an econ major. That's how pervasive these jobs were at my UG.)

Perhaps it was different in the 90s. I definitely made my fair share of mistakes navigating this UMC world, but this was definitely knowable in the 2000s forward.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thread has obviously moved on from OP’s specific situation to a general conversation about what information sharing looked like in the late 90s when it came to the job hunt.

I’m a millennial who will concede that the Internet wasn’t as helpful back in the late 90s. It was immensely helpful to me in the late aughts. But I haven’t seen anyone answer the question of whether or not they noticed tons of kids (juniors in the spring, seniors in the fall) interviewing en masse at all there big employers. Was OCR not a thing in the 90s? Even when I was in school, my top 10 university frequently boasted about how many of its students went to Goldman or JP Morgan, McKinsey or Bain, Harvard Law or Stanford Med. Were they not doing that either in the 90s? Genuinely curious.

Those jobs are all pyramid schemes. For everyone who starts around 10% are there 10 years later...

PP. 100%. And even those that make partner don’t have a guarantee that they’ll have their jobs forever. You build the book or you get cut.

But! Those jobs are great credentials and springboards. I knew several kids who did banking > PE/hedge fund. Or people who did Big Law > in house at a well paying company. That’s why I’m always perplexed when people deride people for taking them because they “only care about money”. Money is a factor no doubt, but those jobs open amazing doors and opportunities. They create a high floor - that’s the real value in doing those jobs for a few years out of school.

Yet another thing UMC student might know, but for someone who had first heard of investment banking AT THE JOB FAIR, probably not on their radar. The only banker I knew gave us a toaster for opening an account.

PP. I was a MC kid of color who learned this freshman/sophomore year attending job fairs and speaking with other students. Again, in the aughts, but the information was there if you were willing to be proactive. (I heard kids in class talking about it and I wasn't even an econ major. That's how pervasive these jobs were at my UG.)

Perhaps it was different in the 90s. I definitely made my fair share of mistakes navigating this UMC world, but this was definitely knowable in the 2000s forward.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thread has obviously moved on from OP’s specific situation to a general conversation about what information sharing looked like in the late 90s when it came to the job hunt.

I’m a millennial who will concede that the Internet wasn’t as helpful back in the late 90s. It was immensely helpful to me in the late aughts. But I haven’t seen anyone answer the question of whether or not they noticed tons of kids (juniors in the spring, seniors in the fall) interviewing en masse at all there big employers. Was OCR not a thing in the 90s? Even when I was in school, my top 10 university frequently boasted about how many of its students went to Goldman or JP Morgan, McKinsey or Bain, Harvard Law or Stanford Med. Were they not doing that either in the 90s? Genuinely curious.

Those jobs are all pyramid schemes. For everyone who starts around 10% are there 10 years later...

PP. 100%. And even those that make partner don’t have a guarantee that they’ll have their jobs forever. You build the book or you get cut.

But! Those jobs are great credentials and springboards. I knew several kids who did banking > PE/hedge fund. Or people who did Big Law > in house at a well paying company. That’s why I’m always perplexed when people deride people for taking them because they “only care about money”. Money is a factor no doubt, but those jobs open amazing doors and opportunities. They create a high floor - that’s the real value in doing those jobs for a few years out of school.

Yet another thing UMC student might know, but for someone who had first heard of investment banking AT THE JOB FAIR, probably not on their radar. The only banker I knew gave us a toaster for opening an account.

Anonymous wrote:On campus recruiting. It’s a fairly formal process where students drop their resumes and firms fly out teams of people to conduct interviews on campus. (For example, when I was in college, all the banks interviewed over a week or two. So you would see students in class in suits as they had interviews in between classes.)

Top candidates are then flown to the home office for a second round of interviews, typically lasting a day. Successful candidates then get an offer whether it’s for an internship or a Ft job.

In some industries (banking, consulting, law), you have to get the summer internship to get the job. It’s nearly impossible to just interview in your last year as nearly all spots have been filled.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thread has obviously moved on from OP’s specific situation to a general conversation about what information sharing looked like in the late 90s when it came to the job hunt.

I’m a millennial who will concede that the Internet wasn’t as helpful back in the late 90s. It was immensely helpful to me in the late aughts. But I haven’t seen anyone answer the question of whether or not they noticed tons of kids (juniors in the spring, seniors in the fall) interviewing en masse at all there big employers. Was OCR not a thing in the 90s? Even when I was in school, my top 10 university frequently boasted about how many of its students went to Goldman or JP Morgan, McKinsey or Bain, Harvard Law or Stanford Med. Were they not doing that either in the 90s? Genuinely curious.

Those jobs are all pyramid schemes. For everyone who starts around 10% are there 10 years later...

PP. 100%. And even those that make partner don’t have a guarantee that they’ll have their jobs forever. You build the book or you get cut.

But! Those jobs are great credentials and springboards. I knew several kids who did banking > PE/hedge fund. Or people who did Big Law > in house at a well paying company. That’s why I’m always perplexed when people deride people for taking them because they “only care about money”. Money is a factor no doubt, but those jobs open amazing doors and opportunities. They create a high floor - that’s the real value in doing those jobs for a few years out of school.

Anonymous wrote:On campus recruiting. It’s a fairly formal process where students drop their resumes and firms fly out teams of people to conduct interviews on campus. (For example, when I was in college, all the banks interviewed over a week or two. So you would see students in class in suits as they had interviews in between classes.)

