There's no inherent reason that people have to be total pricks in the workplace. there's some economic theory that's inconsistent with that claim. in short, i

There's no inherent reason that people have to be total pricks in the workplace. there's some economic theory that's inconsistent with that claim. in short, in the absence of an ability to concretely measure work product, firms are forced to default to tournament style pay. e.g. a > b > c ... a gets paid more than b, b gets paid more than c, etc etc. where work product can be quantified (e.g. installing windshields) and you can explicitly tie pay to performance (i.e. you get paid per windshield) you don't have a problem. Top performers get paid more, poor performers get paid less and maybe go do something else. As soon as measuring the value of work product gets murky that no longer works. Hello, tournament pay. This also explains why backstabbing work environments are so typical. Nothing evil, just normal incentives at work.