I hadn't realized it before today, but Jerry Pournelle (a science fiction writer) pioneered here (with two groups, not three, which is an advance in understanding.)
"Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization."
It reminds me of the quote: "the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy".
The thing about the Iron Rule (which I agree with) is that it appears in online forums too. In placaes like Wikipedia, Stack Overflow and various forums the community divides into three groups:
1. Content creators: those who past and answer questions, etc;
2. Moderators: those who write and enforce rules and standards; and
3. Lurkers: those who simply read.
The second group, while useful, has to constantly be kept in check. No matter how originally (and concurrently) well-intentioned, there will always be a tendency to create and enforce more rules to solve perceived and actual "problems".
I'd be interested to know what psychology drives people to join the moderator camp.
This reminds me a lot of the Conflict vs Mistake framing[0] which is expanded on by his Tragedy of Legible Technique article[1]. It also reminds me a lot of the Steve Jobs Product vs Marketing clip[2].
> When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does. That means she's trying to solve a harder problem than Zvi is, and it makes sense that sometimes, despite having more resources than Zvi, she does worse at it.
It seems to me like the issue is actually in rent-seeking, where the more rent-seeking you have available, the more the marginal mistake person converts into a conflict person. In a world of perfect competition there would be no room for conflicts, and only once you have freely available rents does the land-grabbing phase begin. When your rules are written by the conflicters, for the conflicters benefit, it's already to late. They'll certainly never compromise on the simple correct path.
I heard someone say - 'Problem with corporations is that most of them are run by finance people and lawyers.' I think they fall into your 2nd group - administrators.
>(the office) I’ve been unable to figure out what makes it so devastatingly effective, and elevates it so far above the likes of Dilbert and Office Space.
Dilbert is a hand drawn comic so it will never have the media reach of TV. It also tends to focus more on the details of the bureaucratic brokenness for people to laugh rather than cry at in daily life.
The office is syndicated TV with a new episode every week. It simply has high rewatch value. The broken office bureaucracy is used as a plot device rather than the focus of the show. The show focuses on characters and how they react to work life which keeps the show more funny than sad.
I would argue that Office Space actually was more effective than both of these other two. It was a one off movie from over 20 years ago that people across age groups still regularly reference. You can only watch a movie so many times. There is not much opportunity for syndication or binge watching. After you watch it 20 times 20 years ago it kind of drops out of the yearly zeitgeist.
Adams did try an animated Dilbert series but it didn't do very well or last very long (and wasn't especially good). There was a time when I really liked Dilbert--probably in part because I worked at a cubicle farm tech company that probably resembled PacBell where Adams worked in quite a few ways.
But Adams left (and I left) and, for the most part, Dilbert ended up mostly stuck in a 90s cubicle time warp notwithstanding some zingers about cloud from time to time. (Some of which hit amusingly close to home as the consultant I was later.)
"The Office" we're talking about here is not a syndicated TV show with a new episode every week; it's a British mini-series. You're likely referring to the US version of "The Office", which ran for 9 seasons and was wildly different from the British show (the showrunners attempted to clone the original but discovered that David Brent's character suited Ricky Gervais far more than it did Steve Carrell, and course-corrected to a different kind of show.)
When I first read this, I found it too cynical for my tastes. But now, I can say it's a bit relatable. Being a software engineer, I don't find the "bad" bargain I have for myself that bad. I am a happy "loser."
But over the years, I have observed— multiple times—obviously talented people who have been slogging for a shitty company for years. It takes them forever to realize they are wasting their time and have to take some action. Some never realize, too.
Usually, they are people who have been promoted by the organization. They were early employees. They believed in the vision and found it hard to lose hope that things might change. The "Clueless" as the article notes.
But there can be an easier explanation as well. Partly, it's also sunk-cost bias. It's possible they do recognize the terrible place they are in. But find it incredibly hard to cut their losses. The organization can always dangle the carrot of "the turnaround is around the corner", "we will promote you soon", "the team depends on you".
A parallel is stock investing. I once invested in terrible company. Even though the deluge of bad news never stopped, it took me four years an my investment falling by 60% to admit that I need to admit I made a bad decision and sell my holdings.
The tone of the article is extremely negative. Sociopath, Clueless, Loser. And that leads to a generally negative framing of everything and all of the people in question.
