6 Things They Say Hurt Careers (That Statistics Say Help)
With economic recovery moving slower than a stoned snail and companies receiving 10,000 applications for 90 positions, everyone's concerned with job security. But have no fear, we at Cracked are here to help.
It turns out that many of the ways we intuitively believe we're improving our success in the workforce are totally wrong. If you want to get ahead, you'd be better advised to ...
#6. Start Drinking at Bars
Whatever positive thing you can say about alcohol (like, say, you have it to thank for the loss of your virginity), it sure as hell isn't going to help your career. Climbing the corporate ladder takes a lot of hard work, while spending nights out drinking means you're always calling in sick or spending half the shift hung over. So workers who frequently visit bars to drink away their problems must be making less than their hardworking coworkers who stay late at the office, right?
Not so, says the Journal of Labor Research. Their studies found that social drinkers earned 7 percent more, and people who frequented bars on a regular basis earned a whopping 10 to 14 percent more, than non-drinkers.
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"Hey, my stocks are up. I think I'll burn a $100 bill in front of a homeless guy in celebration."
Why? Well as any fraternity brother trying to justify his 1.5 GPA will tell you, it's not about what you know, it's about who you know. It's all about networking. Workers who regularly visit bars are able to build better relationships with coworkers and make all sorts of contacts outside their company. The guy you're singing karaoke with tonight is the same supervisor who might be giving out promotions six months from now, or the client you'll be trying to sell to next week.
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"You're a terrible doctor, Steve, but you're a hell of a good time. How's head of surgery sound?"
On the other hand, sober working drones may be seen as good workers, but are less likely to make these close personal relationships. And with as many as four out of five promotions being based on those kind of relationships, building that camaraderie with coworkers is more likely to get you that promotion than, say, constantly working. And nothing builds closer relationships like being a wing man for the boss at a bar.
And yes, we're referring to our hypothetical drinker as a male for a reason -- the data shows this trend is only applicable to men, as no correlation between bar visits and paycheck size was found for women.
And just in case you thought that the rule is as simple as "Be a nice guy and you'll be rewarded," it actually turns out that it's more helpful to ...
#5. Be a Jerk
You'd think that just straight being an asshole would be the quickest and easiest way to fail a job interview, or at least alienate your coworkers and make the daily grind much grindier for everybody. But there is an upside to being the biggest dick in your office -- an upside to the tune of $9,772 annually, or more than enough to cover a year's worth of anger management lessons.
That's how much more men who are rated "more disagreeable" than their nicer counterparts make on average, according to a survey by researchers at Notre Dame and University of Western Ontario. The kicker is that this was a self-survey -- the participants aren't people who don't realize they're coming off like dicks, but people who proudly announce it.
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"I will work-fuck you until your soul evaporates!"
Now, you might be thinking that the connection between success and dickishness goes the other way -- that these are people like Dr. House, who know they're great at their jobs, and thus know they can afford to act like cockholes. But the same researchers approached it from the other direction and found that being a jerk also makes you more likely to get hired in the first place, even if the nicer people are equally qualified.
Their study presented 460 students with a list of candidates for a fictitious consulting position and asked them to hire someone. All other things being equal, candidates who were flat-out described as "more agreeable" were less likely to get the job, while more obnoxious candidates were more successful.
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Some of you have already guessed why. The effect was more pronounced in men, leading researchers to speculate that managers and interviewers are subconsciously looking for traditional masculine alpha-male characteristics, which, right or wrong, we associate with being kind of a douchebag. So it's kind of a circular argument that goes on in the minds of the people doing the hiring: Dr. House types can be jerks because they're geniuses and thus confident, therefore when we see a guy acting like a jerk, we figure he must be a genius like Dr. House.
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"No, you can't have the promotion, but you can have two for flinching."
You don't have to agree with it to acknowledge that it goes on. So if you want to impress your boss, just put bees in your coworker's lunchbox. And while you're at it ...
#4. Become Sexist
Yes, it turns out it's not just being a general dick that earns you a fat bonus on your paycheck. Specifically, having watched too many episodes of Mad Men can grant you an advantage in the workplace. It turns out that being a chauvinist pig boosts your earning potential by $11,930 annually.
