they're afraid to stand up to the group, or to the boss. If the boss or the group turns against them, the lone bureaucrat could become the target of the corporate steamroller. They know the machine has no loyalty to them, but loyalty to the machine is their only defense.

This is an understudied area of psychology: How do you get people to do what they know is wrong?

...with regard to corporate decision-making, and people making decisions they would not if "the numbers" did not provide a veneer of dispassionate objectivity.

zation, the more complicit.

when i was still struggling to "make it" (a pursuit i eventually gave up as i wasn't the right personality type) there were so many directives from above that i struggled to buy into but secretly couldn't -- they were raving bullshit and i didn't understand why my superiors were telling me they were the best thing since sliced bread.

i was too green to know that the reason they seemed like raving bullshit was because their real purpose was other than what we were being told.

there is a breed of middle management that are real suck up kick down personality types. vain self absorbed people who's job is simply to feather their own nests and their superiors let and encourage them to do it.

One of the most demotivating things in my career has been reporting to empty suits. handle-it-handle-it types. I do not prosper answering to people i dont respect, and it ended up costing me my career three years ago.

these people contribute nothing but gumming up the works and yet they are kept on. its my theory that companies reach a critical mass of success and then can spend decades of prosperity in spite of themselves. the contributions of the worker bees that competently get the job done out weights the counter productive efforts of their superiors.

I am congenitally incapable of brown nosing good.

I also made some mistakes - too much comfort zone and didnt keep up my skill set the way i should have. BUT I ALWAYS GOT THE JOB DONE and was always effective with the important stuff, but never worked to my full potential. Who amongst us does?

the magnitude of the weasel is directly proportional to how they dress. snappy dressing was the only thing my former boss was good at.

-90% Jimmy


bookmarked. Chris Hedges is always brilliant

And the irony of it is my economic survival currently depends on making guns.

Literally.

I'm pretty much in the same arena as Dr. Mengele, I guess?

-90% Jimmy

This may be the always brilliant Chris Hedges most important piece ever. Read the whole thing. Please. He explains everything.