The general concepts: some people act as capitalists, some people find meaning in their work and lose sight of the capitalistic nature of work, and some people find meaning outside of work and do so by doing the bare minimum at work and not playing the capitalist game, are valid archetypes, however.
This is a thought-provoking read. I'm currently going through Meta onboarding for the third time (once before as an intern and once full-time). The first time it was exciting; the second time it was interesting but seemed quaint, but still, neat for a first-time job; the third time it feels like a pipeline for molding the exact sort of Clueless people the article describes.
Whenever I've heard an executive talk at an organization big enough to have its own HR department, when I've read their press releases, HR documents and policies, or attended their all-hands meetings, they've all sounded like they're talking directly to the Clueless.
Having worked in faang as well for a while now, I can attest that most people seem to be capable of jumping to their own startups very easily.
Companies need to craft very enticing reasons to stay on as a 'Loser' (mostly via perks and pay) and even work harder to retain 'Clueless' since the latter is even more likely to leave and launch a startup being leadership focused. 'Sociopaths' are so few that they're easily gotten via acquisitions, or simply buy them.
My take since then after numerous debates - there is merit hence the massive success of the Office series.
But in general it is a 'glass half empty' perspective. CEOs are often gifted, hard working, but also a bit lucky at times to be born into fortunate situations. Middle managers, are typically leadership-qualified but simply don't want to devote enough time for a CEO or startup founder role. And the rest- who generally do the 'real' work - are often there due to enjoying the work itself, and have even less interest than middle managers to devote time to climbing a ladder. (All of which are respectable positions)
The labels used in GP tend to give a bit more humor, and also attribute upward growth to negative qualities- so haters feel better about having to deal with folks who dont think like them - so it simultaneously appeals to each group!
Of course the more positive perspective is just as valid.
I love The Office, but I don’t believe that the writers actually have some deep knowledge of business psychology and hierarchy. It seems pointless to attempt a deep analysis through that lens.
I think it's often the case that when a story is created, the creator(s) don't necessarily have this detailed philosophical/psychological overview of the characters and the essence of the show. Rather, they have their own life experiences and ideals for the story and characters("there's always that idiot boss and that one guy who does nothing"). Analyses like this one then provide us with a point of view that puts the vision of the writers into a larger perspective.
So it's not necessarily like the writers aimed to create something along these lines, rather, what they created fits perfectly to this narrative. That's what makes reading good analyses so satisfying.
The writers at some point decided that Michael Scott is a character we should be sympathetic with and started writing episodes that expect us to feel bad for him.
It's when I dropped off the show, I like Steve Carell, but I couldn't get past the fact that the show forgot just how the characters are awful people.
I think they both made well thought out and intuitive choices in storytelling that reflect greater truth, like most great film/TV. British version the more bitter truths of course.
Irrelevant. Things resonate with people because they accurately describe underlying structures of reality, regardless of whether an accurate description was the original intent.
It’s the same thing as Lord if the Rings fans trying to ascribe deeper value to the curve at which Frodo tosses his Lembas wrapper away and it signifying the same trajectory as Middle Earth is on.
Or The Wire / Breaking Bad fans digging way too deep for meaning.
To be clear, I deeply appreciate all three above-mentioned stories, and they do have lots of multi-layer symbology, but sometimes a thing is just a thing.
It feels like an observation that could be more easily made from the outside. On the inside of a company, we're wrapped up in everyone's immediate motivations for every decision they make, and we can see at a micro level that everyone is doing their best in their own eyes to get from it what they can, but from the outside you could see a larger pattern of the attitudes and beliefs of people at different levels in corporate hierarchy.
Personally, even if this is not from some deep intellectual tradition of management theory, it helped me see things that I'd been staring at my whole career without understanding. One way it changed my perspective is that it helped me realize that the loyalty of middle management strivers is real, the realest in the company. I used to assume that company rah-rah and loyalty rhetoric was meant to increase the performance and affordability of front-line workers, i.e., that the leaf node employees were the target, and middle management was the delivery mechanism. Middle management parroted loyalty rhetoric to their employees to show upper management that they were carrying out their plans in a capable way and could be perhaps trusted with a promotion.
