Indian Startups: The Elitist Playground No One Wants to Talk About
Startups sell the dream of "meritocracy," but let’s call bullshit. The reality? It’s a closed network where pedigree trumps performance. I’ve seen brilliant people grind twice as hard only to watch IIT/IIM grads waltz into leadership roles—often while doing the bare minimum.
The worst part? Even private college founders and hiring managers play along, desperate for that "premium" tag. The bias isn’t just institutional; it’s cultural. The "right" accent, the "right" brand on your resume, and suddenly, mediocrity gets a free pass. Meanwhile, the rest of us fight for scraps—slower growth, smaller salaries, and zero recognition.
So what’s the fix? Keep playing their game and hope for crumbs? Or start flipping the script—hire, promote, and bet on the undervalued talent they ignore?
If we don’t call this out, nothing changes. And right now, change is long overdue.
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Solution is switch to country where these colleges are not recognised😅, I made this decision when I started my career, currently in UAE(same distance as Bangalore from delhi) getting 75lpa package, 4+ experience. BTW I’m from LPU.
Agree. I saw it first hand at IIMA, no real learning everyone grinding just for the degree and "pedigree". Called it quits. That day I understood its just a network game. Best way is to prove your worth in the free market as an entrepreneur of some kind.
What about ex faang tag? Does that have value?
Plays a role, I would say. Point being?
Is it just me or is anyone else tired of posts that reeks of llm formatting? I'm not talking about the content but the writing style. It's so similar to chatgpt. OP do you talk to chatgpt a lot and it's starting to influence your writing or did you just write this using gpt?
On the content, well nothing new here. Pedigree matters, network matters. True meritocracy never existed and most probably never will. At least in this case the people who got into these institutions are somewhat meritorious - they didn't get in because of daddy money (although the resources they got to prepare for these exams is some amount of privilege)
We are living on a wave of LLMs. Yes, it uses a LLM for formatting. What's the issue? It doesn't creates thoughts. You should give it a try. If you are from IIM/IIT and you commented because of that, it kind of proves my point. Instead of having a knowledge of the thing which is colloquial in everything we do, you are not only off-topic, presumptuous but you are outdated too.
PS - This was completely written on my Android phone by manual typing.😉
Lmao a person complains about the content written with GPT and you straight up assume he’s from tier 1 college and then started attacking based on that assumption. Hilarious!
His answer is from a realistic POV. I agree true meritocracy doesn’t exist never will.
OP, if you post something at least have the balls to listen to an opinion that doesn’t 100% overlap with yours and talk with some reason?
The problem is women workforce is too afraid to lose jobs and end up working like slaves which inturn doesn’t provide men with leverage to control and strike, if people start being flexible and switch job frequently, people can get better pay eventually.
i got your point but my experience says its people and not women
Product companies. I have worked in 3 product conpanies and I have not worked under any leader/tl/director who were from iit. Very few were there
But, how many of them were worthy of being called a leader, vice-president, director?
After listening to the new age Internet people of that time(I mean YouTubers, News, Fake motivators), I believed this thing after school or during early college days that the age of "Premium tag" is gone, but after grinding in the real world, I realised it is all bulshit. It cost me a lot but now maybe I will play by the rules that exist.
the "premium tag" has no real value anymore tbh. even the alumni network doesn't help much. most of them, who are not from cs/circuital branches are not able to secure jobs even via campus placements. still better than other folks ig
And I heard someone barking that there no reservation in private sector...
You DMed that to me last year. But what's the correlation here? LLM can help understand