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Comment by ep103 | Hacker News Reader

The tone of the article is extremely negative. Sociopath, Clueless, Loser. And that leads to a generally negative framing of everything and all of the people in question.

The general concepts: some people act as capitalists, some people find meaning in their work and lose sight of the capitalistic nature of work, and some people find meaning outside of work and do so by doing the bare minimum at work and not playing the capitalist game, are valid archetypes, however.

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The terminology is intentionally punchy as a way to get pageviews - if it were dryly academic, would we be talking about this article 13 years later? I think there was a FAQ somewhere on the original series that was like Q: "Is this just satire?" and A: "Nothing is just satire." It was supposed to be humorous in its over-directness because Venkatesh actually engages with his audience on an emotional level, at the cost of some precision.

Eric Dietrich has a softer framing for this: instead of sociopaths, losers, and clueless; you have opportunists, pragmatists, and idealists [0].

In my opinion it works just as well, without any of the negativity or cynicism of the original Gervais article.

[0]: https://daedtech.com/defining-the-corporate-hierarchy/

The Pink Floyd album "Animals" terms them "Dogs", "Sheep", and "Pigs", which is just as cynical (probably moreso) but also has the catchiness which Sociopath/Loser/Clueless exhibits but Opportunists/Pragmatists/Idealists does not.

That sounds like the album is using the allegories from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Yep, Animal Farm absolutely was an influence on that album

https://www.openculture.com/2017/04/pink-floyd-adapts-orwell...

> Orwell showed the effects of “undemocratic structures” by reducing individuals to animal types, and so does Waters, simplifying the classes further into three (and leaving out humans altogether): the ruling pigs, praetorian and aspiring capitalist dogs, and the sheep, the mindless masses.

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