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.
