[monkeyfacebag]

I don’t think this limited to careers in academia. I see similar kinds of survivorship bias in leadership seminars and talks in industry where they trot out the folks at the top of the pyramid to discuss their career trajectory and dispense wisdom to the rank and file.

Of course, you can still get paid well as a rank and file employee in industry, so the harm is not the same.

[seibelj]

If your goal is to make it to the top, then it is wise to hear from the people at the top how they got there. Inevitably it comes down to innate talent, passion, hard work, and luck. Luck is the element you can't control, but without hard work any luck presented would be useless.

Even if you never get lucky, the character traits of high-ranking people in your field can still be useful to you. Unfortunately there is no guaranteed path to success, and you just need to keep trying and hanging around if you want to become top-tier in whatever career you choose.

[monkeyfacebag]

> without hard work any luck presented would be useless

Can you say more about why you’re convinced this is true?

[dnautics]

Yeah but everyone already knows the rest of the job market is fucked beyond belief. There is an active false narrative that becoming an academic researcher is about doing good science. At best the cynicism goes "get published in a good journal"/grantsmanship deep. Nobody talks about the "don't be ugly", "Theranos-level oversell your research", "over interpret your data" strategies as positive factors in academic advancement.

[monkeyfacebag]

> Yeah but everyone already knows the rest of the job market is fucked beyond belief.

I’m not sure what you mean.