"And often the best, or only way to get a raise is to expand your skills with some outside training and apply at some other company."
Very true. The unfortunate truth is it is often more profitable for your career to job-hop the first 5 years before you settle down somewhere with a 2-3% yearly raise and the occasional promotion. You can easily make 25-50% more over the course of your career by moving around a few times towards the beginning.
"No, which law school you graduate from determines what types of jobs you will be able to land."
Also very true, and applicable for other professional degrees as well. This is biting some large companies in the behind as they are hiring for top-tier education, while their competitors are hiring for top-tier talent, and they aren't the same thing. But it's also much harder to interview for talent, and requires your HR and Management to have better recruiting skills, whereas it is easier for Management to rubber stamp hiring graduates of the best schools with the best GPAs.
I see this in my own job experience when the business managers ponder why we are consistently behind the competition in new ideas, marketshare, and profitability when the majority of our employees are PhD's from top schools.
I think an email conversation I read a few weeks ago sums up why. PhD1 asks, "What do we do when we've reached six sigma quality on our products?" PhD2 replies, "Then we shoot for seven and eight sigma. Because we can." Keep in mind, this is for products that have volumes of less than 10,000 each per year. It brings a lot more overhead to the company, and no additional value to investors, or customers.
Some of the best educated know a lot, but they understand very little.