But why are sexist men rewarded for exhibiting culturally unacceptable behavior, especially when sexism lawsuits against corporations are up by more than 25 percent over the last five years? Don't blame the system; a sexist douche (we'll call him "Chad") actually has a competitive advantage when negotiating a salary.
It starts with the fact that one consistently successful way to get more money from your job is to ask for it. This is one of those times when a sense of entitlement helps you -- march into the boss's office and insist that you're owed more money, and he'll eventually give in. Aggressive negotiators end up earning more than $600,000 over the course of their careers than their coworkers who learned manners.
Which brings us back to Chad. You see, Chad not only thinks Pam likes getting her ass smacked because look at what she's wearing. In his small mind rests another idea: That men should earn more money than women, because men have families to support. That's going to motivate him to storm into the manager's office more often than his more enlightened coworkers. Thanks to his "My dick deserves more cash" philosophy, Chad will soon be rolling in the dough. Though he'll request that his female coworkers knead it first.
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"Going ... down?"
Damnit, I'm a woman who weighs exactly 95 lbs. Where's my millions? I'm thinking here that height may also be involved... I'm only five feet tall, which probably has something to do with why I can indulge in deep dish pepperoni on a regular basis and still fail to break 100 on the scale.
ReplyThe advertisement was spot-on for this article! It was the cougar dating website.
Reply"Going... down? So are these women."
This explains why my old assholish misogynist coworker who was constantly partying and was pals with our boss did so well when all *I* did was work hard... Would you believe they let ME go?
ReplyWell, after reading the article...yes, I find it very easy to believe they let you go...and probably took your stapler from you
Humanity, prepare for destruction. We have willed it, and we will make it so.
ReplyCorrelation does not equal to causation, the article smells like those sensational/tabloid magazines.
ReplyI think this article was a bit skewed and assumes the incorrect variable is causing the effects described above. In the bar example and the fat example, you could say that successful people are more likely to drink at bars because they have more money and you could also say that fat people are more successful because they are working all the time and therefore have less time to work out and eat healthy. Basically, the cause and effect are reversed.
ReplyAll of these studies are correlational, which means that these things may not help your career at all. Just because two things happen together doesn't mean that one thing causes the other.
ReplyCorrelation does not equal to causation. Say: Workers who use google instead of yahoo mail has higher salary, but will changing your mail from yahoo to google increase them? Then again, these things doesn't make sensational article..
I am a fat ugly obnoxious mustachioed sexist drunk! Why don't I have a job?? Oh wait, I'm a woman...
ReplyThen you should be able to get a job, it'll just stagnate.
Soo... basically, if you're ever in the position of staffing your company from the ground-up, make sure to populate your PR and HR department with gay people O.o?
ReplyI tend to agree with the 'normal/hot chicks' hire 'ugly/ uglier-than-me chicks' theory, due to the "I'm not letting that ho-bag up in nyah" conundrum, but I think we've all seen that swing the other way hard at one point or another. Case in point:
ReplyMy boss (hes 55 or so) hired a fresh out of college girl who is pretty hot, but really not right for the position, like she doesnt know how to use any MS Office program beyond a 10th grade level. I feel like this sorta thing happens more often than Ug-O's getting in the door for bein fugly. Then again, never had a lady-boss
Yeah, my former ladyboss hired one ugly chick after another.
ReplyI was actually hired to work in curriculum development at a tutoring company because of my big boobs. The whole company headquarters where I worked was so outrageously overpopulated with well-proportioned women, we'd often joke that it was the CEO's private harem.
ReplyHmm, actually, I think all of these things contributed to my eventual imprisonment.
ReplyPretty woman thing, totally true. Studies have proven that trend in academia at least, and speculatd that it's due to women in high positions doing the hiring. I think it's fantastic that after (arguably) nearly 100 years of hard work on the part of feminists, we end up with studies showing this.
ReplyIt's not the first time I read about this either. Since many HR departments are staffed by women the trend that has grown from this is that being perceived prettier than the woman doing the hiring works against you if you are a woman. However if you are a male doing the hiring then being attractive is an asset since some tend to use the workplace to create their own personal harems.
