Elitism, education, and high school drop outs

[noamnety]

7. Interesting questions

1. Sounds like he was qualified technically to do the work, or he wouldn't have gotten/kept the job and got promoted to that level. That's a common thing in the computer world, though. My dad was a second level manager at IBM, worked his way up from the mail room, taught himself programming, etc. He did finish high school, but I don't think he finished even the first year of college.

2. On his ability to keep confidentiality, obviously no, he didn't do that. But I don't believe that's related to having a high school diploma. The only way I could maybe see a connection is that to be really successful in high school, maybe you need to be able to go along with the crowd, obey authority, not question things too much - and someone who is capable of the work but opts to go down a different path has a propensity toward thinking outside the box, which might have a correlation to becoming a whistleblower or spy (depending on which way you define him).

3. His skills were used for the job initially, I assume - and ultimately to further his ideals. Most people probably aspire to a job where those two things match. I'm a little stumped on that because I do think checks and balances rely on people being able to stand up for their ideals even when it's not in the best interest of their employer. The situation with police comes to mind, where the best thing for a department is for a cop to cover for another cop, so the community maintains trust. But the best thing for the citizen who is victimized by another cop is for one of them to come forward.