Top candidates are then flown to the home office for a second round of interviews, typically lasting a day. Successful candidates then get an offer whether it’s for an internship or a Ft job.

In some industries (banking, consulting, law), you have to get the summer internship to get the job. It’s nearly impossible to just interview in your last year as nearly all spots have been filled.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thread has obviously moved on from OP’s specific situation to a general conversation about what information sharing looked like in the late 90s when it came to the job hunt.

I’m a millennial who will concede that the Internet wasn’t as helpful back in the late 90s. It was immensely helpful to me in the late aughts. But I haven’t seen anyone answer the question of whether or not they noticed tons of kids (juniors in the spring, seniors in the fall) interviewing en masse at all there big employers. Was OCR not a thing in the 90s? Even when I was in school, my top 10 university frequently boasted about how many of its students went to Goldman or JP Morgan, McKinsey or Bain, Harvard Law or Stanford Med. Were they not doing that either in the 90s? Genuinely curious.

Those jobs are all pyramid schemes. For everyone who starts around 10% are there 10 years later...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thread has obviously moved on from OP’s specific situation to a general conversation about what information sharing looked like in the late 90s when it came to the job hunt.

I’m a millennial who will concede that the Internet wasn’t as helpful back in the late 90s. It was immensely helpful to me in the late aughts. But I haven’t seen anyone answer the question of whether or not they noticed tons of kids (juniors in the spring, seniors in the fall) interviewing en masse at all there big employers. Was OCR not a thing in the 90s? Even when I was in school, my top 10 university frequently boasted about how many of its students went to Goldman or JP Morgan, McKinsey or Bain, Harvard Law or Stanford Med. Were they not doing that either in the 90s? Genuinely curious.

It wasn’t about which jobs made the “most money”.

It was about how to have even a modest UMC lifestyle in urban areas required a job like that. Simply being a professional was in no way a path to a comfortable life

For me, I wasn’t interested in being rich, I wanted to have a comfortable life in a better place than the backwater I grew up, and I thought working in most professional careers would afford that. I was wrong. You have to be laser focused on maximizing income, networking, and considering employee prestige as a stepping stone to future career paths.

The people going into Bain and Goldman literally idolized Gordon Gecko; I was more interested in being living like Family Ties — whose dad was a manager at the local PBS station! Sure being a doctor or lawyer is less about the Benjamin’s, but for many of us the debt was a showstopper (some PP keeps saying working class asians go to med school all the time, but I know a LOT of Asian doctors and all of them had doctors for parents OR they owned a successful chain of stores — none were working class, maybe they arrived as working class but at the time med school came around it was different).

It wasn’t just “which careers paid the most money” — it was HOW much more money they paid down the full career path (I knew folks hired by Goldman making $100k ; my bio contracting gig was paying $50k — didn’t seem like huge difference, but of course subsequent years it’s laughable how it diverges). More importantly, the knowledge of how expensive that Keaton lifestyle really was (no Zillow yet, no online shopping, car guides were going to library for KBB), that was the real knowledge I was missing. I thought if I just got a professional job and worked hard, I could live okay. I’m leagues better off than my parents even before considering my spouses income, so there is that. But I realize now how I could have allowed my spouse to retire early, funded my children’s future, if I had just made a few different choices.

Anonymous wrote:The thread has obviously moved on from OP’s specific situation to a general conversation about what information sharing looked like in the late 90s when it came to the job hunt.

I’m a millennial who will concede that the Internet wasn’t as helpful back in the late 90s. It was immensely helpful to me in the late aughts. But I haven’t seen anyone answer the question of whether or not they noticed tons of kids (juniors in the spring, seniors in the fall) interviewing en masse at all there big employers. Was OCR not a thing in the 90s? Even when I was in school, my top 10 university frequently boasted about how many of its students went to Goldman or JP Morgan, McKinsey or Bain, Harvard Law or Stanford Med. Were they not doing that either in the 90s? Genuinely curious.

Anonymous wrote:The thread has obviously moved on from OP’s specific situation to a general conversation about what information sharing looked like in the late 90s when it came to the job hunt.

I’m a millennial who will concede that the Internet wasn’t as helpful back in the late 90s. It was immensely helpful to me in the late aughts. But I haven’t seen anyone answer the question of whether or not they noticed tons of kids (juniors in the spring, seniors in the fall) interviewing en masse at all there big employers. Was OCR not a thing in the 90s? Even when I was in school, my top 10 university frequently boasted about how many of its students went to Goldman or JP Morgan, McKinsey or Bain, Harvard Law or Stanford Med. Were they not doing that either in the 90s? Genuinely curious.

Anonymous wrote:The thread has obviously moved on from OP’s specific situation to a general conversation about what information sharing looked like in the late 90s when it came to the job hunt.

I’m a millennial who will concede that the Internet wasn’t as helpful back in the late 90s. It was immensely helpful to me in the late aughts. But I haven’t seen anyone answer the question of whether or not they noticed tons of kids (juniors in the spring, seniors in the fall) interviewing en masse at all there big employers. Was OCR not a thing in the 90s? Even when I was in school, my top 10 university frequently boasted about how many of its students went to Goldman or JP Morgan, McKinsey or Bain, Harvard Law or Stanford Med. Were they not doing that either in the 90s? Genuinely curious.