College 101
Why You Need to Friend Network (Geeks of a Feather Flock Together) Article Type: Quick and Dirty
Yes, geeks of a feather... flock (or code) together.
Yahoo. Google. Facebook. It wasn't just the founders who made bank. It was the close friends, dorm-mates, section-mates, and other friends of the founders who were recruited early to come work for them in return for a very small salary plus stock options.... Those options ended up being worth millions for many; even billions for a few.;
Being smart and talented is... good. But being smart and talented when nobody knows you're good, or even knows who you are really ruins the notion of “good.” Imagine if Tiger Woods had all his great golf skills but only ever played golf by himself in some remote country on earth. Would he still be considered “good,” let alone great as a golfer?
People like patterns; they like familiar things. Personal relationships are the anchor when selecting a team or really doing any hiring into a given group at a company. And companies with high levels of ambiguity need all the more certainty in the comfort of a good set of personal relationships... because in complex product creation, the company starts out thinking it’s driving to Seattle, only to find that the city was nuked by a competitor and now they have to quickly drive to Chicago… change of plans.
Good personal relationships allow the company to pivot talent efforts quickly and the company lives to fight another day.
Aside from professional reasons, there are a plethora of benefits to being social in college. To have fun… purely for the sake of having fun, to have a wingman, to line up your best man or maid of honor for your not-so-far-away wedding, or to be able to go to your 50th reunion and reminisce about those amazing days you had in college. So study, but be prepared to have the time of your life.