The rich kid is also motivated to pay his dues. If he's installed directly into management then people will bypass him because he'll be considered a no nothing in middle management. If he works his way up, gaining experience all the while then it's a victory for him.

The big difference he, or she, knows exactly how long he has to stay in the at entry-level analyst position. While most people are promoted when someone in management feels it's the right time, the rich kid knows when to ask; not when a position opens up, not when they are asked, not when they feel they've learned enough, but when they are ready to make the leap.

One of these rich kids is a friend of mine. He's been hired and fired from more jobs than I care to remember. While my biggest concern is making the mortgage each month his is making enough to put in his daughters trust fund. Rent, food, and even vacation are expenses he's not worried about.

He paid his dues by doing his stint in different banks and now he's a family financial planner. He built his Rolodex up by being a performer; something that is impossible to do any other way.

I know so many rich kids who say, "I didn't tell anyone at that job I was rich, and I worked my way up from the bottom. I wanted to prove that I'm badass and don't need my money to give me advantages!"

It's pretty much a cliche among rich people these days. By starting at the bottom they gain pride, confidence, and bragging rights. I remember this one rich girl whose dad was close friends with the CEO and who got a very highly coveted and prestigious position in the company.

She would repeat over and over again (I probably heard it 20 times) how when she applied for the job she hid her identity, because she wanted to earn the job on merit.

Naturally, her extraordinary sense of entitlement and being protected gave her tremendous psychological advantage over competitors and she beat them out.

It's just not cool anymore to be given something, it's much cooler to prove you're better than the poor kids by playing their own game far better than they can do.

Of course what these people choose to ignore is that the poor kids are living paycheck to paycheck, can barely afford to buy new shoes, have to clip coupons, are constantly looking at homeless people and realizing that could be them tomorrow, etc.

The rich kids are just oblivious to the fact that rent, food, clothing cost anything at all. They are oblivious to the fact that getting fired in a bad economy can lead to homelessness.

Because then they've been seen to be humble enough to have worked their way up from the bottom... so they can all feel like they've fairly got to the top of the company, and earned it too.

The implication of this article is that the odds were stacked in their favour not necessarily just through explicit intentions of the higher ups, but through the difference in their inherent attitude.

Well, that sucks. I thought the whole point of being born rich was that you get to do cool stuff like drink blood out of Abraham Lincoln's skull with Dick Cheney and the Winklevoss twins, and leapfrog the corporate ladder. Spending your 20s making Powerpoint presentations with the less fortunate would be a total bummer.

You only really need to take credit for the work, I took from the article that you don't actually need to be very good.

I for one am blending a bit of both. From a lower-middle class background and being content to be less than average at my job. For some reason it isn't working out as well as I hoped :P