Choose the right Status Hierarchies

Aaron M Renn on X

Let me tell you about one of my biggest mistakes in life, courtesy of @tylercowen .

Cowen says one mark of talent is knowing the right status hierarchies to climb. I chose the wrong status hierarchies, though hopefully some of that was not entirely my fault.

As a Midwest "farm boy," I chose essentially Midwestern status hierarchies.

Educationally, I chose Indiana University, in the Big Ten status group of the state flagship hierarchy. Not bad, but I easily could have gotten into Harvard or a similar school at that time.

Professionally, I went into technology focused management consulting with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). This was the midtier corporate consulting hierarchy. It was a great experience and Accenture is a great firm. But that as a career platform, unlike true McKinsey tier management consulting or investment banking, doesn't really lead to big things outside of that world. Very few people I knew at any level of Accenture went on to achieve success in obviously elite realms. Almost all of them are still doing some variety of corporate IT.

Geographically, I moved to Chicago. This is the Midwest urban hierarchy. Wonderful city. Arguably the best price/performance in urbanism available today. For people outside of the top 5-7% of talent, it's arguably the best choice. But with some limited exceptions, it's not the big leagues. It's less connected to elite networks. It's not an ambition force multiplier. For people who aspire to reach the peaks, it's the wrong choice. It's the top of the Midwest hierarchy, but not the national or global one.

I grew up in a rural part of Southern Indiana four miles outside a town of less than 100 people. My consolidated high school had 50 people in my graduating class. My choices were extremely high ambition by the standards of that community. They also worked out extremely well for me personally. Getting to move to Chicago, become a managing director at Accenture, experiencing a level of consumption I never knew existed - all great things. In fact, they were so good compared to my origins that I didn't realize what I wasn't accomplishing. I didn't even know about the levels above me in some cases.

I met a very famous pastor whose name you'd know. He grew up in a similar backwater to me, probably 2-3 hours from me. But in high school he had a teacher or counselor who looked at his test scores and told him he needed to go to an elite college - and even gave him a list of acceptable choices. That put him on a trajectory that led to the very apex of his profession.

No one ever did anything like that for me. In retrospect, I was left completely alone growing up to make my own choices in a vacuum. That's better than a lot of people in my hometown area, whose ambitions were actively suppressed. But it made a big negative impact on my life trajectory, at least hypothetically.

Even then, your choice of college determined much of your future. Choosing IU, I could not have gotten a job at McKinsey. I remember in the 1980s growing up and thinking those corporate raiders on Wall Street were cool and that I might like to do something like that. But my college choice made sure that door would not be open for me. (Actually, I would have hated finance anyway).

Absent some outside chance event, probably there was nothing I probably could have done to make better choices in high school. Moving to Chicago and working for Accenture was arguably the right move in light of my college choice.

But I should have recognized in my 20s that I needed to pivot out of that, and I didn't. I was a top 1% programmer in that era, and probably could have gone to Silicon Valley. I just didn't. I have to take ownership of that.

Later I did pivot in ways that opened new vistas. I moved to New York and worked at the Manhattan Institute. I've been quoted in and written for basically every major media outlet there is. My "negative world" idea has massively affected how evangelicals view the world, and is even changing ministry strategies at megachurches.

But the fact that I spent way too much time playing the wrong games in the wrong status hierarchies hurt. I'll probably never overcome that completely.

Cowen's point is critical and most overlooked. It's not just about the kind of job you want to do, or the city you think you'd enjoy living in. You need to think strategically about the right status hierarchies to climb. And explicitly consider what state hierarchy you are putting yourself in through your life choices.

Today, there's more of a known conventional script, as followed by someone like Pete Buttigieg. That still works for some, though is competitive and overcrowded. I probably would have benefitted from being more conventional early in life. But some other people today, the unconventional choice might be better. And, of course, no matter what you do, success is not guaranteed.

There's an old saying, "Without awareness, there is no choice." You are going to be working to climb some status hierarchies. The question is whether you actually made a conscious choice or just drifted into it by default. 8:42 PM · Oct 16, 2024