In the U.S. Nepotism Is Key to Economic Success

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/202208/in-the-us-nepotism-is-key-economic-success

by coolmike • 4 years ago

57 27 4 years ago

psychologytoday.com

Scoundreller2• 4 years ago

The actual research that most of the article is citing:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04996-4

olliej• 4 years ago

Is this really a surprise to anybody?

That said I really doubt that this a US specific problem - I suspect that the US specific headline is more a byproduct of where they were sampling than (and thus had data to support) than anything else. Of course that’s all anecdotal (if we had the data to support my opinion we could put it in the headline :) )

dgant• 4 years ago

Terrible headline. The word "nepotism" doesn't appear in the paper once; its inclusion is editorialism.

You don't need to be hired by wealthy friends to benefit from knowing them. Knowing how high paying jobs work and how to get them isn't universal knowledge. Knowing how to save and invest isn't universal. There are lots of mechanisms to explain the observation without resorting to nepotism.

autoexec2• 4 years ago

It's nice to see research confirm this, but it's been pretty clear to many of us for a long time. We've known for ages that being born rich and having rich friends are the real cheat codes for success. How long have we heard "Who you know is more important than what you know" when it comes to employment? How many generations of us have suffered co-workers or superiors who had no business being in their roles but knew the right people?

Socioeconomic mobility in the US is a joke. It lags behind nations like Portugal, Estonia, Czech Republic, Singapore, Malta, and Slovenia but that reality doesn't stop folks from insisting that people just need to work hard to get ahead. That is a very nice idea and in an ideal world people who work hard enough tugging on their bootstraps would find success more often than not, but that's sure not the world we live in.

polishdude20• 4 years ago

What about wealth accumulated over generations though? Sure you may not be able to be rich yourself, but over a few generations can you make your grand children rich?

favflam• 4 years ago

The middle class in America was only cash flow positive in the 1950s-1970s.

And the story of a shoe shine boy working his way up to head of a brokerage doesn't exist anymore since university degrees act as gate keepers.

I guess IT, if someone had the free time (requires positive cash flow), they could program their way to glory. But even then, I am not sure how they would compete against Softbank style VC-funded startups with 0% cost of capital.

JellyBeanThief• 4 years ago

Before we go further, we need to define "rich". The American Dream, as I've understood it, is: house, car, 2 kids, retirement. Previously that's not been rich, that's just been what ordinary people should be expected to achieve. If it was riches you wanted, it was off to college you went.

But today, home ownership is out of reach for a lot of younger people. And a lot of older people are finding that retirement isn't an option. Ditching the kids can help a bit--a lot of people wait longer to start families or don't start them at all.

So, when we say "sure, you may not be able to be rich yourself", what is it exactly that we mean we can't have?

marginalia_nu2• 4 years ago

Having connections is better than not having connections in every society except Plato's ambiutopian republic.

Scoundreller2• 4 years ago

But it can still be mitigated.

E.g. when hiring or choosing who to admit to an academic program, drop reference letters: they’re largely proof of whether you know wealthy people or not.

Or blind the application process: don’t let screeners see the names of applicants because that can reveal a lot of info.

When an orchestra’s auditions didn’t let décision makers see the applicants, it’s gender ratio changed a lot:

https://www.google.com/search?q=toronto+orchestra+hiring+bli...

marginalia_nu2• 4 years ago

Interesting, this income seems to imply there a gender difference in whether you know wealthy people. I wonder what might cause that.

blagie3• 4 years ago

I think the problem is a bit simpler.

When I'm hiring, I often want to hire someone I *know* to be qualified. The most rational process is:

- If I know you, and you're qualified, I'll hire you (over potentially more qualified candidates, where I don't have the same quality of information)

- If I don't know, but a friend whom I trust does, again, I'll hire you (over potentially more qualified candidates, where I don't have the same quality of information)

- If no one in my network is qualified, I go with resume+interview. This process gives very poor-quality information.

What friends (and references) avoids are genuinely bad hires. In most cases, I'll take a candidate I *know* to be good over one who is *probably* better, but where there's a chance of a bad hire.

This re-entrenches social and power structures, but it is also rational and not corrupt.

refurb• 4 years ago

Pretty much this.

It's similar to hiring CEOs with big pay packages. You hire the guy who was at the helm of a company that double its revenue. You know the CEO may or may not have actually be responsible for the growth, but hey, if that's the only data you have, you go with it.

mgh22• 4 years ago

It is perhaps a shortcut the brain evolved with, but its practice can be detrimental (even unethical) to society when scaled:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEe_QTNPffU&t=13s

Note: The article may be a flawed interpretation of the paper cited - possible clickbait

blagie3• 4 years ago

It's not a shortcut. I described that as the most rational process, and why it makes sense for individuals who want to run successful businesses.

It absolutely is detrimental and unethical when scaled.