Actually, they TRY to use the workplace to create a harem; at best, they end up with a workplace full of beautiful women they can stare creepily at through the glass wall of their office, but never actually approach.
It seems like it's possible that "assertive" and being "a jerk" is being confused. Then again, that seems to happen on a fairly regular basis, especially if you ask any dude who's unsuccessful with women the type of person they go for instead (in case it wasn't obvious, their answer often is "jerks", or "assholes" if you like, very rarely "dudes who are far more assertive and sure of themselves")
ReplyPlus the fact that the surveys on being disagreeable or not were self surveys I think may have been a prime reason that the results were such. The fact is that someone who is perfectly willing to say that they're "disagreeable" would probably stand out first off. Then, imagine the kind of person who would answer that about themselves; obviously this person isn't going to be some meek loser who wants to be left alone constantly, but says he's "agreeable" since it's everyone else's fault they don't get along, right?
Plus, the fact is if someone is willing to admit that they're disagreeable, there's a pretty good chance they really aren't that disagreeable since people who are douches almost never realize just how much of a douche they really are, cause if they did fully realize they wouldn't be such fucks to begin with. Those assholes would be the kinds of people who would call themselves agreeable, since again, it must just be everyone else's fault that they don't like em'.
As far as the mustache thing goes, my personal best guess would be that a mustache stands out, which is good when the workplace is full of faceless drones, yet a beard often comes off as dirty or unkempt...not like a straight up mustache that requires upkeep, as any truly outstanding facial hair does.
And as for number 1...that just makes me sad. Obviously we need to remove all the jealous young ladies from hiring positions, since I don't believe that it's possible to have enough attractive women in the workplace. Hell, if I was the only guy working in a company full of fine young women it would be a pleasure to attend work every day. Not to mention how very interesting company barbeques would be.
This article is extremely depressing for women.
ReplyOn the other hand, now that hipsters know mustaches are popular amongst older corporate types, they might stop growing the goddamn monstrosities.
There's definitely a difference between being willing to stand up for you opinion (not always popular) and being mean or cruel to co-workers. That gets you reprimanded and eventually fired.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesAs for sexism... beliving in traditional gender roles is not the type of sexism that can be a big problem in an office. Complaining that you have to work with women, commenting on those women's sexual preferences, posthulating about who in the office they fucked to get the job, commenting on how you think they dress slutty, and finding reasons to stand behind them and smell their hair. THAT's sexual harrassment, and beleive me, it got my supervisor fired. Oh, and he called his ex-wife a whore a lot.
So, is a woman wearing perfume and figure flattering clothing, showing cleavage, and donning make-up to bring attention to her eyes and lips sexually harassing her male co-workers?
What place does any of that have in a work environment if not to advertise a woman's feminine allure to the male staff. It's only harassment when she gets attention from someone she doesn't want it from.
I think the people who think they're dicks might be the project manager who insists the project get done on time and on budget, or that the boss's pet's idea is a horrible one - in order to be responsible, they have to act like dicks at times.
@Pook - that's not harassment because it's not an action directed at a person.
If women DON'T do those things, they are accused of being dowdy and a prude. Whichever way we choose to dress, someone will always have something unpleasant to say. Makeup and flattering clothing have a place in the workplace because they are what is universally expected of women, wherever we are and whatever job we are doing, bar those environments that require a uniform.
This is awesome. My dad is middle management makes a nice amount of money...And he is chubby, with a moustache, is a social drinker (and smoker) and he is a type A personality...And proudly admits he is an ass. He was just telling someone off tonight. Dad really made his way up the ladder in his company over the years. I'll have to show him this.
ReplyDad sounds like a jackass. Son sounds like a beta-male.
I usually dress up very conservatively and wear my glasses/put my hair up when searching for a job, at least until I get them to trust me and tell me all of their secrets. It's funny how it always happens even with bosses.
ReplyWow, I didn't know that being aggressive and assertive was a sexist behavior. I'll be sure to reduce my assertiveness so that my family can starve, because I'm sure I'll definitely get what I need by not competing with others. If someone can't be competitive, the world isn't theirs and they must just be thankful for what they have, because that's all they'll ever have. :)
Reply