In that social class (the elite) working 30 hours per week is a serious dedication and the "coasters" they punt are the three-martini lunch types who work less than 10 hours per week but still feel entitled to "make decisions". Those people will be fired-- or I should say, "asked to resign"-- but they get nice severance packages and the right to write their own references. That's how the country club mentality works. You protect "your own" no matter what.
(ETA) Part of the reason we, as software engineers, don't have a lot of autonomy or respect is that we don't have the tribal mentality. Many engineers will gladly sell out their own colleagues to management in the hope of getting a promotion.
So yes, you can continually get through on connections despite what we would call meager effort, at that social milieu. It won't make you CEO, but you can move fairly seamlessly from one high-prestige job to another.
Are you suggesting that, like, i-bankers are a group known for its solidarity and generosity to their peers? That i-bankers wouldn't sell out their co-workers for a shot at promotion?
Or that, like, junior lawyers at big law firms are these community-minded individuals who just pick up the slack so that their colleagues can coast?
A lot of people from my college went on to be lawyers and i-bankers. My understanding of those jobs does not match your description. Like, even a little bit.
There are undoubtedly people out there who are underqualified and coasting in cushy jobs that they got through their connections. But the finance and law jobs that super-elite universities feed into to a grossly disproportionate degree are -- at their junior levels, at least -- overwhelmingly not those jobs. They're high-paid, but they're both grind-houses and shark tanks. Their cultures are ones of shallow relationships, little loyalty, and burning out junior employees to support a pyramid structure of more comfortable senior people.
(ETA) Part of the reason we, as software engineers, don't have a lot of autonomy or respect is that we don't have the tribal mentality. Many engineers will gladly sell out their own colleagues to management in the hope of getting a promotion.
So yes, you can continually get through on connections despite what we would call meager effort, at that social milieu. It won't make you CEO, but you can move fairly seamlessly from one high-prestige job to another.