But that never quite made sense. Inspirational company rhetoric is actively irritating to most employees. It's an odd misfit in the front lines of a large company who feels inspired by company boosterism, and they either learn to keep their enthusiasm under wraps, or they are disliked by their fellow workers, who embrace the Loser mentality. Since all the company rah-rah stuff seemed stupid and unproductive, my theory about why companies did it was that it was a peculiar blindness of the otherwise smart people who run companies. But now I realize that if you see middle management as the target, and front-line workers as collateral damage, the cult of loyalty makes a lot of sense. Looking at managers now, I can see that a lot of them buy into it on an emotional and intellectual level, and they believe that it will contribute to their rise in the organization. It works on them! That's why companies do it!
I know people who told their managers that they thought company morale campaigns were creating resentment and cynicism among their fellow employees. They did this in a spirit of openness, as something that management should be aware of, and they suffered real though unofficial consequences. From a cynical, utilitarian perspective, the retaliation they suffered was hard to make sense of. It was petty and ineffective. But it makes sense if you realize that they were attacking an intensely felt part of their managers' self-identity, and their managers' reaction reflected personal hurt, not rational calculation.
I never understood those things until I read this blog post. I always assumed that the cynicism about company values started at the lowest level of management, that management was a tower of atheists acting out the company religion for the sake of the believing suckers at the bottom. But that was a poor fit for reality compared to the Sociopath/Clueless/Losers structure.
Scott is very smart, but he's never worked for a large enterprise. The book has been written for the Clueless who are... clueless about their situation. They work hard, try to meet their KPIs, reach their annual goals, fill their DEI quotas, but somehow people who are worse at meeting these formal targets get promoted ahead of them.
It's funny, I was rereading this article and Scott Alexander's review just now, before I saw that it had been reposted on HN.
Scott makes some good points but I think he simply lacks experience in the kind of big corporations Venkat describes. I think the Gervais Principle can be observed most readily in large, old-economy firms operating in zero-sum industries. It's probably more predominant on the east coast than the west coast, and even more predominant outside of the US. That's not to say that small, new-economy, west-coast, non-zero-sum companies won't demonstrate the same patterns, but they will almost certainly appear more weakly, in different forms. (And, of course, firms in the middle will show the same patterns in middling amounts.)
I first read these articles back in university, thought they were amazing mind-blowing red-pill insights, then promptly discovered on entering the working world that I had too little experience to utilise this kind of thinking.
A few years later I decided that a more principled, honest stance makes sense: be productive, set goals, figure out what you're doing before your do it, decide what you want and then go after it, don't take on work that you can't handle, etc. If you do that, you should be able to avoid politics (or so I thought). This strategy works very well... up to a point. However, after a few more years, and lots of reflection, I've realised that the dynamics Rao describes are visible in pretty much any group of people over a certain size. You just have to observe closely over a long period of time.
Even the most political workplace will look normal 90% of the time... the political interactions are subtle, ambiguous, and almost always inseparable from ongoing relationships or interpersonal dramas. Heck, 95% or more of "politicking" consists of interpersonal skills, "emotional awareness" and the ability to communicate. The Machiavellianism only really comes into play amongst people who've shown that they can do their jobs, have a decent circle of friends (or "friends") in the organisation, and have some idea of what they'd do with organisational power. These are the "table stakes" that Venkat refers to; before you obtain these, attempting to play the political game is pointless.
I concluded that up until the age of about 27-28, it's best to focus on building up your core skillset so that you can gain "table stakes". As a general rule, people under 25 can't beat people over 35 in political games, and shouldn't even try. (For people in-between, it's complicated.) However, over the age of about 28-30, understanding the political games suddenly becomes much, much more important. Even if you only want to use your powers for noble ends. (Example: supporting a junior employee who has unintentionally earned the disapproval of the boss.) With the context of a few years worth of work experience, Venkat's article makes a lot more sense. (Especially after sincerely attempting to walk the path of honesty, integrity and productivity, and observing its strengths and weaknesses.)
It's possible that Scott and his friends either work in very nice companies, or that that don't notice these dynamics going on around them. I have a simpler hypothesis: they're Losers (in Rao's sense) -- they might be well-paid losers, highly-educated losers, socially and financially successful losers, charming and sociable losers, but Losers nevertheless. When Rao calls someone a Loser, all he means is that they've given up on maximizing their potential wealth and power in exchange for a steady income (which may still be very high) and belonging to a particular crowd. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and for 90% of people, it's a reasonable trade.
