How rich kids already won the career game • Hacker News Board

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#161

Post by jsdalton » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 6:27 PM UTC

eunice_chen wrote: post #146

Maro wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the OP was IF the rich kid works just like the regular kid, then he'll still be ahead.

Hard work is very different from skills/talent or luck. The OP is claiming that the rich kid has a different/better personality skill set from the regular kid based on his wealth, and I disagree with that. I believe the rich kid has more opportunities, yes, but I don't believe rich kids are bred to have a better personality to take advantage of those opportunities. Therefore, it falls upon our society which looks at…

I'm not sure you've really disproved anybody's point.

Consider that a rich kid's parents will likely spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) on their child's education, on everything from the best preschools to a top prep school to an Ivy League university. Do you really think those schools offer nothing in exchange for all that money, aside from some better social connections and big names on someone's resume?

It's very, very difficult to reduce the impact of a lifetime of educational and social advantages down to something like "different/better personality skill set," and I think in doing so you are woefully underestimating what kind of benefits those advantages bring.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#162

Post by scott_s » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 6:29 PM UTC

run4yourlives wrote: post #70

Duff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bartender does that only until he gets busted by a police sting operation. A good friend of mine had his nascent teaching career destroyed when he some confident-looking 20 year old chick dropped a 6 pack of Bud Light on the counter of the store he managed part-time. He didn't bother asking for ID (which he was typically pretty strict about) and was led out in cuffs. He received a conditional dismissal after 3 ye…

Where the hell do you live, Singapore? That law is draconian.

It's standard-operating-procedure for the US, from my experience.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#163

Post by tomkarlo » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 6:35 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #153

tomkarlo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. And it's worth noting that the percentage of people in the US whose parents make >$10M a year is so small that it's unlikely that anyone knows enough of them to make statistically valid assumptions about their performance relative to kids from more median backgrounds. You'd need to know or track 1000+ of those individuals to find statistical significant in a phenomenon that's probably a few percentage point…

Not a statistician, but I don't believe this is true. You need ~1000 individuals to find statistically significant phenomena in a population the size of the U.S. . Since the population of rich people is so much smaller, you'd need a smaller number of individuals to draw statistical inferences from it. Anyone know the actual formula for statistical significance, and able to work out how big a sample needs to be for, s…

The funny thing about sample sizes is that they don't scale with population size. [Edited the part where I said they don't scale "much"... they don't scale.]

If you're studying a phenomena with less than 5% impact, you need 1000+ data points to reach 95% significance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_hypothesis_testing [Fixed link, deleted my incorrect comment.]

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#164

Post by jessriedel » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 6:43 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #153

tomkarlo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. And it's worth noting that the percentage of people in the US whose parents make >$10M a year is so small that it's unlikely that anyone knows enough of them to make statistically valid assumptions about their performance relative to kids from more median backgrounds. You'd need to know or track 1000+ of those individuals to find statistical significant in a phenomenon that's probably a few percentage point…

Not a statistician, but I don't believe this is true. You need ~1000 individuals to find statistically significant phenomena in a population the size of the U.S. . Since the population of rich people is so much smaller, you'd need a smaller number of individuals to draw statistical inferences from it. Anyone know the actual formula for statistical significance, and able to work out how big a sample needs to be for, s…

Not trying to be harsh, but you apparently haven't been taught this key idea about statistical significance: degree of confidence depends only on the size of the sample and the sample selection mechanism, not the size of the total population. This is a really unintuitive idea. The dependence is something like

  confidence = (signal/noise)*sqrt(sample size)

(One caveat: if your population is very small, you may be able to get away with a smaller sample size if you are sampling without replacement. In other words, to make statements about a group of 10 people at any desired level of confidence, you never need to sample more than 10 people. This caveat is definitely ignorable for groups like "the number of families with $10 million.)

I couldn't find a great intro link, but you might find something useful here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_hypothesis_testing

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#165

Post by jessriedel » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 6:46 PM UTC

tomkarlo wrote: post #163

nostrademons wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a statistician, but I don't believe this is true. You need ~1000 individuals to find statistically significant phenomena in a population the size of the U.S. . Since the population of rich people is so much smaller, you'd need a smaller number of individuals to draw statistical inferences from it. Anyone know the actual formula for statistical significance, and able to work out how big a sample needs to be for, s…

The funny thing about sample sizes is that they don't scale with population size. [Edited the part where I said they don't scale "much"... they don't scale.] If you're studying a phenomena with less than 5% impact, you need 1000+ data points to reach 95% significance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_hypothesis_testing [Fixed link, deleted my incorrect comment.]

