Intelligent people in cheaper jurisdictions often get used as low-cost cannon fodder, with any independence and initiative discouraged such that they never become seniors or management in anything but name. That's the real "ick".
Saw this firsthand in tech. I was in a second-tier US city. There was a lot of excitement about Silicon Valley's interest in the city--highly diverse, well-educated workforce, pro-business, all that. I began to notice that SV was sending the equivalent of company plumbers to the city. No marketing executives (critical in B2C), no product managers, etc. etc. Or they'd come but be responsible for the equivalent of the company cafeteria, not the important stuff. I pointed this out, a decidedly unpopular opinion, going so far as to say I'd pay money to watch a reality show about a top Google PM relocating to someplace like Tulsa OK. (Or a City banker moving to Leeds, I suppose.) Some people wished I was wrong, others didn't understand the question. A key factor of ick is who realizes the ick and why.
The "Ick" just sounds like a means to keep status and rewards within the "in group", regardless of merit. I saw it in a London brokerage firm that preferred public school alumni for plum jobs and partnerships. But it can apply to anything - accents, clothes, hairstyles, where you live, skin color, sex, religion, etc, etc. Meritocracy be damned.
That's the beauty of it! Invisible road blocks keep outsiders out, thinning the field you must compete against. "Members only." Naturally it is taboo for insiders to talk about this.
The "system" or the desires of the in-group that uses some difference to ensure conformity. The group is individuals who use the cues to exclude outsiders in favor of insiders. There is no impersonal system, but the deliberate involvement of group insiders.
The issue of responsibility is sticky. In the old days, you'd see a graduate intake come onto a trading floor and take on the culture of the desk they were assigned to. The traders' grad would become a bit barrow boy. The analyst desk grad would cite books they barely knew. We come into cultures and they shape us. If that doesn't sit well with us, we soon leave, and the survivors fit the homeostatic state well.
It was one of the reasons I emigrated to the US. Of course, the same happens in the US, just different in and out groups. But on the whole, it feels less constrained than in the UK I left. especially in California.
1. Raj Chetty has studied the effect of elite school graduation on US wages, using kids who get into Ivy U. but choose State Tech for the necessary comparison. Mostly, there is no school effect, once controlled. But the school effect remains considerable in consulting and the tonier forms of banking. The sweatier professions--especially technical work--have less ick. By doubtless wild coincidence, they have less pay.
2. Some people are very good at de-icking, but it probably requires a lot of personal contact. I know a Sri Lankan woman who somehow was working in an enforcement shop dominated by ex-FBI Irish-Americans. She played the role of bratty Irish kid sister to perfection, and her brown skin and foreign accent became invisible.
You're not implying in any way that "status" is a thing, are U? You mean our "highly-trained professionals" are motivated by status, but won't admit it?
Huh.
But that would mean they are sweeping their icky motivations under the rug...OMG!
Thankfully, government service only attracts the best qualified people...like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Or, over here, The Donald, and his Friends.
Maybe society is upside down?
"The first shall be last, and the last shall be first?" kinda thing?
One interesting thing to do is to compare with fields which have much more meritocratic pressures (they are strange ones, so the obvious example is top flight English football). There is the ick, but talent really does matter, so organisations have started to get over it. Which suggests that in a lot of high-end professional fields talent isn't that important so far.
If football was truly meritocratic, there would have been some Asian players. It would have taken so long for Cyril Regis and there would be more black managers.
We could think of even more harshly competitive environments - say war. Know many admirals in Britain with Liverpool accents? Meritocracy is a matter of life and death there.
Football became more meritocratic in the recent era. We know it wasn't before. Hence I said "started to get over it." As for war, the history of most conflicts is that meritocracy only arrives towards the end of long conflicts, there's usually a huge period of (a) letting people who aren't ick be in charge, because their face fits and (b) working out what qualities lead to success in the new conflict.
Is "The Ick" the same thing as Unconscious Bias, or maybe an expansion of the concept? I've gotten mandatory trainings on recognizing and avoiding Unconscious Bias from multiple employers, but it was more focused on making sure we didn't discriminate against marginalized communities.
I haven't had that training. Will check out the content. I'd say the training which would work is employing anthropologists to advise executives on where the Ick is in their banks. The proper job of a bank exec is then to decide on the risks and rewards of changing the homeostatic state that their systems are in
To add, a key difference between unconscious bias training and the Ick is that the former is focused on individuals. The Ick framework says that the pollution response is systematic.
What will these execs do if "analysis" shows that they themselves are the problem? Resign? I don't think so...who guards these guardians? If the cops are corrupt, all bets are off. Didya read about the Icelandic bank execs? They got the rewards, everyone else got the risks. Beautiful! Don't rock our boat.