There's no special pot of gold or magic crown you win by becoming a "sociopath". It simply means that you've decided to step outside of the box defined by the local social structure and to walk your own path. Whether that path is good or evil, logical or insane, spiritual or depraved, is from then on entirely up to you.
That said: based on what I've read about politicking in rationalist circles, and in EA circles, and at Google promotional reviews, and at other FAANGs, and at large silicon valley startups, and at small silicon valley startups, (and presumably amongst small indie bloggers who get targeted by the New York Times) I simply conclude that this kind of behaviour occurs all around Scott and that he simply isn't aware of it.
When we apply the principle "All models are wrong but some are useful." to the Gervais Principle I come to a funny conclusion. It is quite close to reality but mostly useless. It reads funny but is very cynical and it doesn't deliver anything actionable. Neither does it give happiness nor does it empower to change things. It mostly channels anger into cynicism. Well, you may think that you can explain the world in the terms used in the theory and yes, they explain many things quite well. But what then? Resignation?
I would like to know how things are in more neutral terms and know how to fight the calcification (or how you call it) of an organization effectively or, if not possible, how to get the best out of it for myself.
this is complete bullshit. we've discovered much more complex geometry than the pyramid. we don't have to cram our understanding of society and organizations into such a primitive metaphor. it's also not advisable to call your audience sociopaths, losers and clueless.
The worst manager I ever had used to keep a copy of The Prince at his desk. He definitely looked at other people the way this article seems to encourage you to.
I would layer the 80-20 rule on top of this principle. For the 20% that get 80% of sh*t done, this doesn't apply imho. But for the other 80% it seems pretty accurate.
I'd say the 20% fit comfortably in the Clueless zone. They're receiving a bad bargain and not actively maneuvering to actually improve it. But it's just a model anyway, models are never completely accurate.
It's really helpful to identify sociopaths. They know what's up and make things happen, but not friendship material. Kinda dangerous when you interact with one without noticing.
Losers are cool and mostly harmless. The alphas can be a bit annoying sometimes, but most of them can be good friends.
Company hierarchy: Sociopaths at the top > Clueless middle managers > Losers at the bottom.
That's a bleak view, but I've worked in organizations that fit the model. To think that this could be the norm.. What if the model could be applied to human society in general! With such power dynamics, no wonder we seem to be barely hanging together with tense, mutual disrespect.
I really used to buy into this mental model. There are certainly some points that seem to correspond to my lived experience.
At this point though, I've been through each of the tiers and have never been either cluelessly obsequious nor a sociopath -- so I have my doubts that the model is worthwhile despite being a good laugh!
For those that haven't read it:
- Tier 1 - fresh younguns or burnt out talented people who are there for a check (there is a lot of discussion regarding this tier). GOT reference: Sam Tulley
Losers: Aemon Targaryen, Catelyn Tully, Hot Pie, pre-Braavos Arya Stark, Hodor, most of the Freys, the random Lannister soldiers led by Ed Sheeran's character in S08E01.
Clueless: Brienne Tarly, Jon Snow, Rob Stark, Stannis Baratheon, Daenerys Targaryen
The non-Lannister Sociopaths are in many ways more interesting, because they are more subtle about their will to power and hence more effective. Bran in particular - with his Greensight and warging abilities, he has the ability to influence events basically at will, but he's also physically crippled and dependent upon others for action. And note that when asked if he would accept the crown (not take it), he simply says "Why do you think I came all this way?".
Joffrey was a Clueless if ever there was one. He had no grasp of strategy, no skill at manipulation, no understanding of how to present himself. His mother on the other hand was a Sociopath's Sociopath.
Thank god for the clueless, who keep the world running.
I share some of the author's cynicism, but the thesis is a bit flawed.
There's a very key mistake, often made from a populist perspective (those who have never had power) that somehow the people at the top are able to 'freely move' through society. They cannot. Most often, they are in a gilded cage, and they are never as rich, powerful or as mobile as we think.
Execs are often sociopathic and skittish precisely because they are in a precarious situation. Do you really think that most executives can just pop off to another, massively high paying job? No. They are mostly stuck. They have public profiles and have to be careful of what they say, who they interact with. They have to 'socialize' with the right groups. Their wealth does not buy them that-that much more and that slightly nicer cottage, ski vacay, private school etc. drain the accounts really fast.
