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Comment by kamaal | Hacker News Reader

>>Apple's infamous "top 100" meetings pick 100 of the most influential people in the company for a secret retreat.

A thing I can assure you those "top 100" people are people whose managers would have fought hard to be nominated as the top people, and are not necessarily the actual top people.

This is a big problem in big corporations. Your manager needs to play Godfather to you, else no matter who you are or what your contributions are, you are screwed.

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We're talking influence here, not intelligence or hardworkingness or importance. If you can't influence your way in, by definition you aren't one of the hundred most influential.

You know, cynicism doesn't count as insight nor evidence in my book.

Huh? If your manager dislikes you, consciously or subconsciously, you are screwed. I didn't know that was controversial.

This is how humans work, regardless of whether we like it or not.

It doesn't mean, however, that it is impossible to get the 100 most influential people in the company together. It just means that you can't do so by relying on the existing company hierarchy.

The easiest way is to randomly draw 10000 employees, then give them the opportunity to anonymously declare which employee they consider the most influential within their branch/location.

Top 100 voted "go to Disneyland".

Still, his interpretation is more plausible than expecting that the ghost of steve himself visits Tim Cook at night to tell him which 100 guys out of a workforce numbering over 80,000 really deserves that honor.

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