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Losing the Narrative: The Genre Fiction of the Professional Class

• JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  > Solo cup culture flour­ishes because college is simply a pay-to-play credentialing service. If this were the case, why do many spend grueling over hundreds of LeetCode problems? If the credential was truly enough, we wouldn't have to be grilled in interview processes. > The university has been in crisis for almost a century, and in 1948 Richard Weaver was already warning that universities had “turned into playgrounds for grown-up children or centers of vocationalism and professionalism.” At one point in college, I held 3 jobs with the impossible task of trying to stay out of debt (I didn't) by working jobs that paid no more than $10/hour on a $30,000 tuition bill. Is the fault of the university that they became corporatized? There would be no crisis if folks had the time to study.
  • free_rms 6y ago
    > Is the fault of the university that they became corporatized? Yes, and specifically the kind of bureaucratic organization-man corporatized that the article discusses. Tuition keeps skyrocketing at multiples of inflation, yet post docs and adjunct lecturers live in near-poverty. Where's the money go? "Administration".
    • gtfoutttt 6y ago
      I took a side gig teaching at a community college. I had to talk to a dean to get white board markers. And it wasn't like that dean approved and made a phone call and I went and picked them up. She physically walked me over to a locked drawer with the department name on it and handed them to me. A dean. Absolutely laughable if it wasn't so sad.
      • csa 6y ago
        All joking aside, what do you think deans at CCs are supposed to do? Mundane property issues are probably handled by the dean’s admin at some (most?) CCs, but property in general is often going to fall under a dean’s purview. Also, note that a dean’s work at a CC is generally going to be fantastically boring administrative scut work.
        • gtfoutttt 6y ago
          Fair enough. I always equated deans with management.
          • csa 6y ago
            Imho, most managers also do fantastically boring administrative scut work —- think various aspects of hiring, scheduling, budgets, progress reports, personnel reviews, handling administrative complaints (EEO, sexual harassment, etc.), recruiting, etc. Maybe some things are a bit different than a CC dean, but the genre of work is similar. The specific differences in your perception may revolve around whether the manager/dean has a trusted admin, and whether that admin is around. Just a guess... What do you think managers do?
    • JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
      Tuition skyrocketing is attributable to ever-increasing government aid. Tuition begins as a high markup MSRP, and a formula is applied, and on the other end, coincidentally you get just enough aid to afford college, presuming you maximize your government loans.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • georgeecollins 6y ago
    >> If this were the case, why do many spend grueling over hundreds of LeetCode problems? If the credential was truly enough, we wouldn't have to be grilled in interview processes. Credentials aren't enough to get you a job as a coder in many tech companies and they aren't enough to get you a job as a ball player in the NFL. But elite credentials do open all kinds of doors not open to those without them.
  • non-entity 6y ago
    I think software is an exception to the rule. Most other traditionally high paying careers still rely highly on credentials.
• yew 6y ago
  > [A] sorting mechanism that elevates people who pay lip service to permissiveness, but don't fully participate - a preparatory performance of the fake counterculture. Not where I expected to see that sentiment. I do wonder where this is going.
• jonstewart 6y ago
  American Affairs Journal is a relatively recent publication that’s been somewhat pro-Trump, at least pro-Trumpism. James McElroy also often writes in American Conservative. I don’t believe this belongs on Hacker News.
  • jonstewart 6y ago
    Downvote to oblivion, but highfalutin essays in neocon journals keep showing up here on HN with some regularity, particularly on the weekends. I can’t remember the last time I saw something from Jacobin or Mother Jones, and certainly not an essay this overtly political. It’s all too easy to nod along as you read this sort of thing, but then to become more cynical when you consider the source, the underlying motivations, and the larger body of work into which it fits and associates.
    • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      You don't seem to be paying attention. I see borderline Marxist stuff here rather regularly.
      • Apocryphon 6y ago
        Please cite.
        • non-entity 6y ago
          Theres a high chance they'll think marxism is "when the government does stuff" or some similar nonsense and will cite some mildly socdem material.
        • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
          Sorry, I can't off the top of my head. I was reading one on Friday, though, that was... some guy's unique Marxist perspective on... the global south, if I recall correctly. That wasn't borderline Marxist, that was openly, unapologetically Marxist. But again, no, I can't give you a cite. It was on "new" about 48 hours ago, plus or minus several hours. I'm pretty sure I found that on "new", though, rather than on the front page. If front page appearances are your metric, then left stuff may be rather rare.
