[HN Gopher] The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to "T...
___________________________________________________________________
The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to "The Office"
(2009)
Author : taubek
Score : 233 points
Date : 2024-08-11 05:35 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ribbonfarm.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ribbonfarm.com)
| H8crilA wrote:
| Keep in mind that in practice this classification is not perfect,
| as in you cannot just bucketize people into three categories and
| declare perfect understanding. You should treat the roles
| described in the article as archetypes of human behavior.
| crngefest wrote:
| This is true for every statement about people.
| H8crilA wrote:
| And yet it is not obvious to everyone.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| I still maintain there are only 10 types of people in the
| world.
|
| Those who know base-2 numerals and those who don't.
| rbanffy wrote:
| True, but do you _really_ know them? Dan you do long
| division in base 2?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > Keep in mind that in practice this classification is not
| perfect, as in you cannot just bucketize people into
|
| Gosh that's such an INFJ thing to say!
|
| /s[ubtle]
| nkrisc wrote:
| "INFJ", that's from that workplace astrology, right?
| sdwolfz wrote:
| You would be surprised, but companies actually pay hard
| money to consultants to do these astrology readings and
| present them to shareholders as a "measure of workforce
| compatibility".
| nkrisc wrote:
| I had to do something like that once at work. I picked
| random answers for all the questions.
| sdwolfz wrote:
| That's the easy part. Did you also have to do a 1 hour
| interview with the consultant after the questionnaire?
|
| EDIT: also an hour long group meeting after the
| interviews to be presented your collective results?
| osigurdson wrote:
| Most people know how to game these now. Want to be a
| "leader"? Choose extroverted type answers. Get the red
| patch.
| jhbadger wrote:
| I think it was more popular before that book ("The
| Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs
| and the Birth of Personality Testing") came out. Not that
| I ever believed it before that, but I assumed it was
| created by actual social scientists rather than two
| untrained amateurs as is the case.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Meyers briggs is not "astrology" - it doesn't claim to
| predict anything. It categorizes how people already
| consciously see themselves with Carl Jungs archetypes. The
| main point of the archetype concept is to then explore the
| part of you that is different from how you see yourself-
| your "shadow" for the purpose of personal development.
|
| It's not mysterious, mystical, or claiming to be science-
| it's just a very simple set of arbitrary categories to give
| you a different perspective on yourself, and point you in a
| direction of dealing with things you would otherwise avoid
| because it's uncomfortable to think about. For example if
| you see yourself as "rational" and reject "emotional"
| thinking, it can be helpful to actually explore your
| emotional side rather than push it away.
|
| The concept itself is a useful and simple thing, but is
| mostly misunderstood and misused... I don't see how an
| employer testing employees would be useful.
|
| As someone who has read Carl Jungs books, but has not
| encountered it in the workplace, it annoys me to see people
| talking derisively about it from a place of
| misunderstanding.
| chongli wrote:
| It's astrology because it takes unimodal distributions
| and splits them into two groups above and below the mean.
| This is a cardinal sin in statistics because it implies
| the existence of distinct populations that don't really
| exist and so any predictions you try to make are no
| better than a coinflip.
| rbanffy wrote:
| They just said MBTI doesn't predict anything. It's a
| measurement tool, with limitations, and you should use it
| understanding those.
|
| Much like an IQ test, or a having or not a PhD, it
| doesn't hold much predictive power.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| If you can't make any useful predictions with it then
| whatever MBTI measures (or it believes it measures) is...
| also useless?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I attempted to explain what it is useful for above, but
| will elaborate.
|
| The valuable result is the extreme opposite of your
| result- it is a therapy or personal development tool that
| directs you to explore and understand parts of yourself
| you reject or disapprove of (your "shadow").
|
| It simply quantifies something obvious that you already
| know: how you consciously see yourself- in a way that
| guides you to explore aspects of yourself that you
| otherwise would choose to avoid because it's difficult
| and possibly even painful to do so.
|
| What it measures is actually pretty banal and obvious if
| you are familiar with Jungian archetypes- one can easily
| guess the result for yourself and other people without
| using the test.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It actually does not do that- each dimension which
| represents two opposite archetypes (e.g. introvert vs
| extrovert) is a continuum, and the output of the test
| isn't actually a single category but a point on that line
| for each dimension. The full output is actually a 4
| dimensional vector. Importantly- everyone has both
| traits, it is only telling you which you more consciously
| identify with. Many people will be near the middle and
| not strongly on one end of a dimension.
|
| Again, astrology claims to predict the future based on
| nonsense. MTBI makes no such claims, it predicts nothing,
| and it's chosen dimensions are very transparently
| arbitrary value judgements, among limitless possible
| archetypes that one could choose.
| chongli wrote:
| I think you may have missed my point so I'll give an
| example:
|
| Suppose you take a random sample of adult humans and sort
| them by height. What you'll see is a bimodal distribution
| which reflects the fact that there are actually two
| distinct populations represented in the sample: men and
| women. The sexes can be considered types and you will get
| reasonably accurate results for predicting height from
| sex and vice versa.
|
| However, if you instead take a sample of only men and
| sort them by height you will see a unimodal distribution.
| If you then try to split this sample into two types above
| and below the mean, you will find that it doesn't tell
| you anything!
|
| This is what I mean when I say MBTI astrology. The
| archetypes are meaningless! Someone who is at 51% on the
| extroversion scale will get labeled an Extrovert and
| someone at 49% will get labeled an Introvert, but in
| practice these two are virtually indistinguishable and
| fall squarely within the margin of error. Since the
| distribution is unimodal the majority of the population
| clusters around the means, exactly what you would expect
| to find with the hypothesis that personality archetypes
| do not exist.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I don't think I missed your point but you missed mine. If
| someone is 51% or 49% it is misleading to classify- which
| is why the test actually outputs a vector.
