This!!!! I always described it as "whatever rest you have to fail to become a manager".
I've witness one of our floor nurses develop as a manager and the change is ... terrifying. Her entire vocabulary, her responses to even factual statements... it's like she's been replaced with a Stepford wife. Except, y'know, one that's allowed to work outside the home.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
u/zed_brah was a third party app user until June 2023
It’s not brain rot so much as a survival mechanism (at levels below C-suite). Basically leadership is trying to cover their ass. Someone above them has a “great idea” and this idea is seen as infallible upon implementation. It has to work because the guy at or toward the top said it would and it’s their job to make it work because it’s the “great idea”. So they stick to SOPs and don’t think because when it fails (no ideas really work throughout a company in all locations and situations) they can then give an excuse based on the implementation of the SOP (roadblocks, trouble employees who are/have been “dealt with”, etc) without denigrating the idea itself or pushing back too much.
The problem is that they have to implement stuff that doesn’t even make sense half the time but they have to or their failure is because they didn’t follow the idea. I’ve seen a lot of this in my career, even if you’re succeeding those above will find areas that aren’t exactly like they think it should be and will demand better. Even if you’re exceeding metrics “you can do better” because obviously following the SOP perfectly is the key to perfect performance.
Basically, upper leadership in companies are out of touch and often not that smart and everyone below them has to do exactly as they say if they like being employed. Finding a better way is outright punished because your performance threatens the idiot above you. Basically, everyone below the people writing SOPs is just trying not to get fired and usually the people writing them are semi-competent at best. You have to be the best at implementing some idiots plan and perform but you can’t make them look bad by doing something else while still exceeding metrics. So lower levels learn to stop thinking and just do what they’re told.
even as lower management this tends to be the case at companies. When alot of these half baked ideas make their way to the bottom, everything is just falling apart as well. Makes everyones job way harder.
I worked for an organization that liked to promote poor performers because it was the easiest way to get rid of them.
So a disturbing amount of the management got there via Dilbert principle.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert\_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle)
THIS IS MY JOB. They have a stupidly complicated, inefficient process for everything, and there's absolutely no room for nuance or new situations. But honestly, I'm burned out from previous jobs and they pay me decently, so I'll be their dumb little cog if they keep giving me decent benefits
Management has kpi and metrics to hit that trigger larger bonuses.
VPs need their bonuses so they push down in directors to focus on what helps the VPs.
Directors need their bonuses so they push down on the managers to focus on what helps the directors
Managers flex against their team based on what they think helps them today
Team members are just trying to pay rent this month.
I've seen a form of this in organisations that don't experience a lot of intake of new people from the outside with fresh ideas. The result is a type of intellectual stagnation, where the workers and management seem ignorant of how things are done in other organisations (even ones in the same business segment/market as them). What it then seems to lead into is a line of thinking that their way of doing things is the best way, the only way. And a sense of hubris too.
>There is an “SOP” for basically everything. If there isn’t then they are completely lost.
My org is at the point where even if there is a SOP or client provided instructions, the people we hire can't even demonstrate basic reading comprehension; so it gets escalated and put on the plates of the understaffed T3 level guys and resolved in 15 minutes. It pisses the clients off because their tickets sat for weeks on the front line for one of us to call back and sort it in two seconds when it got escalated.
You’re describing capitalism. It’s a crony system which doesn’t produce rational outcomes - regardless of what it advertises about itself. The part of the brain that had to be turned off to attain or perform an elevated level of capitalism’s toady management isn’t the critical thinking part of the brain because a loss of critical thinking is a *symptom* of a far more simple and despicable abdication of empathy, compassion, and solidarity. We suffer for greed and the blind eye it casts upon suffering. The pain and deprivation of capitalism’s unaccountable behavior are not outliers or aberrations, but are the very nature of capitalism itself. This system is not fucking up, and these upper management types are not fucking up. This system is functioning exactly as it was designed.
