Where corporate parasites come from - 2
Another cross post from my technical blog ...
- I already wrote on this topic, but there was at least a vivid, but only one concrete example. And most importantly, he did not explain the systematic reasons for the appearance of the add, but only how it happens. And there are systematic reasons, alas. And about one of them, I would like to tell you today. By the way, it not only concerns the software industries, but in general wherever there are knowledge workers — office workers, all sorts of very smart and creative, and other proletariat of the 21st century.
And this reason for the average man in the street is a bit shocking - a lie embedded in the corporate management system. No, no, "lie" is too gross a word. Better to say, virtual reality, built into the corporate management system. Let me explain. Have you found the USSR when you were at school? If so, then you were told the story as a story of the attitude of the employer and the employee. In slavery, the master has a whip, and he can compel. In the feudal, you work in my land - pay for the use and for protection from the neighboring baron or king. Under capitalism, it is still more liberal, you give me a job, I give you money. It seems even optional. In the twentieth century, everything became a bit more complicated, here you are not only money for work, but also social protection, some kind of medicine, a pension ... Even here in America. And what do you think Roosevelt did?
The twentieth century is generally special. This is the age of the mass working class, blue-collar workers, and the constant balance between what employers promised and what they actually gave. Or at least convinced the workers that they gave. Whether it is democracy, a bright communist future or the purity of the Aryan race. This is a very important clarification, because convincing workers that they have something good there was much cheaper than actually giving. The whole industry has grown on this, the media is called, mass media, means of propaganda. I mean, television, radio, newspapers, magazines ...
')
And it worked not only in macroeconomics in the size of the country, but also in micro, in the size of the company, team. A manager who could convince workers that they have something, that they actually do not have, or rejoice that they have something, that they really do not need at all, such a manager always had an advantage. He needed fewer resources for the same project, or he could have done a larger project with the same resources, for one simple reason - he had virtual resources, reward resources in the imagination of his subordinates. And it went on for a long time. The beginning of the mass working class is the eighteenth century. The beginning of the industrial society is the end of the nineteenth.
Remember, we said that management often turns out to be in virtual reality? So, the reverse is also true. A good manager, by the standards of the twentieth century, subordinates lived in virtual reality, where a commendable sign on the wall costing a couple of dollars or a pennant of a socialist winner for 32 kopecks, GOST 12345, valued much higher than the real wage increase. We have already said that the working environment is evolutionary? And in this evolutionary environment for more than a hundred years survived managers who were able to create virtual reality.
If you are aware of evolutionary theory, then you should have understood what happened. To a large extent, the work of the manager was precisely this creation of virtual reality for the team. “Are you proud to work at OUR factory?” “What is your contribution to the work of the team?” “We have a wonderful team!” Familiar? Do you think it was only in the USSR? Try here in America, come to the interview without showing how happy you are that you can be invited to a SUCH company. Even if the "such" firm produces program-controlled toilets.
But since the second half of the twentieth century, something has gone wrong with the creators of virtual reality. Knowledge workers appeared, knowledge workers, a class of workers who know better than a manager what they need to do for the benefit of the company, and they do it. For which they receive a salary. And these are not only engineers, they are other office workers - marketing, sales, and even the managers themselves. Peter Dryuker, the father of American corporate management, opened them in the early sixties, and then began to develop ways to manage this new category of employees.
Now imagine the problem of a manager who has to create a virtual reality, say, for sellers of used cars or insurance. Okay, let's do without such an extreme, back to the engineers, because it still became not easy. Imagine you are a manager, and you have a group of engineers. You hired them because they are smart. And now you need to convince them that making such a product (the same program-controlled toilet) is more important than feeding the family, paying for the house or educating children ... Once again, in case you didn’t notice, YOU HAD THEM, WHAT THEY ARE SMART. As the Americans say, uh-oh!
It would seem to give up lies, let people work honestly just for money ... But do not forget, this is an evolutionary environment. That is, to refuse corporate management could only if there is no cheaper and effective solution. And you know, there is such a solution! And it is called "social proof." Let me explain with an example.
I saw this documentary on Soviet television almost during my school years, but I still remember him. Psychologists are experimenting with a group of children from kindergarten. Porridge is put on the plate, on the right is sweet, on the left is tasteless, salty and nasty. The children are given in turn to try on a spoon from a sweet land and ask: “How is porridge, sweet?” All, of course, confirm that it is sweet. At some point, one of the children is shoved from a savory edge. He winces, gulps porridge in surprise, and confirms that she is sweet. “And do you want to?” We need to see the heartache on the face of this baby to believe ...
