Post: #1

Gents,

Since almost all of us have to work for a living, and given that many of us work in a corporate environment, it is clear that knowing how to play office politics is a survival skill as important as knowing how to game women.

If reading Roissy, Roosh, and Esther Vilar changed my perspective on women quite radically, Venkatesh Rao's The Gervais Principle series of blog posts changed my perspective on corporate habitats, and it allowed me to finally make sense of seemingly non-sensical situations that I experienced as a young, naive engineer working for tech startups. Here's the series:

1. The Office According to The Office
2. Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and Gametalk
3. The Curse of Development
4. Wonderful Human Beings
5. Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
   

The 6th part is still being prepared. This principle is named after Ricky Gervais, the creator of The Office. It is also based on Hugh MacLeod’s Company Hierarchy:



The interested reader should be able to adapt these ideas to gaming women.

Post: #2

Looks interesting!

Will post back when I get a chance to read through it all.

Post: #3

You can elaborate for a long time on anything about engineering. Gonna graduate soon and look for a job in that field and I'm all ears.

Post: #4

This is a net classic. Up there with the Ladder Theory.

Ribbon Farm is hard as hell to read nowadays. Rao introduces so many new ideas that you have to then use to break down ever newer ideas. Illegibility comes to mind.

WIA

Post: #5

Good posting, Icarus.

I read this a couple of years ago and absolutely devoured it.

Post: #6

(03-02-2013 06:35 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  Ribbon Farm is hard as hell to read nowadays. Rao introduces so many new ideas that you have to then use to break down ever newer ideas.

Indeed. Rao is now a 7/10 on the Moldbug Scale.

Post: #7

(03-02-2013 07:01 PM)Icarus Wrote:  

(03-02-2013 06:35 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  Ribbon Farm is hard as hell to read nowadays. Rao introduces so many new ideas that you have to then use to break down ever newer ideas.

Indeed. Rao is now a 7/10 on the Moldbug Scale.

Did you read his book?

I think it was in chapter 4 where he wanted you to do some exercises.

Sold it on amazon.

WIA

Post: #8

Great series, on part 4 now.

Quote: Remember, you are unique, just like everybody else. And everybody is uniquely above average. This is why, paradoxically, collectivist philosophies that value equality must necessarily value diversity. Nobody wants to equally average. Everybody must be given a chance to be equally above average.

Post: #9

I lived this in a big company. It's pretty true I believe.

Post: #10

Venkat has just posted the 6th and last installment of the Gervais Principle series:

• Children of an absent god
  

Post: #11

Do I understand this right that:

Sociopaths = alpha males
Clueless = women
Losers = betas

Post: #12

(03-09-2014 04:47 AM)Mage Wrote:  Do I understand this right that:

Sociopaths = alpha males
Clueless = women
Losers = betas

The principle is supposed to be applied to organizations, not to the sexual markets. My understanding is as follows:

Sociopaths: understand how the world works, want to dominate instead of being dominated, and play to win, despite the slim odds. "Up or out!" They either make it big or self-destruct in the process. Risk-maximizers who embrace risk with the hope that it will get them the elevator to the top, understanding that such risk-seeking may get them broke and unemployable, too. Know when it is worth working hard and when slacking off pays off. Will not sacrifice their careers in the short-term for the benefit of the company. Do not accept being paid in promises.

Clueless: do not understand how the world works, distort reality, accept being paid in promises, believe they will never get old and will never need to retire. Believe that hard work alone will get them to the top. Have no idea what projects are worth working hard on, and which aren't. Sacrifice their careers in the short-term for the benefit of the company, foolishly believing that the company will reward them later on. These are the idiots who play the "startup roulette" in the Silly Con Valley. Need heroes to worship, for religious reasons.

Losers: understand how the world works, realize they have very little chances of making it big and becoming independent, and decide not to even try. They are risk-minimizers, and will trade compensation for stability and job security. Not particularly loyal to the company, will leave work at 17:01. Know when it's worth working hard and when it's not. Do not want to rise to the Clueless middle manager level, as they know that the instability they will get will not be compensated by the 20%-50% salary increase. Do not sacrifice for the company. Will leave as soon as the company stop giving them stability and job security. Distort rewards, and accept being paid in "good feelings", but not in promises. Want to sell 8 hours of their time each working day to afford doing what they like in their free time. Hope to die before they run out of savings.

Post: #13

I work for the gubmint.

And where I work - all promotions take place via an application form and then an interview.

Most people get weeded out at the application form stage - and the applications are 'anonymised' so the people judging them don't know who they are from.

