8 ms·

People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more

131 points by julienreszka 2mo ago

moralestapia 2mo ago
Agree, but this "study" is trash. But indeed is its "who you know" and "who knows you", the way to the top i always through nepo. Al-ways. There's maybe like one exception to this rule every century.
ItsYan 2mo ago
I wonder if this is true in continental Europe.
- f6v 2mo ago
  It's definitely the case based on my anecdotal evidence. Friendships are formed very early in life in Northern Europe and your circle has a tremendous impact on everything. The same is true for Western Europe, but maybe to a lesser extent.
glaslong 2mo ago
The key to success is the same as it ever was: you buying my Product! Or even better, my Course about how you too can achieve success with your own Product.
storus 2mo ago
Pointing out that cronyism/nepotism is giving the largest boost for one's success instead of "meritocracy" is pretty depressing...
- OutOfHere 2mo ago
  I think calling it cryonyism/neptotism is the problem, as these words don't always capture what is happening. In many cases, the person receiving the opportunity isn't a crony or a relative; it is just someone who is known. There is some comfort that is felt in granting the opportunity to someone who is known or relatable. Perhaps it comes with a belief that one won't get screwed over after such a favor is granted, that the receiving person will remain grateful forever, and sometimes even reciprocate in the future. I am not justifying it. This other comment reflects the same understanding in different words: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49277355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49277355
- elevation 2mo ago
  The contempt for nepotism saddens me. My family's financial fortunes (and social standing) were completely reset a few decades back (my dad was near penniless when he immigrated in midlife) but after decades of frugal living I can now look forward to making opportunities for my children that my parents couldn't make for me. Isn't that what everyone wants?
  - storus 2mo ago
    Did your dad immigate from a country where nepotism/cronyism was the norm? Wasn't America unique in the ability to give this frugal person a chance to pull himself up by the bootstraps by giving him and his children the opportunity to earn a good living without knowing anyone in power? Do you want America that would look like your dad's original country, being a permanent underclass there?
  - OutOfHere 2mo ago
    Nepotism destroys organizations and institutions to favor a few for a short while. The people who depend on the organizations then suffer.
- OutOfHere 2mo ago
  If you want the solution, it is closer to what some government agencies use for hiring. They use guaranteed placement setup whereby if one gets high scores on a test, they're guaranteed placement. The salary is lower, and the work is boring, but they get pension and good healthcare. I passed on it twice because they were high-security places and I don't like emptying my pockets each morning.
sublinear 2mo ago
> 20% Higher adult income for children with economically diverse friends, the gap between a family earning 27,000 and one earning 47,000 a year So we're comparing poor people to even poorer people? I have never had an "economically diverse" group of friends. I grew up even more broke than the groups being compared. My friends were mostly lowlifes back then. I still don't know anybody filthy rich right now. I work from home in the suburbs making 6 figures and so do all my new friends. I'm not saying there isn't some nepotism in high places, but if we're just talking about the middle class... I mean what do you want me to say other than "stay in school"?
pessimizer 2mo ago
Always been true. Physical proximity to wealthy people is the key to success. The reason to send your kid to a good college (or to a terrible "small private liberal arts college on the East Coast") is to get them to be near wealthy people. Sleep with them and compliment them. If you're black, or can pretend to be convincingly, give them a tacit "N-word pass." They probably won't use it, but it will give them a glow like they just voted for Obama again. Tell them about the things you're working on and your business ideas, and praise every observation they make. Praise those observations so extensively that you abandon talking about your project entirely, and just talk about the implications of their astute observation. At the end, express gratitude for the universe giving you the opportunity to meet someone so much on the same page as you as they are. Ask them "why can't other people see it?" Try to develop a private joke from the conversations. Tell them about the difficulties your mother is going through. Repeat until wealthy. My favorite recent example is Carlos Watson. Got pulled up the greasy pole by Steve Jobs' wife, and after he slipped and fell into prison, got out through Trump circle ass-kissing. Even though I suspect owner of The Atlantic paid that bill, too, no matter the keyfabe.
Supermancho 2mo ago
I think it's how you appear to other people you work around. Over a period of time, when the right person thinks you are useful/attractive/interesting, you get more opportunity/promotion. This happens to explain the networking effect implied by the post (and related analyses).
- rizzom5000 2mo ago
  This is a game played at the level of primate politics. If you care about epistemic accuracy more than tribal politics, you'll quickly find yourself in the outgroup. Logical from a 'within the game' perspective, but those who believe that humans are legitimately trying to transcend their irrational nature will be very disappointed.
  - xenadu02 2mo ago
    A difficult lesson to learn but one that led to a 10x increase in income for me. You can fight the system all you like. You might make a difference but you won't be rewarded for it. Or you can accept the game and play it. If you don't like the current game switch companies and play a different one.
pavel_lishin 2mo ago
This is probably the biggest value from going to college, or at least it was - making those connections. I got my first job from a college connection, and my second one as well. I'm not sure how useful the actual classes were, or the degree - my first job certainly didn't require one, and the second one would have likely waived the requirement for one since I was already employed as a software engineer.
- AnimalMuppet 2mo ago
  To some degree (no pun intended), it depends on which college you attend. I went to Random Public University; my university contacts were the kind of people who go to that kind of university. If you went to Harvard/MIT/Caltech, your contacts are the kind of people who go to those places. Those are not equivalent groups.
  - truckyday 2mo ago
    [dead]
- mmooss 2mo ago
  > This is probably the biggest value from going to college ... It's a popular argument that doesn't make it's point very explicitly nor offer any support for it, but the main point is that college education itself has no value. That mode of expression is an old technique that people unintentionally use when they repeat the argument: By not being explicit about the thesis or any support for it, it's impossible to address - the thesis is invisible to many. (In college, you learn you have to explicitly write your thesis and your support for it.) Necessary to it is the argument, again implicit, that the only value in the world is income. Once you see that explicitly written out, you know it's obviously absurd. (It's absurd for another reason too: knowledge and intellectual skill are great aids to income.) People on HN highly value knowledge and cognitive skill. They spend significant time on gaining it, including right here. How much would they value years to dedicate to the very best of those things, learning from each of the very best humans and ideas from any time or place, guided and advised by other people who have spent their lifetime studying each person or idea, and who can introduce you to the best of it and to the most powerful counter-arguments, flaws, and alternatives. It sounds like a fantasy, but it's real. There are powerful people who don't like those thinkers and ideas, because they undermine power. So they devalue them, ostracize them, defund them, ban them - all to stop you from reading them. Those must be powerful ideas.