• skmurphy 6y ago
  two key grafs: "Professionals today would never self-identify as bureaucrats. Product managers at Google might have sleeve tattoos or purple hair. They might describe themselves as “creators” or “creatives.” They might characterize their hobbies as entrepreneurial “side hustles.” But their actual day-in, day-out work involves the coordination of various teams and resources across a large organization based on established administrative procedures. That’s a bureaucrat. The entire professional culture is almost an attempt to invert the connotations and expecta­tions of the word—which is what underlies this class’s tension with storytelling. Conformity is draped in the dead symbols of a prior generation’s counterculture." Conclusion: "Absolute pessimism is almost always a sign of a lazy narcissist, and narratives of inevitable decline are used by those who want to absolve themselves of the obligation to act. Possibility has opened up before us in a manner that is rare in history. We need stories which encourage action. Our leaders must rise to defeat a global plague and in the process test whether or not there still exists, in this underused husk of a nation, the capacity for vigorous action—the capacity to produce the types of heroes who will inspire future generations. Now, more than ever, we need a story."
  • watwut 6y ago
    Isnt the first paragraph basically bullshit? It made up attitudes out of thin air. I have yet to meet product manager or manager or business person that would call himself creative - including those with tatoos and other visible "crazy" visual style. And the people I knew with tatoos did not necessary interpreted themselves as non conforming either. There were aware of raising acceptance of tatoos. And guy explicitely explained his tatoos as "just result of being in environment where many people have it and talk about it, you kinda shift there".
    • neonate 6y ago
      I don't think it's bullshit. "Professionals today would never self-identify as bureaucrats" seems exactly right.
      • foolmeonce 6y ago
• unignorant 6y ago
  On the whole this essay seems to be making a deliberately slippery argument. It wants to redefine "bureaucracy" to suit its purposes while also maintaining all existing pejorative connotations of the term.
  • zozbot234 6y ago
    Where's the redefinition? Large organizations are bureaucratic and ruled by internal politicking. It's their nature.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  Good writing that elevates the discourse, even if it does seem a bit smart and challenging to survive long in this forum. Bureaucracy itself has become an ideology, and we need more observations of it like this.
  • kiliantics 6y ago
    This idea -- late capitalist corporatism as a form of hyper-bureaucratic institutionalisation of all aspects of modern life -- has been gaining ground a lot lately. David Graeber in particular is a good source for articles and books on it.
• augustt 6y ago
  Unsurprisingly meandering for a moral panic piece. Lots of words about how corporations and universities have become too wishy-washy and how Trump refuses to play that game, but nothing said of his mostly successful attempt to normalize bold-faced lying.
  • ahelwer 6y ago
    I think the whole point is that politicians were already bold-faced lying, and everyone knew it, and politicians knew everyone knew it (see the quoted definition of a hack in the article). But we all played the game. See Hypernormalization by Adam Curtis.
• jonstewart 6y ago
  One thing to consider: in the wake of institutional violence (police treatment of BIPOC, US government mal-response to the pandemic) and the protests and concerns that violence engenders, this essay questions the legitimacy of those “narratives.” Why? Who is speaking here? From what basis is the author able to negate the narratives of others?
• Apocryphon 6y ago
  The essay makes some astute observations, advances some interesting theses, and then bloviates all over the place, making judgments of questionable provenance. More interesting is to see what aspects of it can fit the HN milieu. How does the bureaucrat and the corporate genre fit the startup scene and the tech industry?
  • csa 6y ago
    > How does the bureaucrat and the corporate genre fit the startup scene and the tech industry? I think the Gervais Principle answers this question nicely. There was a series of essays based on GP that was written by someone formerly active on HN that can only be found on the way back machine that ties GP into modern Silicon Valley. I’m intentionally leaving out this former HNer’s name because he took down his blog for reasons of professional discretion. I don’t think it’s that hard to find, though.
    • non-entity 6y ago
      GP is a very interesting read, albeit one that left me mildly depressed after reading it. I'll have to try and look for this.
      • csa 6y ago
        You can find the person and dead links to their blog in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5574429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5574429 I think that’s a sufficient hint while not piercing the blogger’s veil of anonymity Please respect his/her desire for a modicum of professional privacy if you figure out who I am referring to.
