2023年经济学人 运气对职业发展有多大影响?

（单词翻译）

Business

商业版块

Bartleby

巴托比专栏

Fortune tells

命运会告诉你答案

The role of luck in careers, companies, and compensation.

运气在事业、公司和薪酬中的作用。

Luck plays a big and often unacknowledged part in career success, starting in the womb.

运气在事业成功中起着重要但不被承认的作用，这种作用从子宫就开始了。

Warren Buffett has talked of winning the “ovarian lottery” by being born in America when he was, and being wired in a way that pays off in a market economy.

沃伦·巴菲特曾谈到他中了“卵巢彩票”，因为他出生在美国且生逢其时，而且他的天赋恰好能让他从市场经济中赚钱。

Good looks are associated with higher pay and a greater chance of being called to interview in hiring processes.

在招聘过程中，长得好看与更高的薪酬和更大的面试邀约几率有关。

Your experience of discrimination will reflect your circumstances of birth.

你受到的歧视会反映你的出生环境。

The early way-stations in a career are often marked by chance: a particularly encouraging boss, say, or an assignment that leads you off in an unexpected but defining direction.

职业生涯早期的转折点往往带有偶然性：比如遇到一位特别鼓励你的老板，或者做了一项任务，这项任务将你引向了意想不到但具有决定性的方向。

Luck can affect the pathways of the most rational-minded professions.

运气可以影响最受理性支配的职业的发展道路。

A paper published in 2022 by Qi Ge of Vassar College and Stephen Wu of Hamilton College found that economists¹ with harder-to-pronounce names, including within ethnic² groups, were less likely to be placed into academic jobs or get tenure³-track positions.

瓦萨学院的葛琦（音译）和汉密尔顿学院的斯蒂芬·吴在2022年发表的一篇论文发现，名字较难发音的经济学家（包括对同族人来说名字难发音的情况）获得学术工作机会或获得能提供终身教职的工作的可能性较小。

Names can work against economists in other ways.

名字可能在其他方面也对经济学家不利。

Another study, by Liran Einav of Stanford University and Leeat Yariv, now of Princeton University, found that faculty⁴ with earlier surname initials were more likely to receive tenure at top departments, an effect they put down to the fact that authors of economics papers tend to be listed alphabetically⁵.

斯坦福大学的利朗·埃纳夫和现供职于普林斯顿大学的利特·亚里夫进行的另一项研究发现，姓氏首字母在字母表靠前位置的教师更有可能获得顶尖院系的终身教职，他们认为这种情况出现的原因是经济学论文作者的名字往往按字母顺序排列。

Performing well can be due to luck, not talent.

出色的表现可能是因为运气，而不是才华。

In financial markets, asset managers who shine in one period often lose their lustre⁶ in the next.

在金融市场，在一个时期大放异彩的资产管理公司往往在下一个时期就会变得黯淡无光。

The rise of passive investing reflects the fact that few stockpickers are able persistently⁷ to outperform the overall market.

被动投资的兴起反映出很少有股票挑选者能够持续跑赢市场的整体状况。

The history of the oil industry is shot through with stories of unexpected discoveries.

石油业的历史上充斥着意想不到的发现。

A recent paper by Alexei Milkov and William Navidi of the Colorado School of Mines found that 90% of industry practitioners⁸ believe that luck affects the outcome of exploration projects.

科罗拉多矿业大学的阿列克谢·米尔科夫和威廉·纳维迪最近发表的一篇论文发现，90%的行业从业者认为运气会影响勘探项目的结果。

The authors’ analysis of 50 years of drilling on the Norwegian Continental⁹ Shelf concluded that the differences in success rates between individual firms were random¹⁰.

作者对挪威大陆架50年来的钻探进行了分析，得出的结论是，不同公司之间的成功率差异是随机产生的。

There is a long-running debate about whether luck affects executives’ pay.

有关运气是否会影响高管薪酬的争论由来已久。

A recent paper by Martina Andreani and Lakshmanan Shivakumar of London Business School and Atif Ellahie of the University of Utah suggests that it does.

