monkeysphere benefits

[mellowtigger]

I mentioned a while ago the concept of the monkeysphere, the number of people (limited by the hardwiring of our brains) that we can intensely care about.  In a related concept, researchers are finding that having friends improves your bank balance.  A Wisconsin Longitudinal Study looked at a 35-year history for about 1,100 males who had answered surveys about high school friendships.

"One additional friendship nomination in high school is associated with a 2 percent higher wage 35 years later.  This is roughly equivalent to almost half the gain from an extra year of education.  Shifting somebody from the bottom fifth to the top fifth of the school popularity distribution - in other words, turning a social reject into a star - would be predicted to yield him a 10 percent wage advantage.  This work emphasizes the critical importance of the early development of social skills alongside the cognitive and productive skills as a basis for economic success in adult life."
http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/publications/working-papers/iser/2009-03.pdf

So... it's not what you can do, it's who you know.  This work confirms the suspicions declared more than once over the years in the adult asperger support group that I've attended.  So, what does this study's conclusion have to say about the fact that I earned $13,644 in 2008?  (Other than the fact that I'm sometimes good at estimating.)  *laugh*  It's a crazy mixed-up world, alright.

It's stuff like this, in my opinion, that contributes to the stupidity of our financial and political realities.  The monkeys just encourage each other about how correct they are.  As long as the plundered riches of the earth can support the lie, they'll keep treating money (and political views) like baseball trading cards.  They're valuable because we encourage each other to believe they're valuable.  The more hype we create amongst ourselves, the more valuable they become.

The crash of this unsustainable system can't come soon enough for my tastes.

Comments

[unzeugmatic.livejournal.com]

So... it's not what you can do, it's who you know.

I would say that this study indicates that the skills of working with other people matter to an extent that helps in a financial sense. Which is not the same thing as who you know.

Over the course of my work life I've seen a few major layoffs from within companies that had once been flying very high. The layoffs always come in shifts, but there seems to be a pattern of who gets laid off in the first one (when the company is still trying to convince itself that it will be the only layoff which it never ever turns to be). The first people to be laid off are not the least "competent" by my sense of these things, but the people who as a matter of personal style make other people's lives more difficult. They are uncooperative, in various ways, which usually adds to the workload of others and always adds to the stress of others. The layoff provides a lawsuit-free way for a company to get rid of these people. What amazes me most of all is that management, apparently, is always aware of who these people are (not that they ever do anything to try to address their behavior).

Who is not at risk for layoff, at least for the first round? The people who, whatever their job, do their best to not make other people's jobs any harder.

My guess here is that the uncooperative if competent folks I refer to were probably a little bit lower on the friendship pole than the folks who do understand what their co-workers do and don't need from them. The translation into salary is pretty straightforward.

[bluebear2.livejournal.com]

I find many places of work give people the wrong impression of what they'd like and so those who aren't aware of what is really wanted go along with it and are considered problematic even though they may sincerely be working hard to give them what they appear to want.
Others who can see beyond the initial impression or have other experience that informs them of the larger picture tend to do better.

[mellowtigger]

Retaining a job is an angle that I hadn't really considered as much. I was thinking more in terms of:
* how people get to hear about job opportunities (social networking),
* how people get hired for a job (passing the social face-to-face interview), and
* how people get their particular salaries (knowing the right people in the right way (not being the wrong gender or skin color helps too)).

[foeclan.livejournal.com]

So... it's not what you can do, it's who you know. This work confirms the suspicions declared more than once over the years in the adult asperger support group that I've attended. So, what does this study's conclusion have to say about the fact that I earned $13,644 in 2008? (Other than the fact that I'm sometimes good at estimating.) *laugh* It's a crazy mixed-up world, alright.

I wouldn't take that to mean 'it's who you know'. It's more 'how well do you get to know people'. These people didn't necessarily get their better jobs from people they knew in high school. It is way easier to get a job when you already know someone in the company, but that's hardly news.

I had very few friends (most of the time 1 really) through high school and I made around 90k last year (a sizable chunk from my severance package, mind you, but in a regular year it would've still been 80-85k depending on bonuses).

Studies like these only make generalizations. They're useless for predicting or describing an individual, nor are they intended to be used that way.

[mellowtigger]

Yes, I agree. I was blurring several different points into one statement. :(

I know from my time jobhunting that the state would tell us that the people who were more likely to land jobs were the ones who attended job fairs and weekly job market roundtables. Essentially, the more social folk would learn of opportunities that weren't widely publicized. The widely publicized stuff would have more applicants and therefore your individual chances were lower. But learning through "lucky" social encounters, you could identify opportunities where you'd have better chances. They were big on insisting that people go to the job roundtables where people just sit and call out opportunities that they know about.

There was a time when the gay bar was a similar venue, a place to pass along news through the social grapevine. Not so much anymore, but Bear Coffee is the closest experience to that possibility these days.

[bearbarry.livejournal.com]

Despite the fact that a college education does help people bridge the gap, and that having a high level of emotional intelligence is very helpful if a person is going to be able to "play well with others," the best predictor of a young man's future income is to look at what his father made. That is not true for women and their daughters (or sons), however. The notion that the US is a "meritocracy" is at best a delusion, and at worst a lie. Even with Obama in the White House, the institutions that wield REAL power in this country are still controlled by rich, old, fat white men.

[mellowtigger]

Yes, one of my past realizations that got blurred into the parent post came to me from a boyfriend from France. He and his friends couldn't really understand the American obsession with pay level and tieing it to our self-worth. They just accepted that two people could do exactly the same job, but one would get paid a lot more than the other because of who they knew within the company who could set their salary. It was no big deal to them.

I still much prefer a meritocracy. Yeah, we're not there yet. (Ask any woman or black man, for example.)