Who Gets to Land Rockets on Barges? Or: What Determines Your Career Trajectory?

MIT has the highest median mid-career income of any university in the world. Its graduates are among the most economically successful and technically accomplished professionals globally. When you think of MIT alumni, you likely envision innovators, startup founders, and engineers working on breakthrough technologies—the kind of people who help land rockets on barges or develop cutting-edge AI systems.

Yet a closer examination reveals a broad spectrum of outcomes. Some achieve the kinds of results that many would expect: founding transformative companies, leading groundbreaking research teams, or joining elite projects like SpaceX's rocket recovery program. A surprising number plateau early in their careers. Their careers stall in mid-level engineering roles in a corner somewhere. They contribute solid work but never advance to the frontier projects or leadership positions that define exceptional careers. Into their 30s and 40s, their job is just a job. They show up, they execute on what they’re told, they clock out and go home. They are perfectly comfortable and will likely never contribute to a breakthrough.

Both groups are among the smartest people in the world. They went to the same school and learned from the same professors. So what's the difference?

What Sets Great Engineers Apart

You can tell when you work with them, very quickly. The high performers demonstrate an unmistakable ability to get things done, solve complex problems under pressure, work effectively with others, bounce back from failure, and persist through difficult challenges. They often have strong critical thinking, excellent communication skills, and the psychological resilience to operate at the cutting edge of their fields.

They have what researchers identify as high-performance skills: the cognitive, psychological, and interpersonal capabilities that lead to exceptional results in challenging environments¹. 

Those whose careers plateau are just as smart, just as educated, but they lack these capabilities. They tend to be passive and execute on what they’re told to. They often don’t play well with others. They slow down when they hit roadblocks. They feel safer in a fairly straightforward box to execute in; ambiguity is uncomfortable and failure is painful. You can’t put them in situations where they will find a way, figure it out, get the result. They don’t get invited to do the high-stakes work that great careers are built on.

These Two Careers Diverge Dramatically

The long-term consequences of this skills gap are substantial. For MIT graduates, the difference between these two career paths likely amounts to millions of dollars in lifetime earnings. More importantly, this difference determines whether you spend your career working on projects that energize and fulfill you, or whether your relationship with work is one where you sell your time for money. 

Lower-performing MIT graduates tend to have stable employment. High-performing MIT graduates don’t have to apply to jobs; people have seen them deliver results, and those people have standing job offers to these grads. They do not ask for promotions; those are offered. VCs show up with money. High-performers deliver great results with panache, and those who want to take on the world’s biggest challenges see these results and actively seek out the performers. That is how a great career is built.

Top companies recognize this. They actively recruit for these skills, designing interview processes that test candidates' ability to solve problems, work in teams, and handle pressure. Venture capitalists look for these traits in founders. The most selective organizations use project-based evaluations and team challenges specifically to identify candidates who possess these capabilities. 

When you want to figure out how to land a rocket on a barge, you find these people and build a team of them. No credential, logo, or score will secure a ticket to ride.

This applies just as well to grads of any school – grads of UIUC, RPI, Georgia Tech outperform many MIT graduates. When you meet them and work with them, you will see why. 

Families Over-Invest in the Wrong Development Plan

This pattern reveals a critical flaw in how we approach career preparation. Families invest most of their time and money into matriculating into an incrementally higher-prestige university. There is strong evidence that this has no impact on career outcomes. There is a relative underinvestment in developing the skills that actually drive career success. Students and parents assume these capabilities will naturally develop during college and early work, or that some people simply "have it" while others don't. Neither is true.

These high-performance skills are learnable and developable, particularly during early adulthood². Because school does not focus on developing them, many assume that they are innate. As a family, you decide whether you are going to make the investment in a high-performance career or not.

¹ Schmidt, F. L., & Oh, I. S. (2016). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 100 years of research findings. Workplace Psychology Review, 31(12).

² Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087-1101.

³ Roberts, B. W., Luo, J., Briley, D. A., Chow, P. I., Su, R., & Hill, P. L. (2017). A systematic review of personality trait change through intervention. Psychological Bulletin, 143(2), 117-141.