anticorporate 2mo ago
Meeting people and making friends outside my income class through civic volunteering probably had a bigger impact on my lifetime earnings to date than either of my degrees or my work history itself.
- kian 2mo ago
  what kind of civic volunteering did you find most rewarding?
  - anticorporate 2mo ago
    Great question! For me, I met a lot of people through more traditional "serve on a board or commission"-type activity in my twenties. But what I found most enjoyable was hands-on volunteering: stream cleanups, teaching kids bicycle safety, composting demos, that kind of thing. Those more hands-on activities were often more inconsistent, though, with the folks showing up every week or month rotating quite a bit. The sweet spot for me was somewhere in the middle, taking on more of an organizer role with civic meetups and that kind of thing. I still got to do some of the hands-on stuff by teaching the rotating cast of volunteers, but formed closer relationships with other organizers.
gopalv 2mo ago
Your success eV is opportunities x success-rate. Out of the gate, hard work improves success rates, but not the count of opportunities. Connections improve opportunities, it doesn't do shit for success-rate. Luck does for both sides of the mix. As a startup founder in my 40s, the entire VP/SVP level in silicon valley is people one or two hops away for an intro, though admittedly a lot of the first hop there is through the other founders. The original paper about importance of weak ties is under appreciated, because people you work with tend to go on to better & bigger things - especially in the beginning of your career, if you are a nice person. Veritasium put out a very nice video[1] about knowing which sort of game we're playing. It is a power law game. There are only two takeaways I had, "show up" and "get lucky". There is no winning without showing up. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k
senorcrab 2mo ago
Ultimately this kind of mechanism is what creates a society of hereditary classes. This is not something to be celebrated - the one good thing about capitalism and open competition generally is that you can challenge this.
- mrhottakes 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - bit-anarchist 2mo ago
    Comparing with the alternatives, capitalism did already enable open competition and undermined nepotism. Also, "more money = better than" is not a capitalist thing. It's just the nature of money being a physical replacement for social credits.
    - defrost 2mo ago
      and US cronyism, did that enable competition and undermine Don Jr ? You write as if there is only one smoothly homogeneous "Capitalism" and that it's actually practiced.
      - bit-anarchist 2mo ago
        > You write as if there is only one smoothly homogeneous "Capitalism" and that it's actually practiced. You'd be mistaken, as that better describes OP. All I mentioned is that the push for open competition began in capitalism (or, more appropriately, liberal capitalism) undermining the prior more nepotism-based system of dominance. Of course, there are more intricacies but, given that OP's comment was shallow, I didn't feel the need of going deep into the many forms of what people may call "capitalism". We can get into it if you'd like.
- QuercusMax 2mo ago
  Private education for the wealthy is a cancer on society - having even rich kids go to the same schools as everyone else is an equalizing effect. I don't see how capitalism help this at all, in fact it seems to make it much worse.
tbrownaw 2mo ago
27000 + 20% is 32400 not 47000, so not sure what's up with that sentence. Also, define "success". Even if it's just about being exceptional in economic terms, AIUI a bog-standard swdev salary is enough to be in the top 10% with no favoritism needed. And if it's about being able to retire and have grandkids come visit sometimes, I think that might be more common than not.
- David 2mo ago
  That sentence confused me, too, but it's clarified in the next paragraph: > Children who grow up with high economic connectedness earn 20 percent more as adults on average than otherwise similar children who do not, a gap equal to growing up in a family making 47,000 dollars a year instead of 27,000. ie: knowing wealthier people has as much impact on your income as growing up in a family making $47k/year instead of $27k/year
- julienreszka 2mo ago
  The 20 percent is the effect on the child's own adult income from growing up with more economically diverse friends. The 27,000 versus 47,000 comparison is a separate number: it's roughly the same size effect you'd see from that same child's own parents earning 47,000 instead of 27,000 while raising them, a different mechanism entirely, used only to give the 20 percent some intuitive scale. They're not the same number expressed two ways, so multiplying one by 1.2 to check the other won't line up.
- RickJWagner 2mo ago
  I did the same math and had the same question. But wait, something was learned! I typed in the start of the equation and after hitting space after the equal sign it yielded the answer! The Hacker News comment box can do the math for you!
SalaevAl 2mo ago
Same intuition here — until my own path disagreed. Roles via acquaintances were mostly meh; the best ones found me without networking.
jrm4 2mo ago
This is absolutely it, and it's something I try to impart to college students. What programming language you learn, or what you put on your resume, or even how you dress and speak at e.g. job fairs all pale in comparison to. "Who do you know, who is in your 'network?'" And note, this can be done without being sleazy. Try to be interested in other people, try to make random friends. That will "pay off" -- both in richness of life and in just money -- more than just about anything. (One of my personal corollaries here is "go until they stop you." This works for nightclubs, conferences, etc. etc. And even if you are stopped, hit them with a HUGE mea culpa, and back away. Which will be rarer than you expect.) (and one more. The other thing I do in every class: Each and every one of you knows something about something WAY MORE AND BETTER than literally everyone else in this room. No promises, but that might be your good avenue.)
- vinaigrette 2mo ago
  What do you mean by "go" ? Talk ?
  - jrm4 2mo ago
    I kind of mean if you're in "spaces where people appear to be fancy" or similar? Like physically go in. Though I think talk works too, actually.
michaelfm1211 2mo ago
I don't disagree with the result but the argument may be flawed. How do you know it's not the other way around, that richness causes having rich friends, rather than rich friends causing richness?
- julienreszka 2mo ago
  [dead]
- ghurtado 2mo ago
  That's the question that popped up into my head shortly after starting to read the article. Correlation != Causation
- bko 2mo ago
