34.运气之用

Passage Thirty-Four

Fortune tells

运气之用

【1】The role of luck in careers, companies and compensation.Luck plays a big and often unacknowledged part in career success, starting in the womb. 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.

运气在事业、公司和报酬中的作用职业成就从一开始就与运气息息相关，但这一点却经常被忽视。沃伦•巴菲特曾说，自己出生在美国，具有天生的优势，能让他在市场经济中获得回报，就像赢得了“基因彩票”。

【2】Good looks are associated with higher pay and a greater chance of being called to interview in hiring processes. Your experience of discrimination will reflect(mirror) your circumstances(surroundings) of birth.

相貌好的人收入会更高，在招聘过程中获得面试机会的可能性也更大。你受到的歧视反映了你的出生环境。

【3】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.

职业生涯的早期阶段往往与机遇相伴。遇到一位十分会激励人的老板，或者一项意想不到的任务让你的职业生涯起步，从此决定了你的方向。

【4】Luck can affect the pathways of the most rational-minded professions. A paper published in 2022 by Qi Ge of Vassar College and Stephen Wu of Hamilton College found that economists with harder-to-pronounce names, including within ethnic groups, were less likely to be placed into academic jobs or get tenure-track positions.

哪怕是最理性的专业人士，他们的职业道路也会受到运气的影响。瓦萨学院的葛琦和汉密尔顿学院的斯蒂芬•吴在2022年发表的论文发现，名字不好读的经济学家较难获得学术职位或终身教职，甚至在同一族群内也不例外。

【5】Names can work against economists in other ways. Another study, by Liran Einav of Stanford University and Leeat Yariv, now of Princeton University, found that faculty 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 alphabetically.

名字可以在其他方面对经济学家产生不利影响。斯坦福大学的里冉·艾纳夫和现在普林斯顿大学的里特·亚里夫进行的另一项研究发现，姓氏首字母排序靠前的教师更有可能在顶级院系获得终身教职，他们将此归因于经济学论文作者按字母排序的惯例。

【6】Performing well can be due to luck, not talent. In financial markets, asset managers who shine in one period often lose their lustre(glory) in the next. The rise of passive investing reflects the fact that few stockpickers are able persistently to outperform(surpass) the overall market.

干得好未必是因为才华，而有可能是运气。金融市场中，在一段时期里大放异彩的资产经理，经常到下一阶段就失去了光彩。被动投资的增长反映出这样一个事实：很少有选股者能够持续跑赢整体市场。

【7】The history of the oil industry is shot through with stories of unexpected discoveries(finds). A recent paper by Alexei Milkov and William Navidi of the Colorado School of Mines found that 90% of industry practitioners believe that luck affects the outcome of exploration projects.

石油行业的历史中充斥着意想不到的发现。科罗拉多矿业学院的亚历克谢·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。

【8】The authors’ analysis of 50 years of drilling on the Norwegian Continental Shelf concluded that the differences in success rates between individual firms were random.

作者对挪威大陆架50年的钻探进行了分析，得出结论：各个公司间成功率的差异是随机的。

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

运气是否会影响高管的薪酬，人们对此一直争论不休。伦敦商学院的蒂娜·安德烈亚尼和拉克什曼南·希瓦库马尔以及犹他大学的阿蒂夫·埃拉希最近发表的一篇论文表明，运气确实会影响高管的薪酬。

【10】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(damages) for firms that were based on past transactions and that could not be attributed to managers’ skills. They found that larger windfall gains led to higher pay for CEOs of less scrutinised firms; tax losses did not seem to affect their earnings. Lucky things.

学者们研究了2017年美国大幅削减公司税的影响，这一事件导致公司基于过去的交易产生了大额的一次性税收收益和损失，而这不能归因于管理者的技能。他们发现，更大的意外收益导致受审查较少的公司的首席执行官会获得更高的薪酬，税收损失似乎并没有影响他们的收入。真是幸运。

【11】Just as some people blindly believe that merit(advantage) determines(decides) success, so it is possible to get too hung up on the role of chance. CEOs may well be rewarded for luck but slogging to the top of companies involves talent and hard work. Although some have argued that entrepreneurs are simply people fortunate enough to have a large appetite for risk, skill does matter.

就像有些人盲目地相信优秀品质决定成功一样，我们也有可能过于看重了机遇的作用。首席执行官们可能会因为运气而得到奖励，但要想拼到公司高层，就需要才能和努力。尽管有些人认为企业家只是那些足够幸运、敢于承担风险的人，但技能确实很重要。

【12】A paper from 2006 by Paul Gompers of Harvard University and his co-authors showed that founders of one successful company have a higher chance of succeeding in their next venture than entrepreneurs who previously(before) failed. Better technology and greater expertise reduce the role of chance; the average success rates in oil exploration, for example, have gone up over time.

哈佛大学的保罗·冈珀斯和他的合著者在2006年发表的一篇论文中指出，一家成功公司的创始人在下一次创业中成功的几率要高于之前失败过的企业家。更好的技术和更丰富的专业知识弱化了机遇的作用。例如，石油勘探的平均成功率随着时间而上升。

【13】But if luck does play a more important role in outcomes than is often acknowledged, what does that mean? For individuals, it suggests you should increase the chances that chance will work in your favour.

但是，如果运气对结果的影响比人们通常认为的要大，这意味着什么呢?对于个人来说，这表明你应该增加运气对产生你有利影响的机会。

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

美国著名创业孵化器Y Combinator的合伙人曾提到增加“运气的表面积”，从而鼓励创业者申请他们的项目：让自己处于可能被拒绝的情境，是在给予运气更多发挥的机会。

【15】An awareness of the role that luck plays ought to affect the behaviour of managers, too. Portfolio 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.

认识运气的作用也应该对经理们的行为有所启发。投资组合思维降低了运气的作用：米尔科夫和纳维迪指出，如果公司完成了许多独立的油井项目，那么在石油勘探中获得好运的可能性就会增加。

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

如果运气意味着坏的决定会带来好的结果，或者好的决定会产生坏的结果，那么经理们应该学会从过程和结果两个方面评估提案的成功率。

【17】And if the difference between skill and luck becomes discernible(obvious) over time, then reward people on consistency of performance, not one-off highs. Mr Buffett might have had a slice of luck at the outset(beginning), but a lifetime of investing success suggests he has maximised it.

如果随着时间的推移，技能和运气之间的差异会愈发明显，那么就应该根据个人表现的连贯性来奖励人才，而不是根据某次的优异表现。巴菲特可能一开始有点运气，但其一生投资的成功表明，他已经将这种运气利用到了极致。