
'The Class Ceiling' Decodes the Cultures of Elite Workplaces - rbanffy
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/02/class-ceiling-laurison-friedman-elite-jobs/582175/
======
sixtypoundhound
I disagree with this point.

"But one way to address this is to change workplace cultures to be closer to
what poor and working-class people bring rather than just trying to teach
those “others” how to adapt."

The standards of many professional environments have evolved to handle the
expectations of many external stakeholders. Think about what you expect from
your lawyer, an ad agency, and accountant: people you trust with your money,
brand, or even your personal freedom. Or the engineer designing a multi-
million dollar piece of equipment for your company. Or the priest or doctor
counseling you on a private matter.

Personal behavior that is culturally appropriate on a shop floor or the Wal-
mart Warehouse (yes, I've worked in both of those places) would be totally out
of line in a professional environment. It would, in fact, work against the
goals of the organization and threaten everyone's employment.

Culture should be driven by the requirements of the job. You are playing a
role. I want my doctor to be infallible and calm. I want my accountant to have
their act together. It's part of the service.

~~~
skybrian
I agree with the larger point, but the bit about wanting a doctor to be
"infallible" doesn't make sense to me. Medicine is not like that. Many common
problems are mysterious and often some trial-and-error is needed to figure
them out. The patient may have to do some of that sleuthing.

What I'm looking for (ideally) is someone that can get me up to speed quickly
on what the problem might be and what's the state of medical knowledge. I
don't know how to find that, though.

~~~
scarejunba
I suspect he may mean "unflappable".

------
supernova87a
Much as it's important to lower barriers of opportunity to people who have not
grown up in privilege, I have to say that as someone responsible for hiring /
managing people -- it is undeniable that people who come from much worse off
backgrounds are much more likely to have a harder time working successfully in
a high performing environment.

As you look to populations who didn't go through the same kind of education,
social circles, family environments ("privilege" as they say nowadays), you
find people who:

\-- Don't hold conversations with the same kind of productive interaction

\-- Don't have the same goals of success or motivations (individually or team)

\-- Haven't yet been exposed to professionally challenging situations and know
how to handle them healthily

\-- Have a higher quotient of "fuck it" if they encounter difficulty

\-- Display gaps in judgement on how to behave / what to do or not do at work

\-- Just have more hard-to-manage stresses outside of work on their life

\-- many more personality / work-related traits

Of course I'm not saying that everyone from a less privileged background is
like this. But undeniably as you "turn the knob down", you encounter more and
more of these issues. If it were not true, everyone pretty much would want to
hire from every stratum of society.

It's a sad truth that the indicators of a privileged background aren't just
superficial meaningless markers. They actually do pretty well indicate how
likely someone is to succeed. They mean that someone has gone through
education / upbringing that give you a pretty good sense of how that person
will behave, and perform (in general). Hence the vicious circle.

This is why efforts like at Accenture (?) to strip resumes of university
background or other "biased" indicators will be unsuccessful. The noise-to-
signal that results will be overwhelming.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
As someone who's been through some hiring as well: I can teach a person how to
talk. I can teach a person how to behave. I can even teach a person a good
judgement. Actually, pretty much all college graduates have an absolutely
awful judgement.

I cannot do anything with the "fuck it" attitude.

~~~
smallgovt
As someone who previously suffered from a fixed mindset, it's entirely
possible to change the "fuck it" attitude. There are many reasons people give
up too early but a lot of it has to do with 1) seeing failure as a reflection
of self-worth and 2) not seeing failure as a growth opportunity. With the
right culture / mentorship / communication, it's possible to correct attitude
just like skillset. Whether it's worth your time is another question.

------
ryandrake
Definitely rings true. I managed to get accepted to one of the “top-ish”
business schools a decade or so back, and got to witness first-hand these non-
obvious rules and norms and these invisible barriers. There’s an obvious class
chasm. You’ve got the bros (and yes they were mostly men in a narrow age band)
who were already investment bankers and management consultants, going back to
finishing school to “get their tickets punched”. And then there was everyone
else: international students trying to get a foothold in American business,
non-traditional, entrepreneurial types, and working-class schmucks like myself
trying to change careers into something more lucrative.

The ‘bros all seemed to know each other already, and knew all these hidden
rules, norms, and behaviors. They had similar interests and hobbies. Liked
similar overseas vacationing spots. Did their wine tasting together. Went to
the same polo and yachting clubs. They spoke the language of privilege and
class fluently. They even dressed pretty much the same. Their elite
backgrounds have them an enormous and obvious advantage.

When it came time to do the grueling company meet-and-greets and interview
gauntlet, these guys were the only ones not sweating it. They already by and
large had their elite jobs lined up by virtue of this hidden network. The rest
of us did 25 interviews a week fighting over the scraps.

Never managed to do a career change, but still found the experience to be
valuable. It changed a lot of my attitudes and beliefs about class mobility,
how much of the world actually runs on these secret rules and understandings,
and the differences between certain and uncertain paths to economic/career
success. I feel the author of this article really gets it.

