[lbo-talk] The job market

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Tue Dec 13 06:02:44 PST 2011


Joanna: "Yeah, that's the saving grace of hi tech work. No amount of groveling will make up for the fact that your colleagues don't respect your work. It's a small world, and word gets around."

[WS:] This is what Galbraith (and Veblen) argued about power in corporation. It is mostly a team decision based on merits rather than managerial fiat. I guess it makes sense in fields in which you cannot bullshit your way out of problems (such as IT). Things either work or they do not. On the other hand, in many services, social and behavioral sciences, policy, or even administration where bullshit to merits ratio is much higher, this is not necessarily the case. Since the merits of a service or product in these areas are not clear, bullshitting one's way out of problem is THE way to go, which means that good bullshitters typically can get high on the managerial totem pole and can bullshit their way with relative impunity.

On the second thought, however, it occurred to me that there is considerable amount of "loose coupling" or slack in most areas of the economy before the shit start hitting the fan. First, the consequences of most decisions are not manifested right away, it usually takes time for things to go visibly wrong. This makes it difficult to connect bad outcomes to any particular decision. Second, there is usually a certain amount of good will among the actors. This means that people who implement decision often "play by the ear" and make adjustments and corrections to plans to stave off problems as they emerge - yet nominally they still follow the same plan or decision. In some cases, the fair amount of willingness to play along is the only factor that saves a plan or a decision that is obvious bullshit - not necessarily bad, but common knowledge - yet for various reasons the players are willing to give credit to the prominent "author" of this plan. It works more or less like in the British sitcom The Black Adder: a sleazy royalty figure listens to common sense advice from his underling, then replies "no, no I have a better idea," then repeats exactly what the underling just said and everyone gives him credit for the "brilliant" plan.

Wojtek



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