Almost anyone who is 'working at a firm' - even as an executive - is not that powerful. If they could, most people would just retire. If someone chooses to work instead of retire, well that's probably a sign of commitment and integrity which is the opposite of sociopathy.
Exec layer is definitely full of whacky people and cynical Machiavellians who are protecting their power and nothing more sure, but they are not 'mobile' and not there by choice.
Also, from a populist perspective, a lot of corporate actions seem Machiavellian, but they are not. Just realist. Made by possibly an entitled class, who make mistakes. But when you have to move people around, hire and fire in large numbers, some people will get burnt, and sometimes in a way that doesn't feel or is not nice, and that will happen even with the most competent, well-meaning leadership.
So yes, if we look at the world purely through the lens of self-interest (and for some, there's no reason to fathom anything more, which is sad), then even with the above characterization it still seems pretty bad. Except thankfully, most of people don't share this cynical view, and usually find much more purpose in what they do than their salary. Teachers are perhaps the best example of that.
“Their wealth does not buy them that-that much more and that slightly nicer cottage, ski vacay, private school etc. drain the accounts really fast.”
This sounds more like middle management to me. The true Sociopaths in the places I’ve worked (I’m thinking SVP to C-level) are in the hundreds of millions net worth or on track to get there.
EDIT: as I write this, I realize most of the places I’ve worked are huge, powerful companies and might not be representative. But the first company I worked at was worth less than a billion dollars, and I think the CEO might have been the only real Sociopath in the room.
[+] [-] Nomentatus|3 years ago|reply
"Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization."
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
[+] [-] jmyeet|3 years ago|reply
The thing about the Iron Rule (which I agree with) is that it appears in online forums too. In placaes like Wikipedia, Stack Overflow and various forums the community divides into three groups:
1. Content creators: those who past and answer questions, etc;
2. Moderators: those who write and enforce rules and standards; and
3. Lurkers: those who simply read.
The second group, while useful, has to constantly be kept in check. No matter how originally (and concurrently) well-intentioned, there will always be a tendency to create and enforce more rules to solve perceived and actual "problems".
I'd be interested to know what psychology drives people to join the moderator camp.
[+] [-] ItsMonkk|3 years ago|reply
> When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does. That means she's trying to solve a harder problem than Zvi is, and it makes sense that sometimes, despite having more resources than Zvi, she does worse at it.
It seems to me like the issue is actually in rent-seeking, where the more rent-seeking you have available, the more the marginal mistake person converts into a conflict person. In a world of perfect competition there would be no room for conflicts, and only once you have freely available rents does the land-grabbing phase begin. When your rules are written by the conflicters, for the conflicters benefit, it's already to late. They'll certainly never compromise on the simple correct path.
[0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/
[1]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
[+] [-] stan3223|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guerrilla|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aetimmes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] citizenpaul|3 years ago|reply
Dilbert is a hand drawn comic so it will never have the media reach of TV. It also tends to focus more on the details of the bureaucratic brokenness for people to laugh rather than cry at in daily life.
The office is syndicated TV with a new episode every week. It simply has high rewatch value. The broken office bureaucracy is used as a plot device rather than the focus of the show. The show focuses on characters and how they react to work life which keeps the show more funny than sad.
I would argue that Office Space actually was more effective than both of these other two. It was a one off movie from over 20 years ago that people across age groups still regularly reference. You can only watch a movie so many times. There is not much opportunity for syndication or binge watching. After you watch it 20 times 20 years ago it kind of drops out of the yearly zeitgeist.
[+] [-] mysterydip|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|3 years ago|reply
But Adams left (and I left) and, for the most part, Dilbert ended up mostly stuck in a 90s cubicle time warp notwithstanding some zingers about cloud from time to time. (Some of which hit amusingly close to home as the consultant I was later.)
[+] [-] cercatrova|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x86x87|3 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/J1KEPvuiQIs
[+] [-] tptacek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Markoff|3 years ago|reply
btw avoid Clerks III, it's unwatchable
[+] [-] shubhamjain|3 years ago|reply
But over the years, I have observed— multiple times—obviously talented people who have been slogging for a shitty company for years. It takes them forever to realize they are wasting their time and have to take some action. Some never realize, too.
Usually, they are people who have been promoted by the organization. They were early employees. They believed in the vision and found it hard to lose hope that things might change. The "Clueless" as the article notes.