  This whole thing is silly as are many of these studies. They arbitrarily treat things as random. Consider this: > Children who grow up with high economic connectedness earn 20 percent more as adults on average than otherwise similar children who do not. "otherwise similar children" is doing a lot of work here. You have high economic connectedness, which may mean you grew up in a rich neighborhood to parents that are smart and value education. Or maybe you're connected to your Harvard classmates who are successful, which means you're likely smart and work hard. Or you're a successful networker, so you're socially adept. But it's almost certainly not a random characteristic like having hazel eyes. No matter how hard they try to control for other things.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- bothers 2mo ago
  Because (taking the blog at face value) that would require future events causing past events, and that's relatively uncommon.
CrzyLngPwd 2mo ago
Since luck can be defined as the crossroads of opportunity and preparedness, and since it takes work to be prepared for opportunity, and since it takes effort and a trained eye to spot opportunity...then ultimately it takes hard work to be successful. Let's not let some billionaires who enjoyed friends with benefits skew the results of millions of successful people.
- jaybrendansmith 2mo ago
  Yes. The definition of 'luck' stated in the article is just ... wrong. Luck as random, sure, but you become more 'lucky' by knowing more people but mostly being open to new opportunities, ideas, friendships. So yes, it is luck, but luck is (opportunity + preparedness + hard work + social skills) X iteration.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2mo ago
  I should have worked harder to be sure I was not born to a single mother in poverty.
  - CrzyLngPwd 2mo ago
    I was born into poverty, with a single mother who worked 3 jobs and died younger than she should have. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you, but I attribute my success with my hard work.
terminalbraid 2mo ago
Clickbait title
- julienreszka 2mo ago
  yup. i concede. but it's also true
throwaway_7274 2mo ago
I attribute 90% of my success in life to the fact that I happened to make the right childhood best friend. One thing led to another and I got a PhD and earn [unreasonable salary]/year now. Life is insanely unfair. On some level it is luck. I don’t know what the “skill issue” twitterites don’t get about it. (Hard work doesn’t hurt, either, but that goes without saying.)
- wordpad 2mo ago
  Given only like 1% of people hold PhDs i feel like you're massively underestimating your own effort in your success.
  - throwaway_7274 2mo ago
    I’m correctly estimating my own effort in my success. I know just how hard I worked. Making the right childhood best friend causally set me on the path to do it.
  - xenadu02 2mo ago
    Success is almost always a combination of both. No one is self-made but that tends to irk people who believe they are because they've spent years doing a lot of hard work. Without that hard work they'd have failed! Yet hard work alone is not sufficient. Where you grow up, what schools you attend, who your childhood friend group is, luckily not getting hit by a bus and put in the hospital, etc. A whole host of factors conspire to grant or deny you opportunities. However once the opportunity arises you have to seize it. Many people have lots of opportunity yet accomplish nothing because they lack the skills, will, or both to do so. Conversely many people with the drive and skills never hit the right opportunity and end up nowhere. For whatever reason the broader culture seems to bounce back and forth between both extremes. The whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "get a job you lazy bum" crowd acting as if you can get rich purely with hard work. Then on the other side there seems to be this well-intentioned idea on the left that if we simply give every under-privileged kid opportunity they'll be successful. Real humans and real lives are far more complex than such simple notions.
whatever1 2mo ago
The key to your success are the connections of your dad.
zahlman 2mo ago
This appears to be trying to sell a system for meeting the right people, rather than giving any actionable advice about how to do so. It also glosses over the fact that who you know is often a result of some combination of hard work and luck.
bmiekre 2mo ago
Hocking a product here huh, so, you rich dad poor dad too?
- dominotw 2mo ago
  key to success is stealth marketing.
awesome_dude 2mo ago
Having the network that can lift you up IS the luck
subygan 2mo ago
a lot of life is transactional and businesslike (even if at times it doesn't feel that way.) and just like in business, a lot of opportunities and outcomes are depended on being in the right place right time & knowing the right person. hard work tips the balance a little bit. not much
bluerooibos 2mo ago
Another ad disguised as an article - nice.
jwpapi 2mo ago
First of all that could be a causality ≠ correlation, but more importantly. Even if it might be the biggest predictor, it might not be the biggest lever. Still interesting train of thought that I might need, but the article is exaggerating the evidence and not adding the right disclaimers.
diego_moita 2mo ago
Hardly news. There are a lot of industries based on the "people I know" principle. From selling Tupperware and Herbalife to the whole Lobbying industry and politics, everything is about the right connections. The world has been like that even before homo sapiens appeared on earth; higher primates also do a lot of making the right connections.
bloqs 2mo ago
Peterson before he went nuts covered the research on this quite bluntly: Lifetime earnings is most strongly predicted by IQ, then conscientiousness. So those with both are considerably more likely. Social connectedness is entirely dependent on personality as well - extraversion predicts this, and extraversion also predicts ones interest in financial incentives rather curiously
- tptacek 2mo ago
  Super uncertain causality. "Earnings is most strongly predicted by IQ" suggests mechanistic and innate causality, but SES acts on IQ and on outcomes (as IQ does on SES). Education powerfully influences lifetime earnings, but education is obviously and potently impacted by the SES of your family. This is like that hoary chestnut about the Pentagon and pizza delivery orders. Military strikes, to hear the story go, are most powerfully predicted by pizza orders. But pizza itself does not cause wars (except in Chicago and New York City). A nit, but the point is you can't distill these problems down to a single statistic and then do policy based on them (not that you were proposing policy).
  - pbhjpbhj 2mo ago
    Got it, so if we just do multi-factorial analysis, and define a manifold within an n-space ... then we can do policy based on that?!
  - win311fwg 2mo ago
    > Education powerfully influences lifetime earnings Based on what? There is positive correlation between educational attainment and lifetime earnings, but that does not imply that education is an influencer. One reasonable explanation for that correlation is that one who has qualities and habits that allow them to do well in the education system are also qualities and habits that do well in the economy. Certainly, those with crippling disabilities or other life challenges that sees them do poorly in school are also understood to have no economic future due to those same disabilities/life challenges, so it seems we have an intuitive understanding of that to some degree. To find influence we can't just pick a top economic performer at random and compare him to a poor economic performer. We need to find the same person with and without an education. Luckily we can essentially do that, to a close enough approximation, by looking at an average person in the past when people didn't seek education and an average person after seeking education became commonplace. Unluckily, primary school rose in prominence before we had good record keeping. But, luckily, post-secondary education rose during the time where we started having great record keeping. Here's the thing: Incomes held stagnant during that time. Lifetime earnings did not increase for the individual after gaining a (post secondary) education. They made just as much when they didn't go to college. Those with high earnings were more likely to go to college by this time, sure, but that's not the same thing. Despite the record keeping being poor, we do know that incomes did rise during the rise of primary and secondary education. So while a post-secondary education clearly has no impact on lifetime earnings, even if someone destined to have high lifetime earnings is likely to attend a post-secondary school, the effects of primary and secondary education remains less clear. However, during that time incomes continued to rise even when there was no meaningful change in the education received, so the correlation in that case is most likely just coincidence. There was a lot of economic change happening at that time that provides a much more reasonable explanation for why incomes were rising.
