How to be a manipulative asshole and get promoted

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > How to be a manipulative asshole and get promoted

Jordan7hm: Feb 17, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

Eric the Mauve posted:

This is basically true of that part of humanity that spends their careers in the corporate world. Well, except the 'evenly' part. It's like 3% Sociopaths, 15% Clueless, 82% Losers.

Rao's central insight is that the sociopaths in the C-suites aren't dumb enough to operate by the Dilbert Principle ("the least effective employees become middle managers to minimize the direct harm they can do"), but rather that they promote useful idiots into middle management where they're easily manipulated into getting failures hung around their necks, and most of the people at the Individual Contributor level are smart enough to know they're stuck in a bad deal, and are being rational when they deliver the minimum effort required to not get fired.

There are exceptions, overgeneralization, etc. etc. but it is a broadly accurate and useful insight.

I think the number of clueless is far higher than the number of losers, if a defining trait of losers is that they recognize their position in the organization. Most middle management for sure classify as clueless, but so do all of those Individual Contributors who do unpaid overtime and bring home mountains of stress because of feeling of duty or loyalty to a company that will fire them during a pandemic. Every company I've ever worked at has had tons of people like that.

Tomfoolery posted:

The most valuable takeaway of "all C-levels are sociopaths" is that you should not trust them. This is 100% true. But occasionally it's important to be able to trust some people, sometimes, and there are ways to actually doing that.

For me the biggest takeaway was just recognizing the way the most effective leaders I work with use language, and in particular being more careful about using what leverage I have more effectively.

I think it's important to shift your thinking a bit on what trust means in the context of work. There are absolutely people who are "trustworthy" at all levels of an organization. By that I mean that they will do what they say, but not what you think they said. They have their own responsibilities and priorities, and those are going to be different from yours. Too often people misread statements or actions to match up to what they want to hear.

quote:

I would argue that the advice to always be looking is less valid for a proper bullshit artist who can snake his or her way up the corporate tree.

I still think that always looking / always moving is good advice for a proper bullshit artist, because it shields them from ever having consequences for their bullshit (which can actually happen if they stay in one place too long). In a really big org that have lots of places to move to, so this isn't as big a deal, but why do that when you can just jump around anyway.

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > How to be a manipulative asshole and get promoted