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.
I think they main incentive that drives people to initially become moderators is the desire to keep the community they operate in clean and rule abiding.
In well-policed communities where moderators actively listen to users, or where people feel reporting and flagging mechanisms work, I would imagine people generally feel empowered enough that they are satisfied remaining a regular user.
I don't think many moderators seek to expand their rulesets, as it really just becomes additional (often free) work for them. Increasing and enforcing more rules is a cost that is only worth bearing when what isn't being actioned is causing enough damage to warrant the additional work.
I've too often seen moderators decide that their job is to prevent controversies; often leading to them forbidding any poster from contradicting any other poster; creating a "first misinformation wins" forum. This is less work for them, way less cognitive work but it creates ridiculous and unfortunate results.
These were disease-centered facebook groups mostly, but also writers groups, etc. The common idea was "If you disagree, just move along. Don't comment."
> 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
Not that simple, especially on Wikipedia. Often but not always, the initial reputation of "moderators" is gained by being a "prolific contributor". Even after becoming a moderator, it's still common for one to continue contributing high-quality content. This system is commonly described as a "meritocracy" but not without vocal critics (on whether it's a true "meritocracy", and on whether "meritocracy" is a good system).
This creates a lot of complications. From my experience, many of the most toxic Wikipedia political struggles arise as a result of the conflicts between:
1. One's opinion about the subject in the article.
2. One's opinion about the quality of the article itself.
3. One's opinion about the editorial policy that is supposed to be applied to the article.
4. One's opinion about another editor as a person.
5. One's opinion about another editor's opinion on (2), (3), and (4).
I think the same thing happens in free and open source software projects as well.
I genuinely wonder what would be the outcome in an alternative system of which moderators are purely neutral observers and do not particulate or contribute content themselves, and what are the advantages and disadvantages in both systems.
I expect that the benefit is: reduced personal attachment on particular issues, and that would be helpful on reducing unnecessary conflicts. However, no personal attachment also means there's no personal motivation on actually solving the problems.
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.
Very consistent with Madison's thinking. The U.S. eventual became less fractionated, and fell into large parties, but different unions, for quite different jobs, might have more persistent differences.
>(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.)
It had pretty wacky humour, and a lot of the office dynamics it talks about are still relatable today. I've seen several Gruntmaster 3000-esque projects since.
> But Adams left (and I left) and, for the most part, Dilbert ended up mostly stuck in a 90s cubicle time warp
This was made obvious during COVID lockdowns to me. He had a lot of trouble addressing it in a way that felt as original and genuine as I was used to from the strip.
Silicon Valley I'm probably close enough to fake even though it's not my day to day thing directly. But college life satire/humor say. No matter how much second and third-hand research I did it would probably be off in a lot of ways.
When you're actually living something, there are a ton of happenings which you can file the serial numbers off, exaggerate a little (or not), and things pretty much write themselves.
I was making an app to classify food if it had nuts or not. Someone on HN commented about hot dog or not app that was in the episode. I didn't have HBO so I wasn't even aware of its existence.
I always feel like I'm the only one who enjoyed the series. I don't know what's so terribly bad about it. It's not The Simpsons, and it's not _that_ related to the strip, but it's amusing in many ways.
Wow that is bad. Its like they gave an intern a shoestring budget and told them to make something happen. The voice actors are like they just grabbed the nearest person and told them hey you are gonna voice these characters.
The show isn't great, but these are hardly unknown cast members/voice actors. Daniel Stern, Chris Elliot, Larry Miller, Jason Alexander, Tom Kenny, Tress MacNielle, Maurice LaMarche, Kathy Griffin. This is nearly an all-star cast for the late 90s.
Let's decouple the art from the artist. My theory is that Adams knows exactly what he is doing and is making a living by feeding the troll / fanning the flames. I stopped watching his blog / consuming the strip a long time ago (cca 2017) but I thoroughly enjoyed it for years before I stopped.
