Trapped by history

A little bit of me feels sorry for Toby Young. I say so because of something Dan Davies tweeted:

Find a brand and stick to it. Don't try to be jack the lad when poundshop Clarksons are in fashion, then pull on the leather elbow patches as soon as you think there's more of a market for Serious.

The point here is that we can be trapped by our brands: Young’s reputation as cheap controversialist disqualifies him from a serious job even if he might be otherwise equipped to do it.

His is not an isolated case. Sam Allardyce has earned a reputation for playing effective but ugly route one football. He objects that he’s had to do this because of the limited ability of the players he’s managed and that he could get a team to play attractive football if he had the chance. But except for a brief period at Bolton, he’s never had that chance.

Similarly, my reputation means I’m unemployable elsewhere: who wants to hire someone who seems to mix dull technocracy with class hatred?

Much more seriously, ex-prisoners and the long-term unemployed find it hard to get work because employers don’t believe they can change.

Our histories, then, limit our options.

This isn’t wholly unreasonable. What we have done in the past is at least some guide to our abilities and character. Mr Young has forgotten that if a man acts like a cunt, a good Bayesian will increase the probability he attaches to the prior belief that he really is a cunt. Many of us are one-trick ponies: for example, I really am unemployable elsewhere. Just as societies are created by their past, and companies cannot easily change their core competences, so too do individuals struggle to change. This is why the decline of old industries is so traumatic: unemployed steel-workers or miners don’t become coders.

But, but but. It’s also possible that employers overstate the extent to which abilities and aptitudes are fixed, and exaggerate the correlation between what somebody has done and what they can do. People are often terrible at judging correlations: why shouldn’t they be so in this case?

I can’t prove this, simply because we don’t see what doesn’t happen: if you don’t hire a guy, you never find out how good he is. One factoid, however, lends it credence – that Timpsons, which does try to employ ex-cons, does OK by doing so.

What seems clearer, though, is the obverse of this. As Marko Tervio has shown, hirers place a premium upon revealed talent – those with the right CV. This is one reason why I advise youngsters to work in finance: an investment bank looks good on your CV.

Revealed talent, however, is scarcer than actual talent. It’s for this reason that Premier League teams tend to hire the same old faces as bosses; why some folk hoover up lots of non-executive directorships; why talking heads current affairs shows have a limited roster of guests; and why there’s a management merry-go-round with a few people jumping from job to job.

And because revealed talent is so scarce, those who have it earn fortunes even if they are only just above a threshold of basic competence.

Which raises a nice paradox. Those people who think that Young’s past disqualifies him from a serious job are doing the same thing that companies do when they refuse to hire the ex-con or when they pay gazillions to mediocre bosses. They are using the same mindset that gives us gross inequalities.

Comments

[Phil]

Ooh, little bit of contrarianism, my name's Chris Dillow, goodnight!

Your paradox looks a bit less paradoxical when you consider that the people who nominate a serial failure and professional oaf like Young for responsible positions are also working on "revealed talent", the talent in this case being the ability to bullshit and troll and get paid for it ("must be doing something right...").

[Duncan]

I don't think anyone would argue that their past rules out anything entirely, but what does grate is the total lack of contrition for his past work until prompted to offer it. I'm not asking that he, or anyone else, for that matter, do some kind of 'walk of shame' to repent their past sins, but it just reeks of entitlement as it stands. He' a 50 something male whose entire career has consisted of boorishly, 'saying the unsayable' to the delight of his fanbase, so it should be of no surprise whatsoever that he's created a lot of enemies on the way, which is slightly different from some guy who committed a crime, has spent some time learning the error of his ways and is then rehabilitated back into society.

[Blissex]

«hirers place a premium upon revealed talent – those with the right CV. [ ... ] doing the same thing that companies do»

But companies don't hire anybody -- managers do. And they don't hire "revealed talent", they simply cover their behinds by hiring on the basis of paperwork that cannot be disputed. In bureaucratic organizations paperwork trumps judgement.

As to T Young, he has lots of "revealed talent" in his past: he is a very reliable and zealous promoter of the Conservative point of view, and that is the principal qualifications to be a Conservative appointee to the board of a QUANGO.

The same for G Osborne as editor for the "Evening Standard" despite not having any qualification for editing a daily, or the previous editor of the "Evening Standard", S Sands, becoming editor of "Today" at the BBC despite not having any qualifications for broadcast journalism.
They are eminently qualified to promote the Conservative point of view.

[Bloke in North Dorset]

"Similarly, my reputation means I’m unemployable elsewhere: who wants to hire someone who seems to mix dull technocracy with class hatred?"

I never found your writing dull and over the years I have been reading you since at about 2007 when Devils Kitchen put me on to you and I have learnt a lot and had my priors challenged.

So I say this with some sadness as someone who was brought up in a working class area of the West Riding in the '60s and early '70s and who's father was brought up in the slums of Bradford and wasn't allowed to take up a full scholarship with bursary at Bradford Grammar School because he had to go and work to earn money for the family because my grandfather was a drunk (probably WW1 LTSD): your class hatred is starting to get tedious and detracts from your otherwise excellent blog.

PS Despite where I live, I am not a Tory and I met DK when getting involved with the failed LPUK.

[TickyW]

Poor Toby! It must be hard for him and his quasi-Nazi views to be rejected.

[Dave Timoney]

The naive principle of yesterday's weather (that continuity is more probable than not) recognises that most people will fail to change their behaviour: reform is the exception. The issue with Toby Young is not the Bayesian probability of his essential cuntishness, but the absence of evidence that might convince us he has mended his ways.

A revealed ex-con in a job interview is required to convince the interviewer that she is a reformed character. Though some of Young's supporters have claimed that his advocacy of free schools and his involvement with the New Schools Network were evidence of a turn towards the serious as well as relevant experience, this failed to convince his critics because he had admitted the former was motivated by self-interest while the latter is a partisan lobby.

The problem with Young is not the weight of his past misdemeanours but that most people think he is dishonest, hence no amount of repentance is going to make a difference.