~~~
rbanffy
Never underestimate the value of a good network. A lot of opportunities will
show up outside a work environment first, as a passing comment or an
invitation for coffee or dinner. This is a segment where first mover advantage
is very significant.

Lower level jobs can be more objectively assigned because you have a much
higher number of matches and mismatches to draw conclusions from. The higher
up you go, the more subjective factors play a role. There has been a lot of
progress in measuring ability at the top tiers, but relatively few companies
hire professional psychometric assessment.

~~~
watwut
There is subjective evaluation as a necessary reality and there is flat out
nepotism. The line may be fuzzy at times, but the above sounds like the latter
with no doubt.

------
chippy
The research linked in the first paragraph wasn't working for me. I think it's
the same here:
[http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66753/](http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66753/) and is a
free download

------
mbostleman
There are hidden rules and behaviors in almost every cultural group from rich
to working class, educated to non-educated, young to not young, one region of
the country to another, even terrain like lowland vs mountain. Being accepted
and having doors opened for you is highly impacted by your behavior and how
well it fits in the cultural context - whether it's up or down the economic
ladder. So this article doesn't strike me as anything new or surprising.

"I think the image that we have—or the ideology, if you want to be political
about it—is once you’re 18 or so, you make your own way and your class origin
is not an important part of how your career goes from there."

I certainly don't have that image - are there those that do? Clearly if you
come from a culture of upper / upper middle class professionals you are likely
to fit in to that work culture more naturally. If you are not from that
culture, then your success at fitting in will depend on your ability to adapt.
Isn't this expressed in the idea "dress for the position you want"? There will
always be social obstacles. The key is that there not be legal obstacles. This
seems pretty obvious. Am I missing something?

~~~
autokad
i have that ideology, and I grew up from a very poor background.

though, i personally dont see much merit in thinking much about things i cant
control, whether they are real or imagined. i do it sometimes, but I always
try to remember what Ronon (stargate atlantis) said, if it helps you: use it.
if it doesn't, put it out of your mind. something like that.

------
geebee
I think this is an important article. One part that really resonated with me
is the studied informality, in a way that becomes a kind of shibboleth for
class membership.

 _" The name that we gave to the culture there was “studied
informality”—nobody wore suits and ties, nobody even wore standard business
casual. People were wearing sneakers and all kinds of casual, fashionable
clothes. There was a sort of “right” way to do it and a “wrong” way to do it_

This actually does remind me of something PG wrote a while back in an essay
about informal dress codes and programmers.

"Nerds don't just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently.
Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against
stupidity.[1]

I feel a little bad bringing this up, because I don't mean to be hard on Paul
here, or dredge up an essay written 15 years ago. I'll also admit I found the
statement entertaining, though it had a bit of the competitive nerd quality to
it, something I found a bit off-putting even though I meet more or less every
demographic check mark for "nerd" for my generation, down to dungeons and
dragons and programming in basic on an appleII.

But then there's this part, from the Atlantic article, about suits. _" that
was in some ways, I think, more off-putting and harder to navigate for some of
our working-class respondents than hearing “just wear a suit and tie every
day” might have been. The rules weren’t obvious, but everybody else seemed to
know them."_

Over time, I'm come to believe that the "informal" barriers to entry for
programming may be far more exclusive than the formal barriers in law or
medicine. We haze through whiteboard coding interviews, we (well google and
many others) store results in a double secret database with scores that a
candidate is never allowed to see. There's no specific degree you take, no
dress code you follow, no formal, well recognized board or exam, conducted
consistently by people who are known experts in their field.

