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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)

#41

Post by The_Colonel »

This just reeks of bitterness. Sounds like someone trying to get to the top, failed somewhere along the way and constructed this model to funnel frustration and sorta explain away their failure.

The judgment permeates the model, apparently the only desirable position js at the top (but then you're a sociopath), second best is a checked-out loser.

To me, being a "clueless" or "over-performing loser" is preferable to a "checked-out loser" (I've been all of those at times), at minimum because the former like their job. Micheal, Andy and Dwight enjoy their job and even find some fulfillment there. Meanwhile for e. g. Stanley the work seems to be only necessary suffering. I'd rather make my work enjoyable than having to suffer 8 hours a day.

Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)

#42

Post by vasco »

mksreddy wrote: post #40

“Sometimes I’ll start a sentence, and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.” — Michael Scott, the first LLM.

Most of my good thinking is done like this. Walking around the house talking out loud to myself about a topic without knowing where it's going. Over the years I've trained myself to try and speak more and more in this mode and I find it has good outcomes. It's not how it works but to myself I call it "putting my brain in analog mode". I also try to write like this for all my first passes. I also found it works for drawing, I will start drawing a random line and see where the hand takes me. I believe there's a term for art done in this way but I can't recall it now. I think Michael Scott was on to something.

Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)

#43

Post by szundi »

vasco wrote: post #42
mksreddy wrote: post #40

“Sometimes I’ll start a sentence, and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.” — Michael Scott, the first LLM.

Most of my good thinking is done like this. Walking around the house talking out loud to myself about a topic without knowing where it's going. Over the years I've trained myself to try and speak more and more in this mode and I find it has good outcomes. It's not how it works but to myself I call it "putting my brain in analog mode". I also try to write like this for all my first passes. I also found it works for dr…

Stephen King does this with whole trilogies haha

Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)

#44

Post by sulandor »

mgblogg wrote: post #31
cen4 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well these observations have nothing with to do with the main conundrum - How do you keep a group of chimps who all have different interests, personalities, needs, beliefs, values, upbringings, culture, religion, language, history etc etc in sync? And these days groups grow quite large quite fast. Historically, if you take rewards, bribery, force, domination and manipulation out of the story, the babblers/non threate…

> if you take rewards, bribery, force, domination and manipulation ... That is a big "if". It works on the family level, but in the real world babbling is coupled with dominance, coercion, blackmail, exploitation etc. It is easy to see in any average company that no one believes the babbler but is forced to listen to them and applaud.

though the shared disdain for the babbler creates a "common enemy" which is probably better than being forced to work directly

Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)

#45

Post by asimovfan »

vasco wrote: post #42
mksreddy wrote: post #40

“Sometimes I’ll start a sentence, and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.” — Michael Scott, the first LLM.

Most of my good thinking is done like this. Walking around the house talking out loud to myself about a topic without knowing where it's going. Over the years I've trained myself to try and speak more and more in this mode and I find it has good outcomes. It's not how it works but to myself I call it "putting my brain in analog mode". I also try to write like this for all my first passes. I also found it works for dr…

Cant do it in German.

Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)

#46

Post by sulandor »

sage76 wrote: post #32

This writing explained nearly everything I saw in the corporate world. One thing I do disagree with is the promotion of enlightened underperformers. Those guys seemed to always end up leaving and starting their own companies.

not necessarily a bad thing, since a well-connected and specialized startup may bring a lot more value to the company and the economy in gerneral

Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)

#47

Post by trainyperson »

vasco wrote: post #42
mksreddy wrote: post #40

“Sometimes I’ll start a sentence, and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.” — Michael Scott, the first LLM.

Most of my good thinking is done like this. Walking around the house talking out loud to myself about a topic without knowing where it's going. Over the years I've trained myself to try and speak more and more in this mode and I find it has good outcomes. It's not how it works but to myself I call it "putting my brain in analog mode". I also try to write like this for all my first passes. I also found it works for dr…

The term (I think) is “automatism”, popularized by Surrealists.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealist_automatism

Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)

#48

Post by fancyfredbot »

The key ingredients of successful memetic corporate organizational theory are cynicism, detachment and disparagement. By describing executives as sociopaths and the middle management as losers this article allows the reader to feel superior to those alongside, above, and below them in the org chart, while the generally cynical tone allows the reader to feel aloof and acts to enhance the already established sense of superiority. Finally the article is written from the point of view of an external observer allowing the reader to imagine themselves as separate and somehow external to the organisation rather than a part of it. This explains why people love to post it to hacker news.

Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)

#49

Post by jhbadger »

_odey wrote: post #14
nkrisc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“INFJ”, that’s from that workplace astrology, right?

You would be surprised, but companies actually pay hard money to consultants to do these astrology readings and present them to shareholders as a "measure of workforce compatibility".

I think it was more popular before that book ("The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing") came out. Not that I ever believed it before that, but I assumed it was created by actual social scientists rather than two untrained amateurs as is the case.

Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)

#50

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

asimovfan wrote: post #45
vasco wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my good thinking is done like this. Walking around the house talking out loud to myself about a topic without knowing where it's going. Over the years I've trained myself to try and speak more and more in this mode and I find it has good outcomes. It's not how it works but to myself I call it "putting my brain in analog mode". I also try to write like this for all my first passes. I also found it works for dr…

Cant do it in German.

You are getting -- I think -- reflexively downvoted, but I genuinely think you are onto something. German grammar has strict word order rules as opposed to say Polish, where syntax is much more permissive ( for that one aspect of it ). I wonder to what extent native language changes how brain functions over the course of one's life.
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