> Almost all middle-earning but high-productivity jobs will have a legion of support staff earning almost exactly the same wage but doing nothing that is produc

> Almost all middle-earning but high-productivity jobs will have a legion of support staff earning almost exactly the same wage but doing nothing that is productive in itself. Gotta be somewhat careful about these kinds of characterizations, though. A lot of support staff may not be doing things that are directly producing profitable output for the company, but they still provide necessary services (and, well, support) that enable the people who are "line workers" to be more, and more consistently, productive. A great example is IT, especially in a non-tech-oriented company. Without a competent IT department, your workers will struggle every time there's a bug, or the power goes out, or they forget their passwords. And yet, as has been seen all too often, IT is a "cost center". And, indeed, it's not at all uncommon for there to be many incompetent IT people in a given large company, who are exactly the kind of unproductive drag on the business that you describe. My point, ultimately, is that any attempt to divide employees into "produces value, good for the company" and "unproductive, bad for the company" cannot be done by simple categorization; it requires actually evaluating the individuals' contributions. Which, exactly as you say, far too few managers are actually capable of doing.