The opposite scenario would be with a chess player or a tennis star. They too work with their teams and thank them when they win – but when they win, the players take home a large portion of the prize money. And in those fields, there are very few qualification requirements. Magnus Carlsen was just a young guy from Norway who kept winning and got to the top. He never needed a master’s degree in chess.

The real losers in the team system are those who don’t have the temperament for all the training and gaining qualifications. Of course, these qualifications include recommendations from known contacts, so networking and socializing have become increasingly important. For most people, this is a workable situation, but for others, it is a frustrating solution.

Some recent evidence suggests that this problem is particularly severe in the world of science. The number of authors on scientific papers has risen sharply, a trend I have observed in my own field, economics. It used to be rare for a new applicant to the job market to have multiple authors in their research paper; now it is common. The paper may be great, but how can you tell how much a single author contributed? In the physical and life sciences, a paper can have dozens of co-authors.

Again, the importance of qualifications will not decrease, but rather increase. Relatively speaking, someone from MIT who is listed on a multi-author publication is more attractive than someone from Iowa State University.