[scottLobster]

It's an issue of incentives, and sadly my experience is it's often not the immediate management that's the problem, it's structural issues with the company that low-level managers have little if any say in.

Speaking for my own experience, program-level and above management often doesn't put their money where their mouth is. Maintenance is chronically under-funded, well-articulated and respectful feedback is ignored with a thank-you. Hell more than once I've been forced to spend an entire day in a conference room with all the other relevant devs to do a "Root Cause Analysis" of a given recent crisis, and we took it seriously each time and came up with genuine solutions. But said solutions required more hardware, more maintenance, more stuff that no one wanted to budget for.

You work in that environment long enough, you learn to clock in and clock out. If you allow yourself to give a shit you'll just be constantly tearing your hair out. Those of us with some objective sense of professionalism usually evolve into the functional elites you mention, but I completely understand those who go the other way.

[rgifford]

Sociopaths, the clueless and losers. This great essay analyzing The Office argues that in a modern business context you're one of the three. [1]

Those "functional elites" you mentioned? Usually they're working 20-50% more for 0-25% percent more pay. They're called the clueless because they've been conned into working more for less, usually under some clever guise like company being family or company values or the promise of a promotion that's always a cycle or two away. The essay then goes on to argue that losers are really just the clueless once they "get it." Losers understand the treadmill and lean into the tedium always aiming to save their time by playing dumb as needed. Sociopaths break out of the cycle by operating only with concern for power and switching up how they talk to folks based on whether they're clueless, losers or fellow sociopaths.

Sociopaths speak in powertalk -- an exchange of information on clear terms. It's usually veiled because the clueless and losers listen in and it makes them feel uncomfortable. If it weren't veiled it would probably sound like lawyer-jargon with lots of plausible deniability, conditions, arguing and explicit shared definitions.

Losers and clueless speak in their own languages based on who they're talking with. It's basically just lots of trying to feel okay... except for when it comes to losers speaking with sociopaths. There the only communication is straight talk, which is basically just direct requests of a master-slave dynamic (i.e. "do this"). The essay is well worth the read!

1. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-...

[vasco]

Not every place in life is a place of struggle and fight. Some people actually enjoy their work. This just sounds like "class struggle" and "proletariat and bourgeoisie" under different names. Also thinking of your colleagues and people as "elites", "losers" and the "clueless" gives me some understanding to the state of mind of who writes this.

To keep it lighter, in the companies I've worked in the architypes of people were more like:

- The "anger problem that shouts every once in a while" guy

- The "chronic nervous person that is paralyzed by impostor syndrome"

- The "i find more problems than solutions" guy

- The "i'm here to socialize, make friends, maybe get married"

- The "i gave up 10 years ago and just want my paycheck"

- The "i'm a kid learning everything I can and am just excited to be here"

- The "i'm working on my true passion outside of work while hanging out here with you guys" etc etc

People have their own lives, not everything is just a power play of losers and elites.

I'll be honest, even if the world was exactly as you described, which it isn't, I'd choose to not see it that way so that my life wouldn't be such a bleak existance. Rather be a naive happy fool than enlightned and depressed.

[j-bos]

The article uses struggly words like sociopaths and losers, but defines them very differently from common use, often the 'losers' have the most fulfilling and rounded lives, i.e. true winners

- The "chronic nervous person that is paralyzed by impostor syndrome" - clueless

- The "i find more problems than solutions" guy - clueless

- The "i'm here to socialize, make friends, maybe get married" - loser

- The "i gave up 10 years ago and just want my paycheck" - loser

- The "i'm working on my true passion outside of work while hanging out here with you guys" etc etc - loser

It's a rough model of org interactions with poorly named categories.

[krapp]

>The article uses struggly words like sociopaths and losers, but defines them very differently from common use, often the 'losers' have the most fulfilling and rounded lives, i.e. true winners

They're "losers" from the point of view of capitalism and corporate hierarchy. If you're not committing your life to ruthlessly climb the ladder to grasp at wealth and power by any means and you don't buy into the game or its rules, you're basically a defective cog, a useless part of the machine.

If you're unaware that success is a rigged lottery designed to find and promote sociopaths and actually believe that reward comes with hard work, determination and passion, you're clueless. A mark. A rube. If you're smart enough, with enough abuse you'll eventually wake up and become a loser.

