Difference in the meaning between present and perfect infinitive

Question

What is the difference between the meaning of the following sentences:

1. To get the job in the face of such a stiff competition was a great achievement.

2. To have gotten the job in the face of such stiff competition was a great achievement.

Can I use present infinitive(to get) to indicate the past event? I mean can I say:

"To get the job in the face of such a stiff competition was a great achievement' without changing the meaning of No2 sentence ( To have gotten the job in the face of such stiff competition was a great achievement" )

Again,

3. To have won the race would have been fanstastic.

(Source: cambridge dictionery perfect infinitive http://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/perfect-infinitive-with-to-to-have-worked)

I think this sentence is conditional. But, i don't know when and how to use this kind of conditional sentence.

I would appreciate your helpfull answer. Thank you.

Answer 1

I think both 1 and 2 are valid, although you have a bad conjugation in the second sentence. It should be To have gotten instead of To have got.

They mean more or less the same thing. Sentence 2 is easier to understand, because you know right away that it is an event that happened in the past. In sentence 1, you don't know what tense it is until you get to "was," and I think that makes the sentence a little awkward.

It's more common to see the following:

Getting the job in the face of such stiff competition was a great achievement.

It was a great achievement to get the job in the face of such stiff competition.

Sentence 3 is conditional, as you say. You use it to refer to a past event. Say you ran the Boston Marathon last month. Talking to your friend now, you can say: "To have won the race would have been fantastic." This is very similar to: "Winning the race would have been fantastic." The former implies that the event was a moment in time (for example, the second you crossed the finish line). The latter implies that the event was a process that occurred over a period of time (for example, running for two hours and wondering why anybody would do this to themselves).