|
| Archetypes are fairly arbitrary concepts that isolate
| individual aspects among thousands that could potentially
| explain personality traits- they don't claim to exist in
| real people.
|
| It is critical to realize that in the dimensions on MBTI
| everyone is actually both, but some people strongly
| identify with one and reject or despise the part of
| themselves that represents the other.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| To follow on: why does the MBTI focus on 8 specific
| archetypes when there are limitless others?
|
| It is indeed a totally arbitrary choice, and a value
| judgement. These are ones that Carl Jung thought
| particularly important based on his philosophy of
| personal development, and experience as a clinical
| psychologist. Of the ones Jung talked about MBTI further
| selected an even more limited set.
|
| Personally, I think it is more useful to skip the MTBI
| and just use Jungs original text.
| wnolens wrote:
| Thanks, this has given me a new perspective.
|
| I went through mbti at a workplace and it was used to
| give us an understanding of our co-workers.
|
| Your point that it's a self assessment and thus only "how
| you see yourself" and not.. y'know, how you actually
| behave, is in retrospect "no shit" but I missed this
| crucial point.
|
| It kind of changes every conversation with anyone I've
| ever had about our result.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It sounds like it is being misused and misunderstood in a
| way that is actually BS.
|
| The way it relates to others is more subtle than that:
|
| Say someone is strongly extroverted and sees introversion
| as a negative thing... and dislikes and disapproves of
| their more introverted co-workers. If they come to
| explore, understand, and accept their own introverted
| aspects it will also take the steam out of their dislike
| for others who show those traits.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| This is true for any kind of generalization. Having said that,
| I can really see this at my company.
|
| At the beginning I was a high-perfoming loser. Then I realized
| how things work, and since then I do bare minimum. I wish I
| could be a sociopath, but I don't have the brains nor the lack
| of morals to do so. I passionately hate the clueless ones
| because they stand against everything I believe in. My dream is
| to save enough money not to have to take part in this circus
| anymore.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > lack of morals
|
| You don't really need to be a clinical sociopath for that -
| you need to know enough to employ the characteristics in
| order to reach your own goal, which might not be a selfish
| one at all.
|
| It's a fun sport if you think about it that way.
| H8crilA wrote:
| High performing is the clueless, not the loser. Bare minimum
| is the loser. Those names are not chosen well, especially the
| "loser".
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| From TFA... "The Gervais Principle is this:
|
| Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-
| performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing
| losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort
| losers to fend for themselves."
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Thank you, I was wondering what the Gervais principle was
| exactly.
| tropicalfruit wrote:
| "The more you work, the less you earn."
|
| You can't really grow in business without exploitation.
|
| Whether that's using "contractors" to deliver your packages,
| using monopoly to slurp people's data, sourcing minerals from
| african blood mines or using asian sweatshops to build your
| phones and clothes.
|
| To me, corporate life has always been a race to see who gets
| exploited the most and who the least.
|
| Sociopaths don't care about exploiting others. I would say the
| same for most people. We can usually rationalize the worst kind
| of things to ourselves when it suits us.
| bboygravity wrote:
| There's quite a difference between deliberately exploiting
| people you interact with in the real world all day every day
| for your own benefit and what you're mentioning.
|
| Buying an iPhone, not knowing that it was built using Chinese
| (semi-)slave labour is not quite the same as a manager who
| promotes easily exploitable (loser) over-achievers and uses
| "devide and conquer" on the rest of his underlings to make
| himself feel safe and comfy. All in the same office that
| everybody goes to every day. For decades.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| It's not exploiting if they voluntarily do it.
|
| The default state of humanity for thousands of years has been a
| lot of people living in mud houses and working all day to do
| subsistence farming and tending to livestock. Doesn't sound
| like a great life, but they aren't being "exploited" there
| either. It's just people versus Mother Nature. However, many
| would gladly take 9-5 jobs in an air conditioned building
| instead, and live in nicer homes with utilities. It's voluntary
| labor.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| Previously:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296 (63 comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33298158 (149 comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486869 (90 comments)
|
| And a lot more which were less popular:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=gervais%20principle%20the%20of...
| h0l0cube wrote:
| I read this long ago, and it poses itself as dark knowledge. The
| triage of 'sociopath', 'clueless', and 'losers', even if it bears
| out this neatly in reality - it doesn't - isn't very actionable.
| I did come away with one useful part of it, and that's 'The Curse
| of Development'. Which basically states, that if you go out of
| your comfort zone to try something new, you'll look foolish to
| outsiders. And it's useful to know this, and then correct for it
| when receiving judgement from people who haven't walked that
| path.
|
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/04/14/the-gervais-principle-...
| mikhael28 wrote:
| I've read this before, and while an entertaining thought
| experiment, I'm not sure there is anything really actionable
| here. Maybe just be mindful that people are trying to exploit
| you.
| t43562 wrote:
| As you say, it's worth knowing what shit can happen but that
| doesn't mean everyone in leadership is a sociopath or that it's
| unwise or losing to accept a paycheck.
|
| It can be unwise to start a business and lose all your money
| which does happen to people.
| rbanffy wrote:
| The terminology on the three groups is used very loosely. The
| "psychopaths" put their own interests on top, the "clueless"
| put the company on top and the "losers" are the ones who opt
| for a low-risk, low-reward strategy. Risk goes up as you move
| up on the pyramid as well, but lots of current C-levels use
| the company to buffer the downsides while keeping the upsides
| for themselves. It's a bit sociopathic, but there are endless
| layers of self-delusion happening on all levels.
|
| This is also an "average" company set in a specific culture.
| Outliers exist and different cultures will also reflect in
| the power dynamics.
| velcrovan wrote:
| I would say the same of Rene Girard's writing. It's a lens to
| try to make sense of the world, not a method.
| alecco wrote:
| Not all companies are like this. Some small companies have good
| leaders. Cherish them if you find one.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Part 2 gets into that.
|
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-...
