I think you’re half right. In the US, the university you graduate from has not that much influence in most career paths. For jobs expecting post-graduate education, then it starts to matter a whole lot. Matching into specific medical schools and law schools can have an immense impact on the respective careers. Tech jobs don’t fall into those buckets.

You are right about this being different:

> On the contrary, here in Germany these positions are usually filled through either familial connections or company-internal mentorships.

Some government jobs are notoriously products of nepotism and inbreeding, but private industry is, in my experience, invested in recruiting the best candidates available to them.

It’s hard to explain in a comment, and it’s easy for locals to take it for granted, but private industry in the US incentivizes speculation (risk-taking). It feeds into how we start companies, how and when we invest, where we live, our liquid financial markets, and I think we idealize hiring not from academic titles or genes but from merit. This idea that we settle on the same things for the 30 years is somewhat antithetical to that.