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)
#2That company hierarchy pyramid really made me feel depressed. Someone list me some CEOs that aren’t sociopaths. Is Bezos one? Yvon Chouinard, the Patagonia guy definitely isn’t it seems like.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#3The worst manager I ever had used to keep a copy of The Prince at his desk. He definitely looked at other people the way this article seems to encourage you to.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#4No post body was provided.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#5That company hierarchy pyramid really made me feel depressed. Someone list me some CEOs that aren’t sociopaths. Is Bezos one? Yvon Chouinard, the Patagonia guy definitely isn’t it seems like.
Bezos ignoring Shatner’s attempts to explain his profound experience going to space in favor of celebrating with alcohol; whilst Shatner is standing there as a recovering alcoholic who lost his wife due to alcohol related stuff seemed pretty sociopathic to me.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#6"organizations don’t suffer pathologies; they are intrinsically pathological constructs"
This rings so true, in my experience. Sociopaths at the top also seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#7I really used to buy into this mental model. There are certainly some points that seem to correspond to my lived experience.
At this point though, I've been through each of the tiers and have never been either cluelessly obsequious nor a sociopath -- so I have my doubts that the model is worthwhile despite being a good laugh!
For those that haven't read it:
- Tier 1 - fresh younguns or burnt out talented people who are there for a check (there is a lot of discussion regarding this tier). GOT reference: Sam Tulley
- Tier 2 - middle managers -- clueless, "true believer" types. GOT reference: many! Eddard Stark, Tommen Lannister, Jaime Lannister
- Tier 3 - sociopaths: bosses at the top of the hierarchy. GOT reference: Tywin Lannister, Joffrey Lannister
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#8Company hierarchy: Sociopaths at the top > Clueless middle managers > Losers at the bottom.
That's a bleak view, but I've worked in organizations that fit the model. To think that this could be the norm.. What if the model could be applied to human society in general! With such power dynamics, no wonder we seem to be barely hanging together with tense, mutual disrespect.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#9That company hierarchy pyramid really made me feel depressed. Someone list me some CEOs that aren’t sociopaths. Is Bezos one? Yvon Chouinard, the Patagonia guy definitely isn’t it seems like.
Lots of non-sociopath CEOs in the small-medium business scene. Go look at the MicroConf crowd some day, bunch of good people right there.
Re: The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
#10That company hierarchy pyramid really made me feel depressed. Someone list me some CEOs that aren’t sociopaths. Is Bezos one? Yvon Chouinard, the Patagonia guy definitely isn’t it seems like.
I recommend disregarding the terms ("sociopath", "clueless", "loser") used in the article, they're unnecessarily cynical and iirc originally used as a joke. This article takes a basic idea about corporate structure (something like "in any company, some people chug along, some people work hard, and some people are in it to win, and they have the following dynamics") and makes it sound awful using loaded language.