All three of those examples are missing a step of like 5-20 years in the middle. Nobody is running a venture fund as a 22 year old ivy grad (barring someone who's taking over for their family member, but in that case it has nothing to do with being an ivy grad), nobody is running the FED right out of a PhD, nobody is a director at a big corporation right out of a PhD.

Presumably once those people are in such high-power positions, they also have a track record of real accomplishments behind them; it's certainly possible they've lied and cheated their entire career but it's definitely less likely they'll make it that far that way.

Part of the point is that the gap in the middle often doesn't matter. I've hung around the Stanford crowd and as I enter my thirties I am awestruck by the opportunities they have regardless of what they have done since graduation. The credential is almost all that matters, as long as they dont mess up massively.

A common path is:

Graduate Stanford => Work at Mckinsey => Get hired into VC.

Graduate Stanford => Raise 15 Million dollar series A with your buddy => Doesn't matter what happens you will end up rich.

It's not a cynical opinion, I have seen it myself and I am doing very well for myself. I worked under an Economics PhD who was the number one in his class (top 5 phd program) and graduated top of his undergrad at UPenn. His incompetence relative to his credentials shattered my respect for the way that we allocate positions of power

>The credential is almost all that matters, as long as they dont mess up massively.

Maybe the west coast is different but everyone I know (including a fair number of people who went to Harvard) who's in any position of power didn't have "tool around doing whatever and don't F up" as their career summary until that point. They had success upon success. While some of them didn't necessarily choose big grand things to spend that time doing, they were all successful at it. Nobody just went with the flow.

The "not bad but not great either" people who were just lucky enough to have opportunity early on but don't have the skill to keep turning the opportunity into success (or just want to chill and raise a family) tend to seem shoehorned onto career paths that dead end somewhere in middle management.

I'm familiar with this path as well, and have myself also probably benefited significantly from a slightly lower tier version of it.

I think the issue is more that we have a lot of positive feedback cycles/signal boosting that occur based on early career opportunities. I don't think research fraud is necessarily part of it though, because once you're accepted into a PhD program at a top program you're probably going to graduate anyway; same with undergrad. But the signal boosting is very real, and I find it especially problematic given how much luck there is in things like getting into a certain college.

Of every 2,000 graduating seniors at Stanford every year, far less than 1% end up in top consulting companies. Even fewer raise a Series A 2-3 years out of school. I am personally not so shocked that these individuals end up succeeding at other social games. They have a track record of doing so.

What about GSB? I think 20% of their students hail from MBB, same as with HBS.

I'd imagine that these to-be MBA-holders will seek positions at less grind-y places. Would not surprise me if a lot of them went to join VC firms, or product manager jobs at larger firms, before VC.

I think most people who raise series A and then fail don't get rich. I've certainly known people who raised more than that, couldn't make the business work and then wound up personally bankrupt.

Possibly, but when you raise it at 24 or 25 years old it looks extremely impressive and sets you up for upper management at other companies.

...or they "got operating experience" and end up a partner at a VC firm.

That might have more to do with the subject than the individual.

That some aspects of the self-fulfilling nepotistic bureaucracies are meritocratic begs the question if those meritocratic elements only exist to justify the nepotism, and indirectly, the gatekeeping meritocracy.

> it's certainly possible they've lied and cheated their entire career but it's definitely less likely they'll make it that far that way.

The number of people who make "correct, active decisions" is vanishingly small.

It's less they've cheated than "Did you really make correct decisions or did your coin just come up heads 8 times in a row?" Other people may have been as smart or smarter, but if the coin flip went tails, they get politically hammered.

Success has a large part of "survivor bias" to it.

See sibling comment. I agree there is a lot of survivorship bias but the reality is more like the first coin flip has a 25% chance and all the subsequent ones are closer to like 80-90% because there are a lot of positive feedback mechanisms you can take advantage of to maximize early career advantages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_R._Orszag (NOTE: NOT suggesting he cheated, just noting that lots of people have fast-tracks pre-planned for them w/o the hassle of working their way up.)

Not quite running the FED, but look at the years, pretty close.

Orszag earned an A.B. summa cum laude in economics from Princeton University in 1991 after completing an 80-page long senior thesis titled "Congressional Oversight of the Federal Reserve: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives."[11] He then received a M.Sc. (1992) and a Ph.D. (1997) in economics from the London School of Economics.

He served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy (1997–1998), and as Senior Economist and Senior Adviser on the Council of Economic Advisers (1995–1996) during the Clinton administration. Director of the OMB by 2008.

Assistants to the president are often these fresh out of school types.

Obamas speechwriter were in their early 20s as well for instance.

The Fed is way more stringent - - a fresh PhD would be an analyst or research associate, nothing more.