I've read articles bringing law and medicine up as a counterpoint to low
levels of women in programming and stem fields. After all, women were clearly
discriminated against, both in terms of formal barriers and informal
hostility, in law and medicine, and yet women are now at much higher levels,
in some cases a majority of law and med students in elite schools. So, the
argument goes, why do we conclude that discrimination is the cause of
continuing lower participation in STEM?

Here's the thing - the formal barriers to entry can be addressed in a formal
way. The vague, culturally implicit shibboleths that software uses to enforce
entry may be vastly more insidious and difficult to even recognize, let alone
abate.

I don't cheer our informal culture and dress code the way I used to. No, I'm
not saying I want us all to wear suits to work (or have an ABA style
organization put a 150K degree in between programmers and the right to
program), but there's something about the "prophylactic barrier against
stupidity", the distain of a more formal culture, that I think may be more
discouraging to people who aren't as familiar with these cultural habits.

I'll leave you with this - I'm a programmer, but my father is a physician. He
was invited to speak a meeting for a society of African American physicians.
He wasn't sure how to dress for a lunch meeting, but decided to go formal,
with a suit. He said if anything, he was ever so slightly underdressed. Casual
dress wouldn't have been anything remotely resembling a prophylactic barrier
against stupidity, it would have been a sign of disrespect.

There's a lot here, in this article, to think about.

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/bubble.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/bubble.html)

~~~
watwut
I remember reading post from some startup founder talking about how he dont
hire those who came in suits - because that shows they are all about how
people look instead of substance etc. Oh well ... suit is general advice,
knowing not to wear it requires subtle knowledge of how people should look ...

~~~
geebee
Oh wow, you're right about suits.

I've read Wall Street people are great at figuring out who is wearing a suit
the right way. I truly can't tell the difference between one off the rack at a
department store.

The subtleties of suits can be certainly turned into a shibboleth as well, and
have been on a regular basis throughout history.

------
mcguire
" _Probably the best example of this is the television-production firm we
studied. The name that we gave to the culture there was “studied
informality”—nobody wore suits and ties, nobody even wore standard business
casual. People were wearing sneakers and all kinds of casual, fashionable
clothes. There was a sort of “right” way to do it and a “wrong” way to do it:
A number of people talked about this one man—who was black and from a working-
class background—who just stood out. He worked there for a while and
eventually left. He wore tracksuits, and the ways he chose to be casual and
fashionable were not the ways that everybody else did._ "

There's a very old quote about this; I cannot remember where I saw it: "You
can't be a rebel if you don't wear the right uniform." Wearing the right
t-shirt and sneakers is as important in some environments as wearing the right
three-piece suit or military uniform in others.

Likewise, knowing the right jokes, playing the right games, watching the right
TV shows, all of these things influence how you fit into an environment and
how productive you will be there.

------
pdonis
An unstated assumption behind analyses like the one in this article is that
the way to get ahead is by being an employee. All of the issues about
"decoding the culture" only apply if you are an employee trying to learn and
adjust to a culture that someone else created. But if you are the founder of
your own business, _you_ create its culture; you don't have to learn someone
else's.

~~~
malvosenior
Until you need to raise money, then you need to convince the VCs that they
should work with you. I'd say out of everyone I've ever met, investors are the
most classist.

~~~
pdonis
Not all businesses need to raise VC money. Not even all startups do (though
it's certainly a lot more common with startups).

------
motohagiography
This phenomenon in America is related but different, and oddly physical in
that the physical presence of people from elite backgrounds often has an
almost childlike, sexless affect in both men and women. I think it comes from
a lack of reliance on physical competence and years of the practice of acting
through others. It's easy to recognize, and almost impossible to fake for very
long.

I see educated people try to replicate it, and it comes off as a kind of
unctuous, false over agreeableness that catches on the same way up-talk and
baby talk do among teenagers, but for a set of more subtle affectations
related to their schools.