Looks like we just replied to nostrademons at the same time, but we slightly disagree. You say that the dependence on population size is slow (sqrt) but I say there is no dependence for most cases. Are you sure you aren't confusing the dependence of confidence on sample size as opposed to population size? See, e.g.,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance#Signal...

I could be making a mistake somewhere.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#166

Post by warrenwilkinson » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 6:51 PM UTC

yequalsx wrote: post #53

ramanujan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In terms of material wealth Western commerce structures have produced more. High levels of pollution, propping up of corrupt regimes in exchange for access to resources for cheap cost, environmental damage done to poor countries, etc. It is inarguable that all these things have occurred. The point I hope to politely contest is that this is a function of Western commerce structures to a greater degree than other com…

There was a far greater ecological disaster in the former Soviet Union than in the United States. I don't think the comparison is fair since Soviet chemical and gas companies didn't do quite the level of investment in third world countries as American companies did. I think one needs to factor in things like Bhopal, Nigeria delta, etc. when comparing to the Soviet Union. We just shifted the dirty work, literally, to…

This is a good question. I believe a libertarian society would function well; but what about the boundarys between societies -- Could somebody live in libertopia, but operating plantations in slavtopia where the labour is cheap and fear keeps environmentalists away. (note: I think there is something to prevent it --- I just don't see what it is yet).

However, your other points: nobody is motivated by money. They want the 'wealth' it is convertable too. And wealth is all valuable things: medicine, automobiles, green energy, free range chicken, homes, etc.

'Wealth of Nations' Adam Smith? I don't recall him being that specific. The wealth of nations was largely an accounting of the wealth of Britain and his inquiry into the cause of it (capital, specialized labour, deregulation).

---

Actually I think I have a solution. If libertopia was better -- no skilled labour would move (or stay) in slavtopia. The few viable industries (diamond mining, oil & gas, lumber, etc) would expire as Libertopia naturally developed alternatives (like it already has: synthetics, electric cars, composite woods).

The transition period is messy though.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#167

Post by johngalt » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 7:01 PM UTC

grammaton wrote: post #80

"The difference is that children of wealth traverse it at a height of one meter over a mattress, while the middle-class and poor traverse it at a height of 20 meters over a lava pit." I notice no one is commenting on this part. Namely, that for children of financial privilege, the risk/reward ratio for a career is markedly skewed compared to their middle class peers.

A rich child has a much higher standard to live up to, and much more to lose. If I'm an eight figure trust fund kid and I screw up bad I end up being middle class. If I'm middle class and screw up I end up middle class.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#168

Post by johngalt » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 7:03 PM UTC

nlz1 wrote: post #158

ShabbyDoo wrote: post #132

Of the 100+ comments so far, relatively little has been said about the benefit to one's career of knowing upper class (or even just upper middle class) social rules. I'm not referring to the obvious ones like which fork to use at a restaurant but rather to the more subtle ones like what constitutes appropriate small talk. A 23 year-old from any socio-economic background might not have sufficient knowledge to contribu…

This is dead on. I had a summer internship with a prestigious law firm. During the initial meet and greet between the interns and partners, one of my fellow interns admitted to not working after college in favor of "just traveling the world, surfing." To my shock, the partner was impressed by this answer. I was dumbfounded. (PROTIP: usually "traveling the world surfing" is only possible if you are independently wealt…

Why would this shock you? Don't you find it interesting/impressive?

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#169

Post by gamble » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 7:07 PM UTC

johngalt wrote: post #167

grammaton wrote: post #80

"The difference is that children of wealth traverse it at a height of one meter over a mattress, while the middle-class and poor traverse it at a height of 20 meters over a lava pit." I notice no one is commenting on this part. Namely, that for children of financial privilege, the risk/reward ratio for a career is markedly skewed compared to their middle class peers.

A rich child has a much higher standard to live up to, and much more to lose. If I'm an eight figure trust fund kid and I screw up bad I end up being middle class. If I'm middle class and screw up I end up middle class.

> If I'm middle class and screw up I end up middle class.

No, you end up working a crappy part time job at a call center with no benefits and no future, desperately trying to convince yourself that you're still middle class because you work a telephone instead of a mop.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#170

Post by pg » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 7:13 PM UTC

The career game is not nearly as important now as it was a couple decades ago, though. Now you can easily opt to be judged directly by market, by starting your own company. Customers don't know or care what your social origins are.