What works as a 3-panel comic strip falls flat on its face when translated too literally to video. You need to hire good writers, director, animators, voice actors, etc. to make an effective video show, and you need to have an idea better than “show a sequence of loosely related 3-panel comic strip jokes, but animated”.
There is a joke at some point in time where they say pathway electronics is going to merge with etech management. And they're gonna call the new company path-e-tech management. How would a kid get this joke?
"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.)
> I’ll be basing this entire article on the American version of the show, which is more fully developed than the original British version, though the original is perhaps more satisfyingly bleak.
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.
The terminology is intentionally punchy as a way to get pageviews - if it were dryly academic, would we be talking about this article 13 years later? I think there was a FAQ somewhere on the original series that was like Q: "Is this just satire?" and A: "Nothing is just satire." It was supposed to be humorous in its over-directness because Venkatesh actually engages with his audience on an emotional level, at the cost of some precision.
The Pink Floyd album "Animals" terms them "Dogs", "Sheep", and "Pigs", which is just as cynical (probably moreso) but also has the catchiness which Sociopath/Loser/Clueless exhibits but Opportunists/Pragmatists/Idealists does not.
> Orwell showed the effects of “undemocratic structures” by reducing individuals to animal types, and so does Waters, simplifying the classes further into three (and leaving out humans altogether): the ruling pigs, praetorian and aspiring capitalist dogs, and the sheep, the mindless masses.
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.
There are some tip top engineering directors in my company that are just regular honest engineers. What's really wild is how my brain just automatically tunes in when they start speaking, and then tunes out again when it's back to corpo speak.
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.
The premise of the essay is that a truly Clueless would never do that; that's Sociopath behavior. That said, they are just archetypes, and to the extent we take them as valid at all, every real human will have some mix of the traits. (Even the characters in The Office do -- as I recall Angela is referred to as both a Sociopath and a Loser in different chapters of the essay.)
Agreed, but my interpretation of the following line:
"The Gervais principle predicts the exact opposite: that the most competent ones will be promoted to middle management."
Ie, the competent losers become Clueless. Hence they're capable of jumping ship / or even starting a business if not for their 'delusional loyalty'. (My point being that lots of company brainwashing mentioned by OP attempts to groom Clueless thought patterns to prevent this flight of talent).
True that starting a company is a Sociopath trait in the writeup, but - this is far from an exact science as you correctly stated =)
(nonetheless this doc has caused many great debates over the years, for sure. Reasoning through lens of obsurdities can be fun)
"Competent" on the object level - they are the people that are really good at the technical aspects of their job, but really bad at reading social cues or playing the political game. When they leave to found startups (and I've done this, as a Clueless), they are the ones who build a brilliantly engineered product that nobody wants, or stumble upon a hot idea only to get forced out by a VC's termsheet that they didn't understand, or they become the richest man in the world and then accidentally buy Twitter for $43B.
If you believe that starting a company is a pure meritocracy based on how good you can build a product, you are almost by definition Clueless.
Or is your conclusion one that the Sociopaths want you to come to? Hence you go back to support their org rather than compete!
Overcoming that fear of failure and finding some Losers to help your new startup, according to the GP theory, I guess labels you as a Clueless turned Sociopath, but if you swap terms to 'Middle Manager turned CEO' I think it becomes more of an enabling perspective. (One reason I think the negative labels here can hurt folks' ambitions!!)
That's fair, and indeed, going back to The Office, the one Sociopath move that Arch-Clueless Michael Scott made in the entire series was leaving in a pique to found The Michael Scott Paper Company. Which was just successful enough at its core function to let him not only pivot back but actually score points off two seasoned Sociopaths.
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.
“Middle managers, are typically leadership-qualified but simply don't want to devote enough time for a CEO or startup founder role.”
I would say it’s not just a time issue, but often their risk tolerance that keeps them in middle management. The “sociopaths” are willing to take huge (but calculated) risks to advance their goals.
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.
