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Comment by jackblemming | Hacker News Reader

I feel bad for anyone genuinely surprised. Our society is hardly a meritocracy. Look over at your nearest manager. Are they over 6’0”? Not surprising.

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The pandemic was a great leveler for this. I've had a bunch of people say "I thought you'd be taller" when meeting in person.

My Lyft app keeps trying to get me to complete my profile with a pic saying that it will help improve the experience. Generous me thinks it helps the driver find me when trying to pick me up. Less generous me says the drivers can quickly see my pic and decide to accept the ride or not. I have no idea how the driver app works, so I may or may not be full of it.

My manager is like 5'6 and my skip skip is like 5'1. This is in faang.

Your grand-boss.

There is research that shows tall people are actually better leaders though… don’t ask me what the mechanism of action is, but it seems to be relevant

As a tall person, I have always been looked to in any group so naturally began taking on the leadership role which I take to mean "gets the group towards the goal". I still do it, but I hate official leadership roles.

Perhaps these people are not overlooked (ha!) by others as much, leading to higher confidence, leading to better developed social skills, leading to better success as managers?

Could also be survival bias in the sense that bias against the height challenged eventually leave only the taller to lead.

I've thought about this a little bit. My pet theory is that taller kids tend to be taller adults, and taller kids tend to be treated more maturely and given more responsibility than smaller kids.

The findings in TFA state that the "beauty premium" for male students remained the same during the switch to online teaching (versus the decline in female students). This would appear to indicate that internal factors play a larger part for the former, whereas external factors play a larger part in the latter.

One of mine is a shorter black man and the other is a husky latina. Their boss is a shorter woman.

Yeah and all Hollywood actors are short. And all racing car/f22 pilots have fast reflexes. All labourers are physically strong. Roles are prepared for people who fit.

Height in management is not one of the fitting requirements.

Most racing car/pilots are also not tall so that they can fit in their respective cockpits.

Bad example imo, but your point still stands.

A manager is someone who never does any work, therefore makes no mistakes, therefore gets promoted :)

be sure to write your own lack of mistakes in ink, in a book with dates on it

My manager is shorter than 5’6 also in FAANG

Who wants to be a manager??

Agreed, the manager does all the dirty work like negotiations between competing priorities and telling people no. His height and friendly disposition give him comparative advantage at these tasks so he can tolerate the job better than I could.

I non ironically agree

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