101–110 of 172 posts
The Gervais Principle is a great read for fans of The Office and/or people who work at large companies. Nice to see it get a shout out. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
This. The OP is effectively a re-wording of the Gervais principal - same idea with slightly less words in blog form. It's a bit ingenious to claim a whole new theory.
Interesting perspective. Without agreeing or disagreeing, I wonder where, on which ladder I’d want to be. Old Money is probably best, but, I don’t really have a choice. Seems Michael Scott is the next best option.
The Gervais Principle was a great/cynical popular summary of some more refined ideas in management theory. Generalizing it to a theory of post-internet globalized class seems straight forward, with the caveat that it can only be as useful as any theory of class. It's the Marxist ceiling, like how classical Newtonian physics is fantastic for modelling coarse engineering problems, and loses coherence when applied to the nature of reality, and doesnt provide much more than some metaphors for things as normal as economics. Reading through it, I don't think this was written so much as an explanatory piece for an HN audience as it was to find others thinking about these problems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very odd that 'baby talk' is professional. I don't think society was always this way. I also respect anyone who questions why this is the case. Assuming it's an efficiency, we should be able to justify this behavior.
I worked as a software developer, in a non software company, I sat in an odd spot off to the side half way up the org chart. The non software people climbed the hierarchy not because they are competent at their jobs, in fact a highly competent person will often be passed over for promotion because they are useful where they are - but because of how they negotiated very complex social networks. A senior manager, my ma…
Meh.... This has a real "I'm 14 and this is deep" vibe. Like a teenager who thinks their dad is a loser, and that the real men are the guys at the bottom in tough blue collar jobs, or at the top in power suits being Wolves of Wall Street. Insights like this can be fun, but they're for the third beer with your buddies, not for writing down.
On the other hand the middle ladder description the nail on the head which is why it makes people around here so uncomfortable.
Meh.... This has a real "I'm 14 and this is deep" vibe. Like a teenager who thinks their dad is a loser, and that the real men are the guys at the bottom in tough blue collar jobs, or at the top in power suits being Wolves of Wall Street. Insights like this can be fun, but they're for the third beer with your buddies, not for writing down.
Pretty ironic take given that the site you're writing the comment on was founded by pg writing a bunch of essays breaking the world down into "nerds" vs "jocks" with VCs being "high school girls". pg decided to write those down rather than share them over a third beer and it seems to have spawned a bunch of billion dollar companies. The author refers to michael o church who had much clearer takes on the subject, not-…
I found myself mildly nodding along to this waiting for the moment of clarity where he describes more fully the elite ladder but he doesn't and so I have no idea how to contrast this middle tier with the upper tier to see distinctions. What's an example of the Elite behaviors/language? How would I know Powertalk when I see it? What would an Elite do/have to show their true status? I definitely accept that I'm not an…
The Gervais Principle (which this article is a riff off of) covers what you’re looking for (and what the author here left implicit): https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... specifically the “Sociopath” as described in the Gervais Principle == the elite
The Gervais Principle is a great read for fans of The Office and/or people who work at large companies. Nice to see it get a shout out. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
This. The OP is effectively a re-wording of the Gervais principal - same idea with slightly less words in blog form. It's a bit ingenious to claim a whole new theory.
This was an interesting take but I'm a little disappointed that the author didn't take the language idea further. As in, in this author's conception of class based language, what's an example of "straight talk"? How do the elites "babytalk" to the Michael Scott-gentry middle class? Most interestingly, what would "powertalk" be in this conception of class? Would it be raw datasets and financial spreadsheets? Because t…
I'm more interested in the "real talk" between Elites and Losers -- what's that look like?
Meh.... This has a real "I'm 14 and this is deep" vibe. Like a teenager who thinks their dad is a loser, and that the real men are the guys at the bottom in tough blue collar jobs, or at the top in power suits being Wolves of Wall Street. Insights like this can be fun, but they're for the third beer with your buddies, not for writing down.
I've never watched the show, but I have to admit I'm a bit bemused by the number of times I've come across people saying they've got [professional] life figured out by realizing it's actually exactly like The Office , which coincidentally, is their favorite show. As I said, I haven't watched the show so I can't really appraise the claims properly, but it seems suspect to me. (Incidentally I noticed a similar tendency…
The office is basically a documentary about white collar work places, once again, with all the shenanigans happening more rapidly.
I don't know any city cops so I can't speak to the accuracy of Brooklyn Nine Nine.