If you asked me about my working life, I would tell you that I’ve worked at the Financial Times for a quarter of a century. If pressed further, I might reveal (depending on who was asking) that long ago I worked briefly for JPMorgan. I might also add that I went to Oxford university.
When I meet other people I am always vaguely curious to know where they have worked and, to a lesser extent, where they have studied. To have been a consultant at Bain means something different to having been one at ?WhatIf!. Equally, Yale means something different to Tuskegee. Such details aren’t everything, but they’re a start.
Yet according to a blog on the Harvard Business Review website, this sort of institutional name-dropping is not only vain and superficial, it has outlived its usefulness. Daniel Gulati, a high-tech entrepreneur, argues that prestige simply isn’t as prestigious as it used to be.