lennxa 2mo ago
i get the narrative the author is going for, but it's stupid. you can put in effort to get to know people and make friends. like it's a game you can play. yes in the extreme cases it can be hard or impossible, but for the audience this is written for, certainly not the case
foxyv 2mo ago
I think a huge part of success comes from stopping and spending some time in self reflection occasionally. It's really easy to get stuck on autopilot and not re-evaluate things. Especially when you are young. Stopping for a bit and spending time actually thinking instead of bashing my head against a wall has been my best strategy to date.
grebc 2mo ago
It’s more reasonable to conclude that your success is linked to your birth these days than not. Especially in the USA.
asdfasgasdgasdg 2mo ago
Surprised to be the first person to point this out. The entire premise of the article is dependent on a single study that definitely cannot demonstrate causation. The results of the study could equally well be explained by a third variable that causes both better financial outcomes and a higher likelihood to have more relationships with people who are wealthier. Beyond that, I just have a lot of trouble accepting the conclusion because of everything I have seen in my career. Hard working people tend to know other hard working people. Hard working people get more done. Getting more done seemed to get you promoted, at least where I worked. Getting promoted had a meaningful, positive effect on income. People who weren’t very productive languished, conversely. Possible this experience does not generalize to all workplaces!
- juliangoldsmith 2mo ago
  A possible "third variable" could be intelligence. It's been shown to be strongly correlated with success in general, and it seems likely people of similar intelligence would find it easier to relate to each other.
  - LPisGood 2mo ago
    > It's been shown to be strongly correlated with success in general Has it? I was under the impression we could hardly define, much less measure that.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 2mo ago
      I think we have many very decent measures of intellect. It’s true that none of them are perfect but I think it’s basically propaganda to say we can’t define or measure it at all.
      - dd8601fn 2mo ago
        > I think it’s basically propaganda to say we can’t define or measure it I worked at a (very well known) test publishing company, for some time. You would not believe how often someone would hear where I work and lecture me about intelligence measurement being nonsense. Almost like they were offended that the test batteries exist. But also, they had absolutely no idea how those tests were developed and validated. They weren’t even aware of the language and cultural work involved in making test variations that validate across different people. I would mostly shrug and keep my mouth shut. I’m not an expert on the subject. But I saw a bit of what those many smart people did at work, and I’m confident that they were better informed. Maybe it was just silly defensiveness, but for a while I started to think all the delightful, “You’re all special in your own way.” messaging of our youth had been extrapolated into more unreasonable notions.
freetime2 2mo ago
The title is “Your Key to Success Isn't More Luck or Hard Work”, but I would hardly consider a 20% increase the “key” to anything. It’s some combination of all the above plus some additional dimensions like decision making, etc.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
mproud 2mo ago
Correlation is not causation. In other words: the side effect of making more money is that you have more money to spend on your children’s education.
crtified 2mo ago
Parents define a person. Yes genetically-of-course, but equally by being their primary and formative influences in almost everything. And obviously, functional parenting quality ranges from great to traumatic to non-existent. Therefore there is no greater variable in nominal differences between youth peers. How could there possibly be?? It is near all-encompassing, and sustains for the first quarter of a persons life. This concept is true going back through the ages, with the main difference being less social and economic mobility in the past. That does not = 100% social or economic mobility now, by any means.
cobbzilla 2mo ago
In other news: People who grew up locked away neglected by their parents earn less But first, we must talk about the wetness of water Sorry but what is this even trying to say? 1=1 ?
FlyingBears 2mo ago
I am in the circle of richer friends and there are few children. My anecdotal theory is harder drive in their families on career, education, etc resulted in this. And their families probably provided for that high economic connectedness, which enabled them for success. Genetic oblivion is a terrible reward for all that work.
georgeecollins 2mo ago
Studies show tall people also earn more. https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing Also, physically attractive people earn more. https://wol.iza.org/press-releases/does-it-pay-to-be-beautiful https://wol.iza.org/press-releases/does-it-pay-to-be-beautif...
zhainya 2mo ago
Up next, water is wet...
xyzelement 2mo ago
This article feels like a "wet streets cause rain" kind of thing. I think there are two factors at play beneath this: 1. Your expectations of yourself. If you grow up with studious and career oriented friends and family, you expect that of yourself. Same when you grow up around enrepreners. On the other than there are social groups that have the attitude roughly "I work a random job until I get fired" - if that's the subculture you are brought up with, that can steer your own life too. 2. You self select your friends. My highschool had a mix of poor but motivated immigrant kids, and just like "bad" kids. The two groups didn't mingle, one ended up in the 1% by and large and the other group is in jail or on welfare. So you could say we did better because we had friends who ended up better off but I think it's the other way - we associated with people who are on our trajectory. "Who you know" is important - but the first job I got through a connection was at age 45. Everything before that came from who I am not who I knew, but who know is shaped by who I am (ie I wouldn't have had the connection that got me this job if the guy hadn't known he as a high performer to begin with)
newsomix9xl 2mo ago
Last time I checked correlation wasn't causation. Maybe things changed. And "best predictors" can be almost anything, even noncausal things. The best predictor of wealth late in life might be rich parents at birth. Go figure.
penguin_booze 2mo ago
> ... and who you know Whom you know.
vkaku 2mo ago
Insert surprise Pikachu face meme

