The median person lives just 18 miles away from their mom. 57% of Americans have never lived outside their home state. A third have never lived outside their hometown.
The more I read about it, I’m convinced “loneliness” is an upper middle class problem.
I made a similar choice a couple of years ago to downgrade my career into a slower-paced, less stressful scenario with less money, and again personally for me the results have spoken for themselves.
Unless I'm Elon Musk, the whole business of business isn't really designed in my favor, so it's logical for me to partake but only just so.
Social life is not about having money (well unless you're really poor) - it's about having time and people to spend it with. You can be in top 5-10% of income and a total loner - plenty such people in tech.
One partner working long hours is enough for both partners to be lonely in marriage. Partner having time consuming hobby is enough for you to be lonely in marriage.
People in work are not friends, they are competitors, allies, enemies, whatever. They are not people you can talk with openly. Moreover, there are plenty of jobs where you work mostly alone or have only temporary relationships.
End result is loneliness.
It feels nice down here, join us!
Unless he literally works in a warehouse or in a position that is pure “worker bee,” $100 says if we knew the actual job title this guy held we’d deem him “clueless.” (Not that he actually IS clueless, who knows, I’m just using that word in the gervais principle sense of it).
“I made a similar choice a couple of years ago to downgrade my career into a slower-paced, less stressful scenario with less money” is quintessential “clueless” reasoning.
Prioritizing things like a slow pace and a lack of stress is something that “clueless” people tend to do, not “losers.” Darryl (& co) in the warehouse are stressed, dude, and they don’t have the time or inclination to prioritize things like lowering stress. They’re too busy living paycheck-to-paycheck. Toby in the office is less stressed, and I bet if you talked to the character Toby he’d say almost exactly what the guy wrote above.
I mean look what he’s doing here — sharing his emotional reasoning with the group. That’s something “clueless” people do, not “losers,” who tend to merely act on emotions rather than reflect on them and THEN act.
If this guy ACTUALLY became a “loser” and started working in an Amazon warehouse and it wasn’t part of a larger “clueless” meta-scheme to get a tax break or something, I would be literally shocked.
Clueless are people buy into the "Arbeit makt frei" idea.
In the linked article, the majority of people in the office (not even considering the warehouse) are losers.
Stanley is the quintessential "loser", and he precisely optimizes for "slower-paced, less stressful".
In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's the "worker bees" that are clueless. Dwight, for example, is as "worker bee" as they come. He jumps on command.
From my reading, this hierarchy has nothing to do with social status outside of work. It is precisely how you behave on the job.
My reading seems similar but different to yours. I agree that it has nothing to do with social status outside of work: to me it’s about emotional processing.
I can’t recall the specific passage but I remember Venkat talking about how clueless people seek absolution in collective emotional processing. That’s what leads me to believe the dude you’re replying to is clueless.
I completely disagree that Stanley is a loser, to me he is a quintessential clueless. He’s working in the office, not the warehouse: he’s in middle management, so IMO he’s clueless by definition because he is part of the padding between the masters/sociopaths/bosses and the slaves/worker bees/losers.
I think your perspective is interesting but I feel like I am adhering slightly more strictly to the heuristics laid out in GP.
Further I checked and Stanley is a sales rep, not middle management.
I really enjoyed reading through that article series last year when I first came across it. I spent a good amount of time wondering where I fit in the hierarchy relative to my coworkers. Ended up deciding that like all models, it's useful but incomplete. Still an interesting thing to know about.
Sort of similar to learning about personality types like Myers-Briggs or Enneagram.
Stanley is a sales rep and that is absolutely a part of the clueless layer. He provides buffer between the masters and the slaves in the warehouse dude: he is clueless. Not a loser like Darryl in the warehouse, not a sociopath like Robert California or Ryan the Temp, but clueless.
I am a clueless loser sociopath so take from that what u will :)
Thanks for the interesting discussion. :)
"""
The minimum-effort Loser Stanley tells him coldly, "this here is a run-out-the-clock situation." The line could apply to Stanley’s entire life.
