I was on a team trying to setup a spinout company in Australia of all places. My corporate overlords built a team, boy band style, to go investigate the market with a minimum product, really experienced people who had seen and done a lot. About half the team was on their second career after retiring out of their first, but all were brilliant. I think we added it up and there was something like 170 years of experience in my small group (I was by far the junior person on the team).
During the sit down on the marketing meeting a new person was introduced to the team (not unusual). They came up to the group and was obviously another senior, experienced addition to the group, hopefully with a long and interesting career behind them.
They walked up to the front of the group and introduced themselves, "Hi I'm <name>, I went to Yale" and sat down at the table and proceeded to offer nothing of any substance over the next 8 weeks until they were quietly asked to go "contribute" their Yale credentials somewhere else.
I've been hit with every kind of credential wagging since then, "When I was at McKinsey..."* or "When I went to Harvard..."+ are usually immediate signs of an immensely useless person and I go out of my way to avoid them. It's actually kind of pathetic.
The best people I've ever met actually seemed a bit shy about notable credentials in their past and it wasn't until after months of probing that I could finally learn about some cool job or notable place they went to school.
As an interesting side anecdote, I just spent the last 6 months living in Kenya with the same kind of Harvard / McKinsey style crowd except in the social enterprise / NGO space.
As someone who was coming from a very different background to a lot of these people, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect.
While I would be the first to admit that things are less than perfect in a number of ways, generally speaking the people I met and eventually ended up consulting for couldn't possibly be much further from some of the personalities described in a number of the comments here.
Overall I was super impressed with the humility, the intelligence and the general standard that I saw in a lot of these people.
Then again, there is a world of difference between someone who chooses to live on next to nothing in a 3rd world country where they are there primarily to help others and the types described in the article.
Thanks for the counter-anecdote. I've met so many people who start the conversation off with a credential drop and then turn out to be useless oxygen thieves that I forget that there really are some smart dedicated people out there with the same kinds of top-tier credentials as attributes who do good work.
As I understood it, it's not the credentials per se you have the problem with, it's the way people bring them up. You two might be talking about different kinds of people.
Interestingly, it's a social red flag in Australia to brag about your history by name-dropping. I gather your team wasn't Australian at all, but I can't ever imagine a local name-dropping in the same way and getting anywhere with it. Possibly name-dropping in terms of "I worked with Dr Famous", which would be uncommon but accepted in the right crowds, but not for institutions. It's part meritocracy, part preferring the underdog, and part tall-poppy syndrome that keeps people quiet, I guess...
During the sit down on the marketing meeting a new person was introduced to the team (not unusual). They came up to the group and was obviously another senior, experienced addition to the group, hopefully with a long and interesting career behind them.
They walked up to the front of the group and introduced themselves, "Hi I'm <name>, I went to Yale" and sat down at the table and proceeded to offer nothing of any substance over the next 8 weeks until they were quietly asked to go "contribute" their Yale credentials somewhere else.
I've been hit with every kind of credential wagging since then, "When I was at McKinsey..."* or "When I went to Harvard..."+ are usually immediate signs of an immensely useless person and I go out of my way to avoid them. It's actually kind of pathetic.
The best people I've ever met actually seemed a bit shy about notable credentials in their past and it wasn't until after months of probing that I could finally learn about some cool job or notable place they went to school.
* I wrote this before reading the article
+ seriously, it's like a cliche