131 points by julienreszka 2mo ago

Agree, but this "study" is trash. But indeed is its "who you know" and "who knows you", the way to the top i always through nepo. Al-ways. There's maybe like one exception to this rule every century.

ItsYan 2mo ago

I wonder if this is true in continental Europe.

f6v 2mo ago
It's definitely the case based on my anecdotal evidence. Friendships are formed very early in life in Northern Europe and your circle has a tremendous impact on everything. The same is true for Western Europe, but maybe to a lesser extent.

glaslong 2mo ago

The key to success is the same as it ever was: you buying my Product! Or even better, my Course about how you too can achieve success with your own Product.

storus 2mo ago

Pointing out that cronyism/nepotism is giving the largest boost for one's success instead of "meritocracy" is pretty depressing...

OutOfHere 2mo ago
I think calling it cryonyism/neptotism is the problem, as these words don't always capture what is happening. In many cases, the person receiving the opportunity isn't a crony or a relative; it is just someone who is known. There is some comfort that is felt in granting the opportunity to someone who is known or relatable. Perhaps it comes with a belief that one won't get screwed over after such a favor is granted, that the receiving person will remain grateful forever, and sometimes even reciprocate in the future. I am not justifying it. This other comment reflects the same understanding in different words: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49277355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49277355
elevation 2mo ago
The contempt for nepotism saddens me. My family's financial fortunes (and social standing) were completely reset a few decades back (my dad was near penniless when he immigrated in midlife) but after decades of frugal living I can now look forward to making opportunities for my children that my parents couldn't make for me. Isn't that what everyone wants?
- storus 2mo ago
  Did your dad immigate from a country where nepotism/cronyism was the norm? Wasn't America unique in the ability to give this frugal person a chance to pull himself up by the bootstraps by giving him and his children the opportunity to earn a good living without knowing anyone in power? Do you want America that would look like your dad's original country, being a permanent underclass there?
- OutOfHere 2mo ago
  Nepotism destroys organizations and institutions to favor a few for a short while. The people who depend on the organizations then suffer.
OutOfHere 2mo ago
If you want the solution, it is closer to what some government agencies use for hiring. They use guaranteed placement setup whereby if one gets high scores on a test, they're guaranteed placement. The salary is lower, and the work is boring, but they get pension and good healthcare. I passed on it twice because they were high-security places and I don't like emptying my pockets each morning.

sublinear 2mo ago

> 20% Higher adult income for children with economically diverse friends, the gap between a family earning 27,000 and one earning 47,000 a year So we're comparing poor people to even poorer people? I have never had an "economically diverse" group of friends. I grew up even more broke than the groups being compared. My friends were mostly lowlifes back then. I still don't know anybody filthy rich right now. I work from home in the suburbs making 6 figures and so do all my new friends. I'm not saying there isn't some nepotism in high places, but if we're just talking about the middle class... I mean what do you want me to say other than "stay in school"?

pessimizer 2mo ago

Always been true. Physical proximity to wealthy people is the key to success. The reason to send your kid to a good college (or to a terrible "small private liberal arts college on the East Coast") is to get them to be near wealthy people. Sleep with them and compliment them. If you're black, or can pretend to be convincingly, give them a tacit "N-word pass." They probably won't use it, but it will give them a glow like they just voted for Obama again. Tell them about the things you're working on and your business ideas, and praise every observation they make. Praise those observations so extensively that you abandon talking about your project entirely, and just talk about the implications of their astute observation. At the end, express gratitude for the universe giving you the opportunity to meet someone so much on the same page as you as they are. Ask them "why can't other people see it?" Try to develop a private joke from the conversations. Tell them about the difficulties your mother is going through. Repeat until wealthy. My favorite recent example is Carlos Watson. Got pulled up the greasy pole by Steve Jobs' wife, and after he slipped and fell into prison, got out through Trump circle ass-kissing. Even though I suspect owner of The Atlantic paid that bill, too, no matter the keyfabe.

Supermancho 2mo ago

I think it's how you appear to other people you work around. Over a period of time, when the right person thinks you are useful/attractive/interesting, you get more opportunity/promotion. This happens to explain the networking effect implied by the post (and related analyses).

rizzom5000 2mo ago
This is a game played at the level of primate politics. If you care about epistemic accuracy more than tribal politics, you'll quickly find yourself in the outgroup. Logical from a 'within the game' perspective, but those who believe that humans are legitimately trying to transcend their irrational nature will be very disappointed.
- xenadu02 2mo ago
  A difficult lesson to learn but one that led to a 10x increase in income for me. You can fight the system all you like. You might make a difference but you won't be rewarded for it. Or you can accept the game and play it. If you don't like the current game switch companies and play a different one.

pavel_lishin 2mo ago

This is probably the biggest value from going to college, or at least it was - making those connections. I got my first job from a college connection, and my second one as well. I'm not sure how useful the actual classes were, or the degree - my first job certainly didn't require one, and the second one would have likely waived the requirement for one since I was already employed as a software engineer.

AnimalMuppet 2mo ago
To some degree (no pun intended), it depends on which college you attend. I went to Random Public University; my university contacts were the kind of people who go to that kind of university. If you went to Harvard/MIT/Caltech, your contacts are the kind of people who go to those places. Those are not equivalent groups.
- truckyday 2mo ago
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mmooss 2mo ago
> This is probably the biggest value from going to college ... It's a popular argument that doesn't make it's point very explicitly nor offer any support for it, but the main point is that college education itself has no value. That mode of expression is an old technique that people unintentionally use when they repeat the argument: By not being explicit about the thesis or any support for it, it's impossible to address - the thesis is invisible to many. (In college, you learn you have to explicitly write your thesis and your support for it.) Necessary to it is the argument, again implicit, that the only value in the world is income. Once you see that explicitly written out, you know it's obviously absurd. (It's absurd for another reason too: knowledge and intellectual skill are great aids to income.) People on HN highly value knowledge and cognitive skill. They spend significant time on gaining it, including right here. How much would they value years to dedicate to the very best of those things, learning from each of the very best humans and ideas from any time or place, guided and advised by other people who have spent their lifetime studying each person or idea, and who can introduce you to the best of it and to the most powerful counter-arguments, flaws, and alternatives. It sounds like a fantasy, but it's real. There are powerful people who don't like those thinkers and ideas, because they undermine power. So they devalue them, ostracize them, defund them, ban them - all to stop you from reading them. Those must be powerful ideas.

