The Rich get Richer

I was a pretty good student in primary school, who used to have good grades. Then, grades consistently declined further ahead during High School and Uni (by then I had realized music, friendship and football were more important, and I regret nothing). While in Primary School, when I was maybe 11, I started to realize that the teachers had somehow flagged me as a the "A-grade guy" and they had begun to evaluate me in what I felt was a bit of a laxer way. I had found mistakes in some exams of mine still graded "A"; A-grades were somehow coming in too easy. So I decided to test it. There was this one exam I purposely decided to add wrong answers here and there. Not everywhere though. I still got an A (or a 10, in the Argentinian scoring system). This gave me two insights:

1. It seemed I was not being critically evaluated anymore for what I really *knew* or studied. It looked like the fact I had passed exams before (my "track record" of sorts) was, somehow, influential. It seemed teachers were in some kind of "autopilot mode" with me, affecting their critical thinking. As much as I enjoyed getting As, there was something wrong about not feeling critically evaluated anymore. I was "open loop".

2. I quickly understood that just as I was flagged as the "A-boy", someone was flagged as the opposite. I quickly identified this person in my class. He was repeatedly failing at exams, despite (which I know first hand since he was a friend of mine) him trying hard to overcome this, to little or no avail. It seemed teachers were in "autopilot mode" with him as well.

What I was testing, without really knowing, was the Matthew Effect: the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. It is a reinforcing loop: success boosts status, which attracts more success. Failure does the same, just in the opposite way. A key factor here is to define what success really means.

If we take a high grade (an A) as a cold measure of success, I was being successful. Now, if we consider true success is about proving proficiency in a topic while being thoroughly reviewed, I was failing miserably. Moreover, my friend was perhaps more successful than me, since he was building at least a good deal of adaptive skills and resilience to overcome difficulties and dealing with failure, which are good traits to have for life in general. "Successful" people tend to handle failure less elegantly, for they usually do not know how to react to it. Still, I can imagine my friend having a hard time telling his parents: "I am not failing my exams, I am just building resiliency for life".

Matthew effect is all around. How many times you have read a shitty article from a multiple-times best-seller published in a renowned publication? You get the feeling they would get published even if they randomly hit the keyboard with a stick, and the likes would still count in the thousands (I'm feeling compelled not to share many examples here). How many other times some guru in your organization comes up with a ridiculous idea everybody applauds while you scratch your head thinking how that would've gone, had you proposed the same? The bar to gauge current output seems to be greatly affected by the past. If there is no perceived past (i.e. you are a nobody for some audience) the bar will be extremely stricter, to the point the work may be disregarded or simply ignored. As much as a reputation may indicate competence or prolificness, it does not guarantee current nor future effectiveness by itself. Thinking so can be even damaging (hail to those who don't buy the flashy credentials and put the stuff under the skeptical magnifier, no matter what). Along the same lines, being fresh in a domain must not equal automatic indifference; there are hidden gems all around out of the mainstream.

This frequently comes back to me, as CTO at ReOrbit. I am in a position of taking decisions which can affect others. As such, I want to be critically evaluated by the people I lead. I want my team to feel safe to point out my nonsense. The credentials I may have earned are a product of failing and succeeding, perhaps in similar amounts. Goes to say, I have screwed up in the past and I am sure I will screw up in the future if I am left to my own devices.