8 ms·

This is a really well-written article. I am not sure if this spin on the cited references is novel but it is the first I am seeing any of it. I am jarred how

This is a really well-written article. I am not sure if this spin on the cited references is novel but it is the first I am seeing any of it. I am jarred how well it describes the "middle" of society, including how many of my own behaviors/beliefs are captured. One thing I am having trouble with is the connection between Michael and the "educated" ladder, even though a big portion of the article is dedicated to that. I will have to mull on it more before I can convincingly respond to "So you think Michael Scott represents the PhDs of the world?" If you are the author, kudos to you.

walshemj 6y ago
Its interesting seeing this formal non American pov and how the American Office is very denatured compared to the UK one. So "the good place" is prestige TV! would not that be more like discussing the latest "in our time" about the plague of Justinian over the water cooler ?
redisman 6y ago
The metaphor definitely breaks in the middle ladder. Why not just do labor, middle management, owners like in the first part of the piece? I get that everyone hates NYT opinion writers but that’s like 20 people - not a social class. Also do software engineers fall into upper middle class or high skilled labor? I think they’re in both. Or maybe I just don’t have any interactions with the middle ladder in real life and I’m clueless
- akhilcacharya 6y ago
  I'm convinced software engineers can be part of either of the 3 ladders, but most are in the upper middle class set.
  - niyikiza 6y ago
    Is it really the same person? - Coder/programmer (L1) - Software Engineer (L2) - Entrepreneur [in the software industry] (L3)
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  The tops of the ladder are there to show what people further down aspire to be. The idea is that if you are a building super you daydream about owning a general contractor business. If you’re a VP at an investment bank you dream of being a billionaire hedge fund manager. The conceit is that random lawyers and doctors wish they could be the kinds of lawyers and doctors that could get an Op-Ed published, but I don’t think it works. Maybe most Econ PhDs secretly want to be Paul Krugman. I doubt it, but maybe. But no way I buy most doctors secretly want to be Anthony Fauci.
- superbcarrot 6y ago
  > Why not just do labor, middle management, owners like in the first part of the piece? I think the idea is that the communication styles from the first part carry over to the second. Which means that if you're an university-educated professional or a cultural leader, you mostly communicate through baby-talk and posture-talk. At least that seems to be the author's point, I'm not sure to what extent I agree.
- gibb0n 6y ago
  High skilled labor. A lot of Software Engineers think they are highly educated intellectuals but are in reality skilled tradespeople on the tools.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    What's weird about software engineering is you can literally be on all three ladders. That high-paid 60 year old man working for his state's labor department keeping the COBOL churning out unemployment checks? High-skill labor. That university researcher who's working night and day to design a new machine learning paradigm? She's an elite creative (Hell, she might even be a Ph.D. and a blue check mark nowadays). The Stanford / UCLA / MIT dropout who builds the next Uber / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook? Working rich. At least until he/she sells the company to someone and bails out.
  - jb775 6y ago
    However, those tools are used for business purposes that create a significant amount of value for the business. And the learning curve of using them within any particular business is generally pretty high. This naturally puts software engineers in a position of high leverage, which happens to be the currency of the elite.
  - the_greyd 6y ago
