A great movie on corporate darwinism:
The Method (2005) Spain/Argentina
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427582/The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"
51–60 of 67 posts
Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"
#52"Protestant Ethic will-to-power". Was that the wind in the weatherstripping, or Nietzche's ghost howling?
Possibly Nietzche's ghost being chased around the house by Ayn Rand.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right, the author is insanely smart. My only real critique is that he is overly embracing of the sociopath concept, probably because his only personal experience comes from within organizations. If he ran his own business I think he'd be able to see this more objectively. Still, he gets a ton of credit for creating all the insights that he does.
I think he has a certain admiration for the sociopath.
They get the job done, no arguing with results.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"
#54"The simple reason is that if you over-perform at the loser level, it is clear that you are an idiot. You’ve already made a bad bargain, and now you’re delivering more value than you need to, making your bargain even worse." I'm surprised this post is so popular on HN. Isn't working for a startup - pouring your time into someone else's company for below-market wages and some piddly fraction of a percent in equity - b…
If you have stock options, even a small slice of the company, it's not wasted effort.
In cash terms, that isn't remotely close to true. The chances of making a fortune as the founder of a startup are vanishingly small, and as an employee, a tenth that. Work in an industry such as banking where compensation has a bonus element and you will do better than a hypothetical startup employee who participates in an IPO every year on that alone, and that's before you consider you'll get a good salary and work half as much.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could also argue that engineers derive a meaning from their work that isn't in terms of money or power (they do work that they enjoy).
Indeed, the real goal of a sociopath engineer might not be to gain control over the org charts, but instead to gain control over the UML diagrams.
Or rather get rid of them.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"
#56Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"
#57Darwin has contributed so richly to our metaphysical vocabulary.
I guess he just replaced other phrases. And Lamarck could have done the word trick just as well.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"
#58You weren't meant to have a boss
http://paulgraham.com/boss.html
Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"
#59Darwin has contributed so richly to our metaphysical vocabulary.
I guess he just replaced other phrases. And Lamarck could have done the word trick just as well.
I'm using Darwin to mean Evolution by Natural Selection. Perhaps Lamark. I honestly know very little about Lamark, but my understanding is that his theories didn't turn out to be very strong. Interestingly, even if they don't describe biology important ideas metaphysics.
I don't think so. Darwinian evolution is not just a description of a natural process. It is a powerful metaphysical principle. IE, Darwinism could happily exist in theory, without any physical form. It just happens to have a physical form, biology. But this fact is the reason that it has had such an impact on our vocabulary.
People that have used Darwinian-like thought before can apply it elsewhere. This kind of analysis draws a lot from that. I think there are few philosophical principles that have this power. I cannot think of a many pieces of philosophical work with this kind of an impact.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
In large organizations, the managers themselves don't decide on their employees' compensation-- HR or executive committees do. Their mandate is to compensate minimally, and they are disconnected from the actual performance of the employee and thus has only their self-interest and political considerations (whose department got the last raise and for how much?) to take into account.
HR's bonus, tho' is calculated on metrics like staff turnover.
But if HR doesn't get any bonuses, then they really have no incentive to do a good job at all. You would then just need to do enough work so as not go get fired.
I work in an organization that fits your parent's description and it sucks. HR doesn't do anything except administrative work and the departmental managers don't have any authority in regards to salaries and benefits.