It's called "survivorship bias", and it's not just for people who "roll out of bed and get a life-long career." It applies equally well to pretty much everyone, including ultra-successful company founders. "Hey, if I can do it, anyone can do it, and the ones who don't are obviously just not willing to work hard enough or take enough risks."
It's not called "survivorship bias." That's a term for looking at, e.g. mutual funds' 5-year records, where the only ones you see are the ones who've been around for 5 years, and not the ones that failed.
Company "loyalty" is sometimes a valid concept, but the probability goes down the bigger the company gets.
Umm...I'm sorry, but it very much is a form of survivorship bias. "Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not."
"I worked hard, my employer treated me well, and I retired early. It's not that hard!" Does not take into the account the workers that worked hard and in return were abused by their employers.
I think you need to look the term up if you want to use it correctly. It's about statistical sampling, not about generalizing from one or two examples.
>Whether it be movie stars, athletes, musicians, or CEOs of multibillion-dollar corporations who dropped out of school, popular media often tells the story of the determined individual who pursues their dreams and beats the odds. There is much less focus on the many people that may be similarly skilled and determined but fail to ever find success because of factors beyond their control or other (seemingly) random events.[16] This creates a false public perception that anyone can achieve great things if they have the ability and make the effort. The overwhelming majority of failures are not visible to the public eye, and only those who survive the selective pressures of their competitive environment are seen regularly.
Language is malleable and dynamic. Words and phrases originating in one place are often conscripted to do extra duty someplace else. There is nothing inappropriate about that. It is a Thing That Happens.
However, in this case the thing I described really is survivorship bias in the original sense of the word. See:
"Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not. This can lead to incorrect conclusions because of incomplete data."
In this case, the selection process is not getting laid off.
Just thought I'd pull the quote from your link that says the opposite of what you're saying. It may have originally come from statistics, altbough I don't think that's the case. The Wikipedia article certainly doesn't say so.
