There's a much bigger insight here.

High-flying companies in SV have become another form of cover-your-ass pedigree that allows the entire management chain to pass the buck on hiring decisions. I see this at the lowest level from IC engineering hires up to the CEO. Hiring someone/investing in their company/putting them in any position of trust, after they've been "minted" at the successful big company is "safe"; it hardly matters what the person did, or what results they achieved, just that it's "on their resume". Whereas hiring someone from a scrappy startup that worked their ass off and executed but wasn't in a position to influence strategy will be branded a "loser" and in a much worse position to get hired vs. the safe bigco candidate.

This is really a big problem/opportunity, and it's all down to our inability to measure/attribute individual performance in a team setting. But it does make you wonder, from a career-planning perspective, should I optimize for "name" or actual learning? Should we all follow Sandberg's advice and just "Get on a rocket ship" and "let our careers take care of themselves" even if the company is already on a breakout trajectory before we got there? As someone who's spent a lot of time optimizing for actual learning, I'm starting to think it's the losing strategy, but then, all my friends work for big companies like Apple / facebook / google, so maybe their influence is just rubbing off on me.

You can be or you can do. Right now we're in a phase (with lots of cheap money) where it's better to be.

When the money becomes harder to scratch out it'll be better to be able to do.

I like this quote by John Boyd, who wrote the book on aerial combat.

“Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road,” he said. “And you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.” He raised his hand and pointed.

“If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.”

Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed another direction. “Or you can go that way and you can do something – something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference.”

He paused and stared into the officer’s eyes and heart. “To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do. Which way will you go?"

What will cause the cheap money to end?

From where I'm sitting, I see zero inflation, a federal reserve that's happy to keep buying assets to stimulate growth, a sluggish economic recovery that's led to 1-2% growth in the US, meanwhile 50% growth in aggregate household nominal wealth since 2010 (that's from the fed's survey of consumer finances) so everyone with home equity and stocks feels rich, and bigger-than-ever VC fundraising from LPs.

I'm gonna get back to work now, but, as much as I'd like this phase of ZIRP-driven asset price inflation and general ethos of cheap money/greed to end, I just really don't see it, at least not in the next 10 years. Please, tell me I'm wrong, I want to be, I just don't see it.

Well, the growth simulation with fake money leads to sub-optimal decisions in the finance world. I don't think policy change will come from genuine improvement of economic conditions but from let's say Deutche Bank blowing up (or something like that). Let's not forget that apparently there is ~quadrilion dollars worth of derivatives in the wild (it's hard to find reliable info)

I think we see a top in the stock market and asset price inflation in the next 6-12 months. What comes after is sort of TBD.

Eventually we'll have real growth (and likely a lot of inflation with it), but what happens between now and then, how long it takes, how bad it gets, is TBD.

All in my humble opinion.

Both. You shouldn't think in binaries, and should recognize that your career is long and will have many different phases.

When you're young - first couple years out of college, or even while you're in college - it's time to optimize for learning. Maybe that means working at a startup, maybe that means founding one, maybe it just means going to a highly-regarded research university and working on some projects with the professor. If you didn't get into a highly-regarded university, it means picking a topic of interest and studying intently about it on your own.

Eventually at some point, you should get pedigree on your resume. A good university would do this, but so would working at a well-regarded blue chip or fast-grower. And most of them are more than willing to hire out of startups, if you have an interesting project that makes you stand out from the crowd.

Stay at the company as long as it remains interesting, where you're learning new things and developing new skills. Leave when it gets boring. Hopefully you've built up a nice nest egg in the process - big companies pay their high performers very well.

Repeat as necessary.

Very true. Like buying from IBM will never get you fired, neither would hiring from Google (though they may start to change in their case.)

Certainly it's easier to look at education, corporate brand as signaling than to really dive into someone's skills and capacity to be successful.

The worst thing is that I see myself falling into this trap. I get dismissive of people without the right "pedigree", but then I realize it's the worst form of mental laziness.

I wonder whether truly great companies are different. I think that, just like really great investors (Fred Wilson and Michael Seibel, to name two) have said, "just tell me what you're doing in simple language", implicitly saying "I trust my own judgment" (vs. some elaborate dance of social networking/signaling), I suspect hiring at really top-tier companies doesn't turn as much on pedigree as on some measurable element of skill, or actual work performance.

In any case, the people I admire most in this world are the contrarians who have the conviction to act on their beliefs, like the Big Short guys, or Billy Beane from the A's -- but that kind of thinking isn't career-friendly, AT ALL.

I also think Nassim Taleb has the right idea that "skin in the game is a moral imperative". In all cases where people pass the buck, the problem is that their interests (e.g. their own careers) are insufficiently aligned with those of their principals (the firms' investors). You want to really see what works, look at the guys who are playing with their own money (e.g. hedge funds, proprietary traders, closely-held companies), not the pundits on CNN.

> Certainly it's easier to look at education, corporate brand as signaling than to really dive into someone's skills and capacity to be successful.

Even more insidious because it actually works. The "average" Stanford CS major coming out of Google is very good. Your false-positive rate (they're actually not that great) is pretty low. However, your false-negative rate (if you didn't go to Stanford or work at Google, you're crap) is insanely high.

Why is Google hiring? If they're hiring to get someone to do a job, their setup makes sense. (A false positive - a bad hire - can be quite damaging, but a false negative - someone you fail to hire who would have been good - is not damaging at all, if in the end you hire someone good to do the job.)

But if Google is hiring for more than that - say, for what the employee will come up with on their own in their 20% time - then the false negatives could be extremely expensive to Google.

>But if Google is hiring for more than that - say, for what the employee will come up with on their own in their 20% time - then the false negatives could be extremely expensive to Google.

This hiring process, together with internal structure, is exactly why companies eventually stagnate. They hire for compliance and create an environment that values the same. There may be smart people in the organization, but great ideas are not compliant because they require change. This is why consultants and outside agencies are needed to come up with ideas - ideas are not welcome in many environments.

Sure Google and Intel don't have great executives that leave for other companies, if you exclude the really successful ones. /s

It's also incredibly rare for executives to leave these companies in the first place. They are compensated wildly; if they leave, it's usually to retire.

not sure why you feel the need to be sarcastic about this.

Marissa and Armstrong were big names coming out of Google that many would argue flamed out. The fact that Sheryl Sandberg makes what I would consider is a lateral move to another successful company doesn't really come into play.

I'd rather hire the leader from a company with a diverse set of products that was directly accountable for an independent P&L. You don't really get that at Intel as everything is a derivative of x86 and I don't think you get that very much at Google (where the real P&L that matters is still search advertising.)

I can speak specifically to Intel, that execs increasingly don't leave because they lack the necessary experience to go run an independent business. Sometimes they manage to get hired elsewhere and, in most cases, they flame out and either retire or return.

Because your logic is obviously fallacious (e.g. moving the goalposts / excluding contrary evidence).

Mike Markkula was mid level manager at Intel (and Fairchild)