Ask HN: How do some people build their careers so fast?
I was browsing LinkedIn out of curiosity and saw a pattern of people that had timelines that go something like this.
1) Graduated Harvard with degree in [random non-business related major]
2) Worked at [random company] as business analyst for 1 year
3) VP / Director at [multi-billion dollar brand name corporation] for 2 years
4) Seed investor at [unicorn tech company]
I'm just generally curious how people are able to climb like that so quickly. Does anyone know people like this and have some insight into how it happened? Are they just wunderkind that get groomed by billionaires or something?
22 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 95.5 ms ] threadNot to mention that people frequently have parents and build very powerful networks in a institution that all the rich people send their kids to study. I would be actually impressed if they would take any time at all to build their careers.
Instead of focusing on those unicorn people, go get good examples of people for YOU. The ones that perhaps work as hard as you do and have similar outcomes and upbringings, they are the ones that together, you can possibly send your kids to study at Harvard.
The most important lesson I've learned in life is that what matters is how you are viewed and compared to your PEERS, not to how you are compared to someone from a different background than you. It takes a lot of time to build ones career, you will need to fluctuate in many social circles until you finally make it, don't make the mistake that there is a corner to cut.
As the question states, they start with some businessy qualification. You never read about people with engineering degrees achieve that type of rapid career progression.
Harvard claims to cover 100% of financial need for attendees. If the situation is similar to MIT, then this really isn't true.
[1] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/types-aid/scholars...
> they will ask which yatch do you ride before they are even willing to answer your questions.
Yachts are really expensive. Like, stupid expensive in terms of total-cost-of-ownership. From the Harvard people I knew, I really think this is false. They might not want to answer your random questionaire because people get annoyed at being asked about their background all the time, but I'd be very surprised to see someone gatekeeping based on owning something so rare.
You could have ended your reasoning as soon as you wrote this. It is obvious what I said is an exaggeration, but it carries out some truth. Go ask around the people in America itself, outside a city like SF/NY, what do they think about it. I'm not even American. That's not what I see/read about. A country with some big time inequality, with little to none social mobility, possibly the worst social mobility since the country was founded. But no, everybody can get into Ivy League.
I didn't say that. I said that the universities offer scholarships which cover their assessment of financial need. They still have limited slots and are very selective.
> It is obvious what I said is an exaggeration, but it carries out some truth
I genuinely didn't know that you were exaggerating. I thought that was your perception.
We live in a world where lots of things are true in degrees. There is some amount of snobbery at elite US universities and there s some quantity of social mobility. But exaggeration makes it really hard to talk about how much or how little and that quantity matters to understanding the problem.
They are outliers who, if you carefully observed, had got some stroke of beginners luck or an influence that guided them correctly or it could be any of the many advantages of being privileged.
Another is to start a startup and then get acquihired into a large company.
Example of the latter:
Plenty of noobs joined the dev scene in London at its most under supplied. They suck at what they do for 70k/y and drop off like flies, the survivors, but a few years later, become managers / heads of / etc.
They suck at staying overtime regularly, commuting daily 1h one way with an overcrowded train costing an arm and leg, and at bearing the pressure from cocaine ingested manager.
2) Dad wants you to develop the discipline of waking up at 8 every morning and cheerfully greeting your company president
3) [multi billion dollar corp] has 5,000 directors, one just retired, and Dad plays golf with their boss
4) An acquaintance from high school/college bacchanalia with richer, cooler parents that just gave him his trust fund without requiring 1) and 2) is starting his seed fund because he doesn't want to wake up at 8 and play golf with old people, and you were fun enough at parties to make the cut. Plus you know directors at [multi billion dollar corp]!
- Access to a computer lab in high school, something not common at all in the '70s, was making small computer apps before his freshman year
- Attends Harvard, meets Paul Allen (working at Honeywell nearby) and Steve Ballmer (Math + Econ).
- Gets a chance to pitch Basic (or whatever it was) to a higher-up at IBM, since Gates' mom was on the board of United Way and could arrange an introduction.
There's a lot of stuff that goes unsaid in a LinkedIn profile.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624887
In many cases they are super-smart too. That’s optional. More often they’re good at relationships and have a great network.
There's a whole mix of nurture and nature. They don't necessarily have the best upbringing, but some have the ideal amount of bad conditions killing off potential competitors.
Gladwell's book, Outliers, covers all this in detail.