Q. What if the people doing the training on unconscious bias themselves have unconscious biases, not to mention a stake in the "unconscious bias training" game?
Or, what if the people taking the mandatory corporate training get good at pretending to change, playing their part of the game?
Is it game playing all the way down, or only part way?
From my own experience, the best way to overcome biases about people is to get to know them better, duh. If you are raised in a monoculture this may not happen, but kids today live in a global TikTok internet culture, and you can tell from how they act towards each other. At least where I live...accepting in some ways, not in others, short attention spans. Phone welded to hand, eye looking at screen. Sometimes: that IRL thing.
Trying to eliminate all the problems in anything is like squeezing a lump of Silly Putty: you can squish on it here, but it will pop out there. But don't squeeze too much Plutonium or it might go BOOM!
I used to fly gliders. To go up they need rising air. To make room for this rising air, the atmosphere must make other air go down. The atmosphere doesn't get bigger or smaller, so something's gotta give. Yin and Yang. Nature and physics create constraints.
If everything were perfect, what would there be to do? Being alive means facing problems.
And even if you had everything...you would spend your whole life dusting it! And if you owned a subatomic particle, how could you even dust it?
Offshoring basic, repetitive tasks is about saving money, full stop.
The offshoring decision makers don’t care who does it and they never think about them- there is no ick- these people don’t exist in their minds any more than the person assembling the iPhone exist in consumers’ minds.
Question: can there be "sustainable" systems that can survive, or only "greedy" systems that fail? How about "open" systems versus "closed" systems? Or are all systems "closed?"
Humans have lived on Earth for only a few short years, but we think we own the place.
We have to think carefully of these things, because we are playing for keeps.
Intelligent people in cheaper jurisdictions often get used as low-cost cannon fodder, with any independence and initiative discouraged such that they never become seniors or management in anything but name. That's the real "ick".
You're quite right. I would say this was the consequence of the Ick
Saw this firsthand in tech. I was in a second-tier US city. There was a lot of excitement about Silicon Valley's interest in the city--highly diverse, well-educated workforce, pro-business, all that. I began to notice that SV was sending the equivalent of company plumbers to the city. No marketing executives (critical in B2C), no product managers, etc. etc. Or they'd come but be responsible for the equivalent of the company cafeteria, not the important stuff. I pointed this out, a decidedly unpopular opinion, going so far as to say I'd pay money to watch a reality show about a top Google PM relocating to someplace like Tulsa OK. (Or a City banker moving to Leeds, I suppose.) Some people wished I was wrong, others didn't understand the question. A key factor of ick is who realizes the ick and why.
Some call it Ick, but others call it genius:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Nz9uetlUU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-gLKG80Vsw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN2_NarcM8c
Just pour that vinegar into a swanky bottle and call it "Ye Olde Champagne."
But sometimes the truth leaks out, and somebody says so in public.
The "Ick" just sounds like a means to keep status and rewards within the "in group", regardless of merit. I saw it in a London brokerage firm that preferred public school alumni for plum jobs and partnerships. But it can apply to anything - accents, clothes, hairstyles, where you live, skin color, sex, religion, etc, etc. Meritocracy be damned.
Yes. The Ick does preserve status. It's a feature of the system, though, not a strategy of any individual
That's the beauty of it! Invisible road blocks keep outsiders out, thinning the field you must compete against. "Members only." Naturally it is taboo for insiders to talk about this.
All groups do this.
The "system" or the desires of the in-group that uses some difference to ensure conformity. The group is individuals who use the cues to exclude outsiders in favor of insiders. There is no impersonal system, but the deliberate involvement of group insiders.
The issue of responsibility is sticky. In the old days, you'd see a graduate intake come onto a trading floor and take on the culture of the desk they were assigned to. The traders' grad would become a bit barrow boy. The analyst desk grad would cite books they barely knew. We come into cultures and they shape us. If that doesn't sit well with us, we soon leave, and the survivors fit the homeostatic state well.
It was one of the reasons I emigrated to the US. Of course, the same happens in the US, just different in and out groups. But on the whole, it feels less constrained than in the UK I left. especially in California.
The Ick of suits with brown shoes! There's (at least one) old Alex cartoon about that.
Two points:
1. Raj Chetty has studied the effect of elite school graduation on US wages, using kids who get into Ivy U. but choose State Tech for the necessary comparison. Mostly, there is no school effect, once controlled. But the school effect remains considerable in consulting and the tonier forms of banking. The sweatier professions--especially technical work--have less ick. By doubtless wild coincidence, they have less pay.