But there can be an easier explanation as well. Partly, it's also sunk-cost bias. It's possible they do recognize the terrible place they are in. But find it incredibly hard to cut their losses. The organization can always dangle the carrot of "the turnaround is around the corner", "we will promote you soon", "the team depends on you".
A parallel is stock investing. I once invested in terrible company. Even though the deluge of bad news never stopped, it took me four years an my investment falling by 60% to admit that I need to admit I made a bad decision and sell my holdings.
[+] [-] ep103|3 years ago|reply
The general concepts: some people act as capitalists, some people find meaning in their work and lose sight of the capitalistic nature of work, and some people find meaning outside of work and do so by doing the bare minimum at work and not playing the capitalist game, are valid archetypes, however.
[+] [-] codekansas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmoriarty|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stu_|3 years ago|reply
Companies need to craft very enticing reasons to stay on as a 'Loser' (mostly via perks and pay) and even work harder to retain 'Clueless' since the latter is even more likely to leave and launch a startup being leadership focused. 'Sociopaths' are so few that they're easily gotten via acquisitions, or simply buy them.
Just a perspective =)
[+] [-] stu_|3 years ago|reply
My take since then after numerous debates - there is merit hence the massive success of the Office series.
But in general it is a 'glass half empty' perspective. CEOs are often gifted, hard working, but also a bit lucky at times to be born into fortunate situations. Middle managers, are typically leadership-qualified but simply don't want to devote enough time for a CEO or startup founder role. And the rest- who generally do the 'real' work - are often there due to enjoying the work itself, and have even less interest than middle managers to devote time to climbing a ladder. (All of which are respectable positions)
The labels used in GP tend to give a bit more humor, and also attribute upward growth to negative qualities- so haters feel better about having to deal with folks who dont think like them - so it simultaneously appeals to each group!
Of course the more positive perspective is just as valid.
[+] [-] vlunkr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karmakurtisaani|3 years ago|reply
So it's not necessarily like the writers aimed to create something along these lines, rather, what they created fits perfectly to this narrative. That's what makes reading good analyses so satisfying.
[+] [-] izacus|3 years ago|reply
It's when I dropped off the show, I like Steve Carell, but I couldn't get past the fact that the show forgot just how the characters are awful people.
[+] [-] fullshark|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] galacticaactual|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorvi|3 years ago|reply
It’s the same thing as Lord if the Rings fans trying to ascribe deeper value to the curve at which Frodo tosses his Lembas wrapper away and it signifying the same trajectory as Middle Earth is on.
Or The Wire / Breaking Bad fans digging way too deep for meaning.
To be clear, I deeply appreciate all three above-mentioned stories, and they do have lots of multi-layer symbology, but sometimes a thing is just a thing.
[+] [-] dkarl|3 years ago|reply
Personally, even if this is not from some deep intellectual tradition of management theory, it helped me see things that I'd been staring at my whole career without understanding. One way it changed my perspective is that it helped me realize that the loyalty of middle management strivers is real, the realest in the company. I used to assume that company rah-rah and loyalty rhetoric was meant to increase the performance and affordability of front-line workers, i.e., that the leaf node employees were the target, and middle management was the delivery mechanism. Middle management parroted loyalty rhetoric to their employees to show upper management that they were carrying out their plans in a capable way and could be perhaps trusted with a promotion.
But that never quite made sense. Inspirational company rhetoric is actively irritating to most employees. It's an odd misfit in the front lines of a large company who feels inspired by company boosterism, and they either learn to keep their enthusiasm under wraps, or they are disliked by their fellow workers, who embrace the Loser mentality. Since all the company rah-rah stuff seemed stupid and unproductive, my theory about why companies did it was that it was a peculiar blindness of the otherwise smart people who run companies. But now I realize that if you see middle management as the target, and front-line workers as collateral damage, the cult of loyalty makes a lot of sense. Looking at managers now, I can see that a lot of them buy into it on an emotional and intellectual level, and they believe that it will contribute to their rise in the organization. It works on them! That's why companies do it!
I know people who told their managers that they thought company morale campaigns were creating resentment and cynicism among their fellow employees. They did this in a spirit of openness, as something that management should be aware of, and they suffered real though unofficial consequences. From a cynical, utilitarian perspective, the retaliation they suffered was hard to make sense of. It was petty and ineffective. But it makes sense if you realize that they were attacking an intensely felt part of their managers' self-identity, and their managers' reaction reflected personal hurt, not rational calculation.
