time_management

I use "douchebag" for those for whom status and money are top-tier goals, and those who are willing to make ethical sacrifices in order to further their career and material well-being. People who fit this profile tend, in addition to being shallow, to be relatively useless because their only skills are political play.

My investment banking peers were some of the most outstanding people I've ever met.

I've met some great people at all levels of investment banks, but there's no denying that (except outside of a few ivory-tower quant groups) investment banking has a douchebag culture. Face time, moronic machismo, authoritarianism, and professional hazing all play into that. Most of the well-adjusted bankers have an almost heroic ability to keep themselves centered in spite of their insane environment.

"Douchebags" seldom get anywhere in business unless they're related to someone important [...]

This is generally true in technology, but not as true in business as a whole. What underlines a douchebag-friendly environment is one crucial element: opacity of contribution. Douchebags generally spend too much time playing politics to contribute under their own power, and usually get ahead by taking credit for others' work, assigning themselves (and people whom they know will let them take credit) easy but important-seeming projects, and playing politics. In technology, it's harder to pull this off than in most other businesses.

You're also confusing "asshole" and "douchebag"-- two related but distinct concepts. An asshole is a mean, obnoxious, and tactless person. A douchebag is a socially successful and smooth, but mean-spirited and worthless person. Assholes are assholes to everyone and generally reviled for this, but douchebags aren't douchebags to anyone important, and will only be mean if it improves their social standing. So you don't necessarily know, in all circumstances, who the douchebags are. Douchebags climb corporate ladders easily, due to the opacity of douchebaggery. Assholes, on the other hand, almost never rise; if no one else takes them out, a douchebag will, because the reviled asshole is an easy target.

To present an undergraduate analogue: in elite colleges, which invariably and intentionally lack business programs, economics programs have a large number of douchebags in them who see "econ" (they never call it "economics") as a pathway to investment banking. Real economics students hate sharing classes with them.

In colleges with business programs, the douches tend to gravitate toward the business degrees, and leave the economics students alone. Just as with economics, which has many serious students, there are non-douchebags who also pursue business degrees and MBAs, obviously, and I'm sure they hate sharing classes with the power-seeking douchebags as well. A lot of really good people go through MBA programs into management. But douchebags also also follow that track, because they follow money and status; it's how douchebags operate.

However, it's not even accurate to say that douchebags are the problem, since there are about as many of them (give or take) as in any other point in history. The difference is that the post-1980s mainstream corporate environment favors and promotes those prone to overtalk, power-play, and "hunger" (corporate euphemism for greed)-- in other words, douchebags. Douchebags thrive in environments of superficiality, conformity, hierarchy, and opacity of contribution. So now you have a system where, despite the best efforts of business-inclined and talented non-douchebags to pursue MBA programs and management tracks, they cannot ascend in the majority of corporate hierarchies, because most companies have filled their upper ranks with douchebags.

MBA programs don't cause this problem. The money and status they offer attracts douchebags, but I've seen absolutely no evidence that they encourage more people to become such. Moreover, the problem isn't that there are more douchebags alive than there were, say, 30 years ago. The fundamental problem is that large, hierarchical corporations now select in favor of douchebags rather than against them. What degrees the douchebags have has nothing to do with this.

There's a solution, but it's radical: a massive push in the direction of social equality, decoupling one's material well-being and lifestyle (somewhat) from one's job position. Right now, the perks associated with a corporate leadership position are so obscene as to create an incentive for the wrong people not merely to put themselves forward for these positions (which could be attributed to a benign overestimation of one's skill) but to actively manipulate the system.

Obviously, society needs to encourage and reward hard work, but the mainstream corporate approach is seriously broken. Hard jobs should pay more than easier ones, and high-ranking jobs should only be available to those with sufficient experience and knowledge, but the concept of a job title as a reward for previous accomplishments (work for less than you're worth now, maybe be an overcompensated and famous CEO later) has proven itself to be a practical disaster, in addition to the model's ethical problems.

The main reward for a high-power job should be the work itself, so that those who fill the positions are likely to be people who actually want to do the job (and are likely to be good at it) rather than those who want the salaries and status. 95% of Fortune 500 executives are not people who want intrinsically to run companies; they want the perks.

Regarding material rewards, that's a matter of "getting the stakes right"-- not so low as to be insulting (since trivial rewards/costs are less incentive than intrinsic motivations) but not so high as to encourage people to lie about their talents, skills, and work ethics (more than they already do, human nature being what it is).

Correct. I would go further and argue that paying stratospheric salaries for executives actually reduces the quality of people selected. The number of competitors increases, but the nature of the competition changes dramatically and therefore the selection process becomes a nasty pile of fail. Short-sighted narcissists instead of leaders rise. They elevate like people, and so on, until their worldview completely dominates the corporate sphere.