And when it comes to the interview - you are interviewed by somebody who you have probably never worked with before. And an independent interviewer from a different office.

I mention all this - because I am not sure how common these types of 'strict, open and fair' systems for handing out promotions are?

And if they are common - I wonder if there is any point learning the strategies and thinking involving in such guides like 'The Gervais Principle' - if you are working in a place where no matter how much of a 'sociopath' you are, it won't affect your chances of getting ahead in the organisation.

Just wondering if others are in similar situations?

Post: #14

(03-09-2014 07:36 AM)Icarus Wrote:  

(03-09-2014 04:47 AM)Mage Wrote:  Do I understand this right that:

Sociopaths = alpha males
Clueless = women
Losers = betas

The principle is supposed to be applied to organizations, not to the sexual markets. My understanding is as follows:

Yes I read further and see that this is not exact overlap, but some overlap is there.
Alpha is still correlated with sociopaty. Clueless is like a hard working beta hoping to get rewarded for being nice and loyal. Loser is like an omega having a know-how speciality but a low social rank. Most women would be losers - unambitious, forming groups, affirming their special snowflake status, having no deep loyalty or passions.

Post: #15

(03-09-2014 07:36 AM)Icarus Wrote:  

(03-09-2014 04:47 AM)Mage Wrote:  Do I understand this right that:

Sociopaths = alpha males
Clueless = women
Losers = betas

The principle is supposed to be applied to organizations, not to the sexual markets. My understanding is as follows:

Sociopaths: understand how the world works, want to dominate instead of being dominated, and play to win, despite the slim odds. "Up or out!" They either make it big or self-destruct in the process. Risk-maximizers who embrace risk with the hope that it will get them the elevator to the top, understanding that such risk-seeking may get them broke and unemployable, too. Know when it is worth working hard and when slacking off pays off. Will not sacrifice their careers in the short-term for the benefit of the company. Do not accept being paid in promises.

Clueless: do not understand how the world works, distort reality, accept being paid in promises, believe they will never get old and will never need to retire. Believe that hard work alone will get them to the top. Have no idea what projects are worth working hard on, and which aren't. Sacrifice their careers in the short-term for the benefit of the company, foolishly believing that the company will reward them later on. These are the idiots who play the "startup roulette" in the Silly Con Valley. Need heroes to worship, for religious reasons.

Losers: understand how the world works, realize they have very little chances of making it big and becoming independent, and decide not to even try. They are risk-minimizers, and will trade compensation for stability and job security. Not particularly loyal to the company, will leave work at 17:01. Know when it's worth working hard and when it's not. Do not want to rise to the Clueless middle manager level, as they know that the instability they will get will not be compensated by the 20%-50% salary increase. Do not sacrifice for the company. Will leave as soon as the company stop giving them stability and job security. Distort rewards, and accept being paid in "good feelings", but not in promises. Want to sell 8 hours of their time each working day to afford doing what they like in their free time. Hope to die before they run out of savings.

thats a pretty good summary, better than whats in the book. Bought it last night after seeing these threads, about half way done. Bought his other books too. Surprisingly reads very fast.

Post: #16

(03-09-2014 08:51 AM)cardguy Wrote:  I work for the gubmint. (...) And if they are common - I wonder if there is any point learning the strategies and thinking involving in such guides like 'The Gervais Principle' - if you are working in a place where no matter how much of a 'sociopath' you are, it won't affect your chances of getting ahead in the organisation.

Sociopaths get ahead in government, too.

You should watch Sir Humphrey in action and learn from him, since he's the epitome of sociopath:

Post: #17

I love 'Yes, Minister'!

And it has the best opening credits of any TV show ever. I love the drawings and music...

Post: #18

(03-09-2014 08:57 AM)Mage Wrote:  Alpha is still correlated with sociopaty. Clueless is like a hard working beta hoping to get rewarded for being nice and loyal. Loser is like an omega having a know-how speciality but a low social rank. Most women would be losers - unambitious, forming groups, affirming their special snowflake status, having no deep loyalty or passions.

Exactly!!! MGTOW are all Losers, for instance. Both Sociopaths (alphas) and Losers (omegas) pity and despise the Clueless (betas). Back in 2012 I wrote a post on that, in another thread, and I now take the liberty of posting it on this thread:

(11-13-2012 03:20 PM)Icarus Wrote:  Remember Hugh MacLeod's company hierarchy?