[robertlagrant]

> They're "losers" from the point of view of capitalism and corporate hierarchy. If you're not committing your life to ruthlessly climb the ladder to grasp at wealth and power by any means and you don't buy into the game or its rules, you're basically a defective cog, a useless part of the machine.

You have too narrow a definition of capitalism and of corporate hierarchy. What you describe is one outworking of them, but not the outworking.

[harimau777]

It's BY FAR the most common outworking. Most people won't be lucky enough to find a job that doesn't work that way.

[j-bos]

yes.

[KirillPanov]

> Sociopaths break out of the cycle by operating only with concern for power

There are other ways to break out of the cycle. Keep looking.

[aleph_minus_one]

> There are other ways to break out of the cycle. Keep looking.

What are these ways (besides founding a startup or something similar)?

[sph]

Working for oneself is how we're meant to work, not to be a cog in someone else's machine. It is sad that for the past ~100 years it has become the norm and we idolize entrepreneurs, as if they are mythical creatures.

[harimau777]

Many people lack the business skills, resources, or temperament for starting their own business. So this is certainly an option but not a panacea.

[sph]

Not every business has to become a billion dollar startup. A fishmonger is more of an entrepreneur than any FAANG employee.

[Draiken]

I hard disagree here. That's what capitalism wants us to evolve into: individual enterprises. But no, there's nothing inherent in the universe or human nature that determines individualism as the true way of working.

You don't have to go far to see people contributing to bigger causes that are not owned by someone else. Open source is a great example of this.

The main reason people idolize entrepreneurs is because they symbolize capitalism's perfect individual. There's a reason society today wants everyone to be an "entrepreneur", but it's not some higher meaning. It's just capitalism.

[sph]

> The main reason people idolize entrepreneurs is because they symbolize capitalism's perfect individual

That's some deep revisionism right there. Humans have worked for themselves, for no master, since before we became Homo Sapiens.

The big societal achievement of capitalism is killing any entrepreneurial spirit and telling you you need to go to a good school and then find a good employer that takes care of all of your needs.

[unicornmama]

> It's an issue of incentives

Please do not just oversimplfy a challenging problem into just "incentives".

Some people lack resilience, and they will collapse under the pressures of professional and personal life. Some people lack ambition and drive, they don't want to exceed their level of productivity no matter what you do.

It's not just a matter of incentives. If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people, you will not get results.

The right approach here is to avoid hiring these peoples (not a perfect science). In absence of that, provide feedback expetations to provide a resaonable opportuntiy to change their behavior, then move them to other projects or terminate them.

And there are organization where non of this is possible - like government and many corporate IT.

[anonymous_sorry]

> Some people lack resilience, and they will collapse under the pressures of professional and personal life. Some people lack ambition and drive, they don't want to exceed their level of productivity no matter what you do.

Few people don't want to improve their productivity. Improving your productivity makes you more valuable. But plenty of people don't want to work harder. There is of course a difference!

I deal poorly with stress, and am thankful I have reached a point in my career where I can earn pretty good money in positions where I'm not pushing myself too hard.

I enjoy learning of course, and do want to get better. But that's in balance with the demands of family and the happiness and fulfillment I find in other pursuits.

I have been promoted reasonably quickly over the past 5 years without playing political games. My productivity has improved through experience, and it seems like that got recognised through promotion. But I guess it's possible I got lucky with managers making bad decisions in my favour.

I don't know if you'd want to hire me. I'm not sure I'd want to work for you. Do you find success with your approach compared to peers with a more empathetic approach to management?

[BlargMcLarg]

>If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people,

Then you didn't offer the right incentives and opportunities. GP simplified it correctly.

Most people aren't lazy or malicious in the face of good rewards, they just realize there's no point working 5x for 1.1x the income after putting in 3x the effort fighting for that 10% raise. If you can't filter them out through hiring practices or termination, you're doing something wrong or you're experiencing the downside of supply/demand.

The only non-trivial thing here is the owners pushing the downside of that market back onto the managers to magically solve, because we all know saying "that's not possible" is going to make you the target of 'disciplinary actions' instead. Welcome to the catch-22 that is management, enjoy your stay.