Path to CEO

Following up on my post "Who needs and Ivy League degree anyway?", I found some more information at this post on Corporate Engagement:

Today's executives are younger, more likely to be female, and less likely to have Ivy League educations. They make their way to the executive suite faster than ever before (about four years faster than their counterparts in 1980), and they hold fewer jobs along the way. They spend about five years less in their current organization before being promoted, and are more likely to be hired from the outside.

What's more, the Organization Man, the lifelong corporate employee who worked his way faithfully and slowly up the executive ladder, appears to be headed out the door

"different skills are being rewarded, and that a new type of executive will benefit from this trend," says Cappelli. "The businessman in the gray flannel suit -- the person who was nameless and had no independent profile but fit into the organization -- that person clearly suffers in this model.

People who can promote themselves clearly win.

It's tempting to say that people with more merit get ahead now, although I'm not exactly sure that this is true because it's hard to judge real merit. But the people who appear to have merit clearly have the advantage in this model."