I've tried to make this point before in conversation in relation to many forms of art and I just had to comment that your reply is very on the money and very concise. Gonna take some inspiration, as I've struggled many times to convey this.
Most people just think that unless the artist "intended it", analysis is worthless.
There's a funny quote about Casanova along the lines of "in his literary work is deep philosophy, and in his philosophical work is incoherent rambling"
True. You need to understand something to explain it. You don’t need to understand something to observe and describe it. Obvious example is how birds fly, which was mostly explained recently only.
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 haven’t watched all of the show, but I actually kind of like that aspect. Shows with irredeemably evil or incompetent characters are boring, real life is more nuanced. It’s always interesting trying to find the lens through which someone’s actions make sense.
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.
I guess? There really is no escape from politics. It’s even worse in the relatively low stakes environments of academia and non profits.
Also, I think that everybody who wants to work at a big corporation should do an enterprise sales job at point in their career. It gives real insight into how decisions to pursue large and expensive initiatives are made in these types of organizations.
“It’s possible that Scott and his friends… are Losers”
I don’t know if the term is even applicable to people who don’t work in large organizations. Scott’s a psychiatrist. A lot of doctors work in small partnerships where these dynamics might not play out.
There's a level where these dynamics operate throughout the economy, outside of the organization. Venkatesh Rao wrote another classic essay [1] where he describes a dynamic where "the 1% and the 90% collaborat[e] to prey on the 9% in the middle — the Jeffersonian middle class."
Scott in this model is a Clueless - he is part of the 9% naive enough (and yet proficient enough in their trade) to believe that they can survive on their own merits and exist in an objective reality of pure reason, outside of social reality and its fickle emotional currents. And sure enough, it ended in a member of the cultural 1% (a journalist) collaborating with the 90% (Internet mobs) to prey on the 9% (a psychologist-blogger), dox him for pageviews, and force him from his job and his blog.
You'll also notice this dynamic in a lot of populist movements, eg. Trump (1%) collaborates with his MAGA fans (90%) to own the urban libs (9%).
I'd say people who work as solo entrepreneurs or independent contractors are usually either "sociopaths" (of a particular kind) or some kind of sociopath/loser mixture, depending on how mercenary and ambitious they are.
(In this case, as in many others, I don't really like Rao's "sociopath" label, as it has the wrong connotations. "Politician" or "machiavellian" may be better.)
The average, say, independent contractor software dev, the "mercenary" type, is a loser/sociopath hybrid. Unlike typical losers, they forgo the security of a steady paycheck and employee benefits in exchange for a (often significant) income boost and personal freedom. They forgo the slightly paternalistic employer/employee relationship and instead engage with their employer on purely capitalistic terms. On the other hand, they typically avoid internal battles wherever they work and simply follow the bidding of whoever signs the cheques.
Solo consultants who actively get involved in helping management make decisions act more like "sociopaths" out of necessity ("politician" may be a much better word for this case). Indeed there's a whole category of solo consultants/executive coaches who basically exist to act as "consigliere" for senior executives who need political mentoring (dressed up as leadership training, career coaching or whatever).
I don't know much about how Scott's industry functions. One guess: partnerships between two or more independent peers typically consist of approximately-equal "sociopaths". If they're "good" sociopaths, these can be very productive business relationships. All parties know what they're getting into, and everyone respects each other as a peer. Healthy startup co-founder relationships should be similar. (Rao's later essay, "Entrepreneurs are the New Labor", suggests that the tech startup scene was becoming filled with more "clueless" young founders as technology hype and startup boosterism attracted more naive youngsters.)
Anyway, based on many of Scott's posts, it sounds as though much of his job does involve political skills: advocating for his patients' needs against some medical bureaucracy, talking patients out of doing stupid things, and so on. All of these are examples of "good politicking" (and might illustrate why the "sociopath" label is deficient).
(I'm turning into a sightly-less-cranky michaelochurch, heh. I guess every forum evolutionary niche needs to be filled.)
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.