anticorporate 2mo ago

Meeting people and making friends outside my income class through civic volunteering probably had a bigger impact on my lifetime earnings to date than either of my degrees or my work history itself.

kian 2mo ago
what kind of civic volunteering did you find most rewarding?
- anticorporate 2mo ago
  Great question! For me, I met a lot of people through more traditional "serve on a board or commission"-type activity in my twenties. But what I found most enjoyable was hands-on volunteering: stream cleanups, teaching kids bicycle safety, composting demos, that kind of thing. Those more hands-on activities were often more inconsistent, though, with the folks showing up every week or month rotating quite a bit. The sweet spot for me was somewhere in the middle, taking on more of an organizer role with civic meetups and that kind of thing. I still got to do some of the hands-on stuff by teaching the rotating cast of volunteers, but formed closer relationships with other organizers.

gopalv 2mo ago

Your success eV is opportunities x success-rate. Out of the gate, hard work improves success rates, but not the count of opportunities. Connections improve opportunities, it doesn't do shit for success-rate. Luck does for both sides of the mix. As a startup founder in my 40s, the entire VP/SVP level in silicon valley is people one or two hops away for an intro, though admittedly a lot of the first hop there is through the other founders. The original paper about importance of weak ties is under appreciated, because people you work with tend to go on to better & bigger things - especially in the beginning of your career, if you are a nice person. Veritasium put out a very nice video[1] about knowing which sort of game we're playing. It is a power law game. There are only two takeaways I had, "show up" and "get lucky". There is no winning without showing up. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k

senorcrab 2mo ago

Ultimately this kind of mechanism is what creates a society of hereditary classes. This is not something to be celebrated - the one good thing about capitalism and open competition generally is that you can challenge this.

mrhottakes 2mo ago
[flagged]
- bit-anarchist 2mo ago
  Comparing with the alternatives, capitalism did already enable open competition and undermined nepotism. Also, "more money = better than" is not a capitalist thing. It's just the nature of money being a physical replacement for social credits.
  - defrost 2mo ago
    and US cronyism, did that enable competition and undermine Don Jr ? You write as if there is only one smoothly homogeneous "Capitalism" and that it's actually practiced.
    - bit-anarchist 2mo ago
      > You write as if there is only one smoothly homogeneous "Capitalism" and that it's actually practiced. You'd be mistaken, as that better describes OP. All I mentioned is that the push for open competition began in capitalism (or, more appropriately, liberal capitalism) undermining the prior more nepotism-based system of dominance. Of course, there are more intricacies but, given that OP's comment was shallow, I didn't feel the need of going deep into the many forms of what people may call "capitalism". We can get into it if you'd like.
QuercusMax 2mo ago
Private education for the wealthy is a cancer on society - having even rich kids go to the same schools as everyone else is an equalizing effect. I don't see how capitalism help this at all, in fact it seems to make it much worse.

tbrownaw 2mo ago

27000 + 20% is 32400 not 47000, so not sure what's up with that sentence. Also, define "success". Even if it's just about being exceptional in economic terms, AIUI a bog-standard swdev salary is enough to be in the top 10% with no favoritism needed. And if it's about being able to retire and have grandkids come visit sometimes, I think that might be more common than not.

David 2mo ago
That sentence confused me, too, but it's clarified in the next paragraph: > Children who grow up with high economic connectedness earn 20 percent more as adults on average than otherwise similar children who do not, a gap equal to growing up in a family making 47,000 dollars a year instead of 27,000. ie: knowing wealthier people has as much impact on your income as growing up in a family making $47k/year instead of $27k/year
julienreszka 2mo ago
The 20 percent is the effect on the child's own adult income from growing up with more economically diverse friends. The 27,000 versus 47,000 comparison is a separate number: it's roughly the same size effect you'd see from that same child's own parents earning 47,000 instead of 27,000 while raising them, a different mechanism entirely, used only to give the 20 percent some intuitive scale. They're not the same number expressed two ways, so multiplying one by 1.2 to check the other won't line up.
RickJWagner 2mo ago
I did the same math and had the same question. But wait, something was learned! I typed in the start of the equation and after hitting space after the equal sign it yielded the answer! The Hacker News comment box can do the math for you!

SalaevAl 2mo ago

Same intuition here — until my own path disagreed. Roles via acquaintances were mostly meh; the best ones found me without networking.

jrm4 2mo ago

This is absolutely it, and it's something I try to impart to college students. What programming language you learn, or what you put on your resume, or even how you dress and speak at e.g. job fairs all pale in comparison to. "Who do you know, who is in your 'network?'" And note, this can be done without being sleazy. Try to be interested in other people, try to make random friends. That will "pay off" -- both in richness of life and in just money -- more than just about anything. (One of my personal corollaries here is "go until they stop you." This works for nightclubs, conferences, etc. etc. And even if you are stopped, hit them with a HUGE mea culpa, and back away. Which will be rarer than you expect.) (and one more. The other thing I do in every class: Each and every one of you knows something about something WAY MORE AND BETTER than literally everyone else in this room. No promises, but that might be your good avenue.)

vinaigrette 2mo ago
What do you mean by "go" ? Talk ?
- jrm4 2mo ago
  I kind of mean if you're in "spaces where people appear to be fancy" or similar? Like physically go in. Though I think talk works too, actually.

michaelfm1211 2mo ago

I don't disagree with the result but the argument may be flawed. How do you know it's not the other way around, that richness causes having rich friends, rather than rich friends causing richness?

julienreszka 2mo ago
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ghurtado 2mo ago
That's the question that popped up into my head shortly after starting to read the article. Correlation != Causation
bko 2mo ago
This whole thing is silly as are many of these studies. They arbitrarily treat things as random. Consider this: > Children who grow up with high economic connectedness earn 20 percent more as adults on average than otherwise similar children who do not. "otherwise similar children" is doing a lot of work here. You have high economic connectedness, which may mean you grew up in a rich neighborhood to parents that are smart and value education. Or maybe you're connected to your Harvard classmates who are successful, which means you're likely smart and work hard. Or you're a successful networker, so you're socially adept. But it's almost certainly not a random characteristic like having hazel eyes. No matter how hard they try to control for other things.
deleted 2mo ago
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bothers 2mo ago
Because (taking the blog at face value) that would require future events causing past events, and that's relatively uncommon.