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Not true! This was actually a life-changing read for me. I
| stopped being the rock-star developer and turned to quiet
| quitting before quiet quitting became a thing thanks to this.
| I'm not joking. No more over-time, far less stress, more time
| with family, and no more burn out. I have no regrets.
| trojanalert wrote:
| To be read in conjunction with the Babbler hypothesis - The
| amount of time some people spend talking gets them into
| leadership positions. It doesn't matter what they say, just how
| much they rant on. I read that, and realised how insanely true it
| is
| cen4 wrote:
| Well these observations have nothing with to do with the main
| conundrum -
|
| How do you keep a group of chimps who all have different
| interests, personalities, needs, beliefs, values, upbringings,
| culture, religion, language, history etc etc in sync?
|
| And these days groups grow quite large quite fast.
|
| Historically, if you take rewards, bribery, force, domination
| and manipulation out of the story, the babblers/non threatening
| people can bridge differences as groups grow larger and larger
| in size.
|
| No solution is perfect, cause its quite an unnatural thing for
| groups to form around anything. Given all the differences.
|
| Just try to work with your entire extended family on a project,
| and watch what kind of strange rituals, stories and behaviors
| keep the group from breaking apart.
| WJW wrote:
| I think you missed the point of the GP: Venkatesh Rao has
| written so much posts around this idea that he's now
| positioned himself as an authority on the topic of workplace
| power dynamics, regardless of if what he wrote is actually
| accurate or not.
|
| He is also quite fond of using poorly defined (in this
| context) words like "dialectical" and "illegibility" that
| makes the reader doubt whether he's actually full of shit or
| that he is actually so brilliant that the reader simply
| doesn't comprehend him.
| mgblogg wrote:
| I think the main point of his principle is roughly correct.
| Classic companies are started by sociopaths and an initial
| amount of losers. Then the clueless come in the middle of
| the pyramid. The clueless section expands as the company
| grows until the company implodes.
|
| I do not agree with his idea of promotion of overachievers
| into middle management and many other things. Some of his
| points are self-contradictory.
|
| There are many variations on the main principle like
| Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
|
| https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
|
| (None of this applies applies to startups that are founded
| by actual programmers.)
| lupire wrote:
| That's not what the GP said. That's your contributing
| opinion.
| swed420 wrote:
| ctrl+f for "dialectical" yields no results in the OP. What
| are you referring to?
| mgblogg wrote:
| > if you take rewards, bribery, force, domination and
| manipulation ...
|
| That is a big "if". It works on the family level, but in the
| real world babbling is coupled with dominance, coercion,
| blackmail, exploitation etc.
|
| It is easy to see in any average company that no one believes
| the babbler but is forced to listen to them and applaud.
| sulandor wrote:
| though the shared disdain for the babbler creates a "common
| enemy" which is probably better than being forced to work
| directly
| verisimi wrote:
| "the main conundrum" .. is not my conundrum.
| 627467 wrote:
| I feel like we forgot (or deprioritized - or maybe never
| genuinely prioritized) how to NOT have to sync on everything
| all the time.
|
| not everyone needs to be in a group.
|
| not everyone in a group needs to be in sync with interests
| AND personalities AND needs AND beliefs AND...
|
| but I see the paradox here: we need to believe the above is
| true to live happier and more meaningfully
| stavros wrote:
| By "groups" we mean "working with people". How are you
| going to do anything without working with people?
| 627467 wrote:
| no one needs to work with EVERY people. exit is an
| option.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not everyone needs to be in a group_
|
| Not everyone is in a civilisation. Few people in a
| civilisation would rather be in _e.g._ Sudan or Ethiopia.
| 627467 wrote:
| there's over 170mil people in those 2 countries. maybe a
| majority wishes buy a one-way ticket to Disneyland but a
| non-irrelevant numbers of people decides to live their
| dreams and struggles with those nearby in that group.
| again: not everyone needs to be ANY given group
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Most people in those countries are part of small groups.
| Humans are a social species. That doesn't _require_
| anyone to be part of a group. But it's a bit ridiculous
| to try and manage a society by assuming it away.
| bloqs wrote:
| This is because extraversion is partially composed of
| assertiveness (big five), which directly indicates your
| influence on your nearby human environment
| bloqs wrote:
| This is because extraversion is partially composed of
| assertiveness (big five), which directly indicates your
| influence on your nearby human environment
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| "People get promoted because they influence others" is a
| description of the problem, not a justification of it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _" People get promoted because they influence others" is
| a description of the problem_
|
| What do you think a leader's job is?
| mjburgess wrote:
| shh, don't explain the correlation. this isn't about
| understanding, its about pseudo-intellectual envy.
| "obviously!" the more people speak, regardless of what they
| say, the more those _Other_ dumb apes will elect them leader.
| I mean, why, any old fool could read every word from the
| dictionary and end up CEO!
