A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System (2001)
inference.phy.cam.ac.uk
inference.phy.cam.ac.uk
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/schmidt/
See also Schmidt's own site, http://disciplinedminds.com.
"Physics Today Editor Stephen G. Benka breaks up two conversations between Schmidt and coworker Toni Feder after working hours. Benka bans private conversations in the workplace, saying that all conversations between staff members must be open to monitoring by management. When Schmidt asks Benka why, Benka refers to the organizing activity that took place the previous year and says he doesn't want that to happen again."
Geez, when you're at the point of banning private conversations among your employees, you should really be thinking there's something seriously wrong with what you're doing.
"While employed at Physics Today, Jeff led a contentious effort to force the magazine to change its long-standing pattern of hiring and training only whites as editors, and to live up to its claim of being an affirmative-action employer. These actions were part of the expression for which Jeff was fired"
Maintaining a physics magazine as a whites-only environment is the kind of thing that requires that level of employee repression. It's all about ethics in physics journalism.
Be warned: it will illuminate White Collar Hell like nothing else.
The "loyalists" are ascendant (they usually are), and have terrible, strong defenses; the "principled" are a fairly rag-tag bunch, have inherently smaller organizations, although they do manage to organize themselves to some extent (the EFF and the ACLU being good examples). Indeed, the biggest weapon the principled have is to force the loyalists to actually (ab)use their overwhelming power to the extent that they offend the public (who are only loyalists within their own narrow context) and so swell the ranks of the principled against them.
This paper is about the travails of being principled in a loyalist organization. It is an incredibly uncomfortable position to be in, and comes at great cost. To those looking to minimize their personal stress, adopting the loyalist viewpoint and the requisite willful ignorance of the moral hazards and externalities it entails is the better, more rational option. Most people in that position are principled at great personal cost.
This way of seeing allows us to make better sense an array of current events. And indeed, we can come to realize that everyone has both loyal and principled aspects. To that end everyone should know precisely how far their loyalty goes. What actions could your organization take that so violated your principles that you would take action against it? For example, if you are in the Army or the CIA, would you torture someone if ordered? If you're a police officer, would you stay silent if you saw your department bury acts of police violence that you knew to be illegal? If you're a financial analyst or regulator, would you change your analysis to suit your management? If you're in the NSA, would you give evidence against Americans suspected of drug trafficking to the DEA, knowing they will use "parallel construction" to hide the source?
To hardcore loyalists, the answers to these questions are unequivocal "yes". The reason is a mixture of indoctrination, rationalization, selfishness and simple cowardice. But it's not "us" vs "them": almost everyone is a hard-core loyalist within their particular organization, although this is particularly true where there are no competing employers. It is almost impossible for most people to risk their decades-long career over a matter of principle, no matter how bad it gets. It's not right, but it's human.
What can save the day is that loyalty is limited to personal context; this is good because it allows loyalists in one org to be principled about other organizations' behaviors. In other words, there are CIA employees who are disgusted by wall street's systematic, unchecked fraud, just as there are wall street employees who descry CIA torture and cover-up, and that's good.
Culturally need to revere the people throughout history who've taken the hard path, the one's who've said "no" to unprincipled action, which always comes at great personal cost. If there was ever a "noble warrior" culture, let it honor the ones who served Principle not because it was easy, but because it was right.
Sorry for the long post.
(If you do flush out your thesis, I'd love to read it)
Please.
Perhaps, given that loyalty and principle seem to be situational, it would make more sense to describe them as behaviors rather than as traits.
On the other hand, cross judgement is a practical way to deal with the issue, since the same accusations probably apply to both organizations if they are both immersed in the same corporate culture (e.g., businesses of similar size etc). If you watch my house and I watch yours, then both houses get watched.
What I think is a key insight in his work is on the politics of "not getting political". Please correct me if I'm butchering the concept, but part of the process of turning salaried professionals into obedient drones is to convince them that it's undignified to "get political" at the workplace. The problem is that the people in charge can easily define their position as the default, apolitical one and any opposition as "getting involved in politics".
To me, whenever a hiring manager says that there's "no politics" at his company, that's a strong sign of a toxic environment. I'd rather work for someone who's politically aware and can help me navigate what politics exists (there's always a political environment) than one who is delusional enough to think that an organization of 10 or 50 or 200 or 20,000 people can have "no politics". Too often, "there's no politics here" means "I'm in the in-crowd and get my way, so 'political' decisions-- meaning ones that I don't like-- are rarely made".
This is how I feel about Silicon Valley "meritocracy". The only people who believe in it are those who've been in the in-crowd for 20+ years and lost touch with reality. They think that they live in a politics-free zone because they're oblivious to their own privilege.
Why in the fuck would a founder even consider being mean to one of the most powerful people in the industry? It just seemed to lack the self awareness that founders probably treat him differently than the average person they interact with.
A major element of whether one is selected for invitation into closed, snooty clubs (or promoted into management) is whether there's a suspicion that you'll invite too many (presumably not deserving) friends. People who are "sticky" don't get promoted. People who might tip off their reports about an impending layoff aren't made managers.
You have to be cold, for organizational ascent, but not a dick.
In environments of heterogeneity, warmth is actually an advantage because people who are personable and giving tend to have a wider array of connections, and that means more information, better ideas, and an easier time staying up to date. The old Silicon Valley actually was that way, but for the past 20 years, it's been functioning as one (however postmodern) corporate organization.
I've come to the conclusion that the only way to save Silicon Valley is to pass a law that makes investors liable for certain kinds of founder misconduct, including sexual harassment. For example, a frat boy like Spiegel would actually probably not get promoted in a larger corporation, if his true colors came out, because he's an HR liability. But investors can fund people like him and wash their hands of the cultural issues created by funding frat boys. That's a real problem, and it ought to be fixed. Since founders are middle managers in the VC-funded meta-company that now exists in the Valley, it's only reasonable to acknowledge them as such, and pass liabilities up the chain into the executive ranks (investors).
Interesting insight about "stickiness"; reminds me of high school cliques, college fraternities/sororities/clubs, etc. Looking forward to your post.
I'm not sure I completely agree with this, but it's definitely a useful perspective to keep in mind. A lot of things look very different if you switch over to that way of thinking once in a while.
Both pieces of it, the founders are middle managers, and the Valley as meta-company.
Here is his response to that: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/538816535930748928/
Clearly PG does have that self-awareness.
The problem with what you're saying is that it almost falls into the class of unfalsifiable assertions. Meaning there's virtually no way to disprove what you're saying (not in the sense that it is proved true, but in the sense that it is nearly impossible to prove either way). Even if PG were to assert vigorously that he has spotted many cases of people being nice to his face but being mean elsewhere, you could just continue to assert "Well he just hasn't spotted it well enough."
Basically, any time you have a couple of monkeys and a banana in the same room, you're going to get politics. That's the way humans appear to be wired.
On the other hand, there are degrees of meritocracy, from the soul-crushing bullshit you get as a leaf-node in a high-tech behemouth (that is to say, none), to the hardscrabble and pragmatic existence you might find in a start-up (you can do the job . . . and you're the janitor? "You're fucking hired, here, have a Aeron and a keyboard and a soda, and don't stop typing").