Being from a well-off background with connections is always going to make it easier to progress in your career.
That’s not to say you won’t make it by working hard or getting lucky but your average person from a Council Estate is likely going to have to work a lot harder than the son of a sitting politician to achieve the same.
In other news; the pope is catholic and bears really do shit in the woods
I’m from a very working class background.
All the people I grew up with who have gone on to be what would be classed as ‘high achievers’ have done so in a very limited set of industries- Sports, Renewable Energy, Logistics and Music.
There was a job which became vacant last month.
I’d had my eye on it for a while; easy, well paid, free travel and accommodation, no formal qualifications, etc
Typically, the position wasn’t advertised and it went to one of the relatives of the person who used to do it, and I don’t think he even had to attend an interview
It’s true I’m afraid. There’s an awful middle ground where working class people call you posh for being able to string a sentence together and posh people think of you as a common oik for speaking in an accent.
My advice would be to work for a foreign managed company if you can.
Look up CEOs on LinkedIn.
Most of them will have went to a (upper tier) university and their first role post graduation, being 22-23 yrs old, will be as a senior manager, head of, or similar. A few years later, they are in C-level roles.
That’s not based on merit.
it’s funny because Jacob Rees Mogg’s investment fund hires state educated people from non-elite unis (see their linkedin)
[deleted]
Honestly, as someone who’s from a seriously working class background, but with a middle-class partner?
Class is a massive barrier.
Outside the traditional issues (knowing the right people, money to survive), middle class and up just straight up have less trauma.
I was talking to my partner about how many of my friends have died to drug addiction, suicide, and drunken stupidity – she’s only been to one funeral, and I’ve lost count. I know plenty of people on their second or third child; her friends are just deciding to try. Half of my mates have serious alcohol and drug problems – most of hers don’t.
There’s a desperation, a genuine struggle at the bottom. And it’s almost completely ignored at every level of politics. The working class that I know feel abandoned, ignored, and unrepresented. They don’t see the point of trying, because you’ll only get kicked back down.
Hell, my dad was telling me about *training his accent away* so that he could apply for better jobs, so he could speak to bank managers to start his business. The same with my mum; to get to the position she’s in, she got rid of her accent.
To be working class is seen almost as shameful.
I am surprised that current D&I efforts seem to recognise race so much but largely ignore class or socio-economic background. I would’ve thought it obvious that these are more relevant distinctions within British society
This is a serious problem in a lot of jobs that provide services *for* the general public as well, speaking from experience. The recruitment process has massive barriers of entry to anyone who isn’t middle-class and up – or who can fake that they are. The process is firstly very time-consuming (circa 4 interview rounds) and the people invariably come from a background in which they assume you will have had time & financial comfort to do e.g. volunteering, coaching, community leadership in your free time, maybe alongside additional qualifications paid by yourself.
Then once you get in the door you realise that the people you’re working with because of being filtered for that ‘type’ have no thirst to actually change anything or think of a better way to do it, because the system as is has already worked for them & changing it might threaten that dynamic. Yayyy.
When I started work in 1971 with a large corporation at 18 (A levels only) from a working class family, it was considered quite normal for anybody to “work their way up the ladder” purely on merit and ability. The CEO at the time had started with the company as an apprentice. But then, you didn’t have a job, you had a career and it was also normal to stay with the same company for your whole working life and retire on a good pension. Don’t see much of that these days. It seems to be not “What you know” but “Who you know”.
I once worked somewhere where the boss asked, of somebody else, “what school did he go to?” I didn’t even understand the question until I realised this was all about the private school system, the kudos of various institutions, who knows who, etc. I went to a standard state school myself, but I was an exception – the majority of people, in this admittedly small company, were privately educated.
This is absolutely true.
Unfortunately all those posh journalists and posh politicians have distracted us with stupid divisive US imported culture war ideas to distract us from the fact that the UK is a class ridden society.
Two of the biggest issues for people coming from working class backgrounds is a) not knowing what opportunities are out there and b) confidence.
My wife came from a poor household in a poor town, worked her as off in school, elbowed her way into Cambridge and went into law.
Right now firms are tripping over themselves to hire from diverse backgrounds. Applications for training contracts are weighted in favour of people from comps/less privileged backgrounds. So the opportunities are out there, schools though need to be encouraging students to aim high.
Something I’ve noticed, now that I’m five or so years out of university, is that a significant number of my coursemates have now given up on any facade of trying to ‘make it on their own’ and have gone to work for their dads’ consulting, financial services and real estate companies. The gap between me (from a working class background) and them has always felt wide, but in the last few years it has never felt wider.
Honestly, it’s time to start going after private schools. At this point I honestly think a cap on the number of privately educated students a university can take on should be implemented, and judges shouldn’t be able to come from private schools at all.
And yet working class young people are gaslit constantly that ultra rich posh young women and children of millionaires from other countries are the underdogs because they don’t have the “privileges” that Terry and Tracey have. In the 90s large companies had policies to encourage taking on working class people, as they had fewer opportunities and could often do better with the opportunities they did get.
There is a really interesting Ted Talk that discusses
This is a British study that has been ongoing for over 70 years.
“Perhaps the biggest message from this remarkable study is this: don’t be born into poverty or into disadvantage, because if you are, you’re far more likely to walk a difficult path in life.”
“They’ve been more likely to do worse at school, to end up with worse jobs and to earn less money.”
“Good parenting only reduced the educational gap between the rich and poor children by about 50 percent.”
There is another one about how income affects the actual development of areas of your brain: https://youtu.be/xTra-yePY_A
20 comments
That’s because it is and always has been?
