I do not assume that good looking people are automatically dumber and more incompetent. I assume that good looking people are about as dumb and incompetent as anyone else. What I also assume that when your selection bias is for looks, you are likely to hire a dumber and more incompetent crew than one that is selected entirely on the basis of competence/intelligence. And the thing is, given that so many of the jobs that seem to have a lookist bias are so very lucrative, it seems logical that good looking people will tend to have more money than others, on the whole, and hence more influence on society on the whole.
It’s a pretty tenuous series of assumptions, I admit, but then, I’m wanting to explore it, not advocate it as one would in Great Debates.
The real reason that the “ugly” firms hire non-attractive women is to specifically avoid distractions like office romances, flirting and sexual harrassment lawsuits.
What kind of consulting do you do? Is it more IT based or is it like management consulting that firms like Accenture or McKinsey do.
I’m looking around my office, and I’m not seeing a whole lot of repulsive people (a few though).
But the high paying jobs you are talking about - particularly finance - are really competative. So you don’t have a small pool of people who are intellegent, but likely to be average looking, you have a large pool of people who are intellegent, and range from average looking to great looking (the truly bad looking and stupid are weeded out early in the career cycle - unless they are so bright that bad looking doesn’t count, or so good looking no one has figured out they are stupid)
Capital Markets, Financial Services Industry. Primarily buy-side firms (investment banks, asset managers, and alternative investment firms). Mixture of IT (system implementations), project management and management consulting for a Big Four accounting firm.
Your view of averages is swayed by meeting a couple of hotties from one firm.
I’ve been in a million real estate offfices over the years and the vast majority are dead average in looks. They would fit right in with any other well dressed bunch, say your own company’s holiday dinner party.
The other thing is that most people look better dressed up and with hair cared for. Some trades dwell on this. A high end restaurant will have sharply dressed staff because they nag them about it. And a truck stop is lucky if they just all come in for the busy shift. But there’s plenty of hotties stuck behind those orange striped aprons. You just have to ask them out to see how impressive they can be.