  • jalgos_eminator 6y ago
    I think an interesting business question is: when does a startup shift from being highly customer/usability focused to focused on making money? We've seen many companies start off by creating innovative products, and now they all just seem like cash grabs. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nike, etc. Do they start to become constrained by marketing? i.e. their actual innovation won't earn them many more sales, and only by marketing more they can increase sales? Do all companies that get big enough (in revenue) do this?
• csa 6y ago
  Fair warning... this guys dumpsters on a group of people who I assume are a large part of the HN demographic, often via unflattering caricatures. Agree or disagree with his opinions, this is a fairly high level of writing, and I recommend reading it for entertainment value if not for actual stimulating thought.
  • walshemj 6y ago
    Very much from the non technical side of C P Snows two nations its a very English take with its distain for "professional". Proper chaps are amateurs haven forfend that we listen to actual scientists - you can see this in Boris Johnson and cummings. And you can see proper literatures disdain for "Genre" on display here.
• TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  This is just a very extended rewrite of a stock right-wing trope: you can't trust educated people, because they're fakes and they don't understand real down-to-earth hard working middle class Americans. I don't think he's wrong about tech being primarily about increasingly automated bureaucracy, and not about open innovation - certainly not in business, and even less so socially and culturally. But ultimately this is decided by Wall St, which is controlled by money, most of which is ultimately managed by billionaires, some of whom have exotic far-right sympathies. Note there's no criticism of right wing story-telling - propaganda - outfits like the Kochs or the Mercers. The targets are exclusively on the progressive side. Trump may have won as a not-business-as-usual candidate, but that doesn't mean he was ever truly a not-business-as-usual president. It means that was the story sold to voters who felt left behind and excluded - just as Obama was sold as the black history redemption candidate, who turned out to have limited interest in doing anything too controversially concrete or transformative with the opportunity. Instead of challenging the cynical sleight-of-message involved in the industrial manipulation of all demographics, the author chooses to slant his thesis towards praising one demographic at the expense of another. It's a good attempt and more literate than most - but it's not nearly as incisive or even-handed as it pretends to be.
  • csa 6y ago
    > This is just a very extended rewrite of a stock right-wing trope: you can't trust educated people, because they're fakes and they don't understand real down-to-earth hard working middle class Americans. Interesting. My takeaway is about 180 degrees from this. I think he’s saying that the vast majority of college graduates are not particularly well-educated. Furthermore, this class of people is just filling the role of very middle class bureaucrats while being sold on the narrative of being something more (e.g., part of the creative class or upper / upper middle class), all while being incredibly conformist in their non-conformity. You say that the targets are “progressives”, but I would say his targets are “poseur progressives”. As someone who highly values the former and is ambivalent about the masses of the latter (esp. in the Bay Area), I agree with the author’s lament of the rise of faux progressives (if, in fact, that is what he is lamenting).
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• jalgos_eminator 6y ago
  > A Harvard Business Review study of common traits among CEOs found that the leaders who rose to that position fastest were those who had a “catapult experience”—a bold and potentially risky career move. Perhaps the same traits that lead to this type of bold action might also lead to very poor outcomes on a college campus. The next sentence calls Bay area programmers "dorks" who have never taken risk, but I'll take the first part at face value. I've been listening to the podcast "How I Built this with Guy Raz" where founders of companies talk about how they started/grew their successful business. It does seem like many of them either had a hard time with "regular work", or they were stuck in some job they didn't like so they decided to start a business. Many of them have college degrees, which goes against what this article is about though. The more I listen to these, the more I think that there is a "type" of person who would start a business and therefore become a CEO. I've met a few people in real life that gave me a similar vibe, and my company's founder/CEO is like this as well. I can't put my finger on why these people seem different to me, but they just seem to think about problems differently.
  • Animats 6y ago
    A Harvard Business Review study of common traits among CEOs found that the leaders who rose to that position fastest were those who had a “catapult experience”—a bold and potentially risky career move. Look for survivor bias there. You'd probably get a similar narrative by interviewing people who won big in Vegas.
