Rich-get-richer in Career Advancement
https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/career-setbacks-can-help-your-performance-but-hurt-your-pay
The rich get richer phenomenon is no foreign concept within our culture. In the article “Career Setbacks Can Help Your Career, But Hurt Your Pay,” by Faye Flam, Flam concludes that the rich get richer effect is particularly relevant to career advancement. Flam claims that while rejections and “near misses” can hurt in the short term, they are ultimately beneficial in someone’s long term career goals. In a study conducted by Dashun Wang, a sociologist at Northwestern University, scientists who were provided grant money by being a “narrow winner,” meaning they were not the most qualified to receive the grants, were more likely to experience success in their field over the next decade and publish papers with greater influence.
As discussed in class, the rich-get-richer effect is based upon the assumption that people will copy the decisions of those before them, i.e. an information cascade. Pages are more likely to have links form with pages that have a higher number of current in-links, meaning that the chances a new page will form a link with a new page is proportional with the number of pages that have already linked to the page. In addition to applying this phenomenon to new web pages or products gaining popularity, the rich-get-richer effect is observed with scientists who receive research funding. Although someone who barely managed to receive a grant may not be significantly more qualified than those who narrowly missed getting chosen for a grant, they are now in a much better position to receive more funding, i.e. more links are likely to connect to them in the future. According to the rich-get-richer effect, they now have a higher number of in-links, so therefore new pages (grants) are likely to connect to them. Based purely off of societal perception, if other people have provided funding for a certain scientist, people are more likely to give out their own grants, if someone else has vetted them. By this same token, those who were considered narrow misses would appear to be at a disproportionate advantage for future funding. However, Flam notes that there are also studies that believe setbacks also provide fuel for greater determination and that “persevering losers [can] still [come] out on top.”