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FYI, everyone, they are all like this. Managers at this level can rationalize ANYTHING. I've seen managers rationalize leaving work to put there kids to bed, then returning to work. I've seen managers rationalize when their kids are in college telling them "you always put your job ahead of your kids".

This kind of sums things up nicely for the middle manager part...
The Gervais Principle

The real trick is to *appear* competitive, while embracing being a "Loser" https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ and producing enough that your clueless bosses are happy and staying off the sociopath's radar.

automation is a god-send in this case. Just automate as much of your job as possible and then execute said automation while doing something else that appears productive but is entertaining. E.g. everyone knows what FB looks like in a browser window, but /. just looks like a wall of text, and since you're typing it appears that you're working dutifully, even when the boss sits literally next to you in the open plan office. (use a small browser window, with minimal UI).

Just sayin...

Mandatory reading for modern corporate employment. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/200...

because that's generally how anyone horrible at their job seems to get that position in the first place. They hide out or "follow the rules" long enough for someone to leave or there is simply no one else to fill the role.

In many of my anecdotes as a contractor, its seems the last people standing in a company (the primary shit stain of sales or the senior dickwad of software) are almost always the most worthless people that just new how to hide well....the good people bailed or were blamed and fired long before.

You're more correct than you think - I posted this before, but another post can't hurt.

The lifecycle of a company is such that once it is out of the growth phase it will be filled by useless wastes of oxygen. That link above provides excruciating details into why this happens.

Your best worker should get a raise. Your worst worker should stay to do the dirty work. The average worker is the one you (may) want to move into management.

Not quite. Every who ever plans to work in any sort of office again must read this in-depth analysis of office politics.

This analysis of The Office suggests that high-level execs "setup" low-level employees to get the outcome they want while dodging responsibility for it. To illustrate, he uses the example of sending Michael to investigate Prince Paper (which Michael does by pretending to be a customer and asking for references):

On the surface, this is a routine request to do some above-board competitive analysis. But by dangling the carrot of a better job and carefully refraining from specifying how the end is to be achieved (using abstractions like “fact-finding” and “fieldwork”), Wallace knows he can get Michael to do what he really wants done: industrial espionage. He engineers execution of his real intention (obtaining an unfair and illegal advantage over Prince Paper) using a predictable “failure” pattern in the execution of his declared intention (honest competition). He knows Michael can be relied on to try foul means, while letting him pretend that he only expected fair means to be used.

The whole series is an interesting read if you're an Office fan.

managers spend a surprising amount of time dealing with bizarre interpersonal issues and personal issues that don't really show up in the books. If I were teaching a management class, the first chapter would be "how to get your underlings to overcome weird personal issues." The fight about the radio in Office Space feels sadly real.

This would be my required reading for anyone, management or not: The Gervais Principle, or, the office according to "The Office"

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009...

I assume the irony in your enthusiasm for eugenics as an antidote to sociopathology was intentional.

You might enjoy The Gervais Principle. Its view of middle management is rather similar.

It all makes sense after you understand MacLeod. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/

* Learn to habitually apply critical thinking. Why would Microsoft want "every American student to have the opportunity to learn computer science"--a somewhat advanced branch of mathematics? That's right: it doesn't. It wants an oversupply of employees in "computing occupations". (Quotes from the linked technet blog post).

BUT, don't apply critical thinking out loud at work. That's non-career-advancing. Use it in your meta-employment strategy.

* Learn persuasion and negotiation skills: applied (cod-) psychology topics such as body language, emotional intelligence, rhetoric. Join Toastmasters. Develop a wide circle of acquaintances in lots of different industries and occupations--it's the "weak connections" that get you jobs.

* Learn the elements of employment law.

* Learn how to cooperate effectively with your fellow employees. Which means doing the shit work, at least some of the time, especially at the start.

If you want to become one of the -l-i-z-a-r-d--p-e-o-p-l-e- 1%:-

* learn what it takes. Here's a very introductory primer: The Gervais Principle.

Apropos which, I found this series of posts fascinating reading.

Sample:

[William H. Whyte, author of The Organization Man] saw signs that in the struggle for dominance between the Sociopaths (whom he admired as the ones actually making the organization effective despite itself) and the middle-management Organization Man, the latter was winning. He was wrong, but not in the way you’d think. The Sociopaths defeated the Organization Men and turned them into The Clueless not by reforming the organization, but by creating a meta-culture of Darwinism in the economy: one based on job-hopping, mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, cataclysmic reorganizations, outsourcing, unforgiving start-up ecosystems, and brutal corporate raiding. In this terrifying meta-world of the Titans, the Organization Man became the Clueless Man. Today, any time an organization grows too brittle, bureaucratic and disconnected from reality, it is simply killed, torn apart and cannibalized, rather than reformed. The result is the modern creative-destructive life cycle of the firm [emphasis added]

Six posts in the series, each shedding much light on modern corporate dynamics. TL;DR version is "the executive class has gone feral."

Also worth reading is another post of Venkat's, "You are not an artisan".

The Locust Economy

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/

Reminds me of The Gervais Principal.

If you don't like it that someone else is making more money than you are, well, maybe you should have taken the tougher classes in school.

You suggest salaries are proportional to the difficulty of ones' college curriculum.

Let's see. I took engineering classes, programming classes, thermodynamics, quantum physics and laser theory. I earn about $115k, -after- 30 years of experience.

But the guy who's pulling down $3M plus bonuses for hiring a team of programmers and quants majored in economics and political science. Perhaps he had to take some calculus and a couple of semesters of physics for frat boys. He's probably got a MBA and some other degrees in professional sociopathy.

None of those classes are "hard" compared to mine, but they somehow entitle him to 20 or 30 times what the people earn who actually enable him to make any money at all. If they manage to somehow threaten, sue, bargain or steal their way to a bigger peice of the action, then they have "earned" their share in the same way that the MBA did... but according to you, they're still not entitled to it because their college classes weren't as "tough."

Right.