|
| The Dumb Ape Hypothesis: we are at our most dumb when
| declaring others so.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I would say it's more because companies and other organisations
| are social systems, and your ability to succeed in a social
| system comes down largely to your social skills. I think people
| with poor social skills don't understand the importance of
| them, and therefor don't understand why the people with better
| social skills are succeeding, and subsequently come up with
| these post hoc rationalizations that allow them to explain
| these outcomes without confronting any of their own issues.
| lupire wrote:
| You have to define "social skills" in a more specific but non
| tautological way for this argument to carry weight.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| I'm not the parent commenter but I like your point.
|
| People who have a reason to form a group will
| cooperate/collaborate best when they have some confidence
| in one another. People share ideas, projects, and skills,
| and "read" one another and form bonds. This is a _social
| system_. It could be a brief association or have a long
| duration. It could have a formal context, such as a
| business or a governmental entity.
|
| Social interactions build people's confidence and sense of
| value in the group, in the individuals, and the work at
| hand. The challenge grows exponentially as the population
| of the group scales. _Communication is hard_.
|
| An individual's discernment and _connectedness_ (a
| confidence /value score) within the group will reflect
| potential for success. _Communication matters_.
|
| The human plot twist is that there can be dysfunctional
| social systems as well as dysfunctional individuals.
|
| For a very serious discussion, the great writer Primo Levi
| published his reflections on his harrowing experiences.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_Levi
|
| This related article about social systems and connectedness
| was also recently discussed on HN with much interest:
| https://www.afterbabel.com/p/the-upstream-cause-of-the-
| youth...
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| You're reading an awful lot into that person's question.
| Social skills are a very basic concept, the wikipedia
| page for them gives a decent overview. But I'm skeptical
| that the parent commenter actually misunderstood what I
| meant, and instead wanted to engage in some debate about
| organisations valuing the wrong skills or something like
| that. A debate about the causes of social maladaptation
| is also not especially relevant to my initial point.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| Cheers! Thanks for your comment.
|
| Your initial point is the simplest explanation for how
| groups of people self-organise... and meta-organise.
|
| I realise that I went far in explaining and gave far more
| than I will receive in this case.
|
| But then again, you responded and that's a connection.
| ^_^
| the_duke wrote:
| Correlation vs causation?
|
| Management has to collect information, disseminate information,
| coordinate, make decisions and propagate them.
|
| All of that requires a lot of communication, aka talking.
| lupire wrote:
| It also requires a lot of listening and reading and thinking,
| aka not talking.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Goes with my reply to OP [0]. I have a colleague that is a
| total waste of space. Never finished a project, never wanted to
| take on advice, always fought on really shady grounds, but he
| fought everything, almost like it was either his idea of what
| was on-point or nothing... But he was constantly talking, he
| was always talking, he is always talking, most of the time
| about things he doesn't have a clue about... and just a week
| ago, he got bumped... I don't get it... I honestly do not get
| what the fuck is wrong with this world.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41215788
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You can provide a lot of value to an organization (or a
| leader) without finishing a single coding project. As an
| engineer I hate it, but I have worked for good directors and
| awful directors and usually the good directors do a ton of
| talking and bitching and moaning. But they also are fortune
| tellers and crystal balls and expert C-suite anthropologists
| that make the work valuable rather than just busy.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Yeah, I mean, I get it... but, how the fuck is this the
| normal state of affairs?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| It's not just normal, it's desirable. You do not want
| your director / C-suite guy reviewing pull requests,
| filing bugs, or being obsessed with code library choices.
| That's what you get when you endlessly promote your
| busy/productive code-loving IC types.
|
| You _want_ someone who is a naturally fluent speaker,
| strongly outspoken, who holds strong opinions, and wants
| to focus on processes and long-term roadmaps and so on.
| All the stuff a dilligent IC disdains.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| That's all worthless if they don't actually have good
| ideas, though. And I don't believe someone who is all
| talk actually has good ideas. You have to be rooted in
| good practice.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| If you're free to define "all talk" as "not useful" then
| yeah - you've created a tautology. All I'm saying is some
| folks that are awful to work with side by side as
| technologists are super useful to an org in other places.
|
| One person's 'all talk' is another person's 'all walk'.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think there is a different power play at work, if politics
| are important in a workplace then it benefits you to promote
| the less competent as they are both less threading at a peer
| level and they owe their position to you so can be expected to
| be loyal. A competent person might think they got there on
| their own and may not be relied on as strongly to take your
| side in office politics. Of course repeating this process many
| times rapidly erodes management competence.
|
| This simple process is from an emergent behavior of rational
| actors acting in accordance to the incentives of the structure.
| Unlike other theories it does not necessitate irrational
| actors, morons, or sociopaths. Where you have people you have
| politics so it almost always occurs just at different speeds,
| hence the pervasiveness and the inevitability of the cycle of
| collapse and rebirth. It appears to me that only a highly
| competent king (someone whose position cannot be threatened by
| a peer) can stop this process and maybe reverse it.
| cainxinth wrote:
| A related type is the Jargonist, who not only speaks endlessly
| but in a stream of acronyms, buzz words, and insider coded
| language.