I never understood those things until I read this blog post. I always assumed that the cynicism about company values started at the lowest level of management, that management was a tower of atheists acting out the company religion for the sake of the believing suckers at the bottom. But that was a poor fit for reality compared to the Sociopath/Clueless/Losers structure.
[+] [-] buscoquadnary|3 years ago|reply
Then I read this article that reviewed and now put less stock in the Gervais Principle
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-gervai...
[+] [-] orthoxerox|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IsaacL|3 years ago|reply
Scott makes some good points but I think he simply lacks experience in the kind of big corporations Venkat describes. I think the Gervais Principle can be observed most readily in large, old-economy firms operating in zero-sum industries. It's probably more predominant on the east coast than the west coast, and even more predominant outside of the US. That's not to say that small, new-economy, west-coast, non-zero-sum companies won't demonstrate the same patterns, but they will almost certainly appear more weakly, in different forms. (And, of course, firms in the middle will show the same patterns in middling amounts.)
I first read these articles back in university, thought they were amazing mind-blowing red-pill insights, then promptly discovered on entering the working world that I had too little experience to utilise this kind of thinking.
A few years later I decided that a more principled, honest stance makes sense: be productive, set goals, figure out what you're doing before your do it, decide what you want and then go after it, don't take on work that you can't handle, etc. If you do that, you should be able to avoid politics (or so I thought). This strategy works very well... up to a point. However, after a few more years, and lots of reflection, I've realised that the dynamics Rao describes are visible in pretty much any group of people over a certain size. You just have to observe closely over a long period of time.
Even the most political workplace will look normal 90% of the time... the political interactions are subtle, ambiguous, and almost always inseparable from ongoing relationships or interpersonal dramas. Heck, 95% or more of "politicking" consists of interpersonal skills, "emotional awareness" and the ability to communicate. The Machiavellianism only really comes into play amongst people who've shown that they can do their jobs, have a decent circle of friends (or "friends") in the organisation, and have some idea of what they'd do with organisational power. These are the "table stakes" that Venkat refers to; before you obtain these, attempting to play the political game is pointless.
I concluded that up until the age of about 27-28, it's best to focus on building up your core skillset so that you can gain "table stakes". As a general rule, people under 25 can't beat people over 35 in political games, and shouldn't even try. (For people in-between, it's complicated.) However, over the age of about 28-30, understanding the political games suddenly becomes much, much more important. Even if you only want to use your powers for noble ends. (Example: supporting a junior employee who has unintentionally earned the disapproval of the boss.) With the context of a few years worth of work experience, Venkat's article makes a lot more sense. (Especially after sincerely attempting to walk the path of honesty, integrity and productivity, and observing its strengths and weaknesses.)
It's possible that Scott and his friends either work in very nice companies, or that that don't notice these dynamics going on around them. I have a simpler hypothesis: they're Losers (in Rao's sense) -- they might be well-paid losers, highly-educated losers, socially and financially successful losers, charming and sociable losers, but Losers nevertheless. When Rao calls someone a Loser, all he means is that they've given up on maximizing their potential wealth and power in exchange for a steady income (which may still be very high) and belonging to a particular crowd. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and for 90% of people, it's a reasonable trade.
There's no special pot of gold or magic crown you win by becoming a "sociopath". It simply means that you've decided to step outside of the box defined by the local social structure and to walk your own path. Whether that path is good or evil, logical or insane, spiritual or depraved, is from then on entirely up to you.
That said: based on what I've read about politicking in rationalist circles, and in EA circles, and at Google promotional reviews, and at other FAANGs, and at large silicon valley startups, and at small silicon valley startups, (and presumably amongst small indie bloggers who get targeted by the New York Times) I simply conclude that this kind of behaviour occurs all around Scott and that he simply isn't aware of it.
[+] [-] agumonkey|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheRealDunkirk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threatripper|3 years ago|reply
I would like to know how things are in more neutral terms and know how to fight the calcification (or how you call it) of an organization effectively or, if not possible, how to get the best out of it for myself.
[+] [-] yoyopa|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mechanical_bear|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blaser-waffle|3 years ago|reply
Great read, but also fails the sniff test the harder you think about it.