2. Some people are very good at de-icking, but it probably requires a lot of personal contact. I know a Sri Lankan woman who somehow was working in an enforcement shop dominated by ex-FBI Irish-Americans. She played the role of bratty Irish kid sister to perfection, and her brown skin and foreign accent became invisible.
This is fascinating (def going to read Douglas’s book)! Thank you for sharing!
One thought—can we choose another term instead of click-baity/tik tok terms like “ick”?
You're not implying in any way that "status" is a thing, are U? You mean our "highly-trained professionals" are motivated by status, but won't admit it?
Huh.
But that would mean they are sweeping their icky motivations under the rug...OMG!
Thankfully, government service only attracts the best qualified people...like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Or, over here, The Donald, and his Friends.
Maybe society is upside down?
"The first shall be last, and the last shall be first?" kinda thing?
Crap.
One interesting thing to do is to compare with fields which have much more meritocratic pressures (they are strange ones, so the obvious example is top flight English football). There is the ick, but talent really does matter, so organisations have started to get over it. Which suggests that in a lot of high-end professional fields talent isn't that important so far.
If football was truly meritocratic, there would have been some Asian players. It would have taken so long for Cyril Regis and there would be more black managers.
We could think of even more harshly competitive environments - say war. Know many admirals in Britain with Liverpool accents? Meritocracy is a matter of life and death there.
Football became more meritocratic in the recent era. We know it wasn't before. Hence I said "started to get over it." As for war, the history of most conflicts is that meritocracy only arrives towards the end of long conflicts, there's usually a huge period of (a) letting people who aren't ick be in charge, because their face fits and (b) working out what qualities lead to success in the new conflict.
An excellent reminder that disgust/pollution responses are atavistic and must be suppressed.
Is "The Ick" the same thing as Unconscious Bias, or maybe an expansion of the concept? I've gotten mandatory trainings on recognizing and avoiding Unconscious Bias from multiple employers, but it was more focused on making sure we didn't discriminate against marginalized communities.
I haven't had that training. Will check out the content. I'd say the training which would work is employing anthropologists to advise executives on where the Ick is in their banks. The proper job of a bank exec is then to decide on the risks and rewards of changing the homeostatic state that their systems are in
To add, a key difference between unconscious bias training and the Ick is that the former is focused on individuals. The Ick framework says that the pollution response is systematic.
What will these execs do if "analysis" shows that they themselves are the problem? Resign? I don't think so...who guards these guardians? If the cops are corrupt, all bets are off. Didya read about the Icelandic bank execs? They got the rewards, everyone else got the risks. Beautiful! Don't rock our boat.
Q. What if the people doing the training on unconscious bias themselves have unconscious biases, not to mention a stake in the "unconscious bias training" game?
Or, what if the people taking the mandatory corporate training get good at pretending to change, playing their part of the game?
Is it game playing all the way down, or only part way?
From my own experience, the best way to overcome biases about people is to get to know them better, duh. If you are raised in a monoculture this may not happen, but kids today live in a global TikTok internet culture, and you can tell from how they act towards each other. At least where I live...accepting in some ways, not in others, short attention spans. Phone welded to hand, eye looking at screen. Sometimes: that IRL thing.
Trying to eliminate all the problems in anything is like squeezing a lump of Silly Putty: you can squish on it here, but it will pop out there. But don't squeeze too much Plutonium or it might go BOOM!
I used to fly gliders. To go up they need rising air. To make room for this rising air, the atmosphere must make other air go down. The atmosphere doesn't get bigger or smaller, so something's gotta give. Yin and Yang. Nature and physics create constraints.
If everything were perfect, what would there be to do? Being alive means facing problems.
And even if you had everything...you would spend your whole life dusting it! And if you owned a subatomic particle, how could you even dust it?
Offshoring basic, repetitive tasks is about saving money, full stop.
The offshoring decision makers don’t care who does it and they never think about them- there is no ick- these people don’t exist in their minds any more than the person assembling the iPhone exist in consumers’ minds.
That is true for repetitive tasks. The question I have is why should it be *mostly* repetitive tasks which go offshore?
We are way beyond mere "offshoring" now. The software industry, via A.I., is starting to eat its own tail, coders. Then what?
The system internalizes benefits and externalizes costs. But such a system is headed for self destruction in the end. Somebody should "war game" this.
The "war game" of nuclear war went like this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/magazine/nuclear-strategy-proud-prophet.html
King Midas died when he could not eat his food because he had turned it into gold:
https://historycooperative.org/king-midas/
Question: can there be "sustainable" systems that can survive, or only "greedy" systems that fail? How about "open" systems versus "closed" systems? Or are all systems "closed?"
Humans have lived on Earth for only a few short years, but we think we own the place.
We have to think carefully of these things, because we are playing for keeps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yfXgu37iyI