91–100 of 174 posts
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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.
I find all these principles to be wrong. Having worked in many companies of many sizes in many industries, there's a more variable distribution of characteristics of office workers. They can be sociopathic, empathic, competent, incompetent, kind, mean, sincere, duplicitous, flexible, inflexible, passionate, aloof, personable, antisocial, motivated, unmotivated, productive, unproductive. And they're always a mix of th…
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…
Gen Y was supposed to be values-driven too, Gen X invented slackers and grunge who were all about authenticity, boomers were children of hippies, beatniks preceded hippies… The malaise afflicting Gen Z is more- secular- than cultural, I fear. The endpoint of economic trends.
The hippies largely were Boomers, not their children.
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and then I'd show him a news broadcast from last week, where the president of the United States of America literally said "War is peace".
Is the use of "literally" here, and the use of quotes, meant to be taken literally (as in, he literally said this)? Or is this the sense of "literally" which actually means "figuratively"?
That's the closest thing I'm finding. Not seeing reporting that he literally said "war is peace".
This essay was my bible at Google. It openly matched internal hierarchy and our own secret GDNA testing results illustrated it directly showing VP and above scored highly on the need to dominate over discover truth etc. The problem was to my existential horror: i couldn’t use this knowledge to get anywhere beyond clueless. Because super large western organizations either purposefully hide information or are full of s…
As the essay points out, we losers have only two paths out of loserdom. The first is to leverage sociopathic tendencies, to scheme and maneuver and accrue power (probably as a minion to an actual sociopath, I don’t think transformation happens except at the early stage of a career). The second is to check out and coast, tacitly improving our position without actually striking a new bargain or finding any safety. My o…
(2009) Previous discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
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 compelling argument ("don't bring me more problems, give me solutions")
3. sociopaths exploit this by telling the execs what they want to hear
4. only after a while, after significant investment of resources in the decisions/projects proposed by the sociopaths it comes up to light it's complete nonsense
5. the sociopaths are aware of this, so they usually pivot before SHTF or they even exploit the situation to ask for more to "fix" the problems
6. the execs who backed the sociopaths want to cover their own asses so they hide the problems from higher ups for as long as possible (CEO, board, investors, shareholders, clients, authorities, public)
7. competent people are pulled out of productive work and thrown to solve impossible or even contradicting situations; some burn out, some leave, and the ones who stay are often stained forever like they were the cause of the problem
Sometimes the sociopaths are external consulting companies or companies offering some magic huge system that they promise will solve all the problems.
Sociopaths exploit information asymmetry.
Classic: https://web.archive.org/web/20051013062258/http://www.kuro5h...
The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41214180 - Aug 2024 (173 comments)
The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33298158 - Oct 2022 (149 comments)
The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486869 - Dec 2020 (60 comments)
The Gervais Principle III: The Curse of Development - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1267202 - April 2010 (27 comments)
The Gervais Principle II: Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and Gametalk - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937541 - Nov 2009 (32 comments)
The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to "The Office" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296 - Oct 2009 (63 comments)
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have anything to read more about the power talk stuff?
Not really to be honest because the framework under which Venkatesh Rao talks about power talk is a bit different than how most sociologists see power talk. Sociologists focus on tone, Rao focuses on the content. In The Gervais Principle information is a currency and treated as negotiation leverage. You never give it for free, unless strictly in the boundaries of your job. Thus, under this lens, you collect as much i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the use of "literally" here, and the use of quotes, meant to be taken literally (as in, he literally said this)? Or is this the sense of "literally" which actually means "figuratively"?
A post to the Truth Social account for Donald Trump included: "The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!" That's the closest thing I'm finding. Not seeing reporting that he literally said "war is peace".
Okay, so then — who gets squeezed more by AI: the clueless or the losers?