[+] [-] synu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MontgomeryPy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mach1ne|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmoriarty|3 years ago|reply
This rings so true, in my experience. Sociopaths at the top also seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
[+] [-] k__|3 years ago|reply
Losers are cool and mostly harmless. The alphas can be a bit annoying sometimes, but most of them can be good friends.
[+] [-] mhh__|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gunax|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lioeters|3 years ago|reply
That's a bleak view, but I've worked in organizations that fit the model. To think that this could be the norm.. What if the model could be applied to human society in general! With such power dynamics, no wonder we seem to be barely hanging together with tense, mutual disrespect.
[+] [-] tomrod|3 years ago|reply
At this point though, I've been through each of the tiers and have never been either cluelessly obsequious nor a sociopath -- so I have my doubts that the model is worthwhile despite being a good laugh!
For those that haven't read it:
- Tier 1 - fresh younguns or burnt out talented people who are there for a check (there is a lot of discussion regarding this tier). GOT reference: Sam Tulley
- Tier 2 - middle managers -- clueless, "true believer" types. GOT reference: many! Eddard Stark, Tommen Lannister, Jaime Lannister
- Tier 3 - sociopaths: bosses at the top of the hierarchy. GOT reference: Tywin Lannister, Joffrey Lannister
[+] [-] nostrademons|3 years ago|reply
Losers: Aemon Targaryen, Catelyn Tully, Hot Pie, pre-Braavos Arya Stark, Hodor, most of the Freys, the random Lannister soldiers led by Ed Sheeran's character in S08E01.
Clueless: Brienne Tarly, Jon Snow, Rob Stark, Stannis Baratheon, Daenerys Targaryen
Sociopaths: Olenna Tyrell, Varys, Cersei Lannister, Bran Stark, post-Braavos Arya Stark
The non-Lannister Sociopaths are in many ways more interesting, because they are more subtle about their will to power and hence more effective. Bran in particular - with his Greensight and warging abilities, he has the ability to influence events basically at will, but he's also physically crippled and dependent upon others for action. And note that when asked if he would accept the crown (not take it), he simply says "Why do you think I came all this way?".
[+] [-] b3morales|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|3 years ago|reply
A sociopath doesn't have to be successful.
Alpha losers might think of them as sociopaths.
And people move back and forth between the roles.
Besides that, it's certainly a more complete model than the alpha/beta/omega one.
[+] [-] jasmer|3 years ago|reply
I share some of the author's cynicism, but the thesis is a bit flawed.
There's a very key mistake, often made from a populist perspective (those who have never had power) that somehow the people at the top are able to 'freely move' through society. They cannot. Most often, they are in a gilded cage, and they are never as rich, powerful or as mobile as we think.
Execs are often sociopathic and skittish precisely because they are in a precarious situation. Do you really think that most executives can just pop off to another, massively high paying job? No. They are mostly stuck. They have public profiles and have to be careful of what they say, who they interact with. They have to 'socialize' with the right groups. Their wealth does not buy them that-that much more and that slightly nicer cottage, ski vacay, private school etc. drain the accounts really fast.
Almost anyone who is 'working at a firm' - even as an executive - is not that powerful. If they could, most people would just retire. If someone chooses to work instead of retire, well that's probably a sign of commitment and integrity which is the opposite of sociopathy.
Exec layer is definitely full of whacky people and cynical Machiavellians who are protecting their power and nothing more sure, but they are not 'mobile' and not there by choice.
Also, from a populist perspective, a lot of corporate actions seem Machiavellian, but they are not. Just realist. Made by possibly an entitled class, who make mistakes. But when you have to move people around, hire and fire in large numbers, some people will get burnt, and sometimes in a way that doesn't feel or is not nice, and that will happen even with the most competent, well-meaning leadership.
So yes, if we look at the world purely through the lens of self-interest (and for some, there's no reason to fathom anything more, which is sad), then even with the above characterization it still seems pretty bad. Except thankfully, most of people don't share this cynical view, and usually find much more purpose in what they do than their salary. Teachers are perhaps the best example of that.
[+] [-] titanomachy|3 years ago|reply
This sounds more like middle management to me. The true Sociopaths in the places I’ve worked (I’m thinking SVP to C-level) are in the hundreds of millions net worth or on track to get there.
EDIT: as I write this, I realize most of the places I’ve worked are huge, powerful companies and might not be representative. But the first company I worked at was worth less than a billion dollars, and I think the CEO might have been the only real Sociopath in the room.