A bizarre choice if they were middle management; the running of a kingdom in the Prince is only really directly applicable to highest levels of C-suite management.
Well, according to one theory, the Prince was supposed to be a Trojan Horse fooling the reader into acting against their best interests, since Machiavelli wrote it as a gift for his arch nemesis.
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.
I had a boss who was a complete and utter sociopath (by the article's definitions), but there were few people I'd rather go to the pub and have a pint with. Dangerous combination. Gotta watch out for those. What he couldn't otherwise make happen through force of will, he could through personality. He's the CIO at some middling company now, and there's no way I'd connect to him on LinkedIn.
Agreed, they will not attack randomly. They'll attack you fiercely the moment you try to do something right, or something that helps your corporation or a customer in any way that doesn't help them. So only if you are ethical in any way are you in danger.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. Your general in the upper strata has to play the game, it's the job. But you can also get a beer and become friends with him or her.
Sociopathic behavior is genuinely useful to participate in. Just have awareness of what's going on, and down cycle and up cycle your "talking in between the lines" as necessary. And have fun
As others have said, it's not random, but woe to you if you get caught in the crosshairs. In this particular instance, the sociopath who became my boss -- best I can figure -- blamed me for something that my previous boss did, and he rode me into the ground with crap assignments and continually-derisive language.
When I finally got a chance to program something for him, towards the end of our time together, and it ran 5 times faster than his favored programmer, he questioned me like I had gotten someone else to do it or something. He was absolutely incredulous, never would admit that, hey, maybe I did know something about what I was talking about.
There's a quote that goes something like, "Never get between a jerk and his goals," and that's what it felt like, for an interminable 3 years.
You don't need to be afraid of Sociopaths as written. Especially not if you're just starting out.
Rather, think of them as massive waves on the ocean. They don't care whether you ride them to shore or are shattered beneath them. Focus more on figuring out which way the waves are going rather than how to stop them.
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.
All of human society is like this. We dress it up and call it different names, but it's just feudalism all over again and again. People who grew up in the US, in luster and afterglow of the post-war boom, thought that our 50's, 60's, and 70's was the way of the world. But we've fallen back in line with the rest of the world now, and the forced shift in the American perspective is jarring.
In the Nordics, the welfare society was built during those decades. However, the system is steadily on the decline, though most don't see (or don't want to see) it yet. Perhaps there was something in the second world war which pushed idealists to the ruling classes of the society, allowing them to restructure it in the actual mutual interest, above self-serving sociopathic interests. Could it be that existential crisis prompts the elite-selectors to favor actual competence over political machinations?
In any case, it seems a common theme in the West that the society built during the height of the cold war is currently being milked in every way possible in the interests of the ruling class, with nothing new being built in its place.
Some governments also adopt this kind of hierarchy. Faux democracies in particular look like this - the actual power sits in the hands of autocratic oligarchs (largely sociopathic in outlook), the 'elected politicians' who are in reality selected by the ruling oligarchs serve as the clueless middle managers, along with appointed bureaucrats who sit atop the various state agencies. These levels are rewarded with various kickbacks (hence they attain millionaire status, while the oligarchs have billionaire status). Sitting at the bottom of the pyramid are the so-called losers - the prison guards, the tax collectors, the local politicians and bureaucrats, etc. Their socio-economic status is pretty low, but it's at least a step above those who live in the slums and shantytowns.
This model characterized, for example, Brazil during the fascist dictatorship era of the 1950s and 1960s, Indonesia and Chile under similar regimes, the Philippines under Marco, probably much of India, a great many African countries, and increasingly it's what the United States seems to be falling into.
This aspect of human nature has been known well before ancient Egypt was a thing. The traditional allegory, which you may find in all major religions, is that every human is driven by "priests" of ambition and desire, who are empowered by the demon of ignorance. The priest of ambition wants power over others, he wants to be feared. The selfish priest of desire wants to be loved by everyone, but will love no one in return. Ambition dominates desire. Most successful men are servants of the two. Sociopaths are driven by inhuman ambition. Clueless - by selfish desire. Losers are the weak, indecisive crowd. There are two outcomes for most: some will manage to kick out both priests and expell the demon, while others will become its slaves, appearing powerful to the crowd, but miserable inside.