CrzyLngPwd 2mo ago

Since luck can be defined as the crossroads of opportunity and preparedness, and since it takes work to be prepared for opportunity, and since it takes effort and a trained eye to spot opportunity...then ultimately it takes hard work to be successful. Let's not let some billionaires who enjoyed friends with benefits skew the results of millions of successful people.

jaybrendansmith 2mo ago
Yes. The definition of 'luck' stated in the article is just ... wrong. Luck as random, sure, but you become more 'lucky' by knowing more people but mostly being open to new opportunities, ideas, friendships. So yes, it is luck, but luck is (opportunity + preparedness + hard work + social skills) X iteration.
0cf8612b2e1e 2mo ago
I should have worked harder to be sure I was not born to a single mother in poverty.
- CrzyLngPwd 2mo ago
  I was born into poverty, with a single mother who worked 3 jobs and died younger than she should have. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you, but I attribute my success with my hard work.

terminalbraid 2mo ago

Clickbait title

julienreszka 2mo ago
yup. i concede. but it's also true

throwaway_7274 2mo ago

I attribute 90% of my success in life to the fact that I happened to make the right childhood best friend. One thing led to another and I got a PhD and earn [unreasonable salary]/year now. Life is insanely unfair. On some level it is luck. I don’t know what the “skill issue” twitterites don’t get about it. (Hard work doesn’t hurt, either, but that goes without saying.)

wordpad 2mo ago
Given only like 1% of people hold PhDs i feel like you're massively underestimating your own effort in your success.
- throwaway_7274 2mo ago
  I’m correctly estimating my own effort in my success. I know just how hard I worked. Making the right childhood best friend causally set me on the path to do it.
- xenadu02 2mo ago
  Success is almost always a combination of both. No one is self-made but that tends to irk people who believe they are because they've spent years doing a lot of hard work. Without that hard work they'd have failed! Yet hard work alone is not sufficient. Where you grow up, what schools you attend, who your childhood friend group is, luckily not getting hit by a bus and put in the hospital, etc. A whole host of factors conspire to grant or deny you opportunities. However once the opportunity arises you have to seize it. Many people have lots of opportunity yet accomplish nothing because they lack the skills, will, or both to do so. Conversely many people with the drive and skills never hit the right opportunity and end up nowhere. For whatever reason the broader culture seems to bounce back and forth between both extremes. The whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "get a job you lazy bum" crowd acting as if you can get rich purely with hard work. Then on the other side there seems to be this well-intentioned idea on the left that if we simply give every under-privileged kid opportunity they'll be successful. Real humans and real lives are far more complex than such simple notions.

whatever1 2mo ago

The key to your success are the connections of your dad.

zahlman 2mo ago

This appears to be trying to sell a system for meeting the right people, rather than giving any actionable advice about how to do so. It also glosses over the fact that who you know is often a result of some combination of hard work and luck.

bmiekre 2mo ago

Hocking a product here huh, so, you rich dad poor dad too?

dominotw 2mo ago
key to success is stealth marketing.

awesome_dude 2mo ago

Having the network that can lift you up IS the luck

subygan 2mo ago

a lot of life is transactional and businesslike (even if at times it doesn't feel that way.) and just like in business, a lot of opportunities and outcomes are depended on being in the right place right time & knowing the right person. hard work tips the balance a little bit. not much

bluerooibos 2mo ago

Another ad disguised as an article - nice.

jwpapi 2mo ago

First of all that could be a causality ≠ correlation, but more importantly. Even if it might be the biggest predictor, it might not be the biggest lever. Still interesting train of thought that I might need, but the article is exaggerating the evidence and not adding the right disclaimers.

diego_moita 2mo ago

Hardly news. There are a lot of industries based on the "people I know" principle. From selling Tupperware and Herbalife to the whole Lobbying industry and politics, everything is about the right connections. The world has been like that even before homo sapiens appeared on earth; higher primates also do a lot of making the right connections.

bloqs 2mo ago

Peterson before he went nuts covered the research on this quite bluntly: Lifetime earnings is most strongly predicted by IQ, then conscientiousness. So those with both are considerably more likely. Social connectedness is entirely dependent on personality as well - extraversion predicts this, and extraversion also predicts ones interest in financial incentives rather curiously

tptacek 2mo ago
Super uncertain causality. "Earnings is most strongly predicted by IQ" suggests mechanistic and innate causality, but SES acts on IQ and on outcomes (as IQ does on SES). Education powerfully influences lifetime earnings, but education is obviously and potently impacted by the SES of your family. This is like that hoary chestnut about the Pentagon and pizza delivery orders. Military strikes, to hear the story go, are most powerfully predicted by pizza orders. But pizza itself does not cause wars (except in Chicago and New York City). A nit, but the point is you can't distill these problems down to a single statistic and then do policy based on them (not that you were proposing policy).
- pbhjpbhj 2mo ago
  Got it, so if we just do multi-factorial analysis, and define a manifold within an n-space ... then we can do policy based on that?!
- win311fwg 2mo ago
  > Education powerfully influences lifetime earnings Based on what? There is positive correlation between educational attainment and lifetime earnings, but that does not imply that education is an influencer. One reasonable explanation for that correlation is that one who has qualities and habits that allow them to do well in the education system are also qualities and habits that do well in the economy. Certainly, those with crippling disabilities or other life challenges that sees them do poorly in school are also understood to have no economic future due to those same disabilities/life challenges, so it seems we have an intuitive understanding of that to some degree. To find influence we can't just pick a top economic performer at random and compare him to a poor economic performer. We need to find the same person with and without an education. Luckily we can essentially do that, to a close enough approximation, by looking at an average person in the past when people didn't seek education and an average person after seeking education became commonplace. Unluckily, primary school rose in prominence before we had good record keeping. But, luckily, post-secondary education rose during the time where we started having great record keeping. Here's the thing: Incomes held stagnant during that time. Lifetime earnings did not increase for the individual after gaining a (post secondary) education. They made just as much when they didn't go to college. Those with high earnings were more likely to go to college by this time, sure, but that's not the same thing. Despite the record keeping being poor, we do know that incomes did rise during the rise of primary and secondary education. So while a post-secondary education clearly has no impact on lifetime earnings, even if someone destined to have high lifetime earnings is likely to attend a post-secondary school, the effects of primary and secondary education remains less clear. However, during that time incomes continued to rise even when there was no meaningful change in the education received, so the correlation in that case is most likely just coincidence. There was a lot of economic change happening at that time that provides a much more reasonable explanation for why incomes were rising.

