The extended West Wing example is funny to me, because I don't really see how you can look at the culture that The West Wing inspired and conclude that this resulted in high quality hires. Faith in the basic mechanics of Washington D.C. institutions is at such a low ebb this country not only elected Trump once, it just did it again. White House staffers under Biden had such a high opinion of themselves and their own cleverness they didn't even see any ethical problems, let alone efficacious ones, with hiding his senility.
I think in general you make interesting points here about how non-financial compensation is undervalued in terms of the people you actually want in an organization. But "prestige" is just as useless as greenbacks in this context, because it's something everyone wants for reasons that aren't connected to producing actual quality work. You're going to get the exact same resume padders who care less about what they're doing and more about what they're marketing.
Thanks for this engaging with the post and for this thoughtful comment!
I hadn't thought about the hiding senility (to the extent senility was hidden)/hiding MS parallel -- that's actually quite remarkable. But then again, I am unsure how much of the blame can be attributed to West Wing.
I agree that bare prestige can lure highly competent as well as more mediocre applicants. A distinctive culture would be a stronger compensation discrimination strategy. However, I think that as an employer, you can target *which* employee demographics you're prestigious to. OpenAI and DeepMind are generally prestigious to CS students. But Cohere, Hugging Face, Mistral, and Flatiron Institute are only dimly notable to even most CS students, despite being highly prestigious to the students those companies would be interested in hiring. Similar for FAANG versus Stripe, Replit, and Waymo.
The extended West Wing example is funny to me, because I don't really see how you can look at the culture that The West Wing inspired and conclude that this resulted in high quality hires. Faith in the basic mechanics of Washington D.C. institutions is at such a low ebb this country not only elected Trump once, it just did it again. White House staffers under Biden had such a high opinion of themselves and their own cleverness they didn't even see any ethical problems, let alone efficacious ones, with hiding his senility.
I think in general you make interesting points here about how non-financial compensation is undervalued in terms of the people you actually want in an organization. But "prestige" is just as useless as greenbacks in this context, because it's something everyone wants for reasons that aren't connected to producing actual quality work. You're going to get the exact same resume padders who care less about what they're doing and more about what they're marketing.
Thanks for this engaging with the post and for this thoughtful comment!
I hadn't thought about the hiding senility (to the extent senility was hidden)/hiding MS parallel -- that's actually quite remarkable. But then again, I am unsure how much of the blame can be attributed to West Wing.
I agree that bare prestige can lure highly competent as well as more mediocre applicants. A distinctive culture would be a stronger compensation discrimination strategy. However, I think that as an employer, you can target *which* employee demographics you're prestigious to. OpenAI and DeepMind are generally prestigious to CS students. But Cohere, Hugging Face, Mistral, and Flatiron Institute are only dimly notable to even most CS students, despite being highly prestigious to the students those companies would be interested in hiring. Similar for FAANG versus Stripe, Replit, and Waymo.
What movie would do the most good by making a position prestigious, allowing the area to have lower hiring costs?
Positive, optimistic, badass use of biotechnology for eg anti-aging?
An economist saves the day? I’ve seen a linguist save the day.
Holden Karnofsky has an idea about a TV show to make immigration-friendliness prestigious: https://www.cold-takes.com/tv-shows-i-wish-i-could-watch-intergalactic-immigration-wars/