And the reason is simple: we are all social creatures. If a lot of people around us claim that the red pennant is good, then even the smartest of us are in the habit of agreeing. For us, belonging to a team, or a tribe there, is more important than whether sweet porridge is in fact or not. Collective idiocy scares us much less than isolation. This is also the result of evolution. Millions of years of human and monkey evolution, exiles from the tribe died much more often than collective idiots, and this was carried under the skin, in flesh and blood, in our genes.
That's just where to get those who will convince the engineer in the reality of virtual reality? Well, they are contagious, not only at rallies, they also communicate in the smoking room ... And the casket just opens. To a group of engineers or there, the same designers, marketers, advertisers, sellers, hire someone not so smart. At least in terms of engineering, design, marketing, advertising or sales. But “with enthusiasm, I don’t want to.” The work of an engineer or advertising there, of course, he does not really, if at all clearly does not harm. But he keeps real engineers, marketers and others in the mode of hyper-efficiency, in the mode of virtual reality. And it turns out, at least judging by the results in the evolutionary environment of the corporate working environment, that it is cheaper to hire such sheep provocateurs than to tell people the truth.
Nothing personal, business is business. The environment is really evolutionary. If it were more effective to tell the truth, many people would already be telling the truth. In many small companies, where shepherd provocateurs cannot afford, they even say. But not in big firms. Obviously, this is not yet more effective. I personally believe that this will change, and telling the truth will become more profitable (again, for systematic reasons, which now have no time to go into), but this, apparently, has not yet happened.
Well, and a question for the sweet. When you need a new manager, who will you promote to this position? An engineer who does a useful business, or this virtual real-enthusiast who in all other respects is more harmful than useful? And let me remind you, “to a large extent the work of the manager has become precisely this virtual reality creation for the team.” You know, it remains only to shrug and admit that there is even some kind of perverted logic in it. After all, this is where our enthusiast specialized in all the way!
By the way, you already understand why in the title I asked “Where do corporate parasites come from?”
- I already wrote on this topic, but there was at least a vivid, but only one concrete example. And most importantly, he did not explain the systematic reasons for the appearance of the add, but only how it happens. And there are systematic reasons, alas. And about one of them, I would like to tell you today. By the way, it not only concerns the software industries, but in general wherever there are knowledge workers — office workers, all sorts of very smart and creative, and other proletariat of the 21st century.
And this reason for the average man in the street is a bit shocking - a lie embedded in the corporate management system. No, no, "lie" is too gross a word. Better to say, virtual reality, built into the corporate management system. Let me explain. Have you found the USSR when you were at school? If so, then you were told the story as a story of the attitude of the employer and the employee. In slavery, the master has a whip, and he can compel. In the feudal, you work in my land - pay for the use and for protection from the neighboring baron or king. Under capitalism, it is still more liberal, you give me a job, I give you money. It seems even optional. In the twentieth century, everything became a bit more complicated, here you are not only money for work, but also social protection, some kind of medicine, a pension ... Even here in America. And what do you think Roosevelt did?
The twentieth century is generally special. This is the age of the mass working class, blue-collar workers, and the constant balance between what employers promised and what they actually gave. Or at least convinced the workers that they gave. Whether it is democracy, a bright communist future or the purity of the Aryan race. This is a very important clarification, because convincing workers that they have something good there was much cheaper than actually giving. The whole industry has grown on this, the media is called, mass media, means of propaganda. I mean, television, radio, newspapers, magazines ...
')
And it worked not only in macroeconomics in the size of the country, but also in micro, in the size of the company, team. A manager who could convince workers that they have something, that they actually do not have, or rejoice that they have something, that they really do not need at all, such a manager always had an advantage. He needed fewer resources for the same project, or he could have done a larger project with the same resources, for one simple reason - he had virtual resources, reward resources in the imagination of his subordinates. And it went on for a long time. The beginning of the mass working class is the eighteenth century. The beginning of the industrial society is the end of the nineteenth.
