The New England Patriots drafted Tom Brady with the 199th pick in 2000, in the sixth round. Their starter was Drew Bledsoe, who had signed a 10-year, $103 million contract. On September 23, 2001, a hit from the Jets linebacker Mo Lewis sheared an artery, and Brady got his chance.
In November, with Bledsoe back, Bill Belichick announced that Brady would remain the starter. Bledsoe said he had been told he would get a chance to win back his job. Brady finished that season as the Super Bowl MVP.
American career advice often says that about 85 percent of jobs are filled through networking. PayScale writes: “Some estimate that upwards of 85 percent of open positions are filled through networking.”
The figure is hard to trace. PayScale links it to a survey by LinkedIn and the Adler Group, with no sample or date. A 2023 article credits it to the job site Zippia.
In 1973 the sociologist Mark Granovetter published “The Strength of Weak Ties.” He had asked professional, technical and managerial workers near Boston how they found their jobs. Of those who found a job through a personal contact, 16.7 percent saw that contact often. Most saw the contact only occasionally or rarely.
“It is remarkable that people receive crucial information from individuals whose very existence they have forgotten.”
Americans apply a two-word adjective to their business heroes. He is self-made. The phrase was strong enough to survive being used by a man born into slavery.
Frederick Douglass delivered a lecture called “Self-Made Men” beginning in 1859. His definition was severe. Self-made men “owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings.”
Douglass gave one explanation for success. Self-made men, he said, are “men of work.”
Bill Gates left Harvard. Steve Jobs left Reed College. Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard. In American business culture these are not scandals. They are origin stories.
The culture formalized the choice. In 2011 Peter Thiel’s fellowship began paying young people to skip college and build companies. The first class had 24 fellows. Each received 100,000 dollars.
Y Combinator is Silicon Valley’s best-known startup school. Its partners meet weekly with each startup in the batch. The meetings are called office hours.
Founders bring rough ideas. The partners pull the ideas apart in minutes. Paul Graham’s pocket advice for startups is blunt: “Launch now.” About one startup in seven changes its idea during a batch.
American schools grade it, from elementary through university, and it appears on the syllabus as a percentage. A student who has understood everything and said nothing receives a lower mark than one who spoke up and was partly wrong.
Results-oriented. A standard phrase on an American résumé. The claim is not that the person works hard or knows the field, but that they can be judged by what came out.
Deliverables. American project language names the output as the unit of work. Not tasks, not effort, not hours. The thing handed over.
Track record. Not qualifications, not references, not what someone believes about themselves. What has already been produced, and can be pointed at.
Best practice. Methods are adopted from a competitor, another industry, another country, on the grounds that they work. There is no loyalty in the concept — the practice earns its place by outcome and loses it the same way.
Return on investment. Every expenditure becomes a candidate for the calculation, including training, meetings, research and attention. The question is not whether the thing is good. It is what came back.
American law firms, consultancies and accounting firms run partnership tracks on which an associate who is not promoted within a defined period leaves. Standing still is not an available option — it is the definition of failure.
Dale Carnegie published it in 1936. It has sold tens of millions of copies and has never been out of print. Its argument is that business outcomes follow from how people feel about you, and its instructions are about attention, names, listening and genuine interest. An American business classic is a book about liking.