This isn’t entirely on point but related – Have you read the piece by Cal Newport about the bias against leadership activities that are fully understood? (He uses sports captains as his actual example.) The idea is this: yes it takes a lot of time and commitment to become a sports captain, but the path is very well understood, so there is an inherent bias against being impressed by it. (Sort of: “anyone could become good at frisbee if they just put in the hours.”) And then he juxtaposed that profile against a kid who worked his way into some sort of council with the UN (if memory serves me), and while it took far less time and commitment to do that, he was widely considered a “more impressive” candidate, simply because people couldn’t really imagine HOW he had done it. Again, somewhat peripheral to the discussion.