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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)

#161

Post by The_Colonel »

usrnm wrote: post #60
The_Colonel wrote: post #41

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…

> 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…

> And you're making an irrational decision because it makes you feel better.

By the same approach, it's irrational to provide anything more than the bare minimum to my kids to not get social services on my back. Doing any volunteering is irrational, contributing to charities is irrational. In all of these examples, you will also find other parties (financially) benefitting from my "stupidity". If your worldview is constrained to a cynical Homo Oeconomicus, that is.

Let's make a model example: I work in a dead-end job. Prospects of advancement or significant pay raise is small, no matter the performance. I have two options:

* checked-out loser - do the bare minimum to not get fired. I'm not producing a lot of value to the executives. I don't see meaning in the job, no fulfillment, I need to slog through the 8-hour days.

* over-performing loser - I try to find meaning and enjoyment in the work I do. My productivity grows (for the same pay), but you know, doing things well is actually kinda enjoyable, and I become to like my work, even see some fulfillment. Sometimes I even identify a bit with my job, and I'm willing to work some overtime to e.g. finish a project on time.

The crazy thing is to say that the former is more "rational" than the "latter". Your first instinct is to look for places where I might accidentally create too much value for some other parties and cut that out even if I'm hurt (subjectively, not financially) in the process. My first instinct is to ask - which one is better for me and the people I like? If someone else benefits too, that's very secondary for me.

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

#162

Post by eru »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #119
eru wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, spoken German can handle that just fine. Spoken German has different rules from written German (and, of course, people have quite a bit more tolerance for minor breaks of grammatical rules in ad-hoc spoken language anyway.) To give an example: a bog standard German sentence puts the verb in second place. Everything else is fairly flexible, eg you can either put object or subject first (unlike in written English,…

> In spoken German, you can get away with "Barbara besucht das Restaurant, weil.. sie hatte ja Hunger." Especially if you pause to think at the place marked by the two dots. Native German speaker: When I hear such a wrong placing of the finite verb in a subclause, I immediately think that the respective speaker is either uneducated (when the person is a native speaker) or (if the person is a foreign speaker) had a re…

I suspect your memory is correcting things. As an experiment, you can try to record some spontaneous speech and really carefully listen to that.

(It's also crazy how many 'uhm' and 'äh' are in there, but you barely remember them just a few seconds later.)

Compare also the tenses in written Germany vs spoken German. Spoken German essentially only has two tenses: 'Perfekt' (perfect) and 'Präsenz' (present)

Written German: Gestern kaufte ich ein. Spoken German: Gestern habe ich eingekauft. (Though there's also the variant "Gestern war ich einkaufen." which doesn't really exist in written German.)

Written German: Mergen werde ich in den Urlaub fahren. Spoken German: Morgen fahre ich in den Urlaub.

You can occasionally hear more tenses in spoken German, but these two account for the majority of uses.

> When I hear such a wrong placing of the finite verb in a subclause, I immediately think that the respective speaker is either uneducated [...]

Yes, there's a huge class component involved here; some of these rules can be used as a shibboleth for social class. Btw for something similar in English compare http://fine.me.uk/Emonds/

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

#163

Post by aleph_minus_one »

eru wrote: post #162
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In spoken German, you can get away with "Barbara besucht das Restaurant, weil.. sie hatte ja Hunger." Especially if you pause to think at the place marked by the two dots. Native German speaker: When I hear such a wrong placing of the finite verb in a subclause, I immediately think that the respective speaker is either uneducated (when the person is a native speaker) or (if the person is a foreign speaker) had a re…

I suspect your memory is correcting things. As an experiment, you can try to record some spontaneous speech and really carefully listen to that. (It's also crazy how many 'uhm' and 'äh' are in there, but you barely remember them just a few seconds later.) Compare also the tenses in written Germany vs spoken German. Spoken German essentially only has two tenses: 'Perfekt' (perfect) and 'Präsenz' (present) Written Germ…

I'm rather sure that my spoken German is on the more formal side.

> Spoken German essentially only has two tenses: 'Perfekt' (perfect) and 'Präsenz' (present)

I typically indeed use Präteritum consciously in spoken German.

> Written German: Mergen werde ich in den Urlaub fahren. Spoken German: Morgen fahre ich in den Urlaub.

Something that I am annoyed of.

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

#164

Post by blitzar »

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?

From the outside organisations appear functional and like they mostly have it together. When you are sitting inside, practically every organisation and particularly those at scale, feels like a zombie.