Remember, we said that management often turns out to be in virtual reality? So, the reverse is also true. A good manager, by the standards of the twentieth century, subordinates lived in virtual reality, where a commendable sign on the wall costing a couple of dollars or a pennant of a socialist winner for 32 kopecks, GOST 12345, valued much higher than the real wage increase. We have already said that the working environment is evolutionary? And in this evolutionary environment for more than a hundred years survived managers who were able to create virtual reality.
If you are aware of evolutionary theory, then you should have understood what happened. To a large extent, the work of the manager was precisely this creation of virtual reality for the team. “Are you proud to work at OUR factory?” “What is your contribution to the work of the team?” “We have a wonderful team!” Familiar? Do you think it was only in the USSR? Try here in America, come to the interview without showing how happy you are that you can be invited to a SUCH company. Even if the "such" firm produces program-controlled toilets.
But since the second half of the twentieth century, something has gone wrong with the creators of virtual reality. Knowledge workers appeared, knowledge workers, a class of workers who know better than a manager what they need to do for the benefit of the company, and they do it. For which they receive a salary. And these are not only engineers, they are other office workers - marketing, sales, and even the managers themselves. Peter Dryuker, the father of American corporate management, opened them in the early sixties, and then began to develop ways to manage this new category of employees.
Now imagine the problem of a manager who has to create a virtual reality, say, for sellers of used cars or insurance. Okay, let's do without such an extreme, back to the engineers, because it still became not easy. Imagine you are a manager, and you have a group of engineers. You hired them because they are smart. And now you need to convince them that making such a product (the same program-controlled toilet) is more important than feeding the family, paying for the house or educating children ... Once again, in case you didn’t notice, YOU HAD THEM, WHAT THEY ARE SMART. As the Americans say, uh-oh!
It would seem to give up lies, let people work honestly just for money ... But do not forget, this is an evolutionary environment. That is, to refuse corporate management could only if there is no cheaper and effective solution. And you know, there is such a solution! And it is called "social proof." Let me explain with an example.
I saw this documentary on Soviet television almost during my school years, but I still remember him. Psychologists are experimenting with a group of children from kindergarten. Porridge is put on the plate, on the right is sweet, on the left is tasteless, salty and nasty. The children are given in turn to try on a spoon from a sweet land and ask: “How is porridge, sweet?” All, of course, confirm that it is sweet. At some point, one of the children is shoved from a savory edge. He winces, gulps porridge in surprise, and confirms that she is sweet. “And do you want to?” We need to see the heartache on the face of this baby to believe ...
And the reason is simple: we are all social creatures. If a lot of people around us claim that the red pennant is good, then even the smartest of us are in the habit of agreeing. For us, belonging to a team, or a tribe there, is more important than whether sweet porridge is in fact or not. Collective idiocy scares us much less than isolation. This is also the result of evolution. Millions of years of human and monkey evolution, exiles from the tribe died much more often than collective idiots, and this was carried under the skin, in flesh and blood, in our genes.
That's just where to get those who will convince the engineer in the reality of virtual reality? Well, they are contagious, not only at rallies, they also communicate in the smoking room ... And the casket just opens. To a group of engineers or there, the same designers, marketers, advertisers, sellers, hire someone not so smart. At least in terms of engineering, design, marketing, advertising or sales. But “with enthusiasm, I don’t want to.” The work of an engineer or advertising there, of course, he does not really, if at all clearly does not harm. But he keeps real engineers, marketers and others in the mode of hyper-efficiency, in the mode of virtual reality. And it turns out, at least judging by the results in the evolutionary environment of the corporate working environment, that it is cheaper to hire such sheep provocateurs than to tell people the truth.
Nothing personal, business is business. The environment is really evolutionary. If it were more effective to tell the truth, many people would already be telling the truth. In many small companies, where shepherd provocateurs cannot afford, they even say. But not in big firms. Obviously, this is not yet more effective. I personally believe that this will change, and telling the truth will become more profitable (again, for systematic reasons, which now have no time to go into), but this, apparently, has not yet happened.
Well, and a question for the sweet. When you need a new manager, who will you promote to this position? An engineer who does a useful business, or this virtual real-enthusiast who in all other respects is more harmful than useful? And let me remind you, “to a large extent the work of the manager has become precisely this virtual reality creation for the team.” You know, it remains only to shrug and admit that there is even some kind of perverted logic in it. After all, this is where our enthusiast specialized in all the way!
By the way, you already understand why in the title I asked “Where do corporate parasites come from?”
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/16541/
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