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My dad had a manager recently that he started calling "VPGPT" behind his back. He felt like the guy primarily spoke in truisms and with long-winded statements

My dad had a manager recently that he started calling "VPGPT" behind his back. He felt like the guy primarily spoke in truisms and with long-winded statements that ultimately said very little but gave the illusion of having depth. He wasn't a huge fan.

Aurornis 2y ago
I had one of those. I thought he was fooling upper management until I started working directly with the CTO, who was very open about the fact that this VP was more about performance than execution. He explained that the guy’s overwhelming desire to look good and be viewed as a thought leader also made him very receptive to incentives. You could give him a task, tell him it was important for his career, and he’d get it done because he was so afraid of looking bad. If it was something he could write about on LinkedIn or his personal newsletter, even better. The challenge was setting the incentives correctly so he couldn’t game them. He was tasked with hiring a team to accomplish some specific goal once and the first set of people he tried to hire were not qualified at all, they were just the first people he could get to interview and want to join. You had to watch him like a hawk to make sure he wasn’t running yet another performative game. The other weird part is that a lot of candidates were really impressed by him. He dressed well and had hair that obviously took a long time to do every morning and he spoke with confidence. This was remarkably effective at convincing many candidates that he knew what he was doing and could run a tight ship. Lot of disappointed people trying to leave his team after the first 6 months.
- mjburgess 2y ago
  They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their desks wide and the ties on their garments long; they love the place of honor at corporate retreats and the most important seats in the interviews; they love to be greeted with respect in the meeting rooms and to be called a Leader by others. ...the more things change, the more they stay the same...
  - tombert 2y ago
    “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”
    - jondwillis 2y ago
      1971 was such a good year for music (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_in_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_in_music and Apple TV+ came out with https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/1971-the-year-that-music-changed-everything/episodes-images/ https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/1971-the-year-that-mus... a few years ago)
  - jean__meslier 2y ago
    Matthew 23:4, nice.
empath75 2y ago
It used to be the case that speaking in that register was a strong signal of a social pedigree and an expensive education. Now it's a signal of people being brainless and easily replaceable. You're also seeing it in politics where politicians that don't think before they speak too much are seen as more authentic and competent than ones that hire teams of consultants to carefully massage every statement they make.
- babyshake 2y ago
  This effect will probably be more pronounced in coming years. Being able to speak and act in ways that are obviously not AI.
  - empath75 2y ago
    The thing is that AIs are also good at mimicking informal/off-the-cuff speech, too. And people are lazy, so they'll fall back on "casual" cliches, which AIs (and consultant-driven politicians) will be just as good at mimicking. It's going to be the rare person who can stay ahead of that. It'll be an endless treadmill.
- thundergolfer 2y ago
  > It used to be the case that speaking in that register was a strong signal of a social pedigree and an expensive education. It's not the same register. There's a vast difference between the extemporaneous speech of the old school patricians and today's C-suite corp-speak. Here's Robert F Kennedy Jr. speaking off the cuff at a public event moments after hearing that MLK had been assassinated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0&t=238s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0&t=238s. That's the speaking style of social pedigree and an expensive education. You'll tend to find it contains lifts of poetry, like Kennedy's evocation of Aeschylus, and little reference to 'synergy', 'collaboration', 'efficiency', etc.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Maybe our standards are rock bottom now, but that speech did not seem to me to be "off the cuff." It seemed rehearsed, polished, edited and wordsmithed, like any other prepared speech by a politician. If he was truly winging it, then wow, what a talent!
bufferoverflow 2y ago
> the guy primarily spoke in truisms and with long-winded statements that ultimately said very little but gave the illusion of having depth. The term for that is deepety. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity

Aurornis 2y ago

I had one of those. I thought he was fooling upper management until I started working directly with the CTO, who was very open about the fact that this VP was more about performance than execution. He explained that the guy’s overwhelming desire to look good and be viewed as a thought leader also made him very receptive to incentives. You could give him a task, tell him it was important for his career, and he’d get it done because he was so afraid of looking bad. If it was something he could write about on LinkedIn or his personal newsletter, even better. The challenge was setting the incentives correctly so he couldn’t game them. He was tasked with hiring a team to accomplish some specific goal once and the first set of people he tried to hire were not qualified at all, they were just the first people he could get to interview and want to join. You had to watch him like a hawk to make sure he wasn’t running yet another performative game. The other weird part is that a lot of candidates were really impressed by him. He dressed well and had hair that obviously took a long time to do every morning and he spoke with confidence. This was remarkably effective at convincing many candidates that he knew what he was doing and could run a tight ship. Lot of disappointed people trying to leave his team after the first 6 months.

mjburgess 2y ago
They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their desks wide and the ties on their garments long; they love the place of honor at corporate retreats and the most important seats in the interviews; they love to be greeted with respect in the meeting rooms and to be called a Leader by others. ...the more things change, the more they stay the same...
- tombert 2y ago
  “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”
  - jondwillis 2y ago
    1971 was such a good year for music (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_in_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_in_music and Apple TV+ came out with https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/1971-the-year-that-music-changed-everything/episodes-images/ https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/1971-the-year-that-mus... a few years ago)
- jean__meslier 2y ago
  Matthew 23:4, nice.

empath75 2y ago

It used to be the case that speaking in that register was a strong signal of a social pedigree and an expensive education. Now it's a signal of people being brainless and easily replaceable. You're also seeing it in politics where politicians that don't think before they speak too much are seen as more authentic and competent than ones that hire teams of consultants to carefully massage every statement they make.

babyshake 2y ago
This effect will probably be more pronounced in coming years. Being able to speak and act in ways that are obviously not AI.
- empath75 2y ago
  The thing is that AIs are also good at mimicking informal/off-the-cuff speech, too. And people are lazy, so they'll fall back on "casual" cliches, which AIs (and consultant-driven politicians) will be just as good at mimicking. It's going to be the rare person who can stay ahead of that. It'll be an endless treadmill.
thundergolfer 2y ago
> It used to be the case that speaking in that register was a strong signal of a social pedigree and an expensive education. It's not the same register. There's a vast difference between the extemporaneous speech of the old school patricians and today's C-suite corp-speak. Here's Robert F Kennedy Jr. speaking off the cuff at a public event moments after hearing that MLK had been assassinated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0&t=238s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0&t=238s. That's the speaking style of social pedigree and an expensive education. You'll tend to find it contains lifts of poetry, like Kennedy's evocation of Aeschylus, and little reference to 'synergy', 'collaboration', 'efficiency', etc.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Maybe our standards are rock bottom now, but that speech did not seem to me to be "off the cuff." It seemed rehearsed, polished, edited and wordsmithed, like any other prepared speech by a politician. If he was truly winging it, then wow, what a talent!

bufferoverflow 2y ago

> the guy primarily spoke in truisms and with long-winded statements that ultimately said very little but gave the illusion of having depth. The term for that is deepety. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity