I've tried many times, with many different approaches and many different people over the course of a 20-year career.

The variation in outcomes was absolutely zero.

To anyone who wants to believe that bosses are fundamentally capable of tolerating independent thought among their underlings, I would recommend the book "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt [1].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-Profession...

> marginally more confident goes a long way

...not sure. My own piece of anecdata here is that healthy self confidence is not really correlated with better career opportunities at all in our industry. If anything, maybe even the opposite is true. In my mind, companies promote people who have internalized the pre-existing power structure and perpetuate it [1]. These tend to be of the "insecure overachiever" [2] type, rather than independent thinkers with healthy self-confidence.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-Profession...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Leading-Professionals-Power-Politics-...

There's a rather interesting perspective that touches some of these issues (and covers many more) in the following book: http://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-Professiona...

There is a great book on this topic by Jeff Schmidt called Disciplined Minds: http://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-Professiona...

Here's a review: http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/01BRrt.html

Earning a PhD certainly requires independent thought and action, but those are directed towards goals imposed by someone else, typically an adviser or one's committee, and the typical grad student rarely questions those goals.

This capacity for creative work in pursuit of others' ends is exactly why Rachel says PhDs are such valuable minions.

The book "Disciplined Minds" [1] makes this point in a radical way. I didn't agree with everything it said, but its point is that higher education selects for people willing to jump through arbitrary hoops for nebulous returns, and that that conformism is valuable to employers.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-Professiona...