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• Animats 6y ago
  That author is all over the place. It's a general rant about the obvious. At the beginning, he's on to something. Fiction has a plot shortage. "Across TV, movies, and novels it is increasingly difficult to find a compelling story that doesn’t rely on gimmicks." Movies are stuck in the Star [Wars|Trek|Gate] ditch, and the Marvel Overextended Universe. The 25th James Bond movie is supposed to come out this year, if anybody cares. Some of this is simply the entertainment glut. Everyone has seen all the possible plot twists. Go back in history and read some of the Canterbury Tales from around 1400. Read a story half way through, then ask yourself how it will end. You'll be right. There are no plot twists. Back then, entertainment was so scarce that they weren't needed. A more serious problem is that there's no shared vision of a better world. Fiction doesn't help us get to a better place. This hit science fiction first. Science fiction of the 1930s to the 1960s was quite upbeat, showing a picture of a marvelous future. It's been downhill since the 1970s. Today SF is mostly space opera. Dystopian visions used to be rare. Now most SF is dystopian. Even much non-SF is dystopian. From The Wire to Game of Thrones, the world sucks.
  • csa 6y ago
    You seem to be reviewing this essay as though it is about entertainment narratives. I see it being a fairly scathing critique of the disingenuous narrative of modern day middle class bureaucrats.
    • Animats 6y ago
      That essay is all over the place. I just started at the beginning.
  • thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > Go back in history and read some of the Canterbury Tales from around 1400. Read a story half way through, then ask yourself how it will end. You'll be right. There are no plot twists. Back then, entertainment was so scarce that they weren't needed. Well no, entertainment wasn't scarce. Different, but not scarce. Audience desires could be different, too: http://arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/2199.htm http://arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/2199.htm
• rsync 6y ago
  This article appears to be a less-well-written and less thoughtful version of the wonderful Ribbonfarm article "The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial": https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-l... Recommended.
  • blululu 6y ago
    This was worth the rather long read. Thank you for sharing.
• 082349872349872 6y ago
  1. TFA treats universities as fungible, when it is a truth universally acknowledged that most colleges won't open any particularly interesting doors. (the ones that do are a handful to a dozen which vary depending upon one's interests) 2. The upper class still has yachts, backyard tennis courts, and polo ponies. The $300 cotton T-shirts and $400 sweatpants are for the working class. where: working class - needs a job / middle class - has enough property to do without a job for few years, but couldn't maintain their lifestyle without an income / upper class - their property provides their income alternatively: working class - acquires things whose TCO doesn't involve external employment / middle class - acquires things whose TCO involves fractions of an FTE / upper class - acquires things whose TCO requires multiple FTEs
  • walshemj 6y ago
    Middle class cant stop working for a few years and life of "property" - they are effectively working class yes even you on 250k pa.
• jstewartmobile 6y ago
  He's talking about you people. So many others have reached the same conclusion.
• hootbootscoot 6y ago
  I find it amazing how James McElroy manages to blame "failed" ideologies and movements from "the counterculture(tm)" for the "Corporate Borg (tm)"'s sublation/sublimitation of the same. Yes, Levi's jeans used rock and roll and rebellion to sell jeans. What's your point, James? (Besides using more words than even I do to attempt to waffle his way around being WRONG, lol) (to anyone attempting to bring me back around to the ostensible class critique nexus of this piece, I apparently didn't get it. It went over my head. I'm kinda thick I guess.)
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• voldacar 6y ago
  This has to be the most incredible piece of writing I've read online all year. So many nuggets of insight, without any filler. I'll be keeping an eye on this author
  • ramphastidae 6y ago
    Thanks for your comment, it led me to read the article and I also came away extremely impressed.
  • ahelwer 6y ago
    If this sort of narrative-media-centered analysis of society appeals to you, you'd probably enjoy Slavoj Zizek. His documentary The Pervert's Guide to Ideology is quite enjoyable. I honestly wondered whether this was a Zizek piece at parts.
    • voldacar 6y ago
      I tend to dislike anything with a Hegelian smell to it, but thank you for the recommandation :)
  • Aeolun 6y ago
    You think? I had to stop after a few paragraphs because I didn’t feel like they were getting to the point.
    • sn41 6y ago
      That's part of the point, I think. The author does not agree that "cutting to the chase" and the "message" is the most important part of literature.
    • runawaybottle 6y ago
      The payoffs are in the pattern overlapping. Try to read it that way and you’ll see how he/she keeps aligning the parallels until it’s clear. Pretty good read, I just disagree with the conclusion (final paragraphs). One could argue the article itself is an inverting of the narrative of the narrative, and thus has nothing left to say. I’m going to confuse myself here I feel, but the article as analysis, if I’m right about itself being an inversion, has to be taken as non-analysis and just a description ultimately. It’s got nothing left to say because there’s really nothing left to say. /meta