The same happens on CS. Here's the CouchSurfing Hierarchy:

• we RVF'ers are the sociopaths: we are the ones who understand how the world works, and play to win.
  

• the self-righteous prigs calling us horrible names on CS forums are the clueless: they are the ones who do not understand how the world works and think that formal and actual meaning are the same thing. Because people say "CS is not a dating site", they read that as a moral commandment, and not as shibboleth whose purpose is to sort the sociopaths from the clueless. They cling to their "morality" because they have nothing else.
  

• the MGTOW are the losers: they are the ones who understand how the world works (like the sociopaths), evaluate their chances of winning, realize that they can't win, and decide not to play. Theirs is a perfectly rational decision, and should not be ridiculed.
  

A sociopath can burn out and become a loser. A loser can transform himself into a sociopath if he has some good genetics and fierce willpower. The clueless remain clueless, they go through life half-asleep.

Post: #19

lol - I'm pretty MGTOW myself.

Not because I am a loser - but because I am busy doing other shit.

Post: #20

I'm a company socio-path but on the bottom end. I've always been able to manipulate every job to serve me best. I'm always willing to work hard but get annoyed when I can't get compensated for that work or if others are dregs around me.

I hate the cooperate model. As I can't manipulate it and even they don't seem to follow their polices they try to rape their slaves with. I work for a massive corporation right now and I have to keep myself from punching holes in the walls. Dosnt help either I fuked one of my bosses and she constantly plays this good cop/ bad cop shit with me. She's the epitome of the clueless manager, but she has the credentials and greased the right hands (or cocks) to get her job. I'm still fresh eyed to the corps and they would be willing to throw me in the grinder at any moments notice.

Post: #21

(03-09-2014 08:51 AM)cardguy Wrote:  I work for the gubmint.

And where I work - all promotions take place via an application form and then an interview.

Most people get weeded out at the application form stage - and the applications are 'anonymised' so the people judging them don't know who they are from.

And when it comes to the interview - you are interviewed by somebody who you have probably never worked with before. And an independent interviewer from a different office.

I mention all this - because I am not sure how common these types of 'strict, open and fair' systems for handing out promotions are?

And if they are common - I wonder if there is any point learning the strategies and thinking involving in such guides like 'The Gervais Principle' - if you are working in a place where no matter how much of a 'sociopath' you are, it won't affect your chances of getting ahead in the organisation.

Just wondering if others are in similar situations?

I used to work in an office environment like that. The union was extremely strong, the bosses were women, and there were strict rules like you mentioned about promotions, all in an effort to promote merit and fairness.

The consequences?

People found ways around them. Ass kissing remained the one and only important skill that made you move forward. The spectacle of the most shameless brown tongues was a hard thing to bear, especially when they were men on men.

If the boss knows the employees at the human ressources department for 10 years, then he has influence on who gets promoted. For every stupid rule the union made, there were 10 ways to go around them. As usual, the rules were meant for suckers.

You can't fuck with human nature. If the entire society works a certain way, then trying to build a large company that pretends to be different is a fucking waste of effort. In the end it actually makes it a lot worse, because the rules and corporate culture are built upon wishful thinking and denial of reality.

Post: #22

Yeah - the unions are very strong where I work. They even have their own separate office in our building.

It is funny - but everyone just gets help with their application forms from their friends who are high up in the organisation who know how to fill them in. Which makes the application system a bit pointless.

And there is a definite skill involved. Unless you hit certain key words in your answer - you score zero points. It is like the world's most annoying parlour game. You can compare two answers - one which gets top marks. And one which gets no marks - and still have trouble figuring out which was the successful answer.

I don't mind though - since nobody gets rich working where I work. It you want to be successful you are better off working somewhere else than worrying about the promotions board.

Post: #23

I used to laugh at brown noses when I used to hold a management position. I had a staff of around 30 people and I had to do scheduling mostly and prep pay roll. Of course I had my favorites because they were fun to work with and I could count in them to work hard. Bitches wanting more shifts would pull shit all the time. Mind you I was one of three men on a staff of 40, 98% women so the cattiness was always around. Legs and chests would show around the 3rd week of the month, bitches would try to get me hot for some hours, it was funny to see, because I would just play along with the sced always set and then they would see nothing changed and try still weren't getting shit. Lol.

All of them chained smoked. They would waste away breaks outside chirping like fuking birds. I made a point to remove the butt container from the patio and move it across the building and make them walk in the freezing cold for 5mims if they wanted a smoke. That shut ended quick, when one girl complained, I told her she can move it if back she cleans it out fully and not leave it for the night cleaners.. She shut up.

