Trophy Jobs

Theory #12 | They're more common that we like to admit. Chances are you've had one.

We’ve all heard of the trophy wife or husband — a partner that’s valued heavily as a status symbol, for superficial qualities over substance.¹

Similarly, I’ve started to think about the idea of the trophy job — a job that people covet for its status more than its substance.

Trophy jobs are more common than we like to admit. Chances are that you've sought after one before and you know many people who do.

How do you spot a trophy job?

Why do you or someone else covet a given job? It's helpful to break down the reasons and categorize them as status or susbtance.

• Status is associated with things like brand, title, compensation, recognition, and power (often external or outputs-oriented). 

• Substance is associated with things like interest, curiosity, skill, experience, and community (moreso internal or inputs-oriented). 

My rough heuristic for measuring this is the status-to-substance ratio:

• A 1:2 ratio or smaller is safe (i.e. not a trophy job).

• A 1:1 ratio is entering dangerous territory.

• Anything greater, e.g. 2:1 ratio, is firmly in trophy job territory.

Sometimes it’s easier to spot a trophy job in retrospect. For example, when someone has a trophy job and its status drops, their desire to do it decreases a lot. It’s common for people to lose motivation when they’re unhappy with their job's substance, but with trophy jobs, satisfaction is tied most to status (e.g. of their role, the company, industry).

How do trophy jobs differ from high status jobs?

In short, all trophy jobs are high status jobs but not all high status jobs are trophy jobs. So high status jobs are prime candidates to be trophy jobs.

In math speak then, status markers are sensitive but not specific. Just because a job has a fancy title and high pay, it’s not de facto a trophy job.

Hence, consider two important things:

• Whether something is a trophy job depends on a given individual’s motivation — whether their desire for its status overpowers substance.

• Two people can hold the same job at the same company, yet for one person it could be a trophy job while for the other it is not.

This means it’s hard to truly prove or disprove that someone has a trophy job. (The same is true of a so-called trophy wife or husband, of course.)

Still, I suspect that most people have sought a trophy job at some point in their life – whether as a stepping stone for future opportunity or for its benefits today. Trophy job hunting seems increasingly common in this global, competitive, seemingly meritocractic, socially-mobile world.

There are trophy job targets in every field.

Ask any recent college graduate and they’ll tell you the most coveted jobs in each field and across all of them. They’ll also tell you how competitive it is to get one. These tend to be common targets for trophy jobs.²

For a while, the hottest job for ambitious new grads was management consulting. Finance jobs (investment banking, private equity) and prestigious professional degrees (MD, JD) also carried high status.

In the past decade, tech has risen up the career status ladder. Jobs at big tech companies and high growth startups have infiltrated the status game. Three roles form what I call tech's prestige job triangle: product manager (PM), venture capitalist (VC), and founder.³

Of the three, the founder role is unique because it's not a job you apply for. But, the Silicon Valley startup boom created an exception: venture capitalists effectively do hire founders. And being “vc-backed” comes not just with funding, but also a big status benefits package. 

Trophy jobs feed into each other too. People move between the roles of PM, VC, and founder so often that it's become a trope. The "pipeline" is well-known: some go straight from a prestigious college into these roles, others come via legacy prestige jobs like consulting or finance, or via stints in functional roles (e.g. engineering, operations).

These jobs have become the latest consulting and banking of tech. Instead of seeking out a role at a McKinsey or Goldman Sachs, many new college grads chase one of these roles at a reputable startup or firm.

Talking to friends in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, the brutally honest takes come out:  “I have so many trophy hunters in my network. I see kids saying they wanna be PMs, but it’s a pure prestige thing, they don’t even know what product is.” ⁴

Addendum (Jan 2024): We’re seeing the role of PM drop in desirability as legendary companies like AirBnb and Snap announce cutting or modifying the role. PM functions are for mature industry and expansive market times, but one or both of those are changing now with the new technology wave as well. There are other emerging roles and archetypes that I’ll talk about in an updated post soon!

Companies enable trophy jobs too.

People play status games, and so do companies. Companies seek people out for roles where a primary goal is internal or external status signaling. They recruit people that already have status from other trophy jobs, past successes, big networks, etc.⁵ These hires can be very competent, yes, but they’re also valued highly for their status windfall. 

In VC, it’s common to see firms recruit ex-founders or employees of hot startups, people with big public brands, alumns of prestige colleges, or all of the above. Pragmatically this can help find and win deals. On the operating side, this shows up in executive hiring when a priority is to instill confidence internally and externally (for fundraising, hiring, and the like).

Sometimes, the “trophy” isn’t a specific role — it’s just working at a high-status company itself. Maybe it’s the hot company that leans into its own hype to help recruit (or can’t avoid it). If taken a bit too literally, this famous Sheryl Sandberg quote can be trophy job bait:

"When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.”