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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8256149" data-attributes="member: 18">I still feel like you're confused here. You keep talking about "exclusivity", which is a really basic misunderstanding of what Old Boys Networks are about and one which may prevent you seeing them where they exist.You seem to think an Old Boys Network is like some sort of private club, which people can only join by being invited in, and which is always seeking to help its members and advance them. Or even how the Masons were in the UK in the 20th century (not so in the 21st), where they did that - always seeking to help their members at the cost of others (US Masons were verrrrry different I understand).That's not right. Old Boys Networks typically make zero efforts to "exclude" people or "preserve exclusivity". They often are full of open-minded and decent people. But the issue is with bias. The term originates in the UK, referring to public schoolboys - now "public" in this sense is kind of the opposite of the US - in the UK, the normal schools most people go to are "state schools", the paid-for schools are "private schools" (same term in the US I think) and the most posh and fancy private schools are "public schools" (it's a long story). People who went to public schools are "Old Boys" - they have a sort of trans-school culture and will all have been educated in relatively similar subjects, suffered similar horrors or upsets, and likely all be either from rich families, or able to get along well with people from rich families. I'm an Old Boy in this sense so I have firsthand knowledge and experience of all this.The issue occurs when you have an organisation where a high percentage of employees (esp. at the top) are Old Boys (which can include women nowadays), because of their shared culture and experience, it means they're disproportionately likely to know each other outside of work, know each other's work, appreciate each other's culture, and so on. There's no active exclusion, usually - you don't get people turned away because they aren't like that - but rather you get people brought in because they are. They do better in interviews because they're on the same wavelength as the interviewer and know exactly what is wanted from them, and will have their CV perfectly aligned, and they may well hear about the job opening sooner though backchannels, and when they work their, their cultural similarity and the "small world" nature of things means they're disproportionately likely to be involved socially with co-workers, particularly people who might be able to help them with advancement. But they're not trying to "keep out" others in an exclusionary way. Does this make sense? It's very different from a club or conspiracy or whatever.And the term is usually used metaphorically, where the network isn't literally public schoolboys, but rather industries, often small industries, where everyone in leadership and decision-making roles kind of knows each other, likely knows each other's work, reads the same books, maybe went to the same unis, certainly has similar levels of education, and anyone entirely outside that is likely to have difficulty getting an "in" to the industry, not because of intentional exclusion, but because they don't have the contacts, and can't easily make them and so on. Smaller industries with low turnover are particularly vulnerable to this. And from an outside perspective it does seem like the larger companies in the RPG industry are like this. Few new/young people are able to enter it, and those that do are only those similar to those already there. There's often a "revolving door" between a few companies. I don't think the RPG industry was always like this, and I think KS and so on offer ways to bypass it, but it's a major contributor to what in the UK is referred to as "stale, male and pale" cultures w/in companies, no matter how well-meaning people in them may be.</blockquote>

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