Being from a well-off background with connections is always going to make it easier to progress in your career.
That’s not to say you won’t make it by working hard or getting lucky but your average person from a Council Estate is likely going to have to work a lot harder than the son of a sitting politician to achieve the same.
In other news; the pope is catholic and bears really do shit in the woods
I’m from a very working class background.
All the people I grew up with who have gone on to be what would be classed as ‘high achievers’ have done so in a very limited set of industries- Sports, Renewable Energy, Logistics and Music.
There was a job which became vacant last month.
I’d had my eye on it for a while; easy, well paid, free travel and accommodation, no formal qualifications, etc
Typically, the position wasn’t advertised and it went to one of the relatives of the person who used to do it, and I don’t think he even had to attend an interview
It’s true I’m afraid. There’s an awful middle ground where working class people call you posh for being able to string a sentence together and posh people think of you as a common oik for speaking in an accent.
My advice would be to work for a foreign managed company if you can.
Look up CEOs on LinkedIn.
Most of them will have went to a (upper tier) university and their first role post graduation, being 22-23 yrs old, will be as a senior manager, head of, or similar. A few years later, they are in C-level roles.
That’s not based on merit.
it’s funny because Jacob Rees Mogg’s investment fund hires state educated people from non-elite unis (see their linkedin)
[deleted]
Honestly, as someone who’s from a seriously working class background, but with a middle-class partner?
Class is a massive barrier.
Outside the traditional issues (knowing the right people, money to survive), middle class and up just straight up have less trauma.
I was talking to my partner about how many of my friends have died to drug addiction, suicide, and drunken stupidity – she’s only been to one funeral, and I’ve lost count. I know plenty of people on their second or third child; her friends are just deciding to try. Half of my mates have serious alcohol and drug problems – most of hers don’t.
There’s a desperation, a genuine struggle at the bottom. And it’s almost completely ignored at every level of politics. The working class that I know feel abandoned, ignored, and unrepresented. They don’t see the point of trying, because you’ll only get kicked back down.
Hell, my dad was telling me about *training his accent away* so that he could apply for better jobs, so he could speak to bank managers to start his business. The same with my mum; to get to the position she’s in, she got rid of her accent.
To be working class is seen almost as shameful.
I am surprised that current D&I efforts seem to recognise race so much but largely ignore class or socio-economic background. I would’ve thought it obvious that these are more relevant distinctions within British society
This is a serious problem in a lot of jobs that provide services *for* the general public as well, speaking from experience. The recruitment process has massive barriers of entry to anyone who isn’t middle-class and up – or who can fake that they are. The process is firstly very time-consuming (circa 4 interview rounds) and the people invariably come from a background in which they assume you will have had time & financial comfort to do e.g. volunteering, coaching, community leadership in your free time, maybe alongside additional qualifications paid by yourself.
Then once you get in the door you realise that the people you’re working with because of being filtered for that ‘type’ have no thirst to actually change anything or think of a better way to do it, because the system as is has already worked for them & changing it might threaten that dynamic. Yayyy.
When I started work in 1971 with a large corporation at 18 (A levels only) from a working class family, it was considered quite normal for anybody to “work their way up the ladder” purely on merit and ability. The CEO at the time had started with the company as an apprentice. But then, you didn’t have a job, you had a career and it was also normal to stay with the same company for your whole working life and retire on a good pension. Don’t see much of that these days. It seems to be not “What you know” but “Who you know”.
I once worked somewhere where the boss asked, of somebody else, “what school did he go to?” I didn’t even understand the question until I realised this was all about the private school system, the kudos of various institutions, who knows who, etc. I went to a standard state school myself, but I was an exception – the majority of people, in this admittedly small company, were privately educated.
This is absolutely true.
Unfortunately all those posh journalists and posh politicians have distracted us with stupid divisive US imported culture war ideas to distract us from the fact that the UK is a class ridden society.
Two of the biggest issues for people coming from working class backgrounds is a) not knowing what opportunities are out there and b) confidence.
My wife came from a poor household in a poor town, worked her as off in school, elbowed her way into Cambridge and went into law.
Right now firms are tripping over themselves to hire from diverse backgrounds. Applications for training contracts are weighted in favour of people from comps/less privileged backgrounds. So the opportunities are out there, schools though need to be encouraging students to aim high.
Something I’ve noticed, now that I’m five or so years out of university, is that a significant number of my coursemates have now given up on any facade of trying to ‘make it on their own’ and have gone to work for their dads’ consulting, financial services and real estate companies. The gap between me (from a working class background) and them has always felt wide, but in the last few years it has never felt wider.
Honestly, it’s time to start going after private schools. At this point I honestly think a cap on the number of privately educated students a university can take on should be implemented, and judges shouldn’t be able to come from private schools at all.
And yet working class young people are gaslit constantly that ultra rich posh young women and children of millionaires from other countries are the underdogs because they don’t have the “privileges” that Terry and Tracey have. In the 90s large companies had policies to encourage taking on working class people, as they had fewer opportunities and could often do better with the opportunities they did get.
There is a really interesting Ted Talk that discusses
https://www.ted.com/talks/helen_pearson_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_human_development/transcript?language=en
This is a British study that has been ongoing for over 70 years.
“Perhaps the biggest message from this remarkable study is this: don’t be born into poverty or into disadvantage, because if you are, you’re far more likely to walk a difficult path in life.”
“They’ve been more likely to do worse at school, to end up with worse jobs and to earn less money.”
“Good parenting only reduced the educational gap between the rich and poor children by about 50 percent.”
There is another one about how income affects the actual development of areas of your brain:
https://youtu.be/xTra-yePY_A