High-ranking political positions pay a middle-class salary (although the social access these positions offer corrupt this intention) for a reason: people who attain them should be those who want the job and to do the work (in this case, to lead) rather than those seeking the material perks.

It's actually much cheaper to overpay executives and at-pay or slightly underpay junior people, which is what most "prestige" firms do.

People overestimate their chances of making it to the CEO level in large corporations, unaware of just how much the game is rigged against them, especially if they didn't inherit a network of connections. Since people-- especially the talented young people who are the workhorses of most companies-- tend to make career decisions based on future income, this is a way to inflate peoples' anticipated future income with no intention of delivering on the promise.

I think that an elite college degree is worth $150k for most people, but I don't think it's the connections that add the value, so much as the prestige of the degree, the recruiting opportunities, and the information learned (mostly outside the classroom) about how the economy and society actually work.

This is going to sound like it's borne out of resentment, but I don't intend it that way: Mark Zuckerberg's problem is that he never failed, and that he never was in the position where failure was remotely possible. Before Facebook's rise, he had ridiculous amounts of PR handed to him, and then got absurd VC investments-- again, literally handed to him. So, the end result of this is that he can't take success gracefully. This is why he pisses people off, and it's also why Facebook is such a mess. If he can't handle success well in the public, why would we expect him to be any more humble and attuned in private?

I also never "got" the poker bug. Even though I was reasonably good at the game, it never seemed to be that interesting to me.

The point values were based on the commonality of the letters in common use, the idea being that it's harder to come up with appropriate words with letters like Z, X, Q in them. The letters' commonalities may be different for the word set of serious play-- the Scrabble dictionary-- in which case the scores become strategic features only loosely connected to historic frequencies.

I'm surprised that J is so uncommon, though. I guess it seems much more common than X and Z because there are a lot of words beginning in it, and it's also at the front of a very large number of common first names.

For amateurs, it's a game of vocabulary, whereas it's more of a strategic game at professional levels. http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?a=6517#36

Although the scores for the letters might need to be re-calibrated; especially for a word game, Scrabble holds up extremely well at high levels of skill.

The economy really sucks right now. Unless you have a guarantee of income (e.g. letter of employment) you should do whatever you can to save your job. Talk to your boss about the issue, and if he doesn't make things better, talk to your boss's boss. Insecure middle managers love to pull shit like bait-and-switch, but somewhere up the food chain, there is someone who would not want this to happen to a talented person (either that, or you're at a shitbag company) and you just have to find him. Now is the time to work aggressively to repair the situation-- the worst that can happen is that you get fired, but in that case you get severance and unemployment, as opposed to the $0.00 you get if you quit.

Regarding depression, it's probably not just your job. I love what I do and I'm bordering on clinical depression right now; the fact that my career could easily go to hell (something statistically impossible two years ago) and that society might collapse, although neither is likely, doesn't lead to happy thoughts.

On the other hand, encouraging people to apply with almost no chance of admitting them is not "recruiting"; it's playing a numbers game. I say "no chance of admitting" because it's nearly impossible to clear the extracurricular bar at the socioeconomic 15th percentile. At that level, the "right" extracurriculars are not offered, but you're not so poor that you can pull off an "overcoming challenges" essay (that was the admissions schtick du jour ca. 1998-2003) or that a college can brag about admitting you.

I'm in a startup, so there isn't this concept of authority or hierarchy in my case.

What I'd say is that you need to be able to go to work without fear. Fearing the boss antagonizes him on a subconscious (if not conscious level). He doesn't want to be a boss, in most cases. Fearing co-workers can socially isolate you. Careful confidence is one thing, but fear is professionally crippling, and the vast majority of people from middle-class backgrounds have way too much of it for their career's sake.

So, to answer your question: I don't personally go to work with fear, but I'm not in a hierarchical environment. I don't know how I would handle one if I went back into one.

One other trait I've noticed of Ivy League graduates in the workplace is that they handle grunt work pretty gracefully. You might think the opposite; having come from prestigious schools, they might act as if they're "too good" to do menial tasks, but the opposite seems to be the case. They handle it gracefully because it doesn't damage their confidence. (Of course, if you give an elite college grad only grunt tasks for 6 months, he'll leave because he's not learning anything; but that's different from the ability to take on an unpleasant project without getting insecure about being assigned it.)

When did you apply?

It must have been in the '80s or '90s, because these days it's pretty much impossible to get into the Ivies without a campus visit on record (or two, preferably). The assumption is that anyone who hasn't done a visit or do doesn't have enough enthusiasm to attend.

