Do your best to be confident, kind, and engaged and you will run circles around the characters enumerated here, even the "winners".
People deserve dignity, even if they are (sometimes forced into) making economic choices you think suboptimal.
Health-preserving work, at least a bit intellectually stimulating, paying so well that you can amass wealth and/or retire early + limited responsibility and no serious legal/economical fallout due to failure
"Losers" in tech have got a great deal.
Edit: to add - _job mobility_ to a level that even the 'Sociopaths' envy
I believe in "work hard & be nice to people", but for religious & stoic reasons rather than expectations that it will be a successful strategy in most corporate environments.
I think healthy institutions find and reward the best people, and so this model fails in them. But the author’s assumption is (perhaps accurately) that most companies are in fact dysfunctional. Earlier in my work history I worked at some awful companies where this model rang an awful lot more true.
The easiest way to obtain the optics of this, is to actually embody it. (much easier than cultivating sociopathic tendencies) The danger is that you over-nice, and end up a sucker.
The sociopath works because he can appear to be the conscientious achiever without doing the hard part. It's possible, but better to just be the conscientious achiever for your own sake.
I don't think that kind of committment is one concerned with the prospect of failure, and this may be the difference in subjectivity, which seems to be grandparent's point.
The trap people fall into is an is-ought fallacy, where because they consider corporate dynamics immoral, they conclude that they are false.
One should work hard and be kind, but the determination to do so shouldn't cloud one's vision.
I'd say, 99% of TV shows, cynical or otherwise, don't have that goal in mind, and is incapable of guiding you through life.
Most of the sociopaths are where they are because of randomness, too. The sociopaths often recognize that a situation could benefit them personally so they grab ahold--this is the point where they may stab somebody in the back.
However, after they mount up for the ride, the tiger goes where it wants and they really don't have any control over it. If it goes well, congrats on your promotion. If it goes badly, even with a scapegoat your promotion path is done so start looking for a new job.
So, the "sociopaths" are a product of 8 coin flips that all came up heads--unfortunately they all think they are geniuses.
Yes! That's why we have great leaders like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Mark Zuckerberg,Elizabeth Holmes, Vladimir Putin.
If anything the guide was not cynical enough. I saw stuff 10x worse in corporate environments.
But I've also seen wonderfully productive, supportive behavior. I've seen leaders who uplift and who succeed by helping those around them. I've learned to pay attention to who I work for, or with, and to support the kind of people who I want to see running things.
It's a grave error to only consider the worst while ignoring the best.
Me too, 99% coming from the rank and file, cleaning personnel, etc. A VP wont sacrifice his chances of promotion to help you, and if he has to fire you to get it,he will.
That said, I believe this is an isolated and extremely rare incident.
In fact I've never worked in an environment like described in this article. I'm not questioning their existence, I know plenty friends who work(ed) in toxic environments, and sure I've been a bit lucky.
But the whole idea that unavoidably you're either a loser, clueless, or a sociopath just doesn't seem rooted in reality to me. Plenty companies are not set up as toxic exploitation machines.
The word “loser” is not the colloquial use of the term, and there is no “winner” (despite the confusing quotations above). Here it simply means loser in the economic sense — they produce an outsized amount of value for the company. They may be fully aware of this, and be happy and productive. They are simply unwilling or unable to do what’s necessary to climb the corporate ladder. If they have awareness of this dynamic, then they’re also unlikely to be promoted in middle management, since the sociopaths want people that will be loyal to them and support their agenda.
Similarly “clueless” doesn’t mean they are idiots — simply that they don’t have what it takes to be a sociopath, and aren’t aware of how they are being used. In other words, they are thinking exactly like the parent post — that’s exactly the kind of person the sociopath wants to promote to middle management.
Finally, “sociopath” is an exaggeration, and it doesn’t mean these people are terrible humans with no redeeming qualities. It just means that they are focused on their own outcomes above others, and internally may be lacking in the conscience department.
If you loosen it all back up it's vague enough to be generally applicable.