伦敦商学院的马丁娜·安德烈亚尼和拉希曼南·西瓦库玛以及犹他大学的阿蒂夫·艾拉伊在最近的一篇论文中认为运气会产生影响。

The academics looked at the impact of a big corporate-tax cut in America in 2017, an event which resulted in large one-off tax gains and losses for firms that were based on past transactions and that could not be attributed to managers’ skills.

学者们研究了2017年美国大幅削减公司税的影响，这一事件导致了公司大幅的税收收益或税收损失，而损益是基于公司过去的交易产生的，与经理的能力无关。

They found that larger windfall gains led to higher pay for CEOs of less scrutinised firms; tax losses did not seem to affect their earnings¹¹. Lucky things.

他们发现，税收收益带来的大笔意外之财导致受审查较少的公司的CEO获得了更高的薪酬，而税收损失似乎并未影响CEO的收入。真是走运。

Just as some people blindly believe that merit determines success, so it is possible to get too hung up on the role of chance.

就像一些人盲目地认为功绩决定成功一样，有一些人也可能过于迷信运气的作用。

CEOs may well be rewarded for luck but slogging to the top of companies involves talent and hard work.

首席执行官们很可能会因为运气好而获得奖励，但要想一步步爬上公司顶层则需要才干和努力。

Although some have argued that entrepreneurs are simply people fortunate enough to have a large appetite for risk, skill does matter.

尽管一些人辩称，创业者只不过是一些足够幸运且热爱冒险的人，但能力确实很重要。

A paper from 2006 by Paul Gompers of Harvard University and his co-authors showed that founders¹² of one successful company have a higher chance of succeeding in their next venture than entrepreneurs who previously¹³ failed.

哈佛大学的保罗·冈珀斯和他的合著者在2006年发表的一篇论文显示，一家成功公司的创始人在下一次创业中获得成功的机会比之前失败过的创业者更高。

Better technology and greater expertise¹⁴ reduce the role of chance; the average success rates in oil exploration, for example, have gone up over time.

更好的技术和更强的专业知识降低了机遇的影响，例如，石油勘探的平均成功率随着时间的推移而上升。

But if luck does play a more important role in outcomes than is often acknowledged, what does that mean?

但是，如果运气对结果的影响确实比人们通常承认的更大，那这意味着什么？

For individuals, it suggests you should increase the chances that chance will work in your favour.

对于个人来说，这表示你应该增加自己获得好运的几率。

Partners at Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, encourage founders to apply to their programmes by talking about increasing the “surface area of luck”: putting yourself in situations where you may be rejected is a way of giving luck more opportunity to strike.

创业孵化公司Y Combinator的合伙人们鼓励创业者申请他们的项目，话术是可以增加“幸运表面积”：把自己置于可能被拒绝的情况下，可以增加好运降临的几率。

An awareness¹⁵ of the role that luck plays ought to affect the behaviour of managers, too.

运气会带来影响，这种认识也应该影响经理的行为。

Portfolio¹⁶ thinking reduces the role of luck: Messrs Milkov and Navidi make the point that the probability of striking it lucky in oil exploration goes up if firms complete numerous independent wells.

投资组合思维降低了运气的影响：米尔科夫和纳维迪指出，如果公司对大量独立矿井完成勘探，那么在石油勘探中撞上好运的概率就会上升。

If luck can mean a bad decision has a good result, or vice¹⁷ versa, managers should learn to assess the success of an initiative on the basis of process as well as outcome.

如果运气意味着糟糕的决策能带来好的结果，或者反之亦然，那么经理们应该学会在评估一项方案的成功时不仅要看结果，还要看过程。

And if the difference between skill and luck becomes discernible over time, then reward people on consistency¹⁸ of performance, not one-off highs.

而且如果随着时间的推移，能力和幸运变得容易区分，那么应该奖励那些表现稳定的人，而不是某一次发挥超常的人。

Mr Buffett might have had a slice of luck at the outset, but a lifetime of investing success suggests he has maximised it.

巴菲特一开始可能有点运气，但他毕生的投资成功表明，他最大化地利用了运气的加持。