111–120 of 174 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I resonate with your comment but completely reject the conclusion. Death is inevitable, who cares how high you climbed on a ladder you didn't define? Why is that meaningful? Money is nice, dont get me wrong, but to value the climbing itself?
Doing hard things is tautologically good.
Bahaha yeah overwork is virtue, sure
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This one got me interested. Can you elaborate? It is a show, but there is absolutely plenty of evidence within the show to support that claim.
Such as what? There was plenty of evidence that Jan was a sociopath, or Ryan (obviously), but David had quite literally 0 sociopathic tendencies. Plus, this author said something about how David (and Jan) were both 'clueless' about Michael's incompetence, so it isn't like you can argue that David knew he was incompetent but tried to get him promoted to corporate anyway (which would obviously have been manipulative, a…
Hot take: being clueless is better than these essays make it out to be. The examples are all really socially annoying people (Michael, Dwight) but I've known some pretty nice and pleasant middle managers who had generally great lives. They probably could've gotten all of that with less work but perfectly hitting the Pareto frontier is quite difficult.
They invest most, they care about made up goals nobody else cares about, they play by rules everyone else thinks are dumb, they feel loyal to a company that doesn't love them back, and because they are more invested in the company, they are the ones who feel the loss the most when the sociopaths pull the rug.
I think it's actually the Losers who have it better: they are simply not invested enough, they are replaceable but also find their place in other companies, and in any case, failure affects us-- I mean, them -- less simply because they are not invested as much and they never felt any loyalty.
"Loser" is a loaded term because it sounds like the cultural, lowercase loser ("so and so is such a loser!") but it actually means "loser in the game of maximum capitalist profit and power". But if you're not really playing that game, being a loser at it isn't so bad.
That was a fun read, and it might even explain why a lot of Gen-z is opting out of any sort of career building, wanting values instead (or next to) a paycheck. They saw their parents do The Office in real life. Interesting is also that Michael does make a really good arc from season one to when he leaves. He remains clueless, or rather he it dawns on him he does not want to become like Ryan or David (the articles soc…
See the Scott Alexander review: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-gervais-pri...
Scott took it too literally. See also how the broader rationalist community took issue with Sam Kriss for inventing a not-obviously-fake historical figure. The biggest takeaway for me is that you shouldn't expect to succeed as a manager by meeting (or exceeding) KPIs. It's about as effective as being a "nice guy" and expecting intimacy in return. The KPIs are there for assigning blame, not for identifying key personn…
Hot take: being clueless is better than these essays make it out to be. The examples are all really socially annoying people (Michael, Dwight) but I've known some pretty nice and pleasant middle managers who had generally great lives. They probably could've gotten all of that with less work but perfectly hitting the Pareto frontier is quite difficult.
According to this theory, the Clueless are the ones who suffer the most. They invest most, they care about made up goals nobody else cares about, they play by rules everyone else thinks are dumb, they feel loyal to a company that doesn't love them back, and because they are more invested in the company, they are the ones who feel the loss the most when the sociopaths pull the rug. I think it's actually the Losers who…
(2009) Previous discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
What I've seen many, many times. 1. business people sold themselves as the best to manage companies and took over companies (just like lawyers do in governments), changing the norm from decades ago when it was more likely for engineers to run companies than some kind of McKinsey guy 2. but they have no idea besides business/money metrics so they quickly become overwhelmed and decide based on who makes the most compel…
That was a fun read, and it might even explain why a lot of Gen-z is opting out of any sort of career building, wanting values instead (or next to) a paycheck. They saw their parents do The Office in real life. Interesting is also that Michael does make a really good arc from season one to when he leaves. He remains clueless, or rather he it dawns on him he does not want to become like Ryan or David (the articles soc…
The smartest thing they did with the US version of The Office after season 1 was to make Michael highly competent in sales and its longterm relationships. S1 and the UK version of the show viewed the boss as incompetent at every level, it was much more cynical. Making Michael marginally competent gives him an empathetic leg to stand on for the audience. Had they kept Michael exactly like David Brent it probably would…
It is also useful because it shows an old adage: people get promoted to their level of incompetence. Michael is actually an excellent salesman. He's a bad manager. He was promoted to branch manager because he was good at a different job.
This is just like when a really good engineer is promoted and becomes a bad manager.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This one got me interested. Can you elaborate? It is a show, but there is absolutely plenty of evidence within the show to support that claim.
Such as what? There was plenty of evidence that Jan was a sociopath, or Ryan (obviously), but David had quite literally 0 sociopathic tendencies. Plus, this author said something about how David (and Jan) were both 'clueless' about Michael's incompetence, so it isn't like you can argue that David knew he was incompetent but tried to get him promoted to corporate anyway (which would obviously have been manipulative, a…
I don't remember David much, but let it be noted that the essay uses "sociopath" in a different way than the commonly understood definition, much like the essay's use of "losers" doesn't mean what people usually mean by loser (as in "so and so is such a loser!"), it means "made a bad economic bargain / they are losing in the capitalist maximum profits & power game".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to this theory, the Clueless are the ones who suffer the most. They invest most, they care about made up goals nobody else cares about, they play by rules everyone else thinks are dumb, they feel loyal to a company that doesn't love them back, and because they are more invested in the company, they are the ones who feel the loss the most when the sociopaths pull the rug. I think it's actually the Losers who…
Yeah perhaps a better term for Loser is Abstainer. Because the Sociopaths also can certainly lose at the game of maximum capitalist profit. Loser/Abstainer just chooses not to play the game.