    I'm surprised, personally I would put software engineer akin to a new-age factory worker, but worse for multiple reasons. This is taking into account how many new software engineers are joining and where the field is going in general, sure some are doing novel work but most are definitely not.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  It doesn't mean "Just NYT opinion writers". It means all the people who think they're leading culture around on a leash by pushing their articles in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Mother Jones etc. and so forth. And that very much is a social class, or more accurately, its a specific subset of a social class. Another subset of the same social class are book editors at the major publishing houses. Look around on LinkedIn. You'll find that easily 3 in 4 of them are female, went to a small-to-medium-sized liberal arts college, etc. They literally gatekeep both fiction and non-fiction, and its why self-publishing and alternative publishing outlets are on the rise. There are likely other subsets of this same social class that I'm unfamiliar with, but I don't generally give it much thought, because I don't care and I don't have to care. EDIT: Sorry, I meant 3 out of 4 of them are female, not 1-in-4.
  - ido 6y ago
    What is the implications of 1/4 female or liberal arts college?
    - lupire 6y ago
      A very confused sexism.
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      Sorry, I meant 3-in-4 are female, not 1-in-4. > A very confused sexism. To an uncritical thinker, it might definitely seem that way. To address the "liberal arts college" aspect, I mean specifically they're insulated from a lot of the reality of the rest of the world. I specifically mean the Dartmouths, Browns, etc. of the educational world. I mean people for whom a $200,000 education to have a $35,000 - $115,000 a year job is perfectly reasonable, because after all, they're not the ones paying for it in any capacity. Their family can easily foot the bill, and if they can't, then they end up married to a junior IB / exec type who can easily afford to pay back that pesky student loan. Obviously this skews more female because of evolutionary dynamics, but you still probably get the occasional male for whom this might be an option of some kind. So what are the implications of a majority female, thoroughly middle class-to-upper middle class group who attended the same or similar small liberals arts colleges? Homogeneity. Women are statistically more willing to conform to the group, or rather, they're higher in trait agreeableness if you want to hash it out scientifically. This means a reluctance to champion a book that could cause controversy, much less intense controversy. We're seeing this already with Penguin having to deal with employees demanding that Jordan Peterson's new book not be published. The second layer of homogeneity is that in order to do well at those colleges - to even be accepted beyond being the 'token' of your specific sub-divided little group - is that you need to speak a certain way, act a certain way, and think a certain way. That gets reinforced and becomes self-selecting. The location of the major publishing houses are all large cosmopolitan cities, cities where the concerns are, "Do I seem culturally accepting enough?", "Am I projecting the 'correct' values?", etc. You need not take my word for it though. You can find plenty of authors who complain about these sorts of things. EDIT: I should add... I know these people. I occasionally work with and consult for these people. The certainty of their positions relative to their utter lack of worldly experience is not just staggering, but offensive. I've travelled all over the world, for over 19 years. I've been to 72 countries, I've lived in 12 different nations for over a year at a time. Women and men with the kind of credentials I've mentioned above are almost always the same. They're utterly convinced of their own moral superiority, whilst also being utterly ignorant of anything outside of their little bubbles.
- Alex3917 6y ago
  > Also do software engineers fall into upper middle class or high skilled labor? The same ladder that telephone users fall on.
paultopia 6y ago
Yeah, I really want to know where the author is getting their model of PhDs. Are we talking about literature departments or chemistry labs?
- klyrs 6y ago
  Yeah, I was picturing my math education. He could probably get through calculus with cheating, tutoring, and begging. But I can't see him actually putting in the work to get through 200 level courses, much less grad courses. But, omg, I can't imagine him surviving a chem lab. The whole place would be on fire within a few minutes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

