5 ms·

A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System (2001)

88 points by poppingtonic 12y ago

gaius 12y ago
a baccalaureate degree in Interdisciplinary Studies Happily all you need to know about this article, is in the first line.
- throwaway038593 12y ago
  What does that have to do with the content of the article? Do you feel that the degree someone has is the sole qualifier of what a person may comment on? If so, what is your degree in? And why do you feel that your degree gives you the qualifications necessary to comment on this article?
  - beat 12y ago
    Demanding a degree to "qualify" to discuss things that ought to be patently obvious to smart people is a good example of Loyalist thinking.
    - gaius 12y ago
      A person independently wealthy enough to take not one but two degrees with no vocational content, writes a sneering article about the poor plebs who have to work for a living. You might as well ask the Queen of England what it's like to work in a shop.
      - walshemj 12y ago
        Not just me that got that vibe from the article then - its more of a personal rant rather than a considered look at they ways in which salaried professions can and are taken advantage of by employers. Not that the union busting mentioned in the article isn't worthy of interest.
greenyoda 12y ago
Having read Disciplined Minds a while ago, I thought the link at the bottom of page, which leads to the story of Schmidt's legal case against his employer, was more interesting than the review itself: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/schmidt/ http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/schmidt/ See also Schmidt's own site, http://disciplinedminds.com http://disciplinedminds.com.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  The chronology is fascinating and horrifying. "Physics Today Editor Stephen G. Benka breaks up two conversations between Schmidt and coworker Toni Feder after working hours. Benka bans private conversations in the workplace, saying that all conversations between staff members must be open to monitoring by management. When Schmidt asks Benka why, Benka refers to the organizing activity that took place the previous year and says he doesn't want that to happen again." Geez, when you're at the point of banning private conversations among your employees, you should really be thinking there's something seriously wrong with what you're doing.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/schmidt/responses/victory-letter.html http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/schmidt/responses/... "While employed at Physics Today, Jeff led a contentious effort to force the magazine to change its long-standing pattern of hiring and training only whites as editors, and to live up to its claim of being an affirmative-action employer. These actions were part of the expression for which Jeff was fired" Maintaining a physics magazine as a whites-only environment is the kind of thing that requires that level of employee repression. It's all about ethics in physics journalism.
MarkL4 12y ago
The book itself is excellent, one of my favorite books. It reads like Foucault if Foucault were a physicist.
- shoo 12y ago
  Having read Disciplined Minds, I'll take that as a strong recommendation to read Foucault!
  - nmyk 12y ago
    You might start with Discipline and Punish, a history of the western (in particular, the French) penal system, drawing many parallels to educational, military, and medical institutions as they are all facets of an overarching technology of power that has emerged over the past couple of centuries. Be warned: it will illuminate White Collar Hell like nothing else.
michaelochurch 12y ago
Ah, this. To be fair, I don't think the system is "soul battering" for most people. A large number of people-- more than one would like-- are perfectly happy to trade their autonomy and freedom for a bit of (temporary) security in social status and income. That might be one of the more surprising (and disturbing) realizations about white-collar hell: most people don't perceive it as a hell. They're fine, they're happy, and while they're being drained of the traits that made them interesting people when they were younger, it happens so slowly (boiled frog) that they neither notice nor care. What I think is a key insight in his work is on the politics of "not getting political". Please correct me if I'm butchering the concept, but part of the process of turning salaried professionals into obedient drones is to convince them that it's undignified to "get political" at the workplace. The problem is that the people in charge can easily define their position as the default, apolitical one and any opposition as "getting involved in politics". To me, whenever a hiring manager says that there's "no politics" at his company, that's a strong sign of a toxic environment. I'd rather work for someone who's politically aware and can help me navigate what politics exists (there's always a political environment) than one who is delusional enough to think that an organization of 10 or 50 or 200 or 20,000 people can have "no politics". Too often, "there's no politics here" means "I'm in the in-crowd and get my way, so 'political' decisions-- meaning ones that I don't like-- are rarely made". This is how I feel about Silicon Valley "meritocracy". The only people who believe in it are those who've been in the in-crowd for 20+ years and lost touch with reality. They think that they live in a politics-free zone because they're oblivious to their own privilege.
