[dvt]

> who you know than what you know

Yeah, the world is a social place. There's a reason European royalty sent their kids to etiquette classes, and even these days fraternities and sororities have formals. That's how the world works. Someone that's surprised by this in their 20s or 30s was failed by their parents or immediate community and this has nothing to do with college.

You need to be nice to people, you need to be friendly, you need to know people, attend events, be fun and jovial, etc. Politeness and relationships are the underpinning of our entire society.

But if you're introverted (like me), this takes very deliberate practice. Over the past few years, I've posted in every monthly "who's hiring" thread here on HN as just an exercise and to meet people (mostly local to LA). I've met dozens of really cool entrepreneurs, fellow engineers, VPs, C-levels, and other smart folks. Most of these connections will go nowhere, but I wanted to practice being more outgoing by grabbing a beer or coffee and talking about life/technology/anything with strangers. I was able to put together an investor I met with a friend of mine that's trying to raise money; was able to pitch some startup ideas to folks that worked in that domain; but more importantly grow my rolodex and become more comfortable with the art of networking.

[graecea]

The problem is that we're being sold the 'meritocracy' narrative in the academical and technical circles. You often see it in HN discussions about hiring decisions (reasoning involving the "top 1% programmers" without any indication as to what that means exactly). If you have the introverted, dilligent, keeping-your-head-down, got-high-marks-at-school mentality that I assume is prevalent on HN, it can come as a shock that despite following all the 'rules' you don't get to 'win at life'. Learning that there's no such thing as 'rules' (or at least, none of the rules worth following are public or written down or even fixed) or 'winning' isn't something that can be taught in class. 'Meritocracy' is the illusion that life, prestige and status attainment somehow work like getting high grades at school and we'd do ourselves a collective service by getting rid of the notion and viewing life and its opportunities in a more pragmatic way.

[Foobar8568]

Indeed, meritocracy is among the biggest lie to the middle class/the poor.

[rowanG077]

Or you simply view being sociable as part of Merit. In fact I'd wager that to do well in almost any job you need to be sociable. Merit is not just about technical ability.

[graecea]

That's just an attempt to salvage meritocracy. The problem is that there is no single metric one could rigorously construct that encapsulates everything one needs for success, partly because 'success' isn't well-defined (there's no such thing as 'winning', remember?) and partly because even if such a metric were constructed it would rapidly become obsolete as one's personality and genreal society evolve.

In more technical terms, some spaces just aren't metrizable ;)

[orwin]

How is this really "Merit"? I'm "sociable" in the sense that due to my familly on my mother's side, i'm very used to talk to small business CEOs/CTOs, and from where i lived and studied, i'm comfortable talking to people who grew in a lot less fortunate households. I don't have one friend among those who did well in the corporate world. Because being "sociable" is more about cultural inheritance than anything. I am an introvert, but i was taught how to live with it (theatre, playing violin in front of a crowd, stuff like that). It was not particularly expensive in my country, so it is true that anyone could afford to do the same, thus "Merit", one could argue, but inheriting my grandfather violin, having my mother doing an art degree (and a medical one) and my father working as a social worker while being __extremely__ well taught tapestry then painting gave me conversation subject and "useless" knowledge for ages. Because knowing the reasoning behind impressionism, which impressionist school did what and how it evolved did a lot more than knowing how to code a VM for my current career.

[xenocratus]

Being sociable has degrees and shades. There's a difference between being a good team mate and being sociable within your team, and being a suckup with some director in your org to win favours. Both are about socialising and the latter is probs more "productive" for one's career without benefitting the company (apart from pushing the clique further).

[ThrowawayR2]

Bingo. People are eager to dunk on education even though it's blatantly obvious that having a solid education is a tool, one of a plethora of tools, that is used to construct a career. Even academics will tell you that; they have to politick harder than anyone to win grants and reach tenure.

[giantg2]

Sure, being sociable is a trait they could rate on. That's different than people giving you preference for a job/promotion because they know you or you share traits with them.

[giantg2]

Yep, I would be much further along and better off if I just played the game.

[kiba]

The lie is that Meritocracy is fair or equitable.

[fullshark]

Pretty much everyone has incomplete world views in their 20s/30s and gets a reality check as they make decisions and reap the consequences. It's just a matter of what particular lessons your parents / schooling / experiences failed to flesh out until then.

[kiba]

Parents only one or two life experience, and likely in a narrow range dictated by socioeconomic circumstances. They also have their own baggage in addition to any wisdom gained, otherwise we would be listening to them more.

I have no advice on how to overcome the wisdom/experience gap and unrepaired damage accumulated over time.

[xenocratus]

I totally agree. We live in a world that only values some very specific types of diversity, indeed. Sociability is not one of them. If you're not like the norm you have to put in effort to be more like the norm: you don't want to go to team socials, or go to spinning classes with a VP of engineering? Sucks to be you. And not only that, we'll tell you that it's your fault that it sucks!

[giantg2]

It's that we live in a two-face system. The schools, companies, etc have policies that are supposed to eliminate or control bias. They claim it's a meritocracy. But then they tout having a network, "who you know vs what you know", etc. So why are bribes, gifts, etc tightly controlled and even illegal in many areas? So one type of bias is ok, but others are not?

You end up with people like me who are told by a friend that they will open up a senior dev position just for you. That means the other people who post to that role are putting effort into the interview process but all for nothing since I'm pre-selected. So I don't ask them to open posting so I don't take the position. So I think these backroom deals are wrong, have been taught that by society, and so I get screwed like every other unconnected person.

[Zerverus]

This assumes that human social interaction somehow is optional, exactly the mistake the parent went to point out.

There is no world where social skills somehow are ‘bias’. They are core.

[giantg2]

Social skills are not bias themselves. This who you know thing is - preference is given to people who are known. This makes it less likely that people who have different attributes get an equal chance.

[SilasX]

Then that means the polices based around promoting college for everyone are equally naive.

[hogFeast]

I don't think it is only about being personable. That is obviously very important but it is as much about being able to insert yourself into someone else's life and help them. You meet someone, they have a problem, and you can say: "Oh, I know X or Y". That is very big, being a connector to lots of people with skills is the same as having those skills yourself.

But I agree totally. Most of my family worked in the public sector, I had no idea about any of this stuff until I started trying to get a job. And some of the people who I grew up with who were totally incompetent but were sociable/well-connected ended up doing very well (I went to a private school, so my sample is quite interesting: I know a guy who was very smart, went to college, trained in law at the top law school in my country, worked hard, but couldn't get it together ended up becoming a chef...meanwhile a guy who got straight Ds, scraped into uni, did no work whilst there is working as a PM at a top fund manager...they don't teach you this part of life in school).

On the OP: college isn't real life, it isn't anything like real life at all because you don't need to be an expert or have knowledge to extract economic value (and that isn't a bad thing at all). As someone who went to private school and saw a decent amount of privilege, it didn't helped kids who came from poorer backgrounds. These kids went to college (which probably would have happened anyway, they are smart) but most (not all tbf) struggled in the real world because they had poor social skills. I have a long list of utterly mediocre human beings who are punching well above their weight in life (and tbf, this is a bad thing...the guy I mention above shouldn't be managing anyone else's money...not to be harsh, he just shouldn't), and a list of one or two people who came from a poorer background and got out. I think that is down to a combination of socialization, understanding business, and nepotism (I wouldn't overestimate the latter, all of the people who punch above their weight had the ability to walk into a room and make another person feel like they had known them forever).