walshemj 6y ago

Its interesting seeing this formal non American pov and how the American Office is very denatured compared to the UK one. So "the good place" is prestige TV! would not that be more like discussing the latest "in our time" about the plague of Justinian over the water cooler ?

redisman 6y ago

The metaphor definitely breaks in the middle ladder. Why not just do labor, middle management, owners like in the first part of the piece? I get that everyone hates NYT opinion writers but that’s like 20 people - not a social class. Also do software engineers fall into upper middle class or high skilled labor? I think they’re in both. Or maybe I just don’t have any interactions with the middle ladder in real life and I’m clueless

akhilcacharya 6y ago
I'm convinced software engineers can be part of either of the 3 ladders, but most are in the upper middle class set.
- niyikiza 6y ago
  Is it really the same person? - Coder/programmer (L1) - Software Engineer (L2) - Entrepreneur [in the software industry] (L3)
bradleyjg 6y ago
The tops of the ladder are there to show what people further down aspire to be. The idea is that if you are a building super you daydream about owning a general contractor business. If you’re a VP at an investment bank you dream of being a billionaire hedge fund manager. The conceit is that random lawyers and doctors wish they could be the kinds of lawyers and doctors that could get an Op-Ed published, but I don’t think it works. Maybe most Econ PhDs secretly want to be Paul Krugman. I doubt it, but maybe. But no way I buy most doctors secretly want to be Anthony Fauci.
superbcarrot 6y ago
> Why not just do labor, middle management, owners like in the first part of the piece? I think the idea is that the communication styles from the first part carry over to the second. Which means that if you're an university-educated professional or a cultural leader, you mostly communicate through baby-talk and posture-talk. At least that seems to be the author's point, I'm not sure to what extent I agree.
gibb0n 6y ago
High skilled labor. A lot of Software Engineers think they are highly educated intellectuals but are in reality skilled tradespeople on the tools.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  What's weird about software engineering is you can literally be on all three ladders. That high-paid 60 year old man working for his state's labor department keeping the COBOL churning out unemployment checks? High-skill labor. That university researcher who's working night and day to design a new machine learning paradigm? She's an elite creative (Hell, she might even be a Ph.D. and a blue check mark nowadays). The Stanford / UCLA / MIT dropout who builds the next Uber / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook? Working rich. At least until he/she sells the company to someone and bails out.
- jb775 6y ago
  However, those tools are used for business purposes that create a significant amount of value for the business. And the learning curve of using them within any particular business is generally pretty high. This naturally puts software engineers in a position of high leverage, which happens to be the currency of the elite.
- the_greyd 6y ago
  I'm surprised, personally I would put software engineer akin to a new-age factory worker, but worse for multiple reasons. This is taking into account how many new software engineers are joining and where the field is going in general, sure some are doing novel work but most are definitely not.
cbozeman 6y ago
It doesn't mean "Just NYT opinion writers". It means all the people who think they're leading culture around on a leash by pushing their articles in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Mother Jones etc. and so forth. And that very much is a social class, or more accurately, its a specific subset of a social class. Another subset of the same social class are book editors at the major publishing houses. Look around on LinkedIn. You'll find that easily 3 in 4 of them are female, went to a small-to-medium-sized liberal arts college, etc. They literally gatekeep both fiction and non-fiction, and its why self-publishing and alternative publishing outlets are on the rise. There are likely other subsets of this same social class that I'm unfamiliar with, but I don't generally give it much thought, because I don't care and I don't have to care. EDIT: Sorry, I meant 3 out of 4 of them are female, not 1-in-4.
- ido 6y ago
  What is the implications of 1/4 female or liberal arts college?
  - lupire 6y ago
    A very confused sexism.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    Sorry, I meant 3-in-4 are female, not 1-in-4. > A very confused sexism. To an uncritical thinker, it might definitely seem that way. To address the "liberal arts college" aspect, I mean specifically they're insulated from a lot of the reality of the rest of the world. I specifically mean the Dartmouths, Browns, etc. of the educational world. I mean people for whom a $200,000 education to have a $35,000 - $115,000 a year job is perfectly reasonable, because after all, they're not the ones paying for it in any capacity. Their family can easily foot the bill, and if they can't, then they end up married to a junior IB / exec type who can easily afford to pay back that pesky student loan. Obviously this skews more female because of evolutionary dynamics, but you still probably get the occasional male for whom this might be an option of some kind. So what are the implications of a majority female, thoroughly middle class-to-upper middle class group who attended the same or similar small liberals arts colleges? Homogeneity. Women are statistically more willing to conform to the group, or rather, they're higher in trait agreeableness if you want to hash it out scientifically. This means a reluctance to champion a book that could cause controversy, much less intense controversy. We're seeing this already with Penguin having to deal with employees demanding that Jordan Peterson's new book not be published. The second layer of homogeneity is that in order to do well at those colleges - to even be accepted beyond being the 'token' of your specific sub-divided little group - is that you need to speak a certain way, act a certain way, and think a certain way. That gets reinforced and becomes self-selecting. The location of the major publishing houses are all large cosmopolitan cities, cities where the concerns are, "Do I seem culturally accepting enough?", "Am I projecting the 'correct' values?", etc. You need not take my word for it though. You can find plenty of authors who complain about these sorts of things. EDIT: I should add... I know these people. I occasionally work with and consult for these people. The certainty of their positions relative to their utter lack of worldly experience is not just staggering, but offensive. I've travelled all over the world, for over 19 years. I've been to 72 countries, I've lived in 12 different nations for over a year at a time. Women and men with the kind of credentials I've mentioned above are almost always the same. They're utterly convinced of their own moral superiority, whilst also being utterly ignorant of anything outside of their little bubbles.
Alex3917 6y ago
> Also do software engineers fall into upper middle class or high skilled labor? The same ladder that telephone users fall on.

paultopia 6y ago

Yeah, I really want to know where the author is getting their model of PhDs. Are we talking about literature departments or chemistry labs?

klyrs 6y ago
Yeah, I was picturing my math education. He could probably get through calculus with cheating, tutoring, and begging. But I can't see him actually putting in the work to get through 200 level courses, much less grad courses. But, omg, I can't imagine him surviving a chem lab. The whole place would be on fire within a few minutes.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]