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

#165

Post by blitzar »

cen4 wrote: post #18
trojanalert wrote: post #12

To be read in conjunction with the Babbler hypothesis - The amount of time some people spend talking gets them into leadership positions. It doesn't matter what they say, just how much they rant on. I read that, and realised how insanely true it is

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…

> How do you keep a group of chimps ... in sync?

Modern management theory says you put the one that throws the most shit and chimps the loudest in charge; give them 90% of the banannas and tell all the others they should be more like that one if they want nice things.

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

#166

Post by eru »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #163
eru wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect your memory is correcting things. As an experiment, you can try to record some spontaneous speech and really carefully listen to that. (It's also crazy how many 'uhm' and 'äh' are in there, but you barely remember them just a few seconds later.) Compare also the tenses in written Germany vs spoken German. Spoken German essentially only has two tenses: 'Perfekt' (perfect) and 'Präsenz' (present) Written Germ…

I'm rather sure that my spoken German is on the more formal side. > Spoken German essentially only has two tenses: 'Perfekt' (perfect) and 'Präsenz' (present) I typically indeed use Präteritum consciously in spoken German. > Written German: Mergen werde ich in den Urlaub fahren. Spoken German: Morgen fahre ich in den Urlaub. Something that I am annoyed of.

Yes, different people have different idiolects, but I'm glad you can see that the constructions I gave as examples are common in spoken German.

> Something that I am annoyed of.

It's easier to see these things with more distance and objectivity in a foreign language.

Eg think of all the English speakers who complain when people mix up its, it's, they're, their, there in writing and accuse them of 'muddled thinking' or at least of 'bad grammar'.

Of course, that's mostly just people being protective of class markers. If there's a villain in this story, it's English poorly 'designed' orthography.

Please do have a look at the Emonds paper at http://fine.me.uk/Emonds/ It's a great read!

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

#167

Post by wizzwizz4 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #133
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People get promoted because they influence others" is a description of the problem, not a justification of it.

> "People get promoted because they influence others" is a description of the problem What do you think a leader’s job is?

To raise others up, and provide an environment where they can do their jobs effectively. Occasionally, to perform coordination tasks, such as deciding on overall strategy, or resolving disputes; more often, a leader delegates but is otherwise hands-off, since most well-functioning teams are largely autonomous. (This is, of course, from the subordinates' perspective: from the leader's perspective, it might look like a lot of putting out fires all of the time.) A leader's job is rarely to self-promote.

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

#168

Post by eru »

jancsika wrote: post #147
asimovfan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Yes, German is perfectly capable of these shenanigans. And some more, especially if you are trying to imitate German philosophers.

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

#169

Post by aleph_minus_one »

eru wrote: post #166
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm rather sure that my spoken German is on the more formal side. > Spoken German essentially only has two tenses: 'Perfekt' (perfect) and 'Präsenz' (present) I typically indeed use Präteritum consciously in spoken German. > Written German: Mergen werde ich in den Urlaub fahren. Spoken German: Morgen fahre ich in den Urlaub. Something that I am annoyed of.

Yes, different people have different idiolects, but I'm glad you can see that the constructions I gave as examples are common in spoken German. > Something that I am annoyed of. It's easier to see these things with more distance and objectivity in a foreign language. Eg think of all the English speakers who complain when people mix up its, it's, they're, their, there in writing and accuse them of 'muddled thinking' o…

> It's easier to see these things with more distance and objectivity in a foreign language.

I have a similar opinion about such topics in foreign languages. It's just that I am much less knowledgeable concerning their subtle parts, so I as a non-native speaker can often not be sure whether I am right or I'm not aware of some subtle part of the respective language. Thus I am much more cautious concerning expressing such points for foreign languages.

But your argument

> Eg think of all the English speakers who complain when people mix up its, it's, they're, their, there in writing and accuse them of 'muddled thinking' or at least of 'bad grammar'.

which is about topics that you learn about in your first weeks of English lessons could indeed come from me.

So: I see things with the same "objectivity" in all languages (that I know or am learning); I'm just much more knowledgeable and thus outspoken concerning my native language.

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

#170

Post by Detrytus »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #167
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "People get promoted because they influence others" is a description of the problem What do you think a leader’s job is?

To raise others up, and provide an environment where they can do their jobs effectively. Occasionally, to perform coordination tasks, such as deciding on overall strategy, or resolving disputes; more often, a leader delegates but is otherwise hands-off, since most well-functioning teams are largely autonomous. (This is, of course, from the subordinates' perspective: from the leader's perspective, it might look like a…

>To raise others up, and provide an environment where they can do their jobs effectively.

You mean: to influence them?

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