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Name drops?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| If that's the case, given how much I talk I should be president
| by now.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Must be why I keep getting promoted.
|
| You might be inverting cause and effect.
| tankenmate wrote:
| "Traded freedom for a paycheck in short." or to quote Pink Floyd,
| "Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a
| cage?" -- Wish You Were Here.
| fch42 wrote:
| A lot of these "organisational models" treat organisational
| behaviour as a kind of game; you can get ahead by exploiting game
| masters' mistakes, by cheating, or possibly by knowing and
| playing the rules really well. And just like poker, there's
| always a supply of those who believe in luck and just go all-in
| with no plan.
|
| While I get that "as such", and therefore can follow a
| classification sociopath/clueless/loser, what is always missing
| in such models are the people who don't care to play. Those who
| go to the casino for free food and drinks in order to watch the
| show, but not to take a stake of their own. Are they "losers"
| because if you don't bet you can't win ? All of those who play,
| though, actually want these spectators - after all, winning if
| there's noone looking, is that a win?
|
| Personally, I think you have this "fourth column" in all
| organisations. They take their paycheck and deliver something of
| what's asked for, but else don't care; what they see as "success"
| is not related to organisational structure or behaviour at all.
| With all the focus on "success" and "promotion" (or, opposite,
| "losers"), I wonder how much the theorists are missing. The non-
| voters can be the majority, you know ...
| the_gipsy wrote:
| That's the "losers", they are precisely described.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > The Losers like to feel good about their lives. They are the
| happiness seekers, rather than will-to-power players, and enter
| and exit reactively, in response to the meta-Darwinian trends
| in the economy. But they have no more loyalty to the firm than
| the Sociopaths. They do have a loyalty to individual people,
| and a commitment to finding fulfillment through work when they
| can, and coasting when they cannot.
| lupire wrote:
| This is the main annoyance I had that turned me off this
| theory. Not playing a game may be technically "losing" the
| game, but empathizing that part gives the game undue
| importance in the big picture, instead of looking for what
| actually is important.
| fch42 wrote:
| Not only that; but also, by virtue of the "promo pool"
| being the "losers" in this theory, it subclasses them
| without saying so (into at least three types - losers that
| will avoid promotion at almost all cost, losers that seek
| promotion through "hard work" and loosers that trick their
| promotion through sociopathic scheming). This is basically
| what I meant ... at the very very minimum, the "unafflicted
| losers" that don't care about the game are missing.
|
| (agree - looks like reality is more complex)
| sage76 wrote:
| This writing explained nearly everything I saw in the corporate
| world.
|
| One thing I do disagree with is the promotion of enlightened
| underperformers. Those guys seemed to always end up leaving and
| starting their own companies.
| sulandor wrote:
| not necessarily a bad thing, since a well-connected and
| specialized startup may bring a lot more value to the company
| and the economy in gerneral
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Those guys seemed to always end up leaving and starting their
| own companies
|
| The "enlightened underperformer" path is high-risk/high-reward.
| Only a minority will be promoted up, and most will end up
| either doing a lateral move to another company or being
| promoted out.
| mksreddy wrote:
| "Sometimes I'll start a sentence, and I don't even know where
| it's going. I just hope I find it along the way."
|
| -- Michael Scott, the first LLM.
| vasco wrote:
| Most of my good thinking is done like this. Walking around the
| house talking out loud to myself about a topic without knowing
| where it's going. Over the years I've trained myself to try and
| speak more and more in this mode and I find it has good
| outcomes. It's not how it works but to myself I call it
| "putting my brain in analog mode". I also try to write like
| this for all my first passes. I also found it works for
| drawing, I will start drawing a random line and see where the
| hand takes me. I believe there's a term for art done in this
| way but I can't recall it now. I think Michael Scott was on to
| something.
| szundi wrote:
| Stephen King does this with whole trilogies haha
| rbanffy wrote:
| This is actually a very practical way of creating stories -
| set up the stage and see what the characters go about
| doing. The writer needs to be aware of the larger stage in
| order to keep the reader interested in understanding what's
| actually going on and why.
| Lyngbakr wrote:
| I remember Stephen King writing in his book _On Writing_
| that he once deviated from this approach (Maximum
| Overdrive, perhaps?) and it really didn 't go well. At
| the time, I thought creating characters, a scenario, and
| setting and then seeing what happened was nuts, but it's
| essentially how D&D works (albeit in a group setting) and
| that's always fun.
| asimovfan wrote:
| Cant do it in German.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| You are getting -- I think -- reflexively downvoted, but I
| genuinely think you are onto something. German grammar has
| strict word order rules as opposed to say Polish, where
| syntax is much more permissive ( for that one aspect of it
| ). I wonder to what extent native language changes how
| brain functions over the course of one's life.
| eru wrote:
| Nah, spoken German can handle that just fine. Spoken
| German has different rules from written German (and, of
| course, people have quite a bit more tolerance for minor
| breaks of grammatical rules in ad-hoc spoken language
| anyway.)
|
| To give an example: a bog standard German sentence puts
| the verb in second place. Everything else is fairly
| flexible, eg you can either put object or subject first
| (unlike in written English, where the place of the
| subject is much more constrained).
|
| Now, when you have a subordinate clause, written German
| puts the finite at the end. Like "Barbara besuchte das
| Restaurant, weil sie Hunger hatte."
|
| In spoken German, you can get away with "Barbara besucht
| das Restaurant, weil.. sie hatte ja Hunger." Especially
| if you pause to think at the place marked by the two
| dots.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > In spoken German, you can get away with "Barbara
| besucht das Restaurant, weil.. sie hatte ja Hunger."
| Especially if you pause to think at the place marked by
| the two dots.
|
| Native German speaker: When I hear such a wrong placing
| of the finite verb in a subclause, I immediately think
| that the respective speaker is either uneducated (when
| the person is a native speaker) or (if the person is a
| foreign speaker) had a really bad German teacher who did
| not correct this mistake.