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.
I think it’s important to distinguish DSM Sociopath (Joffrey) from Gervais Principle Sociopath (Cersei).
Both abbreviate to “sociopath” but they are very different concepts.
I don’t think Joffrey qualifies as a GP Sociopath at all, as GP notes. While he was “in charge” he didn’t play the GP Sociopath game, and so was quickly removed. As the OP notes it’s possible for Clueless to be placed in positions of power in plenty of cases, for example when a fall guy is needed, or a puppet. So just wearing the crown doesn’t mean he MUST be a GP 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.
Good points, but most CEO's don't really earn that much, and even net worth generally several million.
And I don't mean to discount your experience, but even a lot of 'big time' CEO's are not worth 'hundred's of millions'. Maybe 10's. Not 100's.
Also, CEO's are interesting and different people, it's actually hard to know if they are 'sociopaths' from just being in a meeting with them. In fact, even knowing them for some time it's hard to tell. Remember they are living in an identity, all the time. They have to be not just 'on' but 'really on' - so it just feels kind of otherworldly with them, that doesn't mean 'sociopath'. I think looking at actions, particularly layoffs, how they are handled, the kind of marketing, growth, underhanded tactics is more helpful.
Maybe I'm just naive, but I found this principle overly cynical.
For example, the "sociopathic" intern can also be described as someone with healthy amount of disrespect to existing organizational structures and tries to bring innovation to a dinosaur firm. He took the risk and suffered the consequences like a man.
- Able to take decisions upon someone’s employment. In today’s society, it’s based on immediate performance and utility, and negates people’s need. In other words, they’re able to fire someone who’s depressed, and block out emotionally from the catastrophic outcomes. In today’s society, it’s considered the correct way to lead, because it imposes meritocracy and encourages hard work. It’s not very humane, but companies need to live. Not like, you know, people.
- Socially inept. People who make friends and build a family life easily don’t end up as carrierists.
In both cases, even if I’m able to regurgitate that point of view which I don’t agree with, I empathize with the managers in that it’s necessary they behave this way. Perhaps I’m sociopathic.
I’m a CEO, after all ;) (just 3-people company, not too much harm done, and they all got 30% to 60% salary increase this year).
Good point, there absolutely are "prosocial psychopaths" such as the neurologist James Fallon (I recommend his Youtube videos.) They can be exceptionally useful. I firmly believe that Steve Jobs was in this camp.
But according to Fallon (citing research) the key to getting that nice place is exceptionally loving, caring, attentive parenting. Most of us don't get that, so the results are usually bad.
That company hierarchy pyramid really made me feel depressed. Someone list me some CEOs that aren’t sociopaths. Is Bezos one? Yvon Chouinard, the Patagonia guy definitely isn’t it seems like.
Bezos ignoring Shatner’s attempts to explain his profound experience going to space in favor of celebrating with alcohol; whilst Shatner is standing there as a recovering alcoholic who lost his wife due to alcohol related stuff seemed pretty sociopathic to me.
Did Bezos know about Shatner's alcohol problems? I watched more Star Trek than most, but I had no idea before this comment, and I have even less of an idea about his wife. Not everyone is clued up on the latest celebrity gossip.
Since Shatner was Bezos' guest, Bezos should have known. While you may not have personally known about it, it has been widely reported.
Basic hospitality is important. Most folks are rightfully indignant when an interviewing company haven't read their resume, while virtually all companies want interviewees to have read the company public website.
Frankly, at that level he should have competent staff that briefed him.
Akin to giving a Chinese guest a watch and white flowers as a present - sure, he might not know that it's a faux pas [1], but he should have structures in place to prevent basic slip-ups.