The shibboleths of class are ever present, and the best solution to
monocultures is to enable better mobility instead of contriving ways to filter
against them.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
I'm curious. Do you have more specific details about this effect?

~~~
ableal
Possibly something along these lines:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Official_Preppy_Handbook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Official_Preppy_Handbook)

~~~
genericone
The summary on that wikipedia page made me chuckle lightly at work. All
kidding aside, I'm now doing searches for all manner of 'subculture'
handbooks. Looks like I'll be encountering some new reading material soon.

------
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1
I rose to the top in programming by fixing stuff the uni grads couldn't.

------
fromthestart
>The word we use in sociology is homophily—people like people who are like
themselves.

None of the studies I've seen have even considered whether a privileged
background _does_ translate to higher than average merit. And why wouldn't it?
We already know household income is correlated with IQ, and growing up having
access to better schools, better extracurriculars, less influence from crime,
etc is likely, or at least possibly going to build a more competent child.

This field is hopelessly biased. These soft "scientists" start with the
premise, that we are all equally competent and set out to prove that cultural
factors simply get in the way of _perception_ of merit. The irony is that
these same people harp about workplace culture, with claims that "good" [PC]
culture has positive effect on business outcomes - doesn't it follow that
different _home_ cultures will similarly effect adult outcomes? Why won't
anyone with academic clout admit that the culture of your childhood effects
how much you're likely to learn, how disciplined you're likely to be and,
ultimately, how well you're going to function in a professional environment?

It's a conflation between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.
Frankly, is bad for business and bad for society.

~~~
Pryde
I've got to be honest, I initially reacted to this kind of emotionally,
thinking that of course external circumstances don't have any bearing on
intrinsic merit. I definitely have a bias toward thinking that everyone is
more or less equal and that modern workplaces often enshrine a kind of
cultural bias towards using inconsequential factors as proxies for merit.

That being said, it's been my impression for a while that IQ scores at least
are mostly irrelevant, and not well correlated with economic performance. Is
that a mistaken impression? I fully agree with the rest of the factors you
bring up as positive influences, it's just the connection to IQ that I have a
concern with.

I would argue, also, that the "equal competence" premise could be better
stated as "that we all have an approximately equal potential for competence".
I'm curious if you think this alternate premise would also be bad for business
and society?

Thanks for prompting me to challenge my own assumptions and biases, btw

~~~
jeffreyrogers
It is more correlated to income than wealth:

> each point increase in IQ test scores raises income by between $234 and $616
> per year after holding a variety of factors constant

From:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028960...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289607000219)

~~~
Pryde
Interesting. I don't have access to the full paper, but it appears that the
individuals in that study were 28 when the research was conducted. I'll
definitely be searching for recent studies conducted on the same cohort when I
get the chance, but I do wonder if that correlation holds steady-ish over
time, and also if it will be replicated with cohorts of a later generation as
other economic climates develop.

I appreciate the information!

------
poutrathor
16% gap pay is not that big an issue considering it's about elite workspace :
If one earns 100k year, the other got "only" 84k a year. Hardly a bad income
and not a life changing gap.

Their (84k earners) children will be born into wealthy/high middle class and
fare well, and earn the whole 100k once in the workforce while discriminating
the new generational minority.

Hate as much as you want, it's life and it will never be perfect.

Seldom immigrants make it big, but their children or grand-children might.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I think our society expends a lot of energy and political capital trying to
make equality within a single generation possible. I believe that will never
work. Who you were born too will always be a huge influence on where you end
up on life. In addition, one of the biggest motivations for parents, is to
give their children every advantage that they possibly can.

However, instead of fighting with this parental desire to better our children,
we should use it. While it may not be possible to achieve equality in a single
generation, it should be possible in 2-3 generations. Many immigrants have
demonstrated this. The first generation may only work low-paying menial jobs,
but they provide enough of an education for the second generation to get
higher paying jobs and enter the middle class. The second generation works and
saves and their children attend elite universities. The third generation is
part of the upper middle class, and with the right connections and luck, they
are their children can enter the top class of society. Thus we do not have to
do the Sisyphean task of trying to make equal outcomes for everyone, we just
have to work to make sure that each parent has the ability to make life better
for their children.

