The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office" • Hacker News Board

Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"

#61

Post by turtle4 » Thu, Oct 15, 2009, 2:54 PM UTC

strlen wrote: post #35

wsprague wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means that an engineer is a "loser" in this system; and in terms of monetary gain, they may very well be. The author stresses that "loser" is not the same as "bad person" or "living their life according to wacked principles".

The problem I had with this article is that while it covers the case of people who are "losers" monetarily but have meaning outside of work (Pam, Angela) it doesn't cover the case of people who find that meaning in their work ; the latter category includes most good scientists and engineers and many business professionals as well. That being said, the engineer position is also fairly privileged: the pay of a Silicon…

I think you're getting out of scope. This isn't a 'life' theory, it is a 'business/management' theory. In terms of business/management, those scientists/engineers are losers. They will never rise to the top, and are destined to work for people less skilled them themselves.

Note that there isn't anything -wrong- with that. As you say, there may be reasons they do that, whether it is derived pleasure, or something else, but because they aren't actively gaming the 'ladder', they aren't going to move up it, and thus will always be losers.

I think this article works better, if you don't call them losers, and instead call them exploited, because there is such a strongly negative connotation associated with the term loser that it is hard to get past. The author is really saying that bottom layer is exploited (not compensated sufficiently).

Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"

#62

Post by joshwa » Thu, Oct 15, 2009, 3:46 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #27

joshwa wrote: post #9

Earlier 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.

Like the other reply said, not every organization does bonuses. My BigCorp, being in retail, only does bonuses as profit-sharing, based on total company performance.

Job performance objectives are overwhelmingly based on overall company performance and department-level performance scores, and individual performance has almost nothing to do with it. And even then the whole salary situation is cloaked in smoke and mirrors and is essentially irrational and adversarial. Your scorecard numbers have nothing to do with it.

Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"

#63

Post by authentic » Thu, Oct 15, 2009, 4:27 PM UTC

wsprague wrote: post #30

lionhearted wrote: post #2

It gets this half-right/half-wrong: > While some may be losers in that sense too, they are primarily losers in the economic sense: those who have, for various reasons, made (or been forced to make) a bad economic bargain: they’ve given up some potential for long-term economic liberty (as capitalists) for short-term economic stability. Halfway with the author so far. Generally, being salaried is a bad economic bargain…

"the reason people aren't compensated accordingly [sic] to their production is that it's incredibly hard to judge production." ... perhaps .... ... but perhaps Karl Marx was correct when he said that (basically) the essence of capitalism is in the systematic skimming of "surplus production" by the controllers of capital. In other words, EVERY employee is not paid according to their production. I also think that this…

In reality, most employees are paid more than they produce, and a large part of the surplus generated by a productive minority inside a company goes to an unproductive majority rather than being skimmed by the controllers of capital. Therefore Marx' argument can only hold true in the aggregate.

Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"

#64

Post by philwelch » Thu, Oct 15, 2009, 5:57 PM UTC

wsprague wrote: post #30

lionhearted wrote: post #2

It gets this half-right/half-wrong: > While some may be losers in that sense too, they are primarily losers in the economic sense: those who have, for various reasons, made (or been forced to make) a bad economic bargain: they’ve given up some potential for long-term economic liberty (as capitalists) for short-term economic stability. Halfway with the author so far. Generally, being salaried is a bad economic bargain…

"the reason people aren't compensated accordingly [sic] to their production is that it's incredibly hard to judge production." ... perhaps .... ... but perhaps Karl Marx was correct when he said that (basically) the essence of capitalism is in the systematic skimming of "surplus production" by the controllers of capital. In other words, EVERY employee is not paid according to their production. I also think that this…

Marx's argument is not based on this kind of thing at all, but rather on the mere existence of profit.

It all comes down to your theory of value. Marx uses a labor theory of value that might say that a chair is worth exactly the wood and the human labor that is invested in producing it. When a chair manufacturer employs people to build chairs, they pay the employees less than their labor is worth, sell the chairs, and pocket the margin.

The market theory of value says that something is worth what someone is willing to buy and sell it for. So if you decide to work at the chair factory for $5/hr, you and the chair company have agreed that your time is worth $5/hr. If the chair company sells a chair for $50, the chair company and the consumer agree the chair is worth $50. (Of course, the chair company might be willing to sell for $20 and the consumer might be willing to pay $70, so there is a "surplus" to both sides. But that simply arises from the distinction between individual value judgments and market value.)

The market perspective is the only one where productive activity makes any sense at all. From a labor theory of value, a chair, a table, a skyscraper, or a startup is only worth the amount of labor that was invested in it. But if this was true, then wouldn't we be just as well off to spare the labor and hang out on the beach instead of working? The market theory of value says that if you invest labor, you might create something more valuable than the labor you put into it, which is the only theory that justifies productive labor in the first place. It also says that if you invest your labor into building something no one wants or is willing to pay for, you simply waste it. The labor theory of value would gel with many people's naive ideas here: I put so much work into this damned thing, isn't it worth something?

Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"

#65

Post by philwelch » Thu, Oct 15, 2009, 8:45 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #55

Dilpil wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Get rid of the drawings, yes. But also to gain control over the product design and architecture that they are meant to convey.

Org charts are meant to convey the power structure of an organization, but they are usually a lie as well. A good "sociopath" will gain rank in the real power structure, while the clueless middle manager will gain rank in the nominal org chart.

Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"

#66

Post by philwelch » Thu, Oct 15, 2009, 8:54 PM UTC

ajju wrote: post #19

I have never read a more apt description of large organizations or a better deconstruction of a tv show. The author should turn his incisive intellect onto startups next (although I don't know of any "The Office" like shows to aid his analysis)

There was actually a story arc in The Office where Michael gets fired and founds a competitor. All the normal dynamics are upset--Michael is freed from the role of the clueless middle manager and manages to put his sales skills to use, Pam elevates herself to a sales position, and the now disgraced, out-of-the-industry Ryan seizes the opportunity to get back into the game.

Re: The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office"

#67

Post by geebee » Fri, Oct 16, 2009, 5:29 PM UTC

bd wrote: post #38

strlen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article handles the case of people who derive a meaning from outside of their work and the people who are looking for financial success and power/status within a corporation. As I've mentioned in a previous comment, the article doesn't take into account the fact that there are people who a) look for a meaning that isn't centered around money or power b) derive it from their work If you're an engineer working for…

I think the author has these options covered: - If you do it because you enjoy it, then you are, by article's definition, a "loser" (in terms of potential monetary gains) [1]. - If you do it in order to learn about running your own startup, then you are "sociopath-in-training" (ala Ryan from The Office). And that's it. The author doesn't claim you cannot have happy and meaningful life as "loser" (by his definition),…

Very good points. The author does try to disambiguate "loser" (though I don't think he does disambiguate "sociopath").

My problem with these terms is that they just can't be disassociated with their common meanings. This is a common rhetorical trick - an author defines the word one way, and sticks to that definition, but inevitably uses the impact of the more common word (while claiming that the earlier disambiguation clears him of the need to defend the more common usage).

In short, I think we need a different word than "loser" to describe the category of workers who 1) make a good salary 2) enjoy their work, and 3) yes, could make more money or get a better deal outside the organization.

I'm also unwilling to accept the use of "sociopath" to describe all start-up founders, no matter how airtight the author has been in locking down a definition that avoids all the negative connotations of the more general use of "sociopath."

I guess that I'm really just saying that some words just can't be disambiguated.

In this case, the ambiguity is in the interest of being humorous and interesting, which is why it doesn't bug me all that much (though in other contexts, it can be infuriating).