You’re probably going to fail: A note on ‘survivorship bias’

Photo credit: Noah Silliman / Unsplash

Greg’s stuck in his job for 10 years now, and he’s getting too damn tired for it. In his early 30s, he considers this to be his own mid-life crisis. He scrolls through LinkedIn and other job portals, searching for job openings elsewhere, but the unfamiliarity is making him hesitant. This is his first — no, the second—job. In fact, he never really ventured anywhere else.

On one of his lunches, he scrolled through Medium and found a pretty popular post by someone who made a mid-30s career change. Everything was rosy and great for the author! Greg decided to save that post for future reference. Just in case, you know?

After a few days of deliberating, he finally got down to getting his CV ready. He detailed every contribution he made during his 10-year stint into a template he found on Pinterest. After another two or three days, he’s finally done.

He starts looking for jobs, and after a few days, he finally found another opening. Hooray for Greg! It’s almost the same thing as what he’s doing now, but with better pay, better benefits, better environment. He got excited and brought up his email, typed in the first few words in the subject: “Application for…”

Then he stops.

“Shit, a career change this late? Am I able to cope? Can I really do this?”

Greg calls up his friend, who had changed careers before. The friend is calm and patient, giving proper advice on how to handle a career change after so long in a single job. Greg feels a whole lot better.

A few more days pass. Sitting across Greg is his girlfriend. While Greg is busy trying to poke the cherry tomato with his fork, his girlfriend nonchalantly asks if Greg is going to leave his job or not.

Greg misses the tomato. It zips across the table, flies a good distance, then drops onto the floor, rolling to the side of a waiter’s feet. Greg shook his head, mentioning his unsent draft (which he edited almost 15 times). His girlfriend then mentioned her friend, who changed her career and got a promotion after working for a year.

“Think about the opportunities!” The girlfriend says. “Do you really want to retire at that company? You’ve been stuck in that position for almost seven years now, so let’s be real here.”

“You’re right!” Greg says. “I’m going to change my job. I’m sending my applications out tonight.”

Greg feels great. He searches “mid-life career change” on Google and finds many articles detailing about the intricacies and success of people who did the exact same thing. Promotions. Better pay. Great environment. Understanding colleagues.

“OK,” he mutters, “OK, I’m going to do this. Screw it!”

Survivorship bias

Motivation is irrational

A sad reality