On Status

Some musings from a nobody

Written on 18th Dec '24

Introduction

The first time I felt someone was leagues ahead of the competition (in Singapore) was ironically in an advert that was on the Straits Times Classified. Basically a place where there are adverts, long before digital marketplaces were popular. In it, a schoolmate (I was in Grade 5 / P5 / age 11 at that time) was shown to have completed Grade 10 national-level Chemistry examinations (GCE O-Levels) under the tutelage of some "master tutor" outside of school.

My 11 y/o self was blown away. All I'd been taught was that academic mastery was crucial, and here was someone leapfrogging four years of a challenging syllabus. I vividly recall mentioning this to my brother who was 21 at that time. To my surprise, he brushed it off, saying that it didn't matter.

Why could he say that?

I can't remember his exact reasoning, but now, being in his position (right before going to college), I'd say exactly the same thing to a curious 11 y/o. Why bother?

At the time, I didn’t fully understand. But I trusted my brother’s judgment, and eventually, that feeling of comparison faded into the background.

Local

Sports

I was in the cross country team for the bulk of my high school (Secondary 1 to Secondary 4 here in Singapore). I had a very rough start (which I will probably write in more detail at some point) but after 2 years of training I started seeing some progress. In any sport, with enough time, you start to understand where you stand—who the competition is, who the best in the nation are, how your country’s standards compare globally, and what it takes to perform on the world stage.

It was even my team's strategy to go through what was needed (in terms of aerobic fitness, quantified in terms of 2.4km times) to medal in the National School's Cross Country Championships. We all knew what the winning times were for track races that came soon after.

By global standards, however, Singapore’s distance running scene isn’t strong. I often tell my friends that D1 runners from schools in the NCAA Finals came to Singapore, they would sweep distance records from 800m all the way to the 10000m. If they spent a little more time training, they could probably hop in to a half marathon and a full, and get the national records too. Of course, it depends on where these times are run, but even then, most of our national records aren't run locally.

Yet squabbles still occur to varying degrees at the school and national level. I believe that these squabbles are the result of status plays, especially when one party feels like they aren't getting the credit they deserve. It could be in the form of prize money, fame, or simply placing in a (locally) high-stakes race.

When we take a step back and realise what "high-stakes" people are fighting after, it becomes slightly laughable. After all, it's not even the Olympics or regional Asian Games. In that sense, status by individual metrics within a confined arena rarely scales.

Parties

When I first wrote this title, part of me was definitely thinking about the big birthday party that my friend had when he turned 20. Just as status manifests itself in academics and athletics, it also finds its way into our personal lives, even in something as unassuming as a birthday party!

Don't get me wrong, I was glad to be part of it. Over 30 people were invited, and I even got to (re)connect with a friend that I've not seen since primary school.

Singapore, by nature, is small. People progress in batches together. Folks from the same "elite" primary schools who were "high achievers" back then tend to go to "prestigious" programmes like med / law school together. In the end nearly everyone is probably at most two degrees of connection away.

I never threw parties, so I wouldn't know how the feeling of hosting one is like. Taken in the most genuine form, I think that parties are a celebration of an event with close family and friends; a sharing of joy that people get to partake in. Taken most cynically, it's a form of shielded status elevation. When you are the centre of attention, there's an undeniable sense that some level of status is conferred upon the person who jioed (invited) everyone to his party.

To me, I'll be much more content if I had 15 good friends (out of the 150) to celebrate something with. But even in these seemingly personal, localized contexts—like a birthday party—status plays quietly influence interactions. In sports, the boundaries of status felt confined to the local or national arena, and even in social settings like parties, they remain limited to small circles of connection.

Global

Tech

But what happens when we scale this to a global level? In the world of tech, status games take on an entirely different dimension.

The Forbes 30 Under 30 2024 was released a couple of weeks back, and I’d bet the mean age of founders in the AI category—an inaugural addition this year—is lower than in any other section. From my Twitter / X feed, it feels like every other young founder or engineer is securing an O-1 Visa, raising seed funding, or championing the idea of dropping out of school. Fellowships, scholarships and grants are aplenty, ready to support the young and ambitious. This isn’t new; prodigies have captivated society for ages.

One observation that I've made while being adjacent (and confined to an island off mainland Singapore) to young ambitious teenagers is that status accumulation tends to become self-reinforcing. Once someone has built enough credibility [^1] in the field, subsequent opportunities often flow effortlessly. To me the clearest evidence of this was the consecutive releases of the Neo Scholars (Oct 25) and Contrary Venture Partners (Oct 30)--two highly selective programs where two names appeared on both lists. It's often the case where a young ambitious individual crosses a certain threshold of recognition and this paves the way for many more opportunities.