It's very interesting that you bring this up. I noticed this, in the workplace, when I worked at a hedge fund. People who came from wealthy backgrounds had no fear of the boss and seemed, from the outset, to be half a level above same-rank co-workers. They had a refined knack for putting authority in its place, which doesn't mean being a jerk; on the contrary, it means doing what the boss wants while "training" the relationship as one among equals. They treated work as an extended education, and their relationship with their boss as mentor/protege. This is an attitude that's not restricted to the well-heeled, but somehow, those from privileged backgrounds were able to do it in a way that didn't piss anyone off. (In this case, you have to worry more about pissing off co-workers than the boss.)

So if he's poor enough that the college can brag about admitting him, he gets in, but if he's run-of-the-mill economic 15th-percentile, he has no shot unless he manages to finagle his way into a high school offering the "right" extracurriculars (e.g. crew)?

Incredible credentials would be 2400 SAT, 780-800 on 3 or more SAT IIs and straight A's.

Out of curiosity, is the difference between 2300 and 2400, or even 2200 and 2400, really that significant? I know that it matters a lot in admissions, but I don't think it has much predictive value over academic performance at the upper levels. IQ tests become less predictive at the upper end, and I wouldn't be surprised if SATs were the same way.

Right, but regardless of whether the yield is 20% or 70%, colleges care immensely about maximizing it. Higher yield means less uncertainty about class composition and size, as well as higher prestige.

Your comment would be much more informative if we had some idea exactly which colleges you are talking about, and which persons affiliated with each college you have spoke to, and how recently.

Ivy League (x2), 3 and 1 year ago. Elite liberal arts college, 3 years ago. Mid-sized West Coast school, 4 years ago. State flagship, 3 years ago.

I find this difficult to believe, given that I know people who've worked in admissions at a surprisingly large number of colleges-- private and public, universities and liberal arts colleges, elite and average-- and they've all indicated the importance of yield. It's not something that will get a mediocre applicant in, but it's easy for a good one to get rejected on low predicted yield.

This is one of the problems I have with college admissions consultants. They charge kids an arm and leg to help them get into elite schools, but few if any of them actually ever admitted kids to elite schools. All they can do is look at the black box, see what goes in, what goes out, and then make educated guesses about why. That's not good enough for the prices they charge.

I would argue with you on this one. The outcome can be altered, but most people don't have the means or knowledge necessary to do so. For example, consider a student with a 3.9+ from a reasonably good public school, and a 2200 on the SATs, and otherwise middle-of-the-road "soft factors". He's not getting in, obviously. If he improves his SAT scores to 2300-2400, or spends three times as much time on his admissions essay, it won't matter in the least. He's still not getting in.

On the other hand, if he had attended a prep high school (it's ridiculously easy to get into elite colleges from a brand-name prep) he would have a guidance counselor with enough social connections to state his case personally in the admissions office, and he'd almost certainly get in. Or, if he had a great internship-- especially of the kind that can only be bought, in high school, using elite connections-- he could get in.

The service provided by "admissions counselors" like Kat Cohen is the sale of their social connections: an internship at a NYC art gallery in your junior year, a recommendation from a Senator, etc. Everything else they provide is pretty useless. The reason this business model begins to fail at some point is that connection-pimping doesn't scale. Kat Cohen can do this for 3 students per year, but if she's pounding her network for 100 students, her "connections" are going to become annoyed at being sold to rich high schoolers, and fade away from her and her efforts.

Right. Very wealthy kids become very good at impressing people early on in their lives.

If there was a "poor kid" who had incredible credentials AND didn't sound like a basket case, then he'd be hotly pursued by every top school in the country. But those kids are very rare, so it's not realistic to pit a student like that against a "rich kid with good grades and scores" which is as common as air in these applicant pools.

It depends on what you mean by "poor". If we're talking about someone from abject poverty, or from Wyoming in a year short on mountain-state applicants, you're correct. If you're talking about someone from upstate New York at the economic 15th-percentile, you're wrong. He would not be highly sought; he'd probably be turned away for not knowing which extracurriculars were "right" (e.g. crew, sailing, lacrosse) and which were not.

This is how things work now, but you are at least in a position to change this, admittedly in a very small way. Why aren't you trying to bring about a world where the "g kids", so to speak, are able to bring home the bacon, instead of the children of the caste that brought us Bush and subprime?

Most countries have only a handful of excellent colleges, and the vast majority of the bright people end up at a small number of them. This means that it matters a great deal, in these countries, where you went to school.

In the US, partly as a consequence of the silly admissions system, the talent's much more widely spread around. So there are more colleges worth teaching at, and consequently we have 50-100 excellent schools. It also doesn't matter, because of this, nearly as much where one goes to school; it's almost irrelevant after the first job.

They could try to fight the current world order, though, instead of admitting some Skull and Bones cocksuckers who go on to destroy the country and world economy. They could show a lot more spine on that one.