State departments and organizations have a lot more hierarchy for better or worse.

He was "Senior Advisor" before even graduating. He was a WH Director within 10yrs. Three years later, he was Vice Chairman of a global bank (Citigroup).

Likely they will also fraud the 5-20 years in the middle. These corporations are also highly susceptible to fraud.

This is absolutely not the reality of a PhD. On what planet do people with those backgrounds get those positions out of their PhDs? What's the basis for this entire comment?

The basis is spending 15 years in NYC high finance and having multiple close groups of friends who graduated from Stanford, work in tech, raised VC, etc

You have 15 years of finance experience as you “enter your thirties”?

You got me, poor wording. My father worked at a very high level in influential investment funds, I grew up around the industry and understand how it works. I will delete this later because its not something I want to advertise

It sounds like you have a background and exposure to people who might have many enabling success factors. Shiny credentials might be one but social networks are another. Collectively, they might be contributing to the success you suggest is not deserved, but I’m not sure that’s an obvious argument. People of these backgrounds could probably game any gating ritual.

Perhaps we should focus on drawing more actual talent rather than excluding the phonies (even at the highest levels, status and influence isn’t zero sum in my experience).

I think it is correct that on the surface it is credentials. I also think it is correct that the underlying property is social networks and a particular culture / mindset.

Ultimately, I think the "phonies" need to be addressed directly because I believe they are effectively a cabal.

I also think it requires the broader culture to take active steps to help make this happen: work harder to think about what bad behavior is and take action to avoid / penalize it.

FWIW, I have traveled in the finance / startup circles and kept looking for "better places" but have come to the conclusion that they are few and far between and the issue is the business culture and the broader culture that celebrates it.

Isn't there a time limit on deleting / editing comments?

And the cherry-on-top: Once you are part of a research unit at big corporation, your annual bonus depends on your number of publications. Or why the pursuit of incremental but well marketed results never ends. Or why papers with 6+ authors among which only 1-2 substantially contributed is the new normal.

Thanks for pointing out the problem with credentials.

Name a better indicator then for being competent.

Industry kinda already has. Products launched. Teams managed. A candidate's publication record is a conversation starter during interviews, but I feel like years of experience at a company working on launching a successful project is a much more valuable currency.

> Industry kinda already has. Products launched.

This suggestion is so detached from both the problem and the very nature of academia that it's straight-out laughable.

I mean, what do product launches have to do building knowledge on the state of the art, identifying a novel idea, doing the iterative work to refine the idea, and finally document it to the public? Product launches at best require you to manage people and expectations. Do you honestly believe that a guy who launched a product is more qualified to drive science forward than a PhD with an outstanding academic track record just because your PM had a knack to cut corners, descope requirements, and pass the buck to underlings? Because that's the bulk of the job of all PMs I ever met, including from FANGs.

Your suggestion is the poster child of the old mantra "if the only tool you have is a hammer you tend to see every problem as a nail".

The private sector does do research, and for RoI /it actually has to work/.

Academia is a cesspit of politics and dishonesty. Forming the most effective cartels, sensationalizing your results, and being well networked with other academics is not aligned with getting results on actual problems.

> The private sector does do research, and for RoI /it actually has to work/.

The private sector does research with researchers, not product managers.

The process is exactly the same. It's not a public vs private thing. It's a research vs production thing. Research is open-ended and iterative and exploratory. Product design is close-ended, focused, and with hard requirements. Research has zero to do with product management, and you don't change the nature of the problem by pretending that a scientific discovery is a product expecting to be launched.

> Academia is a cesspit of politics and dishonesty.

Oh awesome. Have you ever did any corporate work? Because if you believe that academia suffers from this problem but corporations don't then I have a few bridges I'd like to sell you.

At least in academia you do need to have your publications to back you up. In corporate environments all you have is the cesspool part.

Many companies now hire PhDs to do production work, and it ends up being a complete disaster. There is not much need for pure researchers in most of industry.

And in my experience teams with these academic data "scientists" are far worse cesspools than normal engineering teams who deliver actual products and value.

Also, what are publications supposed to show? They are often a negative indicator of actual capability. Ever interviewed a data scientist who looks good on paper with tons of publications who can't even write a for loop? I have.

I agree that business isn't really the right model for academics but the problems imho is that what an "outstanding academic track record is" has become so ambiguous that it's practically meaningless -- and I say this as a former tenured prof at an R1 institution.

I could write a book about this stuff. The stories I could tell about what's behind those "outstanding academic track records"...

The problem, if anything, is trying to apply a business model to academics, equating research quality with federal grant dollars, taking away real intellectual freedom protections, and then ignoring all the ponzi scheming and exploitation that occurs. Everyone has their heads in the sand, knows academics (at least biomedical research) is full of BS, and just goes on pretending like it's not because no one knows of a good alternative, or doesn't have the courage or power to change things.