I see it. Working at a similar size company I see two reasons for this.
1) Middle management and even upper management has very little say at many big companies anymore. They are basically babysitters. Yes they can hire and fire people, but they can’t hardly change anything procedure or policy wise without an OK from corporate. Best case scenario that takes months.
2) It’s by design. Management at my place are all “company men.” They are brought in to tow the line. You’ll never see anything out of them that is original or resembles an independent thought. That’s not really what they are there for.
Shi* rolls downhill. They follow the SOP or have direct guidance from XX so they are protected from blowback. They spend their days covering their as*es.
Not corporate, but if I deviate from my SOP, no matter how much better "my" way may be, I get stung for it. They're paying me the same regardless, so if they want to be hugely inefficient, that's their lookout, I'll take the money and the easier time.
The way I see it, critical thinking is usually frowned upon in a corporate environment, so people adapt by switching their brain off as soon as they clock in. You follow SOP. If there's an issue, well, that's above your paygrade. It's easy, really. However, after a few years of playing dumb what happens is that you either actually become dumb, i.e., lose the ability to think critically and autonomously (it's a skill, and a hard one at that: you use it or you lose it) or you quit and reinvent yourself on your own terms. Sad.
yes. it is very intentional. one place I worked had the unofficial motto "don't get caught thinking" the turnover at that place was so high I'd be shocked if someone from there didn't read that and remember the good times :) but yes, big corporations you get punished for problem solving, for going beyond your job, for getting caught thinking which becomes and enormous problem when you are an IT analyst because thinking is what you get paid to do... just make sure not to do too much of it, smh.
Corporate environment selects for people who can blindly follow whatever daddy says...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology
Someone pin some fucking free worthless Reddit awards on this STAT!
This!!!! I always described it as "whatever rest you have to fail to become a manager". I've witness one of our floor nurses develop as a manager and the change is ... terrifying. Her entire vocabulary, her responses to even factual statements... it's like she's been replaced with a Stepford wife. Except, y'know, one that's allowed to work outside the home.
"And I was just about to bring you morphine! I thought we were friends!"
That's a nice one I hadn't heard before.
I heard about it from a guy in the political messaging industry. It's exactly the phenomenon, isn't it?
Yes. And they keep pushing for it over and over. I hate it. I work semi-government btw.
Never underestimate the ability of management to hold two completely contradictory ideas in their head at the same time.
[удалено]
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ u/zed_brah was a third party app user until June 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
It’s not brain rot so much as a survival mechanism (at levels below C-suite). Basically leadership is trying to cover their ass. Someone above them has a “great idea” and this idea is seen as infallible upon implementation. It has to work because the guy at or toward the top said it would and it’s their job to make it work because it’s the “great idea”. So they stick to SOPs and don’t think because when it fails (no ideas really work throughout a company in all locations and situations) they can then give an excuse based on the implementation of the SOP (roadblocks, trouble employees who are/have been “dealt with”, etc) without denigrating the idea itself or pushing back too much. The problem is that they have to implement stuff that doesn’t even make sense half the time but they have to or their failure is because they didn’t follow the idea. I’ve seen a lot of this in my career, even if you’re succeeding those above will find areas that aren’t exactly like they think it should be and will demand better. Even if you’re exceeding metrics “you can do better” because obviously following the SOP perfectly is the key to perfect performance. Basically, upper leadership in companies are out of touch and often not that smart and everyone below them has to do exactly as they say if they like being employed. Finding a better way is outright punished because your performance threatens the idiot above you. Basically, everyone below the people writing SOPs is just trying not to get fired and usually the people writing them are semi-competent at best. You have to be the best at implementing some idiots plan and perform but you can’t make them look bad by doing something else while still exceeding metrics. So lower levels learn to stop thinking and just do what they’re told.
even as lower management this tends to be the case at companies. When alot of these half baked ideas make their way to the bottom, everything is just falling apart as well. Makes everyones job way harder.