Solving this problem doesn't consist of yelling at management to do something different (if they do, they'll be less competitive, and a less ethical competitor will win).

It does consist of re-aligning incentives, whether through regulation or otherwise, so there is a level, ethical playing field for everyone.

moralestapia• 4 years ago

I disagree, particularly on this industry.

I have hired people as well, any capable engineer is able to prove its worth in a couple technical interviews at most. And no, I'm not talking about "inverting the tree" and similar bs, give them a real-life problem that your business usually encounters, let them do their thing, observe, ask questions.

I worked for a company that was building wireless infrastructure for a big region, the engineers we hired like this were great and stayed for years, some of them had no real education or a chaperone, still, they performed and that's all we cared about.

Your method seems just lazy, honestly.

jjk166• 4 years ago

I have hired people as well, any capable engineer is able to prove its worth in a couple technical interviews at most.

There is so much more to being a good employee than just the ability to demonstrate technical aptitude. How do they handle a crisis, how well do they cooperate with other employees, how's their work ethic, how diplomatic is their communication? The aspect of the engineers you hired which you chose to highlight was that they stayed for years - how did them solving a technical problem give you insight into their long term personal life plans?

I've seen countless brilliant engineers who I would never in a million years hire. I'd much rather teach a good employee how to be a good engineer than teach a good engineer how to be a good employee.

wyre• 4 years ago

So my question is, how do I make rich friends?

TheCoelacanth• 4 years ago

Have you tried being born to a rich family?

asdff• 4 years ago

Go to private school on financial aid

thegrim33• 4 years ago

The research says nothing about nepotism. They looked into facebook connections and found that people with higher "socioeconomic status" tended more often to be friends on facebook with other high socioeconomic people.

mgh22• 4 years ago

The interpretation of the study presented in the article may be completely amiss or just a correlation vs. causation problem.

Facebook started out in colleges - maybe college education provided to the poor via scholarships made them mingle with the rich, that is why you see the association? To see this and conclude nepotism as the cause is a bit stretched...

parpfish• 4 years ago

Shouldn’t the headline call this cronyism (appointing friends) rather than nepotism (appointing family)?

Kon-Peki• 4 years ago

OK, now explain how poor people become friends with rich people without resorting to circular logic.

As_You_Wish• 4 years ago

Nepotism means hiring family.

Everyone has know for forever that it is not what you know, it's who you know. This has probably been done this way for forever. Back in the ancient Roman times, back in Sumeria I'm sure.

This article is pretty worthless. It states the obvious. Except they are wrong about the definition of nepotism which is bothering me to no end.

I have held many positions where people around me and under me had WAY more skill, and I mean WAY more skills in the technical thing that they were doing.

However, people who talk about meritocracy usually are sour apple-ing about other people who "brown nose" and "play office politics." It's really in that genre that this is what things that piss people off are about. The thing is, is that it takes a long time, at least for me, to understand how office politics work. I had to work long and hard at it, it did not come natural for me. There are a lot of techniques that I learned. I had to change my thought patterns.

But, here's the thing, I was pretty good at getting things done by being a "brown noser" and "playing office politics." Because part of office politics, for me, is not just politicing upwards, but sideways and downwards, too. But I 100% admitted it to everyone, that they were all better than me...that's why they were hired. My job was just to coordinate everything and get them the resources they need, and their job was to make me look good, and my job was to make them look good politically. No one really minded that I was not the sharpest tool in the shed, because I didn't say I was. But I DID say that I was very good at other things that they were not good at.

But yes, pick your business associates and mentors VERY carefully. Don't just walk into a job and make friends with the first people that happen to talk to you. No. Anyways, you never want to make "friends" with anyone at work. You should have no friends at a workplace. You have associates, but you are polite and respectful towards all. Make friends outside of work. This approach has never failed me. I shoot up organizations because I figure out who the powerful people are and slowly work into developing relationships with them, even if they are many levels above me...I figure out the line of approach. Who are their close associates? And those associate's associates. Work your way into the power structure. Yeah, you have to be sharp and have skills, but the CEO of GM is not screwing on hubcaps every day - the technical skills are not needed at that level. Usually.

sjducb• 4 years ago

This article ignores explainations that do not involve nepotism between friends.

For example my high income friends talk about salary, so I know what similarly qualified people can make, and I know when to keep pushing in salary negotiations.

High income friends are examples of real achievable career paths. You can see what they did, then have a high probability of replicating their success.

High income friends are also good sources of knowledgeable feedback on what you're doing wrong. For example a friend of mine was struggling to get a job after university so I looked at his CV and it didn't mention his university, or grade. I made him put it on the front of the CV. The first company that saw the new CV gave him an interview.

Finally people make friends with people like themselves. If you care about money then you'll make friends with people who also care about money. The correlation between having high income friends and earning a lot of money could easily be a confounding variable.

In the U.S. Nepotism Is Key to Economic Success

Related Stories