|
| Thus: _No, don 't do this._ Speak the sentence as you
| would write it.
| lowdownbutter wrote:
| You've reminded me of this -
|
| > The Brits often assume that Germans have no sense of
| humour. In truth, writes comedian Stewart Lee, it's a
| language problem. The peculiarities of German sentence
| construction simply rule out the lazy set-ups that
| British comics rely on ...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/may/23/germany.fea
| tur...
| tomsmeding wrote:
| My native language is Dutch, not German, but the word order
| restrictions are similar. But note that these word orders
| apply to subsentences: units of subject, object and verb,
| with additional stuff like prepositional phrases around it.
| Nothing at all is strict about how you combine these
| subsentences together into an argument: if this, then that,
| but maybe such, and perhaps so, thus something else -- at
| least in informal speech.
| jancsika wrote:
| Rank speculation-- similar type of improv is quantized to
| the level of a full sentence.
|
| Even ranker-- doesn't German have the same kinds of
| filibuster phrases as English? Stuff like this:
|
| "Look,"
|
| "The point is this--"
|
| "I think what the average American wants is..."
|
| "If I've said it once I've said it a thousands times--"
|
| There's a character Fred Armisen did on SNL news that eats
| the entire segment with these phrases. I'm sure the same
| can be done in German.
| trainyperson wrote:
| The term (I think) is "automatism", popularized by
| Surrealists.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealist_automatism
| The_Colonel wrote:
| This just reeks of bitterness. Sounds like someone trying to get
| to the top, failed somewhere along the way and constructed this
| model to funnel frustration and sorta explain away their failure.
|
| The judgment permeates the model, apparently the only desirable
| position js at the top (but then you're a sociopath), second best
| is a checked-out loser.
|
| To me, being a "clueless" or "over-performing loser" is
| preferable to a "checked-out loser" (I've been all of those at
| times), at minimum because the former like their job. Micheal,
| Andy and Dwight enjoy their job and even find some fulfillment
| there. Meanwhile for e. g. Stanley the work seems to be only
| necessary suffering. I'd rather make my work enjoyable than
| having to suffer 8 hours a day.
| rkachowski wrote:
| we must imagine Sisyphus happy
| usrnm wrote:
| > I'd rather make my work enjoyable than having to suffer 8
| hours a day.
|
| And you're making an irrational decision because it makes you
| feel better. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't really
| contradict the essence of the article. If you look at work from
| the economic point of view, it's just an economic transaction,
| we are selling our time for money. Selling more of my time for
| more money or selling less of it for the same money are both
| rational things to do, selling more time and effort for the
| same money is not very rational.
| zahllos wrote:
| I agree with the parent poster, the author sounds very
| bitter. Might not be true, they might be trying at humour and
| I haven't got it.
|
| But I think doing the minimum you can get away with is
| playing with fire.
|
| Your colleagues will resent you. You're also sending a signal
| to everyone that will be remembered. Maybe a colleague will
| start a business or move to another place one day. Are they
| going to employ the minimum effort person they used to work
| with? No.
| wnolens wrote:
| Even just viewing a job purely as an economic transaction
| is short-sighted. You are at least making social
| transactions, and likely also meaning transactions.
|
| Hell, even a commute to work where you're spending time,
| gas, and risk on the road can serve as a quiet time to
| process and integrate life's experiences.
| usrnm wrote:
| > Your colleagues will resent you
|
| Why would they? We're all adults and all more or less
| understand the rules of the game. And in rare cases in my
| career when the company culture was all about working long
| hours and living at work, I just tend not to stick in such
| places for long
| epolanski wrote:
| > The Losers are not social losers (as in the opposite of
| "cool"), but people who have struck bad bargains economically -
| giving up capitalist striving for steady paychecks.
|
| Both Michael and Dwight are excellent salesmen, but both struck
| bad (financial) deals for a steady paycheck.
|
| If you've been a loser in previous jobs you gave up much better
| money for the benefit of executive and shareholders.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| The key ingredients of successful memetic corporate
| organizational theory are cynicism, detachment and disparagement.
| By describing executives as sociopaths and the middle management
| as losers this article allows the reader to feel superior to
| those alongside, above, and below them in the org chart, while
| the generally cynical tone allows the reader to feel aloof and
| acts to enhance the already established sense of superiority.
| Finally the article is written from the point of view of an
| external observer allowing the reader to imagine themselves as
| separate and somehow external to the organisation rather than a
| part of it. This explains why people love to post it to hacker
| news.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| To an extent, sure, there is definitely an element of that. It
| certainly is interesting that it ends up on HN as often as it
| does though tbh until now I assumed it had more to do with the
| theory of office that managed to capture a plausible
| explanation why "The Office" felt as close to the real thing
| than most of us felt comfortable with.
|
| edit: Just the explanation of 'stakes' made me realize that
| ribbonfarm was onto something there.
| rbanffy wrote:
| The Office is triggering to me. Not as much the UK version,
| but the American one (a lot of Brazilian companies cargo-cult
| American ones) rings too many bells.
|
| Also, Silicon Valley has triggering moments.
| dlkf wrote:
| The article is rife with references to a mediocre tv show, but it
| doesn't contain a single example of the principle as applied to a
| firm. The author is an expert in something, but it isn't
| business.
| stavros wrote:
| If the Office is a mediocre comedy TV show, what's a great
| comedy TV show?
