6 ms·

My former manager organized an offsite where we all watched Office Space together. Did she just not get it? Or did she get it, and it was some weird flex makin

by yojo 9mo ago

My former manager organized an offsite where we all watched Office Space together. Did she just not get it? Or did she get it, and it was some weird flex making us watch it with her? I still don’t know.

tsunamifury 9mo ago
Did you not realize we’ve built a system where everyone is both oppressor and oppressed. Did you not think she too had an idiot boss?
- helterskelter 9mo ago
  Shit rolls downhill...and most people just try to keep an eye on where the next turd comes from without bothering to watch where it goes after it's past them.
  - wordpad 9mo ago
    That's... So wise... Where is that from
    - tejtm 9mo ago
      from how to be a plumber -- Shit flows downhill, payday is on Friday.
      - buildsjets 9mo ago
        You forgot the most important rule of plumbing: Don’t bite your fingernails.
- booleandilemma 9mo ago
  Not enough people realize this, unfortunately. If they did our system would be flatter than it currently is. You wouldn't have "peaks", so to speak.
  - eru 9mo ago
    Well, driving an Uber is pretty flat.
Aurornis 9mo ago
Your manager had a boss, too. She had to deal with the oddities and frustrations of corporate life and expectations, too. Even your CEO has a board to deal with. I always think it's strange when people draw a mental dividing line between ICs and managers and think people on the other side are living in totally different experiences of the world.
- tonyedgecombe 9mo ago
  Middle management rarely has enough power to make any changes. They have to dish out whatever bullshit is handed down to them from above.
  - xp84 9mo ago
    Can confirm, as an EM this is very true. The best you can hope for is that we're transparent with you about the BS and don't BS you. That's what I try to do.
- yojo 9mo ago
  I get that we’re all part of the same system, but I consider Office Space a nihilistic rejection of the entirety of that system. It’s not just “my boss is dumb,” it’s “this whole system is anti-human and dumb, and we’d all be happier working outside with our muscles.” And it’s totally appropriate for that message to resonate with my boss, but it’s weird for my boss to make that message the focus of what is ostensibly a corporate team-building event. Edit: just realized I used a “it’s not just this, it’s that” construction. I swear I’m not an LLM, but maybe their prose is infecting my brain.
  - Aurornis 9mo ago
    > but it’s weird for my boss to make that message the focus of what is ostensibly a corporate team-building event. Having been a manager: I bet your boss didn't want to be there any more than you did. They were forced to do corporate team-building and they recognized the absurdity of it all. So they tried to come up with something entertaining that they could claim was passably work-related. They were trying to do their best by you within the constraints of what was mandated by their job. This looks like a nice gesture. You are too occupied viewing your manager as "the other" to recognize when they were trying to bond and do something nice for the team within the constraints of their job. You're lucky. At corporate team-building retreats I never got to watch any fun movies. One had us listen to lectures by a manager whose primary experience was as a little league coach and who thought leading his team was the same thing. The other involved the manager giving us a psychology test of his own creation and trying to lecture us about what he thought our learning styles and weaknesses were based on all the different self-help books he read.
muyuu 9mo ago
I don't have stats to back it up, but many people claim that Office Space made a lot of people resign their cubicle jobs and this was a sharp effect on its release.
- astura 9mo ago
  Office Space was released in 1999, at the peak of the dot-com bubble. So, of course office jobs (particularly software jobs) would decrease when that bubble popped. But it's not as a result of that movie.
  - margalabargala 9mo ago
    The specific claim made was a spike in voluntary resignations, which should be distinguishable from any bubble popping effect.
  - muyuu 9mo ago
    I specifically avoided making the claim because you really cannot prove either way I remember when it was released, I graduated that year, and I remember the reactions at the time it would still be anecdotal and it's hard to know how many people did in fact resign as a result of the impact from this film, and if it's something that would make any difference in the grand scheme of things
ivanhoe 9mo ago
Perhaps she just had a good sense of humor? It's a great movie after all..
johnvanommen 9mo ago
> my former manager organized an offsite where we all watched Office Space together. Working in management is infinitely more soul crushing than being Peter Gibbons. I literally brought up The Peter Principle when I quit a job like that. Office Space is a parable about a software developer who doesn’t want to be promoted beyond his core competency. Peter Gibbons is fighting the Peter Principle.
- kcplate 9mo ago
  > Office Space is a parable about a software developer who doesn’t want to be promoted beyond his core competency. I always thought Lumberg gets a somewhat un-derserved bad rap in that flick. He is characterized as the villain and of course is—from Peter’s perspective which is where the story is told. But within that universe and at a 10,000 foot POV was he? He seems to be the only one within the corporation that is actually functional, capable, motivated and excelling in his role. No doubt he is a dick, but that’s just part of his role and he’s good at it. He’s a cog, knows he’s a cog, but realizes the machine still needs to run. He recognizes that Peter has hit that competence/incompetence point. He also realizes the Bob’s are incompetent, but powerful. He really is the only one that seems to realize everything that is going on.
  - pas 9mo ago
    His communication deficit was too big to actually be a good manager, no? (Well, maybe not. Maybe being soul-crushingly efficient is optimal if you know most people will fluctuate out soon anyway, so your lack of ability to actually build a rapport with them is not a material impediment to deliver results sustainably.)
driverdan 9mo ago
I watched Office Space with a bunch of coworkers at a previous job. It's a funny movie that most people in startups view as a parody of big company office life. Our company didn't function like the movie.
themadturk 9mo ago
You sound as though you worked for one of my managers, though he just gave everyone a copy of the DVD for Christmas one year. The thing is, he definitely got it, knew he was part of the system, and did his best to take care of the people working for him.