What's funny [sad?] to me is that your description of PMs sounds exactly like the most credentialed, accomplished researchers I know on paper.

It's interesting to me regarding some of the examples in the linked piece. Ghostwriting reviews, for example, is actually seen as a good practice in a lot of circles because it provides experience to grad students with the review process. Those guest authorships? Very grey area between that and collaborative authorships. It's not the grunt work, it's the idea, right? Or is it that ideas are a dime a dozen, and actually doing the work is important? I can't tell which it is anymore -- it seems to depend on what benefits those in power.

Someone else posted something about how 1% of research is fraud, and 80% is bad. I think the percent of fraud is probably higher, the percent bad research is lower, and the difference is much more fuzzy than you'd think initially. The really difficult thing is that tiny incremental contributions is how things actually work. No one wants to admit this though. Bad research is actively incentivized, and there's credit bubbles everywhere.

The worst problem is that this credentialing bubble is everywhere with everything, as another posted noted. The problem isn't the credentialing per se, it's how it's detached from reality, the real demands of the tasks. Having a credential doesn't mean that the person is competent for all the tasks it nominally encompasses; conversely, those tasks don't necessarily require the credential that's often demanded.

For getting a job, maybe…industry isn't everything.

I think his point is that practical experience and a track record of proven, successful, outcomes are more useful for predicting future outcome.

A good PhD is launching a successful project.

" Products launched. Teams managed."

This definitely has zero to do with quality research being published, and even in startup land, those things are nice to have but still don't prove anything, unless they were the directing agents of those initiatives.

Those are even easier to hack. Here's the result of measuring by projects launched: https://killedbygoogle.com/

These metrics can just as easily be gamed, see how all the glory at Google goes towards launching exciting projects, that then immediately get put into stasis, then canceled.

For most, credentialism works fine in academia.

The problem is that you're incentivized to cheat, because it's either that or your career.

Academia suffers from incredible power asymmetry, and an obsession with prestige. It's shit culture that rots from the head and down.

Of course, the vast majority of research groups are not like that - but it seems to be a problem which has always been there, but just been swept under the rug.

Again, it's difficult to find informants. Groups are small, and most advisors have very few people under their wing. It is probably very easy to identify and black-ball whistleblowers. It gets more difficult, the more you're invested in your work/degree.

Allow me to offer some qualities other than competency that are necessary for responsible research.

1. Purpose. what is it that drives one?

2. Integrity. when does one compromise it?

3. Awareness. is one able to disengage when one's ego (fueled by credentials) is activated.

Can't agree more. And it's getting worse. In certain fields people are almost untouchable. Couldn't count anymore the number of discussions I had about doctors and how absolutely incompetent some of them are: the usual reaction is like 'No, you don't say! But the selection process ensures only the smartest get selected,so what are you on about?'. The second one is PhDs, and in general all sorts of professors almost elevated to god like level. You almost get a free pass to spread whatever shit you want if the credentials are right.

The corporate world is exactly the same. Since my last promotion,I now have a nice title. People now listen to what I have to say. They even take me seriously. I can now go to some guy who's got 20 times more experience and start selling my consulting services(I'm not a consultant).

>Couldn't count anymore the number of discussions I had about doctors and how absolutely incompetent some of them are: the usual reaction is like 'No, you don't say! But the selection process ensures only the smartest get selected,so what are you on about?'. The second one is PhDs, and in general all sorts of professors almost elevated to god like level. You almost get a free pass to spread whatever shit you want if the credentials are right.

It's like the old joke: what do you call the worst-performing graduate from medical school (or a PhD program), the one who was at the bottom of their class? You call them "Doctor"!

I'll trade my credential for a few million any day of the week.

Never have any takers, I wonder why.

Credentials are non transferable and non-voidable unless you are later discovered having cheated. I don’t get what point you’re trying to make here.

> The root of the problem is that we allow people with high esteemed credentials to run society.

If high credentials run society, surely somebody would offer me a bribe of a few million dollars by now, in order to make use of my 'society running' abilities.

You forgot a step:

"Your parents are rich, so you have a chance."

Publications really only look impressive to outsiders and gra d students.

Surely you mean the number of publications, or some other superficial metric (e.g. being the third "supervising" author on a paper with a dozen authors).

If I read a paper and have a great appreciation for the ideas, and have a sense that an author contributed significantly to the aspects I appreciate (either from explicit descriptions of the authors' contributions in the publication, or by speaking to them), why would that not be impressive to me?

I work with a group that got a pretty ground-breaking tech paper published in a top medical journal. They estimated it generated $100M in investment for the group. Over 2-3 years. I think the original investment for the work that produced the paper was about $1M. FWIW.