People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more

moralestapia

Agree, but this "study" is trash. But indeed is its "who you know" and "who knows you", the way to the top i always through nepo. Al-ways. There's maybe like one exception to this rule every century.

ItsYan

I wonder if this is true in continental Europe.

glaslong

The key to success is the same as it ever was: you buying my Product! Or even better, my Course about how you too can achieve success with your own Product.

storus

Pointing out that cronyism/nepotism is giving the largest boost for one's success instead of "meritocracy" is pretty depressing...

sublinear

> 20% Higher adult income for children with economically diverse friends, the gap between a family earning 27,000 and one earning 47,000 a year So we're comparing poor people to even poorer people? I have never had an "economically diverse" group of friends. I grew up even more broke than the groups being compared. My friends were mostly lowlifes back then. I still don't know anybody filthy rich right now. I work from home in the suburbs making 6 figures and so do all my new friends. I'm not saying there isn't some nepotism in high places, but if we're just talking about the middle class... I mean what do you want me to say other than "stay in school"?

pessimizer

Always been true. Physical proximity to wealthy people is the key to success. The reason to send your kid to a good college (or to a terrible "small private liberal arts college on the East Coast") is to get them to be near wealthy people. Sleep with them and compliment them. If you're black, or can pretend to be convincingly, give them a tacit "N-word pass." They probably won't use it, but it will give them a glow like they just voted for Obama again. Tell them about the things you're working on and your business ideas, and praise every observation they make. Praise those observations so extensively that you abandon talking about your project entirely, and just talk about the implications of their astute observation. At the end, express gratitude for the universe giving you the opportunity to meet someone so much on the same page as you as they are. Ask them "why can't other people see it?" Try to develop a private joke from the conversations. Tell them about the difficulties your mother is going through. Repeat until wealthy. My favorite recent example is Carlos Watson. Got pulled up the greasy pole by Steve Jobs' wife, and after he slipped and fell into prison, got out through Trump circle ass-kissing. Even though I suspect owner of The Atlantic paid that bill, too, no matter the keyfabe.

Supermancho

I think it's how you appear to other people you work around. Over a period of time, when the right person thinks you are useful/attractive/interesting, you get more opportunity/promotion. This happens to explain the networking effect implied by the post (and related analyses).

pavel_lishin

This is probably the biggest value from going to college, or at least it was - making those connections. I got my first job from a college connection, and my second one as well. I'm not sure how useful the actual classes were, or the degree - my first job certainly didn't require one, and the second one would have likely waived the requirement for one since I was already employed as a software engineer.

anticorporate

Meeting people and making friends outside my income class through civic volunteering probably had a bigger impact on my lifetime earnings to date than either of my degrees or my work history itself.

gopalv

Your success eV is opportunities x success-rate. Out of the gate, hard work improves success rates, but not the count of opportunities. Connections improve opportunities, it doesn't do shit for success-rate. Luck does for both sides of the mix. As a startup founder in my 40s, the entire VP/SVP level in silicon valley is people one or two hops away for an intro, though admittedly a lot of the first hop there is through the other founders. The original paper about importance of weak ties is under appreciated, because people you work with tend to go on to better & bigger things - especially in the beginning of your career, if you are a nice person. Veritasium put out a very nice video[1] about knowing which sort of game we're playing. It is a power law game. There are only two takeaways I had, "show up" and "get lucky". There is no winning without showing up. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k

senorcrab

Ultimately this kind of mechanism is what creates a society of hereditary classes. This is not something to be celebrated - the one good thing about capitalism and open competition generally is that you can challenge this.

tbrownaw

27000 + 20% is 32400 not 47000, so not sure what's up with that sentence. Also, define "success". Even if it's just about being exceptional in economic terms, AIUI a bog-standard swdev salary is enough to be in the top 10% with no favoritism needed. And if it's about being able to retire and have grandkids come visit sometimes, I think that might be more common than not.

SalaevAl

Same intuition here — until my own path disagreed. Roles via acquaintances were mostly meh; the best ones found me without networking.

jrm4

This is absolutely it, and it's something I try to impart to college students. What programming language you learn, or what you put on your resume, or even how you dress and speak at e.g. job fairs all pale in comparison to. "Who do you know, who is in your 'network?'" And note, this can be done without being sleazy. Try to be interested in other people, try to make random friends. That will "pay off" -- both in richness of life and in just money -- more than just about anything. (One of my personal corollaries here is "go until they stop you." This works for nightclubs, conferences, etc. etc. And even if you are stopped, hit them with a HUGE mea culpa, and back away. Which will be rarer than you expect.) (and one more. The other thing I do in every class: Each and every one of you knows something about something WAY MORE AND BETTER than literally everyone else in this room. No promises, but that might be your good avenue.)

michaelfm1211

I don't disagree with the result but the argument may be flawed. How do you know it's not the other way around, that richness causes having rich friends, rather than rich friends causing richness?

CrzyLngPwd

Since luck can be defined as the crossroads of opportunity and preparedness, and since it takes work to be prepared for opportunity, and since it takes effort and a trained eye to spot opportunity...then ultimately it takes hard work to be successful. Let's not let some billionaires who enjoyed friends with benefits skew the results of millions of successful people.

terminalbraid

Clickbait title

throwaway_7274

I attribute 90% of my success in life to the fact that I happened to make the right childhood best friend. One thing led to another and I got a PhD and earn [unreasonable salary]/year now. Life is insanely unfair. On some level it is luck. I don’t know what the “skill issue” twitterites don’t get about it. (Hard work doesn’t hurt, either, but that goes without saying.)

whatever1

The key to your success are the connections of your dad.

zahlman

This appears to be trying to sell a system for meeting the right people, rather than giving any actionable advice about how to do so. It also glosses over the fact that who you know is often a result of some combination of hard work and luck.