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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)

#141

Post by 627467 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #135
627467 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we forgot (or deprioritized - or maybe never genuinely prioritized) how to NOT have to sync on everything all the time. not everyone needs to be in a group. not everyone in a group needs to be in sync with interests AND personalities AND needs AND beliefs AND... but I see the paradox here: we need to believe the above is true to live happier and more meaningfully

> not everyone needs to be in a group Not everyone is in a civilisation. Few people in a civilisation would rather be in e.g. Sudan or Ethiopia.

there's over 170mil people in those 2 countries. maybe a majority wishes buy a one-way ticket to Disneyland but a non-irrelevant numbers of people decides to live their dreams and struggles with those nearby in that group. again: not everyone needs to be ANY given group

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

#142

Post by 627467 »

stavros wrote: post #118
627467 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we forgot (or deprioritized - or maybe never genuinely prioritized) how to NOT have to sync on everything all the time. not everyone needs to be in a group. not everyone in a group needs to be in sync with interests AND personalities AND needs AND beliefs AND... but I see the paradox here: we need to believe the above is true to live happier and more meaningfully

By "groups" we mean "working with people". How are you going to do anything without working with people?

no one needs to work with EVERY people. exit is an option.

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

#143

Post by heresie-dabord »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #110
heresie-dabord wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the parent commenter but I like your point. People who have a reason to form a group will cooperate/collaborate best when they have some confidence in one another. People share ideas, projects, and skills, and "read" one another and form bonds. This is a social system . It could be a brief association or have a long duration. It could have a formal context, such as a business or a governmental entity. Social…

You’re reading an awful lot into that person’s question. Social skills are a very basic concept, the wikipedia page for them gives a decent overview. But I’m skeptical that the parent commenter actually misunderstood what I meant, and instead wanted to engage in some debate about organisations valuing the wrong skills or something like that. A debate about the causes of social maladaptation is also not especially rel…

Cheers! Thanks for your comment.

Your initial point is the simplest explanation for how groups of people self-organise... and meta-organise.

I realise that I went far in explaining and gave far more than I will receive in this case.

But then again, you responded and that's a connection. ^_^

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

#144

Post by JumpCrisscross »

627467 wrote: post #141
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not everyone needs to be in a group Not everyone is in a civilisation. Few people in a civilisation would rather be in e.g. Sudan or Ethiopia.

there's over 170mil people in those 2 countries. maybe a majority wishes buy a one-way ticket to Disneyland but a non-irrelevant numbers of people decides to live their dreams and struggles with those nearby in that group. again: not everyone needs to be ANY given group

Most people in those countries are part of small groups. Humans are a social species. That doesn’t require anyone to be part of a group. But it’s a bit ridiculous to try and manage a society by assuming it away.

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

#145

Post by JumpCrisscross »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #139
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also banks, I would say Banks get “torn apart and cannibalized” more frequently than industrials.

That often doesn't seem to be a result of competitive pressure, but of hubris. I think in many of those cases, in the framework set out by the article, the sociopaths would still be in charge of the company.

> often doesn't seem to be a result of competitive pressure, but of hubris

Column A / Column B. If hubris is the root, the less hubristic competitor takes it over on failure. If competition causes excessive risk taking, the better-managed bank wins. The system really only loses when competitive pressure causes everyone to lower their guard, which happens, which is why banking has to be tightly regulated. (And this is true with or without fractional reserves.)

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

#146

Post by usrnm »

zahllos wrote: post #96
usrnm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rather make my work enjoyable than having to suffer 8 hours a day. And you're making an irrational decision because it makes you feel better. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't really contradict the essence of the article. If you look at work from the economic point of view, it's just an economic transaction, we are selling our time for money. Selling more of my time for more money or selling less of it fo…

I agree with the parent poster, the author sounds very bitter. Might not be true, they might be trying at humour and I haven't got it. But I think doing the minimum you can get away with is playing with fire. Your colleagues will resent you. You're also sending a signal to everyone that will be remembered. Maybe a colleague will start a business or move to another place one day. Are they going to employ the minimum e…

> Your colleagues will resent you

Why would they? We're all adults and all more or less understand the rules of the game. And in rare cases in my career when the company culture was all about working long hours and living at work, I just tend not to stick in such places for long

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

#147

Post by jancsika »

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.

Rank speculation-- similar type of improv is quantized to the level of a full sentence.

Even ranker-- doesn't German have the same kinds of filibuster phrases as English? Stuff like this:

"Look,"

"The point is this--"

"I think what the average American wants is..."

"If I've said it once I've said it a thousands times--"

There's a character Fred Armisen did on SNL news that eats the entire segment with these phrases. I'm sure the same can be done in German.

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

#148

Post by dilyevsky »

sangnoir wrote: post #126
d_burfoot wrote: post #107

> Today, any time an organization grows too brittle, bureaucratic and disconnected from reality, it is simply killed, torn apart and cannibalized, rather than reformed. I actually think the overall argument of the essay makes more sense when you realize the above comment actually isn't true for the large majority of organizations. Universities, government agencies, big tech monopolies, public sector unions, complacen…

Can you give examples of zombie institutions?

Boeing? Id look at old school defense and enterprise b2b corps. In a lot of cases they sell out of date products and if they somehow lost all blueprints / source code they probably wouldn’t be able to even reproduce it because no one there even knows how it works

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

#149

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

mikhael28 wrote: post #10

I’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.

Not true! This was actually a life-changing read for me. I stopped being the rock-star developer and turned to quiet quitting before quiet quitting became a thing thanks to this. I'm not joking. No more over-time, far less stress, more time with family, and no more burn out. I have no regrets.

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

#150

Post by Mathnerd314 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #131
Mathnerd314 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did: > Universities, government agencies, big tech monopolies, public sector unions, complacent companies in industries that haven't changed in 50 years so: Harvard, FDA, Google, American Postal Workers Union, State Farm. Also banks, I would say.

> Also banks, I would say Banks get “torn apart and cannibalized” more frequently than industrials.

Well, big banks. Like Wells Fargo, still limping along. And maybe Boeing is in the "complacent industry" category, also recently in the news.
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