Thursday, July 31, 2008

I Hate Nepotists

Bragging set aside, the fact was that I graduated in the top 5 of my class.

Not top 5 percent.

Top 5 people. I was number 5.

And the reason I knew I was #5 was because it was the Carlson School and it was reasonably competitive. You could ID the people who kept posting good grades, knew their stuff in class and ergo were your "competition." Not that you didn't like them, you just knew who they were.

But there was one thing that I would like to (once again, setting bragging aside and merely pointing out the facts) point out that separated me from the rest and that was out of the 5 I was the only one to;

1. Pay for all of my college AND living expenses in its entirety with no debt
2. Work full time while going to school full time
3. Graduate 6 months early

The rest of them either had college at minimum heavily subsidized and not a one of the remaining 4 finished in anything less than 5 years and I doubt any of them worked beyond a token 15 hours a week.

Regardless, in my young 21 years of youth I thought, foolishly, that with this background I would be reasonably attractive to potential employers. That upon graduation, the least of my worries would be finding a job.

Ah, but there was one minor little factor I forgot to consider;

Nepotism and cronyism.

For up until that point I thought the Ambercrombie and Fitch wearing students who would say,

"It's not what you know, it's who you know"

were merely jocks who couldn't go pro and now were relegated to majoring in marketing or sales. Guys (and gals) who didn't have the ability to do calculus or math and therefore thought they'd get by in corporate America by kissing ass and brown-nosing. Foolish peers who were guaranteed to be in for a rude awakening when they got to the "real world" where obviously corporations would be able to weed them out, because SURELY corporate America appreciates production and efficiency and smarts over brown-nosing.

Sadly, they knew more than I ever did about business, no matter what my rank. For they were right, it's not what you know. It is who you know. All I knew was how to predict stock market bubbles and housing bubbles and Asian currency crises. All nothing compared to a good gopher and ass-kisser whose dad golfs with the VP of finance.

And so for the next year I watched my career go down in utter flames as I saw people with C averages landing $50,000 a year jobs at their "dad's firm" or suburban Sue getting a coveted analyst position at her "grandpa's firm." Even to this day when I teach class, I see college students all of 19 years old, pull up in a brand new Honda and have absolutely no worries about finding a job later in life because one is lined up for them. And if not, no worries, you can always go back and live with mommy and daddy back in the burbs.

The reason this is so angering is not that I personally didn't get the coveted analyst position at the local investment bank when I was 23, but that it is not a meritocracy. That the best people do not get the job. That the highest qualified do not get the promotion. It is the connected or the charlatans that do. And you can study your ass off and pioneer new lines of thought or come up with radical and crazy ways of doing things that could make a company millions, but if you're not somebody's nephew or somebody's niece, well, "Thank you for your interest in XYZ Corporation. Though you background is impressive we have decided to go with another candidate who's willing to suck our...ahem."

My whole point, is that while I am the most ardent capitalist and for everybody making billions in dough, the opportunity cost we suffer by letting the less-qualified candidates get positions of power or productivity costs us all. Imagine, for once, if all senators and congressmen who had college paid for, sudden disappeared and were replaced with people who did. Imagine if the ass-kissing CEO's of all the financial firms who more or less wiped out 25% of the equity in your homes were replaced instead with farmer Joe. The amount of pain we could have avoided (not to mention the sheer level of production we would have enjoyed) is unfathomable.

That being, though I am for lower taxes, when I see charts like this;




I start to wonder how much of that was truly earned by people who busted their asses off and created something new and something of worth, or were merely the Bush, Heinz-Kerry's, Pelosi's, Obama's, and Gore's of the world who never worked a day in their lives, never got their fingernails dirty and never shoveled sh!t for a living (which coincidentally was my first job - poo-shoveler). And then I start to opine about a "nepotism" tax where we tax people who get jobs over more-qualified people because of who their mommy is or something.

9 comments:

Ryan said...

"That the best people do not get the job. That the highest qualified do not get the promotion. It is the connected or the charlatans that do."

First your post on America's budding desire for socialism and now this. These two posts really resonate with me as they dovetail almost completely with the views I've arrived at in my own personal reflection.

The quote of yours above sums up my experience as a post-grad in the current job market(June-08 grad) much better than I think I could. I worked my ass off to learn my subject (econ) by reading numerous books and jstor articles, stuff some of my Professors had not even read, in order to gain a thorough understanding of the material. Now I learn some of my peers who had spent more time partying on randon tuesday nights or blowing their afternoons at the rec center, instead of reading Hayek's theory of the trade cycle or Friedman's monetary history, already have jobs. It's so difficult to convey to these HR people that I not only know economic theory but also recognize from this theory that it's only through hard work and putting in the time that anyone truly gets ahead in this world (though I'm believing this less and less). I'm so sick of going into these interviews fully prepared to explain how I will fulfill the duties of the position and how my skills relate to those duties, and instead having to answer questions that have no relation to the position but would merely illustrate how I may handle office politics. I think I may just sell out and become another one of the loathesome suck-up "team players" rather than striving to remain an independent thinking productivity machine. It's either that or--gulp--sales.

Anonymous said...

This is why I am determined to start my own companies and become a wealthy person and maybe some day run my own hedge-fund.