I don’t think skill and status accumulation are inherently bad. These opportunities exist for young people to seize, and it’s signals their talent and ambition when they reach that level. But there’s a flip side: achieving a spot in one prestigious program often comes at the expense of another equally deserving candidate who didn’t make it. This creates an environment where breaking into these elite circles becomes exponentially harder for those on the outside looking in, even if they’re equally skilled or ambitious.

So, like any other ambitious young adult exposed to said mantras on the Internet, we all want a way in to these elite circles. The allure of recognition, especially in tech, lies in its promise: credibility begets opportunity, which, in turn, opens doors to an even greater future.

Sustainable Success?

But while precociousness grabs attention, in endurance sports, we're much more concerned with sustainability. It's not about hammering out a 200km week, it's about stringing together a whole season of 100km weeks to build effective mileage. That's what separates elites from amateurs: the ability to put in the work, week in, week out. Only a small group of training partners and friends are clued in on this grind.

The same principle applies beyond sport. Teenagers and young adults may enrapture us with their ability to move fast and break things—now made so much easier with "serendipitous" platforms like Twitter / X and simply the Web-but how many can sustain that rate of progress beyond their youth?

Society, however, seems obsessed with signs of precociousness, from PSLE top-scorers in Asia to Western [^2] societies. What could go wrong, right?

The focus on early achievement could blinds us to the secondary effects of glorifying success. I've had conversations with friends that made me realise it's not the achievement themselves that spark discomfort—it's the outsized responses to them. We celebrate these wins loudly on social media but rarely pause to consider the subtle pressure they place on everyone watching.

Personally, I’ve always admired those who grind quietly, documenting their wins and losses internally rather than broadcasting them. But I’ve come to realize there’s survivorship bias in this mindset: how would I even know someone is grinding silently if they’re not on social media? Perhaps it’s through multiple iterations of deliberate practice—without external validation—that mastery emerges. Sharing progress openly may create marketing funnels, but it also risks prioritising optics over substance.

So amidst the noise (or signal!), I had a conversation with a friend who built his company entirely from scratch and has recently been documenting his takeaways. He described the tranquility of working outside traditional systems of validation, like school, Twitter, or the startup world's pecking order of funding rounds and media attention. Sure, there's marketing, but it's not about that raw form of chasing recognition, it's ensuring his work reaches the right people.

How do we respond?

I love this Twitter thread explaining the mindsets and actionables that young individuals can adopt. If there could've been a TLDR, that would've been it. But I think it's challenging—everyone craves some sort of external validation at some point.

Young adults from 18-24 probably hold the belief that we can conquer the world, but I believe that it's also healthy to hold some form of non-judgemental skepticism and general curiosity about what others our age are doing. Like the thread said (oh I love it), am I good in general, not just good for my age? Am I pursuing something out of genuine interest or because people on tech twitter say it's good for me to do?

Revisiting that anecdote of my brother dismissing that ad that made my 11 y/o self upset: he could see, from having experienced part of the world beyond school, that grades and awards weren't everything. Mastery of subject knowledge in school isn't the only signal (or necessarily even a good one) of "success"[^3]. He helped me realise (once then, and many times after) that the boundaries of what mattered had shifted. And it takes someone with authority to call you out, like he did with my naivety. In other words, diversity of experiences leads to an intuition of what's worth bothering about.

In the end, status isn't inherently bad—it's a signal of skill, effort and ambition. But as I've learnt, it's not the only signal, nor is it the most important one (though it could be the loudest!). Whether in acads, sports, or tech, the systems we create often amplify status in ways that obscure what really matters: the ability to sustain progress and build meaningful relationships.

There's value in ambition, but there's equal value in questioning what drives it. It’s easy to compare status based on age or circumstance, but the harder, more meaningful questions are: Who am I doing this for? Am I chasing recognition? For now, I think I’m better off staying focused, tuning out the noise, and committing to the work that truly matters. :D

Footnotes

[^1]: To be fair, credibility measured in terms of both skill accumulation and status accumulation. I think skill accumulation contributes to status accumulation. Point being, if you're good enough and make yourself visible enough, it becomes a winner-take-all market.

[^2]: I'm linking a piece by someone who wrote about her feelings while going through The Knowledge Society.

[^3]: In inverted commas because I have not reached a definition of it yet.