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Dilbert!
|
| (I know that Scott Adams got chastised for some
| views/tweets/whatever and I don't care)
|
| Now, to the cartoons. I was introduced to them back in 2000 or
| 2001 by a colleague. We both loved the Monty Pythons, so we had
| that in common to begin with. Once I read the first few strips, I
| got hooked. I starting 'seeing' these chars to my colleagues (and
| to myself).
|
| Dilbert has taught me A LOT about psychology and operating in
| large corporations. My all-time favorite cartoon is (and will
| most likely forever be): https://dilbert-
| viewer.herokuapp.com/1998-04-10
| cushychicken wrote:
| Late stage Scott Adams has some pretty icky views, but that
| doesn't change the fact that he had some spot on insights about
| modern office culture. "Spot on" may not be a strong enough
| term - "timeless" may be a more appropriate one.
| rbanffy wrote:
| My wife, a trained clinical psychologist, rebooted her career
| into corporate consulting. After her first assignment, she
| came back and all she had to say was "I didn't know. I
| thought it was a joke. It's all true. Dilbert is true".
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| As much as I love Dilbert, I'd have preferred if it had ended
| around 2016-ish. The later Dilberts may have been "timeless"
| (in the sense that the belief system where minorities are out
| to get you and kindness is a sin is over a hundred years
| old), but they certainly weren't "spot on".
|
| Some of them had valid points about how corporate
| "inclusivity" is often nothing of the sort - a trend dating
| back to the US civil rights era (see: _Letter from Birmingham
| Jail_ ), which I expect to continue for a hundred years yet -
| but surrounded by panels and panels of the characters
| smirking at each other about woke liberal madness as
| fantastical caricatures play out in front of them, that
| insight was... somewhat obscured.
|
| Earlier Dilbert, though? Many of the stories were sent in by
| readers and fans, but _wow_ did Scott Adams adapt them well
| to the comic medium. It 's a real shame how he ended up, and
| I hope he gets better soon.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I love The Office (UK version). It is one of my all time
| favorites, and crudely enough, after so many years of being a
| fan, I got a taste of what having David Brent as a boss is
| like... My Boss is so much like Gervais' character, that it is
| almost like God is taking a piss on me.
|
| I absolutely hate my current work environment, and it is all
| fueled by the archetype of boss caricatured in The Office. It is
| real, then again, where else would they find so much comedy gold?
| it had to come from real life...
| throwaway7ahgb wrote:
| Why haven't you been able to get an offer somewhere else?
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| Not the person you asked but I can give you my reasons:
|
| 1. Job market being overly picky makes it hard to jump ship,
| especially if you're early-mid level 2. There's a general
| notion that "everywhere's the same deal" so people just learn
| to cope with it 3. "Golden handcuffs" - compensation so good
| you're willing to tolerate the downsides.
| stavros wrote:
| For not reading the sibling's response, you really nailed
| the reasons.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| my mother always said i need to learn to just shut up
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Market is WILD! I had a super good interview just 2 days ago,
| just to get a "sorry, maybe we'll call you later". I guess my
| stack is too crap. No one seems to, really, be hiring. ----
| edit Also, I am making good money, and I can do my job with
| my hands tied behind my back...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Also, I am making good money, and I can do my job with my
| hands tied behind my back...
|
| Some unsolicited advice from the internet: take some time
| to learn a skill or decorate your house or something. If
| you have slack in your schedule and can't see a way to
| utilise it at work towards a promotion, then maybe
| investing in things outside of work might be fun?
| adhambadr wrote:
| this was an insanely entertaining and informative read that gave
| me (a corporate outsider) a massive learning on the psychology of
| these orgs. It felt like I m reading a very informative
| management book but using pop culture analogies I can follow,
| thank you so much for the time to put it and looking forward to
| pt2 about Jim.
|
| Also on another note, are startup founders then in that realm
| sociopaths or the clueless (with the vcs then being the
| sopciopaths, employees the ls etc.)? asking for a friend.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I read this a decade ago, and really didn't want to believe it.
| Surely this is just a joke, riffing on the office. But no, a lot
| of CEO's are psychopaths, and this has held up with test of time.
| d_burfoot wrote:
| > Today, any time an organization grows too brittle, bureaucratic
| and disconnected from reality, it is simply killed, torn apart
| and cannibalized, rather than reformed.
|
| I actually think the overall argument of the essay makes more
| sense when you realize the above comment actually _isn 't_ true
| for the large majority of organizations. Universities, government
| agencies, big tech monopolies, public sector unions, complacent
| companies in industries that haven't changed in 50 years, etc.
| Most sectors of the economy just don't experience that much
| competitive pressure, and that's why there are so many zombie
| institutions, whose activities resemble a kind of mindless
| shambling rather than any kind of rational constructive motion.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Can you give examples of zombie institutions?
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| He did: > Universities, government agencies, big tech
| monopolies, public sector unions, complacent companies in
| industries that haven't changed in 50 years
|
| so: Harvard, FDA, Google, American Postal Workers Union,
| State Farm. Also banks, I would say.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Also banks, I would say_
|
| Banks get "torn apart and cannibalized" more frequently
| than industrials.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| That often doesn't seem to be a result of competitive
| pressure, but of hubris. I think in many of those cases,
| in the framework set out by the article, the sociopaths
| would still be in charge of the company.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _often doesn 't seem to be a result of competitive
| pressure, but of hubris_
|
| Column A / Column B. If hubris is the root, the less
| hubristic competitor takes it over on failure. If
| competition causes excessive risk taking, the better-
| managed bank wins. The system really only loses when
| competitive pressure causes everyone to lower their
| guard, which happens, which is why banking has to be
| tightly regulated. (And this is true with or without
| fractional reserves.)
