Earlier quoted context omitted.
How enforceable is a condition like that?
It is illegal in several US states, including WA.
It was never written down for me. Handshake.
Are elites meritocratic and efficiency-seeking? Evidence from MBA students
51–60 of 77 posts
Re: Are elites meritocratic and efficiency-seeking? Evidence from MBA students
#52My two cents, I believe there is an nuance worth deliniating, specifically differentiating between being elite "in status" vs being elite "in nature." Painting broad strokes here for the sake of this post (so take with a grain of salt)... Many people born into or groomed for an elite status (via inherited wealth, rich families, strong support systems, etc) are rationally self preservationists. They were born on third…
> Being genuinely competent, they don't have an innate imposter syndrome, and thus, they value a system that has a clear and objective criteria for them and others, because they are confident they will operate fine within it. This is not a statement about competence, but about inflated ego.
In what way is the ego inflated? They feel confident in a system that they have learned to perform in with the best of their ability.
Re: Are elites meritocratic and efficiency-seeking? Evidence from MBA students
#53Yawn. Call me back when it's been reproduced. Remember folks, we cannot cherry pick from the failed science of psychology even when it appears to be interesting.
By that metric all of science has failed, or at least the biomedical fields.
Psychology looks like particle physics compared to fields like dentistry, and not a lot different from a lot of biomedical fields.
Psychology is just the messenger — meta-science goes under the radar but it's probably its biggest contribution to science at large.
I agree about replication in any case (not just psychological studies), but I have to say this seems like it probably would. If anything I think it underrepresents the phenomenon it studies because support for corruption and unethical behavior is likely to be underestimated in this kind of setting/design.
Re: Are elites meritocratic and efficiency-seeking? Evidence from MBA students
#54This paper perfectly demonstrates two HR axioms I have observed in a 20 year tech journey from IC system engineer to retired unicorn CTO: 1. Total compensation varies obscenely within the organization. It correlates moderately with intelligence and in no way with effort. Some of the most useless articles you work with make the most money. 2. Leadership really, really, really does not want peers sharing compensation i…
There's a now deleted comment that touched upon some of the issues on making compensation information public; I have very similar views as above so I'll write my own: 1. There are skillsets/capabilities that the organization finds difficult to get on the market, as well as brings disproportionate profits to the organization. For example, a database company may need to hire two software engineers, one writing CRUD app…
That’s a very good point you make. In that spirit, I’ll also restate my original comment in a way more charitable to CEOs: When you factor in trust and leadership/persuasion skills, which are typically misunderstood and undervalued by orders of magnitude by junior staff, compensation structures are highly meritocratic. It’s the perception part that creates the headaches.
Re: Are elites meritocratic and efficiency-seeking? Evidence from MBA students
#55This paper perfectly demonstrates two HR axioms I have observed in a 20 year tech journey from IC system engineer to retired unicorn CTO: 1. Total compensation varies obscenely within the organization. It correlates moderately with intelligence and in no way with effort. Some of the most useless articles you work with make the most money. 2. Leadership really, really, really does not want peers sharing compensation i…
I don't have a ready link but the economics literature pretty consistently finds that compensation transparency compresses wage ranges but also reduces the median wage. This would seem to indicate that it makes the majority of people worse off.
The other issue is that the majority of people think they generate more value than they actually do. This is the "almost everyone believes they are above average" phenomenon that consistently shows up across a diverse range of domains. People are usually happier when such beliefs are not publicly challenged on a regular basis.
Re: Are elites meritocratic and efficiency-seeking? Evidence from MBA students
#56This paper contorts itself to reclassify greed as efficiency. Can greed cut costs? Well sure, but isn't that beside the point? It's like measureing GDP by the amount of dollars in circulation.
GDP is literally a measure of the amount of dollars and how many times they're in circulation.
Re: Are elites meritocratic and efficiency-seeking? Evidence from MBA students
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are, or consider yourself, part of the top "performers" you have a self-interest incentive to favour this because you expect to be among the "winners" and don't want to share with the "losers". I.e., unequal earnings distribution looks better and better as you climb the social ladder because you benefit more and more. On the other hand, if you are at the bottom you may strongly support more equal distibution b…
Don’t hire the best people in order to make yourself look better. Got it.