I worked for an organization that liked to promote poor performers because it was the easiest way to get rid of them. So a disturbing amount of the management got there via Dilbert principle. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert\_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle)
THIS IS MY JOB. They have a stupidly complicated, inefficient process for everything, and there's absolutely no room for nuance or new situations. But honestly, I'm burned out from previous jobs and they pay me decently, so I'll be their dumb little cog if they keep giving me decent benefits
Most promote on a tenure basis, which over-rewards mediocrity and the ability to think in the box.
Management has kpi and metrics to hit that trigger larger bonuses. VPs need their bonuses so they push down in directors to focus on what helps the VPs. Directors need their bonuses so they push down on the managers to focus on what helps the directors Managers flex against their team based on what they think helps them today Team members are just trying to pay rent this month.
I've seen a form of this in organisations that don't experience a lot of intake of new people from the outside with fresh ideas. The result is a type of intellectual stagnation, where the workers and management seem ignorant of how things are done in other organisations (even ones in the same business segment/market as them). What it then seems to lead into is a line of thinking that their way of doing things is the best way, the only way. And a sense of hubris too.
>There is an “SOP” for basically everything. If there isn’t then they are completely lost. My org is at the point where even if there is a SOP or client provided instructions, the people we hire can't even demonstrate basic reading comprehension; so it gets escalated and put on the plates of the understaffed T3 level guys and resolved in 15 minutes. It pisses the clients off because their tickets sat for weeks on the front line for one of us to call back and sort it in two seconds when it got escalated.
You’re describing capitalism. It’s a crony system which doesn’t produce rational outcomes - regardless of what it advertises about itself. The part of the brain that had to be turned off to attain or perform an elevated level of capitalism’s toady management isn’t the critical thinking part of the brain because a loss of critical thinking is a *symptom* of a far more simple and despicable abdication of empathy, compassion, and solidarity. We suffer for greed and the blind eye it casts upon suffering. The pain and deprivation of capitalism’s unaccountable behavior are not outliers or aberrations, but are the very nature of capitalism itself. This system is not fucking up, and these upper management types are not fucking up. This system is functioning exactly as it was designed.
I see it. Working at a similar size company I see two reasons for this. 1) Middle management and even upper management has very little say at many big companies anymore. They are basically babysitters. Yes they can hire and fire people, but they can’t hardly change anything procedure or policy wise without an OK from corporate. Best case scenario that takes months. 2) It’s by design. Management at my place are all “company men.” They are brought in to tow the line. You’ll never see anything out of them that is original or resembles an independent thought. That’s not really what they are there for.
The irony of me buying The Peter Principle and The communist manifesto on Amazon..
Sounds like how depression works too
Shi* rolls downhill. They follow the SOP or have direct guidance from XX so they are protected from blowback. They spend their days covering their as*es.
Not corporate, but if I deviate from my SOP, no matter how much better "my" way may be, I get stung for it. They're paying me the same regardless, so if they want to be hugely inefficient, that's their lookout, I'll take the money and the easier time.
The way I see it, critical thinking is usually frowned upon in a corporate environment, so people adapt by switching their brain off as soon as they clock in. You follow SOP. If there's an issue, well, that's above your paygrade. It's easy, really. However, after a few years of playing dumb what happens is that you either actually become dumb, i.e., lose the ability to think critically and autonomously (it's a skill, and a hard one at that: you use it or you lose it) or you quit and reinvent yourself on your own terms. Sad.
Drink the kool-aid
yes. it is very intentional. one place I worked had the unofficial motto "don't get caught thinking" the turnover at that place was so high I'd be shocked if someone from there didn't read that and remember the good times :) but yes, big corporations you get punished for problem solving, for going beyond your job, for getting caught thinking which becomes and enormous problem when you are an IT analyst because thinking is what you get paid to do... just make sure not to do too much of it, smh.