by yojo 9mo ago

tsunamifury 9mo ago

Did you not realize we’ve built a system where everyone is both oppressor and oppressed. Did you not think she too had an idiot boss?

helterskelter 9mo ago
Shit rolls downhill...and most people just try to keep an eye on where the next turd comes from without bothering to watch where it goes after it's past them.
- wordpad 9mo ago
  That's... So wise... Where is that from
  - tejtm 9mo ago
    from how to be a plumber -- Shit flows downhill, payday is on Friday.
    - buildsjets 9mo ago
      You forgot the most important rule of plumbing: Don’t bite your fingernails.
booleandilemma 9mo ago
Not enough people realize this, unfortunately. If they did our system would be flatter than it currently is. You wouldn't have "peaks", so to speak.
- eru 9mo ago
  Well, driving an Uber is pretty flat.

Aurornis 9mo ago

Your manager had a boss, too. She had to deal with the oddities and frustrations of corporate life and expectations, too. Even your CEO has a board to deal with. I always think it's strange when people draw a mental dividing line between ICs and managers and think people on the other side are living in totally different experiences of the world.

tonyedgecombe 9mo ago
Middle management rarely has enough power to make any changes. They have to dish out whatever bullshit is handed down to them from above.
- xp84 9mo ago
  Can confirm, as an EM this is very true. The best you can hope for is that we're transparent with you about the BS and don't BS you. That's what I try to do.
yojo 9mo ago
I get that we’re all part of the same system, but I consider Office Space a nihilistic rejection of the entirety of that system. It’s not just “my boss is dumb,” it’s “this whole system is anti-human and dumb, and we’d all be happier working outside with our muscles.” And it’s totally appropriate for that message to resonate with my boss, but it’s weird for my boss to make that message the focus of what is ostensibly a corporate team-building event. Edit: just realized I used a “it’s not just this, it’s that” construction. I swear I’m not an LLM, but maybe their prose is infecting my brain.
- Aurornis 9mo ago
  > but it’s weird for my boss to make that message the focus of what is ostensibly a corporate team-building event. Having been a manager: I bet your boss didn't want to be there any more than you did. They were forced to do corporate team-building and they recognized the absurdity of it all. So they tried to come up with something entertaining that they could claim was passably work-related. They were trying to do their best by you within the constraints of what was mandated by their job. This looks like a nice gesture. You are too occupied viewing your manager as "the other" to recognize when they were trying to bond and do something nice for the team within the constraints of their job. You're lucky. At corporate team-building retreats I never got to watch any fun movies. One had us listen to lectures by a manager whose primary experience was as a little league coach and who thought leading his team was the same thing. The other involved the manager giving us a psychology test of his own creation and trying to lecture us about what he thought our learning styles and weaknesses were based on all the different self-help books he read.

muyuu 9mo ago

I don't have stats to back it up, but many people claim that Office Space made a lot of people resign their cubicle jobs and this was a sharp effect on its release.

astura 9mo ago
Office Space was released in 1999, at the peak of the dot-com bubble. So, of course office jobs (particularly software jobs) would decrease when that bubble popped. But it's not as a result of that movie.
- margalabargala 9mo ago
  The specific claim made was a spike in voluntary resignations, which should be distinguishable from any bubble popping effect.
- muyuu 9mo ago
  I specifically avoided making the claim because you really cannot prove either way I remember when it was released, I graduated that year, and I remember the reactions at the time it would still be anecdotal and it's hard to know how many people did in fact resign as a result of the impact from this film, and if it's something that would make any difference in the grand scheme of things

ivanhoe 9mo ago

Perhaps she just had a good sense of humor? It's a great movie after all..

johnvanommen 9mo ago

> my former manager organized an offsite where we all watched Office Space together. Working in management is infinitely more soul crushing than being Peter Gibbons. I literally brought up The Peter Principle when I quit a job like that. Office Space is a parable about a software developer who doesn’t want to be promoted beyond his core competency. Peter Gibbons is fighting the Peter Principle.

kcplate 9mo ago
> Office Space is a parable about a software developer who doesn’t want to be promoted beyond his core competency. I always thought Lumberg gets a somewhat un-derserved bad rap in that flick. He is characterized as the villain and of course is—from Peter’s perspective which is where the story is told. But within that universe and at a 10,000 foot POV was he? He seems to be the only one within the corporation that is actually functional, capable, motivated and excelling in his role. No doubt he is a dick, but that’s just part of his role and he’s good at it. He’s a cog, knows he’s a cog, but realizes the machine still needs to run. He recognizes that Peter has hit that competence/incompetence point. He also realizes the Bob’s are incompetent, but powerful. He really is the only one that seems to realize everything that is going on.
- pas 9mo ago
  His communication deficit was too big to actually be a good manager, no? (Well, maybe not. Maybe being soul-crushingly efficient is optimal if you know most people will fluctuate out soon anyway, so your lack of ability to actually build a rapport with them is not a material impediment to deliver results sustainably.)

driverdan 9mo ago

I watched Office Space with a bunch of coworkers at a previous job. It's a funny movie that most people in startups view as a parody of big company office life. Our company didn't function like the movie.

themadturk 9mo ago

You sound as though you worked for one of my managers, though he just gave everyone a copy of the DVD for Christmas one year. The thing is, he definitely got it, knew he was part of the system, and did his best to take care of the people working for him.