- ryguytilidie 12y ago
  Your last line reminds me a lot of when PG said that most founders are really nice people who are rarely "mean". Why in the fuck would a founder even consider being mean to one of the most powerful people in the industry? It just seemed to lack the self awareness that founders probably treat him differently than the average person they interact with.
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    I'm working on a blog post about this. The people who tend to succeed in the corporate world are (a) not needlessly mean, (b) rarely mean to those in power, but (c) generally avoidant of close personal relationships. A major element of whether one is selected for invitation into closed, snooty clubs (or promoted into management) is whether there's a suspicion that you'll invite too many (presumably not deserving) friends. People who are "sticky" don't get promoted. People who might tip off their reports about an impending layoff aren't made managers. You have to be cold, for organizational ascent, but not a dick. In environments of heterogeneity, warmth is actually an advantage because people who are personable and giving tend to have a wider array of connections, and that means more information, better ideas, and an easier time staying up to date. The old Silicon Valley actually was that way, but for the past 20 years, it's been functioning as one (however postmodern) corporate organization. I've come to the conclusion that the only way to save Silicon Valley is to pass a law that makes investors liable for certain kinds of founder misconduct, including sexual harassment. For example, a frat boy like Spiegel would actually probably not get promoted in a larger corporation, if his true colors came out, because he's an HR liability. But investors can fund people like him and wash their hands of the cultural issues created by funding frat boys. That's a real problem, and it ought to be fixed. Since founders are middle managers in the VC-funded meta-company that now exists in the Valley, it's only reasonable to acknowledge them as such, and pass liabilities up the chain into the executive ranks (investors).
javajosh 12y ago
This is another good data-point for my lay-thesis that the dominant tension of our time is between principle and loyalty. Snowden is the ultimate embodiment of this tension. Most other recent news can be seen through this lens as well, particularly the problems with the US criminal justice system, or the controversy over the release of the recent torture report. The "loyalists" are ascendant (they usually are), and have terrible, strong defenses; the "principled" are a fairly rag-tag bunch, have inherently smaller organizations, although they do manage to organize themselves to some extent (the EFF and the ACLU being good examples). Indeed, the biggest weapon the principled have is to force the loyalists to actually (ab)use their overwhelming power to the extent that they offend the public (who are only loyalists within their own narrow context) and so swell the ranks of the principled against them. This paper is about the travails of being principled in a loyalist organization. It is an incredibly uncomfortable position to be in, and comes at great cost. To those looking to minimize their personal stress, adopting the loyalist viewpoint and the requisite willful ignorance of the moral hazards and externalities it entails is the better, more rational option. Most people in that position are principled at great personal cost. This way of seeing allows us to make better sense an array of current events. And indeed, we can come to realize that everyone has both loyal and principled aspects. To that end everyone should know precisely how far their loyalty goes. What actions could your organization take that so violated your principles that you would take action against it? For example, if you are in the Army or the CIA, would you torture someone if ordered? If you're a police officer, would you stay silent if you saw your department bury acts of police violence that you knew to be illegal? If you're a financial analyst or regulator, would you change your analysis to suit your management? If you're in the NSA, would you give evidence against Americans suspected of drug trafficking to the DEA, knowing they will use "parallel construction" to hide the source? To hardcore loyalists, the answers to these questions are unequivocal "yes". The reason is a mixture of indoctrination, rationalization, selfishness and simple cowardice. But it's not "us" vs "them": almost everyone is a hard-core loyalist within their particular organization, although this is particularly true where there are no competing employers. It is almost impossible for most people to risk their decades-long career over a matter of principle, no matter how bad it gets. It's not right, but it's human. What can save the day is that loyalty is limited to personal context; this is good because it allows loyalists in one org to be principled about other organizations' behaviors. In other words, there are CIA employees who are disgusted by wall street's systematic, unchecked fraud, just as there are wall street employees who descry CIA torture and cover-up, and that's good. Culturally need to revere the people throughout history who've taken the hard path, the one's who've said "no" to unprincipled action, which always comes at great personal cost. If there was ever a "noble warrior" culture, let it honor the ones who served Principle not because it was easy, but because it was right. Sorry for the long post.