Post: #24

Apparently not applicable to gov't.
In the comments Venkat says:
"Interesting that you bring up government. All this logic is upended in the world of government, and another Brit show, Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister provides a lot of the reasons why. In government, the sociopaths are in the middle, the clueless at the top, and the losers (as before) at the bottom."

Post: #25

I finished this book some time ago. The aim of the book is the provide the reader a guide to organizational literacy. I particularly liked the sections on the different organizational languages.

Here are a few choice quotes pulled from the book that have stayed with me:

Quote:Achieving organizational literacy or even fluency does not mean you will do great things or avoid doing stupid things. But it does mean that you will find it much harder to lie to yourself about what you are doing and why. It forces you to own the decisions you make and accept the consequences of your actions and decisions. It makes it harder to blame others for things that happen to you . So to seek organizational literacy is to also accept a sort of responsibility for your own life that many instinctively reject.

Quote:Powertalk is the in-group language of the Sociopaths. Posturetalk is the language spoken by the Clueless to everybody. They don’t have an in-group language since they don’t realize they constitute a group. Sociopaths and Losers talk back to the Clueless in a language called Babytalk that seems like Posturetalk to the Clueless. Among themselves , Losers speak a language called Gametalk. This is the only language that has been properly studied and documented. I won’t cover it at all, but you can learn all about it in the pop classics on transactional analysis (TA) from 30 years ago: Eric Berne’s Games People Play and What Do You Say after You Say Hello , and Thomas Harris’ I’m OK– You’re OK.

Finally, Sociopaths and Losers rarely speak to each other at all. One of the functions of the Clueless, recall, is to provide a buffer in what would otherwise be a painfully raw master-slave dynamic in a pure Sociopath-Loser organization. But when they do talk, they actually speak an unadorned language you could call Straight Talk if it were worth naming. It is the ordinary( if rare) utilitarian language of the sane, with no ulterior motives flying around. The mean-what-you-say-and-say-what-you-mean stuff between two people in a fixed, asymmetric power relationship, who don’t want or need to play real or fake power games. This is the unmarked black triangle edge in the diagram.

Quote:Gametalk is all about multiple (usually two) levels of communication. What distinguishes Powertalk is that with every word uttered, the power equation between the two speakers shifts just a little . Sometimes both gain slightly, at the expense of some poor schmuck. Sometimes one yields ground to the other. Powertalk in other words, is a consequential language.

When the Clueless or the Losers talk, on the other hand, nothing really changes. Relative positions remain the same all around. Shifts happen only by accident. Even in the rare cases where exploitable information is exchanged , its value is not recognized or reflected in the exchange. Posturetalk and Babytalk leave things unchanged because they are, to quote Shakespeare, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Gametalk leaves power relations unchanged because its entire purpose is to help Losers put themselves and each other into safe pigeonholes that validate do-nothing life scripts.

Quote:Status illegibility is necessary to keep a group of Losers stable. It is a deep form of uncertainty. I am not saying that there is a ranking that is just not known or knowable. I am saying there is no clear ranking to be known. If you’re silently screaming “Heisenberg,” please; some patience. We have a long way to go.

If your status is clear, and the status of the club is clear (which is by definition, the average status of all its current members ), then either your status is higher, in which case the club will want you, but you won’t want to join, or your status is lower, in which case the opposite is true. If status were precisely known all around, then the only case that allows somebody to join a club is if their status exactly matches the average of the club. The probability of this happening is vanishingly small, even if status could be measured accurately and quantitatively. Worse, this benefits neither joiner nor club.

But consider what happens when all you really know about the club is the range of status , from lowest to highest. If you know you belong in the range, but have no idea whether your status is above or below the average, the uncertainty allows you to join. And your fealty to the group, and the group’s to you, will be in proportion to the legibility of your status. If events conspire to make status too legible, competitiveness is amplified, weakening group cohesion, and stabilizing dynamics kick in, restoring the illegibility, or the group breaks down.

Quote:Among the Sociopaths, status is irrelevant. Table stakes and skill at using them is what matters. Sociopaths pay attention to what you have, and how well you bargain with it. Not who you are.

Quote:Bureaucracies are structures designed to do certain things very efficiently and competently : those that are by default in the best interests of the Sociopaths.

They are also designed to do certain things incompetently: those expensive things that the organization is expected to do, but would cut into Sociopath profits if actually done right.

And finally, they are designed to obstruct, delay and generally kill things that might hurt the interests of the Sociopaths.