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| Well, big banks. Like Wells Fargo, still limping along.
| And maybe Boeing is in the "complacent industry"
| category, also recently in the news.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Boeing? Id look at old school defense and enterprise b2b
| corps. In a lot of cases they sell out of date products and
| if they somehow lost all blueprints / source code they
| probably wouldn't be able to even reproduce it because no one
| there even knows how it works
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I foundationally disagree with your premise
|
| If you look at the composition and charters of these old
| "institutions" like governments, universities etc... the scope
| and function, the amount of resources put towards them etc...
| is very much not static.
|
| In fact, they are exceptionally different than they were at
| their founding, and this is specifically true for universities
| with how they were funded at the beginning versus how they are
| funded now as well as what their role in the social
| organization of society is
|
| So this concept that there are these big monolithic things - by
| function of simply not changing names - haven't changed, is
| silly at best
|
| The Crimson even did a huge writeup of this:
|
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/5/22/yir-college-adm...
|
| Bottom line, all of these institutions have been captured by
| moneyed interests and that's the cycle
|
| Public goods get privatized by dominating financiers and used
| to benefit the in group they serve while passing all
| externalities to the out group
|
| Aka "capitalism" - and yes, this applies to the Soviet Union
| perfectly because the Bolshevik coopted all of the land in
| Soviet territories on behalf of the bosheviks and had nothing
| to do with individual labor power - so please save your
| communist complaints for somebody who is promoting communism
| because that's not me
| motohagiography wrote:
| are you a sociopath because the inner struggles of your food
| delivery guy don't register to you, or have you just
| instrumentalized someone to achieve an end and you just relate
| with a transactional distance? no matter what you think you do,
| to someone you work for, you are the food delivery guy
| represented by a little dot whose progress to your destination
| someone is watching on their screen. maybe they're even racing
| you against another one, but it doesn't matter.
|
| I don' think the gervais principle enlightens anymore. I remember
| thinking it was amazing to see my suspicions laid out like this,
| but with some time and distance I don't know that I would share
| it with someone now. why demoralize them.
|
| I can see how it's demeaning and feels like punishment to take
| orders or show deference to someone who lacks heroic qualities,
| and really we should make a better class of managers, but it is
| the duty of all prisoners to escape, and they probably won't miss
| you anyway. there's an aspect of humility that comes from simple
| competence where all work is "we make a thing here so our
| families can eat," and if you're on an existential quest for
| belonging, you're probably not going to provide the value to
| others that yields the rewards of the business.
|
| Sure, money and power flows to some of the least interesting
| people doing the dullest things, but the dinner party they're
| boring at isn't the reconciliation or taking account of their
| course through life either. they do the thing and then eat at
| drive thrus and watch some tv. meaning for them comes from
| somewhere else. articles raging against them are dumb and
| misleading. trying to grind out meaning from every experience is
| exhausting and ephemeral because meaning is beautiful, but it's
| rarely shared and doesn't persist.
|
| this life is only what we actually do, so do something different.
| djhope99 wrote:
| I think sales and consulting can be a bit of a cheat code here.
|
| You spend most of your time with customers and so you just kind
| of navigate their politics without actually involving yourself.
|
| The money can be better so it's a better deal and you're mostly
| shut out from the politics of the organisation you work for
| anyway.
| bhasi wrote:
| This is incredibly insightful - I've never analyzed people in
| organizations in this way, except "people who can do the work"
| and "others who ride on their coattails".
| renewiltord wrote:
| This blog has been in continuous existence for almost two
| decades. That's pretty impressive!
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I think there are some insightful gems in there, but it doesn't
| add up to a grand unified theory of management.
|
| One company I worked at was ran by a narcissist, who promoted
| anyone who sucked up to him - the harder the suck, the higher the
| office. Not because they were underachieving losers or whatnot.
| And as a result most people he promoted were the Clueless, who
| genuinely sucked up the nonsense he spewed. The company was,
| somehow, very successful.
|
| Anther company was all sociopath going at 100 mph flat out,
| hoping to make enough dosh before it all explodes. No losers or
| clueless on board beyond probation.
|
| Another had a great guy at the top, who was seriously nice,
| competent at the subject matter, and fair and concerned with the
| well-being of his people, we're all in this together etc. If
| anything, he was the Clueless. His lieutenants in turn were
| incompetent sociopaths, busy with keeping him happy while
| flailing their arms to appear like they are trying to control the
| chaos, all the time sucking at the teat of the Really Nice CEO.
| He didn't promote them because they were sociopath, but he
| promoted them for some reason and didn't have the heart to fire
| them.
|
| As much as I love the cynicism, I think reality is more
| complicated. But for sure, being a psycho and not actually caring
| about the work or people is a great boost to a successful career.
|
| "The Office" analogies are a bit convoluted to me as well. Jim's
| climbing the greasy pole of company management isn't, to me,
| embracing Sociopathy, but if anything, trying to make his Loser
| life more comfortable. Swallow a few stupid company slogans, toe
| a line, and in return have less work and more money. Not really
| his opening up to screwing other people or relentlessly jumping
| ship to a higher position with the competitors.
| thayne wrote:
| I think this is at best incomplete.
|
| For example, there are people who work as value producers who
| overperform not because they are "clueless" -- they are well
| aware that the company is not loyal to them, and they got a "bad
| deal" -- but because they enjoy the work they do, or they have an
| internal drive to do a good job at whatever they do, or they
| believe doing a good job makes a difference in the world, etc.
| And at least some of such people are unlikely to accept a
| "promotion" to a managerial position.
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