Yeah, I remember seeing the clip on HIGNFY, and he came off as a bit of a jerk regardless. Just saying it's not necessarily as bad as some people seem to assume it is.
I recommend disregarding the terms ("sociopath", "clueless", "loser") used in the article, they're unnecessarily cynical and iirc originally used as a joke. This article takes a basic idea about corporate structure (something like "in any company, some people chug along, some people work hard, and some people are in it to win, and they have the following dynamics") and makes it sound awful using loaded language.
"in any company, some people chug along, some people work hard, and some people are in it to win, and they have the following dynamics"
That's an oversimplification.
Sociopaths are not just "in it to win". They will do whatever it takes to win, and trample as many people under foot as it takes takes them to get ahead without a twinge of conscience.
The clueless in the article aren't merely working hard, they're also true believers in the organization who "build up a perverse sense of loyalty to the firm, even when events make it abundantly clear that the firm is not loyal to them."
Unlike the clueless, the losers see clearly and do the bare minimum to get by and will (like the sociopaths) abandon the ship when it starts to sink, unlike the clueless, who will loyally sink right along with it. While they're in the organization, "they traded freedom for a paycheck .. mortgage their lives away, and hope to die before their money runs out."
While the losers have no more loyalty to the company 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."
The original article is a classic because it paints a very vivid picture that is emotionally resonant with anyone who has dealt with the banality of corporate life. However it's important to remember that The Office characters trended towards caricatures over time, and individuals are not archetypes.
To that point, GPs characterization of chug-along, work-hard, and in-it-to-win-it rings just as true without pigeonholing people and better maps to the attitudes of people I've known well enough to have a deeper understanding of their psychology. Some specifics:
"Doing whatever it takes to win [...] without a twinge of conscience" does not describe the majority of C and VP levels I've known. Certainly a lot of the unpleasant decisions that need to be made (eg. layoffs) are easier if one is truly a sociopath, but in practice how do you know? The reality is that upper level management has huge orgs where most individuals don't know them personally and yet is impacted by their decisions. When the impact is negative it's often easier to believe that management doesn't care about them versus understanding why it might be the best thing for the company.
I also think that loyalty is much more orthogonal to archetype or effort level, and the idea that "clueless in the article aren't merely working hard, they're also true believers in the organization" does not really ring true. In reality, people at all levels can have varying degrees of loyalty to a company. A better model is the Dead Sea Effect—people will tend to stay if they don't believe they have better options. This is naturally going to affect middle-management more because they have achieved a higher status, and it's subject to all the noise of imposter syndrome and Dunning-Kruger, but it still applies to all levels.
Finally, I disagree that "Unlike the clueless, the losers see clearly". The losers don't necessarily see anything more clearly, they just aren't playing the same game. Manager tells them what to do, they put in the minimum effort to do it, punch the clock and go home. Are they wise because harder work never would have earned them any extra reward? Or are they creating a self-fulfilling prophecy through poor performance? Honestly it could go either way.
The question is: will only the sociopath led medium-companies become large companies? Or do large companies choose a sociopath leadership while becoming large?
In my experience, every company eventually gets led by a sociopath. Every worker has the same story about how the old boss was so good to employees etc and then replaced by some ruthless profiteer. Companies prosper (profitableish, lots of innovation, employees are first) under the former, and are eventually pillaged and killed under the latter.
I think our current economic/social climate forces the kind of gervais principle balance over a long enough timeline. The gervais principle generates predictable profits.
This mirrors my experience as well. In the small and medium-sized business area, the "sociopaths" are the large businesses and private equity firms looking to acquire the smaller businesses. Or often it's the business owner who's the only sociopath in the business, but they are far enough removed from day-to-day operations that the people working underneath them don't recognize them as sociopaths.
Another thing I've learned is that the more time you spend with executives, the easier it becomes to recognize this behavior. Go to any large chamber meeting in any large-ish city in the U.S., and I'm sure you will find plenty of sociopaths (in both the literal and the Gervais Principle sense).
"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