"As hire As and Bs hire Cs"
Re: Are elites meritocratic and efficiency-seeking? Evidence from MBA students
#58This paper perfectly demonstrates two HR axioms I have observed in a 20 year tech journey from IC system engineer to retired unicorn CTO: 1. Total compensation varies obscenely within the organization. It correlates moderately with intelligence and in no way with effort. Some of the most useless articles you work with make the most money. 2. Leadership really, really, really does not want peers sharing compensation i…
A lot of big companies outside of tech already do have semi-transparent pay structures, plus or minus some wiggle room within pay bands. My wife works for a very large company that you've heard of. Everyone is assigned a pay band that corresponds to their title. Everyone can go on to the portal and see approximately how much someone else earns (within a narrow range) based on their level and geographical location. It…
> everyone is assigned a pay band that corresponds to their title
Hilariously, some big companies work around this by having several entries in the HR systems for a single official title, each with independent pay bands, since the title was not required to be unique within the database. I remember one company had around a thousand different independent entries for a much smaller number of technical titles accumulated from making individual exceptions.
Even if someone had the same title as you on the same team, there would be no correlation with pay bands. They liked to use this to hide the fact that new hires were being paid significantly more than people that had been hired a few years prior.
Re: Are elites meritocratic and efficiency-seeking? Evidence from MBA students
#59My two cents, I believe there is an nuance worth deliniating, specifically differentiating between being elite "in status" vs being elite "in nature." Painting broad strokes here for the sake of this post (so take with a grain of salt)... Many people born into or groomed for an elite status (via inherited wealth, rich families, strong support systems, etc) are rationally self preservationists. They were born on third…
These are good insights. I think it is perhaps also worth noting that even the individuals who succeed on their own merit do so with a lot of luck, and it may not always be obvious to them the luck was there. Milton Hershey is known for his candy company. Somewhat less known is the fact that his successful candy company was his fourth; his three previous bankrupted (mostly due to fluctuations in prices moving candy f…
Great to acknowledge luck but too often it’s used as an excuse. Even the story you laid out has to do with a lot of persistence, grit, determination, learning from mistakes, etc
A better way of putting it is probably: barring terrible luck, nearly anybody can be successful if they’re willing to make the sacrifices, work hard, learn quickly, and keep at it long enough. And even if you get terribly lucky, it just makes your odds worse - there are people out there who’ve had worse luck than you and still became more successful than you.
Re: Are elites meritocratic and efficiency-seeking? Evidence from MBA students
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are good insights. I think it is perhaps also worth noting that even the individuals who succeed on their own merit do so with a lot of luck, and it may not always be obvious to them the luck was there. Milton Hershey is known for his candy company. Somewhat less known is the fact that his successful candy company was his fourth; his three previous bankrupted (mostly due to fluctuations in prices moving candy f…
Great to acknowledge luck but too often it’s used as an excuse. Even the story you laid out has to do with a lot of persistence, grit, determination, learning from mistakes, etc A better way of putting it is probably: barring terrible luck, nearly anybody can be successful if they’re willing to make the sacrifices, work hard, learn quickly, and keep at it long enough. And even if you get terribly lucky, it just makes…
> barring terrible luck, nearly anybody can be successful if they’re willing to make the sacrifices, work hard, learn quickly, and keep at it long enough
The problem is, I don't think we have nearly enough global signal to make that assertion. Wouldn't we need some objective metrics on how many people succeed vs. fail correlated against their level of effort?
I have some pretty deep-seated concerns that we have assumed "fortune favors the brave" without comparing that assertion objectively to other hypotheses such as "fortune favors the sons and daughters of the successful" or "fortune favors the pretty" (where "pretty" here is standing in for whatever mostly-permanent physical characteristic one might choose: sex, gender, skin color, working legs, what have you). To be certain, from a personal standpoint the only one of those you can control directly is your own boldness so that matters in terms of personal choice... But policy has to look at the level of not personal choice, but the effects rules, laws, and incentives have on sculpting society as a whole.