This blog post on being an employee in the corporate world: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/

This blog post on being an employee in the corporate world: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... It introduced me to the idea that most employees are "economic losers" who are "people who have struck bad bargains economically – giving up capitalist striving for steady paychecks." (At least in the early - middle life cycle of a company). It encapsulates this as "The Gervais Principle": Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves. (The terminology is quite specific to the article - i.e. not sociopaths in the movie-cliche view). I won't attempt to summarise the article here. Suffice to say it altered my thinking about future roles. Search HN for many prior discussions here of that post.