10. Unfair Advantage
# Career RetrospectLife is unfair.
Because of my family background, throughout my education I had to rely on tuition waivers for low- and middle-income households. In college, I depended on help from classmates to get meal tickets for the student cafeteria, and on support from the alumni association. Even in a relatively resource-scarce situation, I was still lucky enough to receive help from countless people, which made me who I am today.
I know that if I hadn’t been fortunate enough, I wouldn’t have achieved what I have now.
I’ve seen many people who are extremely talented, but because of their environment or family circumstances, they are held back and have to work much harder than others just to stand at the same starting line.
The Unequal Distribution of Resources
In the real world, resources are often distributed unevenly. Some people are born with access to quality education, comfortable family backgrounds, and extensive networks, while others have to struggle with limited resources. This inequality is reflected not only in material terms, but even more deeply in access to opportunities.
Recently, I saw a few examples: friends around me started families and careers, and their abundant resources gave their children many chances to explore—music, English, sports, drawing, you name it. From an early age, they had the devoted companionship of both parents, and when they reached college, their children were sent directly overseas to study and broaden their horizons, crushing others at the starting line.
With the same work能力 and the same level of effort, differences in upbringing and background can lead to completely different career trajectories. Some people can easily obtain internship opportunities through family resources, while others need several times the effort just to get one interview.
I think a very well-written piece on this is Denny’s article, “The Internet and Filial Piety Money”.
Parents from wealthy families, however, feel that their children are still young and just starting out, and still need help. They pass down their own social networks, and the next generation can continue to expand and solidify that network. If, right when they enter society, they already know a bunch of “important people” whose relationships the previous generation spent decades building, it would be hard for work and life not to be smooth and full of folds.
As the article says, with resources like that, it’s really hard not to succeed smoothly.
Conversely, if you grow up in a negative environment—being denied, mocked, bullied, or even unsupported by your parents—then as an adult, you either lose confidence completely and can never find it again, or you need a very long time to rebuild it. Either way, it’s a disadvantage.
Unfortunately, these things cannot be changed. All we can do is narrow the gap as much as possible. Personally, I support UBI (universal basic income), or any solution that can meet basic survival needs, rather than trapping people in toxic environments or wasting huge amounts of time just trying to escape poverty.
Make Good Use of Your Unfair Advantage
The Unfair Advantage is a book that discusses how we can make good use of our unfair advantages. It starts with the MILES Framework, which stands for:
- M: Money
- I: Intelligence and Insight
- L: Location and Luck
- E: Education and Expertise
- S: Status
There’s no denying that all five depend on luck to some extent, but there are still ways to break through difficult circumstances. This is very similar to what I wrote earlier about increasing your luck surface area:
- Keep learning: when resources are limited, knowledge and skills are the cheapest and most valuable investment (though for courses that cost tens of thousands, it’s worth thinking twice first)
- Actively build your network: proactively connect with people from different backgrounds to broaden your perspective and opportunities. Every conversation could become a turning point in your career
- Join more activities: clubs, hobby groups, social mixers, and so on
- Seek mentorship: look for seniors and mentors who are willing to support younger people. Many people are happy to help young people with potential
- Be inclusive and empathetic: understanding that inequality exists doesn’t mean you have to fight it head-on; rather, it means approaching it with a more open mind and learning to understand and accept it
My family had no connections, no money, no background, and no wealthy relatives. But my parents worked hard to maintain an environment where I could study, giving me the opportunity to go to Taipei for college and broaden my horizons through the environment and the classmates around me.
I was also lucky enough to intern at a startup, where I met many highly capable teammates. After graduating from high school, I started self-studying Japanese. Because I had been self-studying all through college, by the time I came to Japan for work, I already had a solid foundation that was enough to handle life and work in Japan.
Unfair advantages can be applied in many areas. For example, when Taiwanese people want to open a Stripe account, they first need to set up a virtual company and bank account in the U.S. Because I live in Japan and Stripe supports it here, I can set up a Stripe account at zero cost and solve the biggest problem for indie developers—getting paid. That’s also an unfair advantage.
As long as you choose the right field, everyone has some kind of unfair advantage, more or less. Some people are born tall, some good-looking, some have pleasant voices. These are all unfair advantages—things we’re born with. The question is simply whether we notice them and make good use of them.
Do you have any unfair advantages too? Feel free to let me know ❤️