lennxa 2mo ago

i get the narrative the author is going for, but it's stupid. you can put in effort to get to know people and make friends. like it's a game you can play. yes in the extreme cases it can be hard or impossible, but for the audience this is written for, certainly not the case

foxyv 2mo ago

I think a huge part of success comes from stopping and spending some time in self reflection occasionally. It's really easy to get stuck on autopilot and not re-evaluate things. Especially when you are young. Stopping for a bit and spending time actually thinking instead of bashing my head against a wall has been my best strategy to date.

grebc 2mo ago

It’s more reasonable to conclude that your success is linked to your birth these days than not. Especially in the USA.

asdfasgasdgasdg 2mo ago

Surprised to be the first person to point this out. The entire premise of the article is dependent on a single study that definitely cannot demonstrate causation. The results of the study could equally well be explained by a third variable that causes both better financial outcomes and a higher likelihood to have more relationships with people who are wealthier. Beyond that, I just have a lot of trouble accepting the conclusion because of everything I have seen in my career. Hard working people tend to know other hard working people. Hard working people get more done. Getting more done seemed to get you promoted, at least where I worked. Getting promoted had a meaningful, positive effect on income. People who weren’t very productive languished, conversely. Possible this experience does not generalize to all workplaces!

juliangoldsmith 2mo ago
A possible "third variable" could be intelligence. It's been shown to be strongly correlated with success in general, and it seems likely people of similar intelligence would find it easier to relate to each other.
- LPisGood 2mo ago
  > It's been shown to be strongly correlated with success in general Has it? I was under the impression we could hardly define, much less measure that.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 2mo ago
    I think we have many very decent measures of intellect. It’s true that none of them are perfect but I think it’s basically propaganda to say we can’t define or measure it at all.
    - dd8601fn 2mo ago
      > I think it’s basically propaganda to say we can’t define or measure it I worked at a (very well known) test publishing company, for some time. You would not believe how often someone would hear where I work and lecture me about intelligence measurement being nonsense. Almost like they were offended that the test batteries exist. But also, they had absolutely no idea how those tests were developed and validated. They weren’t even aware of the language and cultural work involved in making test variations that validate across different people. I would mostly shrug and keep my mouth shut. I’m not an expert on the subject. But I saw a bit of what those many smart people did at work, and I’m confident that they were better informed. Maybe it was just silly defensiveness, but for a while I started to think all the delightful, “You’re all special in your own way.” messaging of our youth had been extrapolated into more unreasonable notions.

freetime2 2mo ago

The title is “Your Key to Success Isn't More Luck or Hard Work”, but I would hardly consider a 20% increase the “key” to anything. It’s some combination of all the above plus some additional dimensions like decision making, etc.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

mproud 2mo ago

Correlation is not causation. In other words: the side effect of making more money is that you have more money to spend on your children’s education.

crtified 2mo ago

Parents define a person. Yes genetically-of-course, but equally by being their primary and formative influences in almost everything. And obviously, functional parenting quality ranges from great to traumatic to non-existent. Therefore there is no greater variable in nominal differences between youth peers. How could there possibly be?? It is near all-encompassing, and sustains for the first quarter of a persons life. This concept is true going back through the ages, with the main difference being less social and economic mobility in the past. That does not = 100% social or economic mobility now, by any means.

cobbzilla 2mo ago

In other news: People who grew up locked away neglected by their parents earn less But first, we must talk about the wetness of water Sorry but what is this even trying to say? 1=1 ?

FlyingBears 2mo ago

I am in the circle of richer friends and there are few children. My anecdotal theory is harder drive in their families on career, education, etc resulted in this. And their families probably provided for that high economic connectedness, which enabled them for success. Genetic oblivion is a terrible reward for all that work.

georgeecollins 2mo ago

Studies show tall people also earn more. https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing Also, physically attractive people earn more. https://wol.iza.org/press-releases/does-it-pay-to-be-beautiful https://wol.iza.org/press-releases/does-it-pay-to-be-beautif...

zhainya 2mo ago

Up next, water is wet...

xyzelement 2mo ago

This article feels like a "wet streets cause rain" kind of thing. I think there are two factors at play beneath this: 1. Your expectations of yourself. If you grow up with studious and career oriented friends and family, you expect that of yourself. Same when you grow up around enrepreners. On the other than there are social groups that have the attitude roughly "I work a random job until I get fired" - if that's the subculture you are brought up with, that can steer your own life too. 2. You self select your friends. My highschool had a mix of poor but motivated immigrant kids, and just like "bad" kids. The two groups didn't mingle, one ended up in the 1% by and large and the other group is in jail or on welfare. So you could say we did better because we had friends who ended up better off but I think it's the other way - we associated with people who are on our trajectory. "Who you know" is important - but the first job I got through a connection was at age 45. Everything before that came from who I am not who I knew, but who know is shaped by who I am (ie I wouldn't have had the connection that got me this job if the guy hadn't known he as a high performer to begin with)

newsomix9xl 2mo ago

Last time I checked correlation wasn't causation. Maybe things changed. And "best predictors" can be almost anything, even noncausal things. The best predictor of wealth late in life might be rich parents at birth. Go figure.

penguin_booze 2mo ago

> ... and who you know Whom you know.

vkaku 2mo ago

Insert surprise Pikachu face meme