I read in Barton Bigg's book "Hedgehogging" about an instance where a guy came into the firm he was working at and according to him, this guy was a rugged individualist who didn't really like socializing or anything and made it very clear he wanted to be left alone to work.

Well this really pissed off the management that he wasn't a "team player," wasn't "diplomatic," etc...blah blah blah well Biggs says he argued vociferously for them to not fire the guy, because he was very talented and was building the company a really great business. He said, "I tried to convince them that we needed to create an environment that could accomidate very talented, undiplomatic eccentrics."

The management wouldn't fire him, but they underpaid him what they normally would have. Biggs informed the guy about it, that he was being underpaid, and the guy quit right there. Lucky for the firm, the guy had left a good second-in-command who was able to take over.

Anyhow, the guy now apparently runs a hedge fund with assets up to $10 billion!! And the stupid company lost him, all because he wasn't a team-player type.

For you types hating corporate America, look into entrepreneurship IMO, it's riskier, but it would be great to become wealthy building your own company. Hire people solely on merit, create a culture of meritocracy, keep bureaucracy to a minimum, etc...this is my dream, haven't accomplished it yet though.

Andrew L said...

This has nothing to do with your whiny little rant (I kid, I kid), but you've posted before about Hollywood not making enough movies about all-American freedom-loving manly-man conservative/capitalist type heroes, so I thought you might enjoy this

(I found it via metaphilm, which is also kind of a cool site)

VH said...

Hey Cap,
I feel your pain. I've lived through the sort of crap you describe--it is quite demoralizing. At one very large banking corporation that I spent 6-7 years toiling endlessly at, our department was called into a meeting one sunny Monday morning. Management informed us that the company had merged with an even larger company and that there would be changes. One of the changes was that we were to get a new manager for our team. Was he one of us, one of the hard workers that had been with the company during hard and lean times? Would there finally be a well deserved promotion from one of the loyal soldiers? Nope. They promoted a fellow who had been with the company for less than a year and who's only claim to duty was regularly drinking and schmoozing with some of the executives, and who had a vast collection of impressive Italian shoes (I kid you not--management was impressed); he was always well dressed--to say the least. Needless to say, the poor bastard couldn't manage himself out of a wet paper bag. The 15 months he was our manager were some of the most toxic I have ever experienced in a any job.
I wish I could say that this was the last and only time I have seen someone promoted for their looks and socializing.

JR Hume said...

I wonder about the same things. One of our city council members is a trust fund kiddie and a moron when it comes to council work.

Yet, I think the nepotism rampant in all kinds of industry is the main driving force behind the formation of new businesses. One way to avoid kissing ass is to be the boss.

Still . . . maybe we ought to identify those vast fortunes used merely to subsidize an underserving child's lifestyle and tax the crap out of it.

On the other hand, those trust funds invest in things . . . like new business. Or do they? I see reports of huge fortunes being put at the disposal of rabidly Leftist organizations.

I wonder . . .

jim

Unknown said...

I FEEL YOUR PAIN. I HAVE BEEN TRYING FOR OVER A YEAR TO START A NEW CAREER, I GRADUATED WITH A GREAT GPA, THE BEST I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE AND I CAN NOT GET A JOB FOR HE LIFE OF ME. SINCE MOVING TO MINNESOTA I HAVE HEARD FROM MANY PEOPLE "ITS NOT WHAT YOU KNOW, BUT WHO YOU KNOW", I STILL THOUGHT MY HARD WORK IN SCHOOL, WOULD GET ME THAT DREAM JOB. IN FACT, I AM CURRENTLY AT A JOB THAT I GOT ONLY BECAUSE I NEW A GUY WHO KNEW THE LADY HIRING. OTHERWISE I WOULD PROBABLY BE FLIPPING BURGERS RIGHT NOW. I AM SO FRUSTRATED AND HAVE NO CLUE HOW TO GET OUT OF THIS PLACE AND INTO A BETTER JOB!

Anonymous said...

Everyone hates nepotism until it works in their favor. No use crying about it ,because, like it or not, that's how the world turns and always will.

Anonymous said...

Who do you think are the types that fear the global economy and the idea of international competition for jobs. The stakes are getting higher and the competition more ruthless. The days are numbered for Americans who expect to get jobs because they know somebody. I bet it is the same people who fear outsourcing that are the nepotists. Maybe I'm being idealistic but I think global competition will make cronyism more difficult.

Hot Sam said...

I agree 100%, but if you judge your success by the size of your wallet, you'll likely be disappointed.

Disappointment=Expectations>Reality

I was the top Lieutenant in my battalion and the last one promoted to Captain. The worst Army officer I knew in 21 years of service just got promoted to Colonel in the most inappropriate position he could ever hold.

I chose to leave that craziness and took a 40% pay cut. But I love my new job. I'm not earning as much as I did, but I will do fine in the long-run.

There hasn't been a president in 50 years that I would consider above-average in character, intellect and abilities. Congress isn't any better. It takes blind ambition to be a politician, and it takes politics to rise through the business world.

The real question is, are you going to compromise your values to get what they've got?

Life isn't fair, but would you really want to live in a world where everyone got exactly what they deserved?