When I worked in mainstream finance, I came across a lot of people (men, mostly) with big-sounding job titles and hefty salaries to match. Frequently, they would claim, or at least imply, with great confidence that their success was evidence of the meritocratic nature of the financial services industry: they were smart, they had worked hard, their efforts had been recognised and rewarded. As things go in milk-making, so they go in business: the cream naturally rises to the top. Once, I was foolish enough to say to my CEO that the problem with senior managers at our firm was that all the people at the top thought they owed their position to merit but almost no-one who worked for them shared that view. I added that this was also true in most comparable firms. I doubt my career trajectory improved after that conversation, but it was probably already too late. Nonetheless, I still stand by what I said then: if you really want to know how good a manager is, don’t ask them, talk to their junior staff instead.
Mohandas Gandhi was once asked his opinion about Western civilization, and replied, “I think it would be a very good idea”, which nicely sums up my view about meritocracy. What we have in the West is a system that encourages people at the top to believe they deserve to be there, without paying much attention to whether there is any evidence to support that belief. We are born with nothing and we die with nothing (the Book of Job reminds us), so we convince ourselves that what we make of our lives is down to us, and that consequently we should bear responsibility for our failures and take credit for our successes. Except that we are not born into nothing: we are born into a complex socio-economic world, which supplies advantages to some and disadvantages to others, and what we are able to make of our lives is significantly constrained by the place of our birth, our sex organs and skin colour, and the attitude our parents take towards our education.
Continue reading “Lucky, lucky, lucky”