The Good Sides Of Nepotism

Nepotism is not great. I have at-least-some proof of my longstanding commitment to this principle: when I accidentally joined the pre-rush info-sequence for a college frat, a speaker came in and explained we should join (in part) because he'd gotten his first job through a Brother who took a chance on him despite having no skills or qualifications. I put my hand up and said "isn't that bad, though?" and was promptly encouraged not to rush.

Still, nepotism has some good features in contexts where the alternatives are also bad, and I think they're worth thinking about.

First: until you've hired and managed people, it's hard to understand how many people fail at one of two very basic hurdles.

The first is just "show up consistently and do roughly what you say you'll do." Everyone struggles with this sometimes, but it's kind of shocking how hard it is to find people who clear a basic reliability bar. And for a lot of parts of a lot of organizations, it's better to have someone who consistently does a B-grade job than someone who mostly does an A+ job but sometimes flakes completely.

Of course, nepotism doesn't necessarily solve this: some nepo hires do a C-minus job and flake constantly, but believe they're unfirable. But "selective" nepotism can help: you hire someone who either 1) you know is responsible, 2) is embedded in your community such that their cost of being irresponsible is much higher than a random Jo's.

The second basic hurdle is Not Causing a Crisis. As a manager, it's really important that your employees don't set the joint on fire / steal all your money / stab you in the back for lolz. And again, selective nepotism can ameliorate this problem: if you hire somebody embodied in your social network, they may face bonus incentives not to entirely F things/you up.

(It feels notable that all of this seems dependent on living in an atomized world where people's reputations don't necessarily follow them; there's probably a lot more to say about this, across love and work and everything).

A different benefit of nepotism I've come to appreciate more and more is within systems where the only ways to succeed are seemingly 1) be a ferocious, amoral shark, 2) be a nepo baby.

Savvy readers will notice that the nepo-babies here will most likely be the children of ferocious amoral sharks, but i] sometimes a domain only becomes cutthroat later, such that the parents might be nice as well, and ii] there's at-least-some-chance that the apple will stray from the tree, whereas anyone new who enters the field will only get to the top by stomping on the faces of those below them.

One nepo child who I think used their powers for good is Ronan Farrow, who helped expose Harvey Weinstein. His book Catch and Kill is littered with advantages he got through having famous parents, including meeting lots of powerful people since childhood, getting an MSNBC show of his own in his 20s, and having a wealthy friend's high-security apartment to hang out in while being tailed by Weinstein's goons, etc. (Admittedly he also gets betrayed by one of these powerful family friends, a feminist lawyer who pretends to be a listening ear but it turns out is directly spying for Weinstein).

At various points in the book I thought to myself
1) Farrow is very brave to use his advantages like this,
2) I'm not sure how anyone without those advantages could have successfully battled the combined powers arrayed against him (Weinstein, Weinstein's lawyers who I am scared to name, and Hillary Clinton, among others).

I sometimes (sometimes!) feel that the same dynamic exists for politicians: that the only ways to get to the top are either to be a malignant narcissist or to have the right surname. And while of course it's possible to have the right surname and be a malignant narcissist, the set theory here implies that our only hope is the occasional nepo baby who has the network of their parents but the morals of a good human being. Here's hoping.