88 points by poppingtonic 12y ago

gaius 12y ago

a baccalaureate degree in Interdisciplinary Studies Happily all you need to know about this article, is in the first line.

throwaway038593 12y ago
What does that have to do with the content of the article? Do you feel that the degree someone has is the sole qualifier of what a person may comment on? If so, what is your degree in? And why do you feel that your degree gives you the qualifications necessary to comment on this article?
- beat 12y ago
  Demanding a degree to "qualify" to discuss things that ought to be patently obvious to smart people is a good example of Loyalist thinking.
  - gaius 12y ago
    A person independently wealthy enough to take not one but two degrees with no vocational content, writes a sneering article about the poor plebs who have to work for a living. You might as well ask the Queen of England what it's like to work in a shop.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      Not just me that got that vibe from the article then - its more of a personal rant rather than a considered look at they ways in which salaried professions can and are taken advantage of by employers. Not that the union busting mentioned in the article isn't worthy of interest.

greenyoda 12y ago

Having read Disciplined Minds a while ago, I thought the link at the bottom of page, which leads to the story of Schmidt's legal case against his employer, was more interesting than the review itself: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/schmidt/ http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/schmidt/ See also Schmidt's own site, http://disciplinedminds.com http://disciplinedminds.com.

waterlesscloud 12y ago
The chronology is fascinating and horrifying. "Physics Today Editor Stephen G. Benka breaks up two conversations between Schmidt and coworker Toni Feder after working hours. Benka bans private conversations in the workplace, saying that all conversations between staff members must be open to monitoring by management. When Schmidt asks Benka why, Benka refers to the organizing activity that took place the previous year and says he doesn't want that to happen again." Geez, when you're at the point of banning private conversations among your employees, you should really be thinking there's something seriously wrong with what you're doing.
- pjc50 12y ago
  http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/schmidt/responses/victory-letter.html http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/schmidt/responses/... "While employed at Physics Today, Jeff led a contentious effort to force the magazine to change its long-standing pattern of hiring and training only whites as editors, and to live up to its claim of being an affirmative-action employer. These actions were part of the expression for which Jeff was fired" Maintaining a physics magazine as a whites-only environment is the kind of thing that requires that level of employee repression. It's all about ethics in physics journalism.

MarkL4 12y ago

The book itself is excellent, one of my favorite books. It reads like Foucault if Foucault were a physicist.

shoo 12y ago
Having read Disciplined Minds, I'll take that as a strong recommendation to read Foucault!
- nmyk 12y ago
  You might start with Discipline and Punish, a history of the western (in particular, the French) penal system, drawing many parallels to educational, military, and medical institutions as they are all facets of an overarching technology of power that has emerged over the past couple of centuries. Be warned: it will illuminate White Collar Hell like nothing else.

michaelochurch 12y ago

Ah, this. To be fair, I don't think the system is "soul battering" for most people. A large number of people-- more than one would like-- are perfectly happy to trade their autonomy and freedom for a bit of (temporary) security in social status and income. That might be one of the more surprising (and disturbing) realizations about white-collar hell: most people don't perceive it as a hell. They're fine, they're happy, and while they're being drained of the traits that made them interesting people when they were younger, it happens so slowly (boiled frog) that they neither notice nor care. What I think is a key insight in his work is on the politics of "not getting political". Please correct me if I'm butchering the concept, but part of the process of turning salaried professionals into obedient drones is to convince them that it's undignified to "get political" at the workplace. The problem is that the people in charge can easily define their position as the default, apolitical one and any opposition as "getting involved in politics". To me, whenever a hiring manager says that there's "no politics" at his company, that's a strong sign of a toxic environment. I'd rather work for someone who's politically aware and can help me navigate what politics exists (there's always a political environment) than one who is delusional enough to think that an organization of 10 or 50 or 200 or 20,000 people can have "no politics". Too often, "there's no politics here" means "I'm in the in-crowd and get my way, so 'political' decisions-- meaning ones that I don't like-- are rarely made". This is how I feel about Silicon Valley "meritocracy". The only people who believe in it are those who've been in the in-crowd for 20+ years and lost touch with reality. They think that they live in a politics-free zone because they're oblivious to their own privilege.

