Survivorship Bias and LinkedIn Success Stories
I feel like I need to address this issue. A lot of times I would open LinkedIn only to feel down and sort of depressed after I scroll through a couple of posts by people mentioning their success stories. It has also become a meme in itself. One of my friends explained how he felt as if he was not making enough progress whenever he would watch other people make tremendous progress in software development. This trend can be extrapolated outside of the software development field but I would like to mention it in this specific scope only. I would also like to give a disclaimer that I don’t envy those who are ahead of me and I am more than happy for their achievements. This article is about survivorship bias and why we should stop comparing ourselves with others.
Survivorship bias, survival bias or immortal time bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to incorrect conclusions.
Rolf Dobelli writes, “Behind every popular author you can find 100 other writers whose books will never sell. Behind them are another 100 who haven’t found publishers. Behind them are yet another those whose unfinished manuscripts gather dust in drawers. And behind each one of these are 100 people who dream of - one day - writing a book. You, however, hear of only the successful authors and fail to recognise how unlikely literary success is.”
These days we often come around wonderful success stories of other software developers and some of us wonder why we are not making enough progress and why we cannot achieve what others can. The fact is, we are oblivious to the failures they have endured throughout their journey. This is not highlighted on the media in any career field. Although, it is not the job of media to dig around the graveyards of the unsuccessful. You must do the digging yourself. This burial ground of unsuccessful houses thousands of more people than the glamourous realm of successful contemporaries.
Suppose, John admires YouTubers. Wherever he goes, he witnesses kids of his age earning thousands, in money and followers, through YouTube. Eventually, he decides to start a YouTube channel of his own. How probable is it that he will make to the top? The answer is just a fraction above zero. Survivorship bias is at work here, distorting the probability of success like cut glass.
In no way do I intend to convey that we should not try. What I mean is that we should try our best but also visit the graveyards of once promised opportunities, entrepreneurships and projects so as to have a clear picture lest we overestimate our chances of success.
Another aspect of this issue which I want to briefly elaborate upon is comparing yourself with others. We all have heard this phrase a gazillion times that we should not compare ourselves with others but it is ubiquitous that people don’t apply this in their life. One of the reasons is the company they surround themselves with and the thoughts that dominate their mind. Now this require a separate article to be talked about.
Nevertheless, this life is a plane. We all are walking our separate paths in this plane. We should not be concerned with how many people are walking ahead of us and how many are walking behind. Rather, we should always compare our self with what speed we were walking this path yesterday and improve upon it. Furthermore, it’s not bad to be inspired with other people’s achievements as it’s a completely different that the issue I am addressing here. If we dwell upon these negative thoughts and spend more time in this dark realm of self-doubt, we not make any progress and others will definitely be way ahead of us.
In conclusion, the vast number of books and videos on success should make you sceptical as the unsuccessful don’t write books or give lectures on their failures.