"""
So either you are pulling your info from some more-original source than I am, or you're mis-remembering what the article says.
He states clearly that middle managers provide the buffer between the sociopaths and losers. Thus, Stanley is clueless.
Venkat’s description of Stanley as a “loser” completely destroys his own heuristics that only clueless are in middle management.
So congratulations, you’ve found a flaw in Venkat’s logic. He contradicts himself. However, I still think the general heuristics he lays out are valuable (as you seem to).
Thanks for the quote man — you made me realize the issue isn’t quite as cut-and-dry as I thought it was. I see your point now. Thank you.
The people in the warehouse don't report to Stanley. His job is to get sales from customers. He has no one reporting to him.
Michael is the chief clueless person in the show. Dwight and Andy are aspiring clueless.
The losers are the people who do the day-to-day work that keeps the company in business. The sociopaths are the people at the top who view the company as a board game with pawns that can be moved around or sacrificed at will.
The purpose of the clueless is to put a buffer between the sociopaths and the losers so that the sociopaths don't have to consider that their pawns are real people with real feelings and real families to take care of.
There are three classes of losers according to his system:
1. Over-performing losers, who are prime candidates for promotion to the clueless ranks
2. Average losers, who know they have a raw deal but don't have the ambition or coldness to do anything about it.
3. Under-performing losers, who are prime sociopath candidates because they have a lack of "give a damn" about what they do and are willing to push the boundaries because they know the deal is not in their favor.
Note that the over-under here is relative to ability. Jim is an under-performing loser, while still being very good at his job, because he doesn't put in his best effort.
Kevin is an average loser because even though he's not that good at his job, he's giving a good-faith effort to what he does.
Dwight is over-performing because he's always attempting to go above and beyond, even when it is inconvenient to him.
I was right and you were wrong. Learned something new today. Thank you!
Stanley isn't middle management, he's an aging sales guy who is too old to justify switching jobs; he's close to retirement, and the "run out the clock" quote in the article is spot on about it being his whole life at this point -- he's killing time until he retires.
He's a loser because he doesn't have the willingness or ability to be a ruthless sociopath -- why bother, he's out in 2 years or less -- and has no illusions about how the company feels about its employees.
He is clueless because he doesn’t have the willingness or ability to be a ruthless sociopath , but he still doesn’t want to be a loser in the warehouse with Darryl.
Stanley is a low-status clueless, not a high-status loser. (IMO).
These are interesting perspectives all around and I welcome further friendly debate. Thanks for sharing your thoughts guys. :)
Clueless, these are the people who believe in so called company values, think they can change things or try to achieve something. Relatively rare nowadays in most places, but these do happen. Both of the middle managers were this.
Losers are people who indeed care more about social aspects than getting things done. While the top sees this as a distraction it really is, but does not care about the day to day operations, just power.
It is an interesting way to look at organizations though.
I agree that for someone that had a very active social life before having kids and moving to the suburbs would likely see a drop in that activity when suddenly having to take care of small kids in a suburban situation.
However, for someone that before having kids they already don't have any friends/family close by (imagine a fresh middle-aged, childless, immigrant couple moving in an area where there are very few other people from their own country), having kids would force a lot more opportunities to interact with other people (doctors, caretakers, teachers, other parents, etc) and ultimately speed up integration. Sure, none of those relationships may become a deep friendship connection but it's a lot better than having no human interaction.
Also have to get over the fear that people will judge you for taking your kids with you out into the world.
What I said should be taken with a grain of salt. I did what I did for more than a decade, savoring both the good and the bad.
Which makes it all the more suitable for a discussion on HN, wouldn't you say?
People seem to actually believe that 5 thousand a year gives you a middle class lifestyle in the third world. The cost of eating only rice and beans and living in a tin shack with dirt floors is pretty much the same everywhere.
