[yoyohello13]

Yeah I think “don’t attribute to malice what can be explained be stupidity” is applied too broadly these days. There is absolutely malice behind some decisions/actions, and it’s dangerous to just shrug it off. Even more concerning, often the malicious people will hide behind stupidity.

[andy99]

> Even more concerning, often the malicious people will hide behind stupidity.

yeah a lot of people that get ahead seem to be intentionally ignorant (to the point of fooling themselves) to provide a kind of plausible deniability. It's obviously put on because you see they are shrewd political operators and and "errors" are always in their favor. But there's this game of who can appear the most aloof and thus impossible to ascribe any malice to.

[aleph_minus_one]

> But there's this game of who can appear the most aloof and thus impossible to ascribe any malice to.

The people who are actually hard to ascribe any malice to are often politically very inept, i.e.

- (nearly) "everybody" knows these people are not malicious

- but since people want to be manipulated, such people don't make any career

[Joel_Mckay]

It is not mutually exclusive, as people can be both pernicious and stupid if they choose to be...

https://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidi...

Engagement is mostly derived from upset people, and thus algorithms or clowns behave in unsustainable ways to make millions of pennies.

Academic bias arises from the ivory tower phenomena in a walled garden, and if some naive kid is often told they are the best-of-the-best special... they tend to truly believe the rhetoric as they slowly indenture themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

Most HR folks quickly tire of entitled peoples petulance, as no matter how conventionally "smart" a applicant may be... no office wants to deal with drama everyday. =3

[pixl97]

This said, most HR folks are head deep in their own ass with their own drama, so there's that.

[Joel_Mckay]

External staffing agencies are a set of problems unto themselves.

One usually exchanges Faustian contractual consistency with creative talent that drove initial success.

Politics is rarely about the technology itself, and there are always skeletons next to pirate treasure boxes. lol =3