I accidentally upvoted you. Sorry, but I absolutely disagree. Talent "density" outside of a few media friendly schools is actually very good. Better still, that talent is cheaper.
You can get excellent developers for $50K/year coming out of a "second tier" school which certainly beats having to hire a $200K/year princess out of stanford.
Fact mit, harvard and stanford aren't holy ground for the only places to find smart people. In fact I think the brand name works against them a little. My experience (MIT only) has been that the stars tend to be better but the average tends to be about the same as anywhere else. You get students forgetting data structures, using the wrong algorithms and other such tragedies. I'd bet money that Harvard and Stanford have the same issues.
You can get excellent developers for $50K/year coming out of a "second tier" school which certainly beats having to hire a $200K/year princess out of stanford.
Fact mit, harvard and stanford aren't holy ground for the only places to find smart people. In fact I think the brand name works against them a little. My experience (MIT only) has been that the stars tend to be better but the average tends to be about the same as anywhere else. You get students forgetting data structures, using the wrong algorithms and other such tragedies. I'd bet money that Harvard and Stanford have the same issues.