I agree with your premise in general though, because given a similar lifestyle and similar percentage of savings (let's say 10%) from your salary you get in a high COL place vs. low COL place, high COL place would be more preferable, as that 10% will be higher in absolute dollar value, and a lot of goods are priced the same everywhere.
By your definition no American is a member of the global lower class, as defined purely on an income basis. That's a fine point to make if the discussion was about global poverty, but that's clearly not what this discussion is about. In effect, your comment amounts to whataboutism.
Yeah, exactly. You trade a social life for financial stability accompanied by loneliness. I've had one or the other, but not yet been able to find a balance. It's, very, very hard to do except for the few among us who have a highly desired technical skills (check) and excellent marketing skills (uh, nope). Those folks can run successful freelance/consulting businesses, work reasonable hours, and still make good money.
Make more money -> spend more time at work -> buy more "things" -> attach happiness to those things = set up for discontentment.
- Enough for buying satisfied house and land AND a nice secondary room in the middle of city. So they support two main life styles. Need a peaceful time, go to house surrounding by nature. Need a party, city life, back in town.
- Enough money for commuting between places as you want
- Enough money for buying whatever objects. Get bored, go shopping
- Enough money for not worrying about it so you can do things that improve your contentment.
Well, this is not new, money solves maybe 90% of whatever problems you have right now.
A mid-career software engineer at FAANG might have a greater income than every single person they grew up with. But they probably know middle managers making even more, as well as ex-colleagues who hit it big with a startup. Those middle managers know many people making more than them, all the way up the food chain. Those colleagues at the startups probably know people who had more equity, VCs, etc. with even more money. And this continues on and on.
Part of what I’m wondering is if people are agreeing they spend more time alone than in the past, social norms say that means we’re lonely, so they agree with the idea.
I grew up in the country with a lot of alone time. I loved it. I don’t consider myself a depressed person. I can imagine anything I want, write the story down, plan projects, do the deep work of being me.
Being more social just feels like a series of shallow experiences relative. Drinks, coffees, some emotionally exciting event... all fleeting to me.
My own head is forever.
I think we want to believe loneliness is bad because of social pressure to connect, get a job with people we don’t know but we need a job, etc
Personally, I find that all incredibly stifling and stressful for little personal gain (the aristocracy of course loves a population that’s normalized to a small set of behaviors but that’s a diff topic).
Upper middle class types seem to have engagement in social structures forced on them. It’s bizarre to me
Edit: this article and digging into the idea is what underlie my take here https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/17/peopl...
Racism and such aside, I feel there’s a lot for urban grind types to learn from rural life
This is quite stark in some poorer countries (e.g.: some African, South American or Asian countries). You don't see that much in the US, but you do see it in some European countries and the ones with more of this are the ones that I find have less inertial loneliness. Thus: "first world problems" occur when you need the person next to you less. Maybe this is the same phenomenon that makes a country like Iceland famous for helpfulness towards others?
Oh God, I wish I did. She's not even 18ft away until she dies, and she'll probably outlive me.
I'd expect those to be the loneliest of people. At least people who travel often learn how to meet and make new friends and rarely find themselves stuck in social isolation.
My mom grew up in a family of 11 siblings in Bangladesh, most of whom lived with their families in the same city when I was a kid. It’s hard to express rich and full life was back there.
For one, as the article pointed out, there are differences between social interaction and loneliness. For another, there are many broken families out there today, especially with the rise of opioid and other brutal addictions.
Anecdotally, I've seen hispanic families tend to be closer-knit, while a lot of other families tend to have some pretty serious problems. As one data point, my parents now live only a few miles away from me but I see them only very occasionally. Likewise, former close-knit groups of friends who all never left their home town -- and in at least one case, ended up buying homes only a couple blocks away from each other -- ended up squabbling and fighting and stopped talking to each other at all.
So whereas your experiences have led you to suppose that being close to childhood friends and family makes someone less lonely, my own -- and those of the various other nomads I've gotten to know over the years -- lead me to suppose that getting away from childhood friends and family helps to stave off the loneliness.