ryguytilidie 12y ago
Your last line reminds me a lot of when PG said that most founders are really nice people who are rarely "mean". Why in the fuck would a founder even consider being mean to one of the most powerful people in the industry? It just seemed to lack the self awareness that founders probably treat him differently than the average person they interact with.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  I'm working on a blog post about this. The people who tend to succeed in the corporate world are (a) not needlessly mean, (b) rarely mean to those in power, but (c) generally avoidant of close personal relationships. A major element of whether one is selected for invitation into closed, snooty clubs (or promoted into management) is whether there's a suspicion that you'll invite too many (presumably not deserving) friends. People who are "sticky" don't get promoted. People who might tip off their reports about an impending layoff aren't made managers. You have to be cold, for organizational ascent, but not a dick. In environments of heterogeneity, warmth is actually an advantage because people who are personable and giving tend to have a wider array of connections, and that means more information, better ideas, and an easier time staying up to date. The old Silicon Valley actually was that way, but for the past 20 years, it's been functioning as one (however postmodern) corporate organization. I've come to the conclusion that the only way to save Silicon Valley is to pass a law that makes investors liable for certain kinds of founder misconduct, including sexual harassment. For example, a frat boy like Spiegel would actually probably not get promoted in a larger corporation, if his true colors came out, because he's an HR liability. But investors can fund people like him and wash their hands of the cultural issues created by funding frat boys. That's a real problem, and it ought to be fixed. Since founders are middle managers in the VC-funded meta-company that now exists in the Valley, it's only reasonable to acknowledge them as such, and pass liabilities up the chain into the executive ranks (investors).

javajosh 12y ago

This is another good data-point for my lay-thesis that the dominant tension of our time is between principle and loyalty. Snowden is the ultimate embodiment of this tension. Most other recent news can be seen through this lens as well, particularly the problems with the US criminal justice system, or the controversy over the release of the recent torture report. The "loyalists" are ascendant (they usually are), and have terrible, strong defenses; the "principled" are a fairly rag-tag bunch, have inherently smaller organizations, although they do manage to organize themselves to some extent (the EFF and the ACLU being good examples). Indeed, the biggest weapon the principled have is to force the loyalists to actually (ab)use their overwhelming power to the extent that they offend the public (who are only loyalists within their own narrow context) and so swell the ranks of the principled against them. This paper is about the travails of being principled in a loyalist organization. It is an incredibly uncomfortable position to be in, and comes at great cost. To those looking to minimize their personal stress, adopting the loyalist viewpoint and the requisite willful ignorance of the moral hazards and externalities it entails is the better, more rational option. Most people in that position are principled at great personal cost. This way of seeing allows us to make better sense an array of current events. And indeed, we can come to realize that everyone has both loyal and principled aspects. To that end everyone should know precisely how far their loyalty goes. What actions could your organization take that so violated your principles that you would take action against it? For example, if you are in the Army or the CIA, would you torture someone if ordered? If you're a police officer, would you stay silent if you saw your department bury acts of police violence that you knew to be illegal? If you're a financial analyst or regulator, would you change your analysis to suit your management? If you're in the NSA, would you give evidence against Americans suspected of drug trafficking to the DEA, knowing they will use "parallel construction" to hide the source? To hardcore loyalists, the answers to these questions are unequivocal "yes". The reason is a mixture of indoctrination, rationalization, selfishness and simple cowardice. But it's not "us" vs "them": almost everyone is a hard-core loyalist within their particular organization, although this is particularly true where there are no competing employers. It is almost impossible for most people to risk their decades-long career over a matter of principle, no matter how bad it gets. It's not right, but it's human. What can save the day is that loyalty is limited to personal context; this is good because it allows loyalists in one org to be principled about other organizations' behaviors. In other words, there are CIA employees who are disgusted by wall street's systematic, unchecked fraud, just as there are wall street employees who descry CIA torture and cover-up, and that's good. Culturally need to revere the people throughout history who've taken the hard path, the one's who've said "no" to unprincipled action, which always comes at great personal cost. If there was ever a "noble warrior" culture, let it honor the ones who served Principle not because it was easy, but because it was right. Sorry for the long post.