alt Hacker NewsI was responding to this part of your post:
> rather than a symbol of educational attainment.
Your original argument appeared to imply that it was a system designed to separate people by class, not by merit or educational attainment.
In my experience the people who are that selective about university pedigree are either doing it out of laziness (outsourcing selection process to the university filtering mechanism) or they have a degree from that system and believe that hiring people from it will automatically grant them more allies, thereby improving their own power.
> Your original argument appeared to imply that it was a system designed to separate people by class, not by merit or educational attainment.
I guess my core point is that those people you note (and I've met loads of them too) would have been equally smart and educated if they'd gone to a less prestigious university, but conditional on their ability, they'll do better at getting higher status jobs because they went to an Ivy League.
> In my experience the people who are that selective about university pedigree are either doing it out of laziness (outsourcing selection process to the university filtering mechanism)
This was a HR level policy at a really fast growing tech company (Facebook, back in 2013). I remember it because I was so shocked that this was a thing (not being an Ivy League graduate myself).