Entitlement or Confidence

Bankers are upset that their bonuses are too low. Employees of companies that have lost enough money to require hand-outs from the government are unhappy. They still have their jobs and they are earning a good wage ($60K before bonus at a minimum), but unlike other professions where the bonus is compensation based on the success of the employee and the firm, bankers expect to get paid. It's what they signed up for and they deserve it.

It takes a certain kind of person to succeed in highly-paid service companies, e.g. investment banks and consulting firms. But one trait that these professionals share with successful people everywhere is a feeling of entitlement. An overblown sense of entitlement is neither necessary for success nor does it guarantee a great career, but the vast majority of people I have met who have 'succeeded' academically, professionally, and personally have all felt that they were owed something.

With the grade-inflation and high-curves of today's most competitive universities, one does not need to be the best or even one of the best to receive an 'A.' Those students who take it upon themselves to argue for grades; those who fight to turn each 'A' into an 'A+' because they worked so hard, or because they were sick on the day of the final, or 'just because' do end up raising their grades. It doesn't work all of the time, but professors and TAs are human and have limited time to deal with all the mounds bullshit involved in these discussions. Sometimes teachers give in and sometimes they stand firm, but for a student who is able to disengage from reality enough to demand the grades "they deserve" it is a very successful strategy.

There is a similar sort of confidence that is very helpful when discussing compensation and career advancement with your boss and when selling projects to clients. It is a confidence that is only tangentially related to reality and completely overcomes any questions of self-doubt or introspection. There's never a danger of an employee well shrouded in entitled being convinced of why they were passed over or why they weren't qualified; those are mistakes on the part of the supervisor.

I wonder if the same entitlement that served people so well while climbing the corporate ladder is what screws over their supervisors and clients when something goes wrong. When does confidence in oneself become entitlement? Is a feeling of entitlement useful or is it only it's correlation with confidence that makes it seem so?