'The Class Ceiling' Decodes the Cultures of Elite Workplaces
Much as it&#x27;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 &#x2F; 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.<p>As you look to populations who didn&#x27;t go through the same kind of education, social circles, family environments (&quot;privilege&quot; as they say nowadays), you find people who:<p>-- Don&#x27;t hold conversations with the same kind of productive interaction<p>-- Don&#x27;t have the same goals of success or motivations (individually or team)<p>-- Haven&#x27;t yet been exposed to professionally challenging situations and know how to handle them healthily<p>-- Have a higher quotient of &quot;fuck it&quot; if they encounter difficulty<p>-- Display gaps in judgement on how to behave &#x2F; what to do or not do at work<p>-- Just have more hard-to-manage stresses outside of work on their life<p>-- many more personality &#x2F; work-related traits<p>Of course I&#x27;m not saying that everyone from a less privileged background is like this.  But undeniably as you &quot;turn the knob down&quot;, 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.<p>It&#x27;s a sad truth that the indicators of a privileged background aren&#x27;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 &#x2F; upbringing that give you a pretty good sense of how that person will behave, and perform (in general).  Hence the vicious circle.<p>This is why efforts like at Accenture (?) to strip resumes of university background or other &quot;biased&quot; indicators will be unsuccessful.   The noise-to-signal that results will be overwhelming.