The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
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Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#2Keep in mind that in practice this classification is not perfect, as in you cannot just bucketize people into three categories and declare perfect understanding. You should treat the roles described in the article as archetypes of human behavior.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#3Keep in mind that in practice this classification is not perfect, as in you cannot just bucketize people into three categories and declare perfect understanding. You should treat the roles described in the article as archetypes of human behavior.
This is true for every statement about people.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#4From TFA... "The Gervais Principle is this:
Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves."
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#5"The more you work, the less you earn."
You can't really grow in business without exploitation.
Whether that's using "contractors" to deliver your packages, using monopoly to slurp people's data, sourcing minerals from african blood mines or using asian sweatshops to build your phones and clothes.
To me, corporate life has always been a race to see who gets exploited the most and who the least.
Sociopaths don't care about exploiting others. I would say the same for most people. We can usually rationalize the worst kind of things to ourselves when it suits us.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#6Previously:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296 (63 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33298158 (149 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486869 (90 comments)
And a lot more which were less popular: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=gervais%20principle%20the%20of...
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#7"The more you work, the less you earn." You can't really grow in business without exploitation. Whether that's using "contractors" to deliver your packages, using monopoly to slurp people's data, sourcing minerals from african blood mines or using asian sweatshops to build your phones and clothes. To me, corporate life has always been a race to see who gets exploited the most and who the least. Sociopaths don't care…
There's quite a difference between deliberately exploiting people you interact with in the real world all day every day for your own benefit and what you're mentioning.
Buying an iPhone, not knowing that it was built using Chinese (semi-)slave labour is not quite the same as a manager who promotes easily exploitable (loser) over-achievers and uses "devide and conquer" on the rest of his underlings to make himself feel safe and comfy. All in the same office that everybody goes to every day. For decades.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#8[flagged]
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#9I read this long ago, and it poses itself as dark knowledge. The triage of 'sociopath', 'clueless', and 'losers', even if it bears out this neatly in reality – it doesn't – isn't very actionable. I did come away with one useful part of it, and that's 'The Curse of Development'. Which basically states, that if you go out of your comfort zone to try something new, you'll look foolish to outsiders. And it's useful to know this, and then correct for it when receiving judgement from people who haven't walked that path.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/04/14/the-gervais-principle-...
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#10I’ve read this before, and while an entertaining thought experiment, I’m not sure there is anything really actionable here. Maybe just be mindful that people are trying to exploit you.