[Balgair]

Middle management people are the graphite control rods of a nuclear reactor, they slow down the process enough to be useful and act as sacrificial elements in the power plant.

The Gervais Principle is a great lens with which to look at company hierarchies and all people in any large organization should know about it: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

"Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves."(Don't get too attached to the names used, Rao intentionally makes everyone into a miserable cog in the machine)

[stevarino]

While I agree with your analogy, graphite is actually a moderator which (in a nuclear context) accelerates reactions. This was a factor for Chernobyl [1] where the rods had graphite tips, so a scram had a momentary rapid increase in reactivity. This burst of reactivity caused temperature to momentarily spike. The heat produced steam which increased pressure and the vessel exploded.

[1] http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub913e_web.pd...

[Balgair]

Cool!

[jbergens]

No, hot