I got the idea for this from Venkatesh Rao, who operates the ribbonfarm blog: experiments in refactored perception, and who has been discussing The Gervais Principle, based on the TV show The Office.
Basically, he divides office personalities into three types: the Sociopaths at the top, the Clueless in the middle, and the Losers at the bottom. As you can see, not very flattering titles - but apt ones. I have put my own slant on his slant in what follows.
As I see it, the Sociopaths create and destroy companies - more often the later. The Clueless are the geniuses in the middle that help with the creation part, and try to resist the destruction part - as the sociopaths try to make a quick buck off of what they already have, instead of trying to make it better. For this posting, I have simply called them Upper Management and Middle Management.
The Clueless, or Middle Management, were once over-achieving nobodies, who got promoted, because they were so useful. They are called clueless because they have no understanding of power politics, which the Sociopaths, or Upper Management, excel at.
The Losers, the vast majority, simply do their job, more or less, and try to make the best of a bad deal. I was one myself once, but I will not be spending much time on them - after all, they are losers.
I haven't spent much time around the Sociopaths, but my limited exposure to them certainly convinced me of the aptness of their title. You want to say out of the way of these guys.
I have had more exposure to the Clueless, and I have worked for several of them. The companies I worked for owed much of their success to these guys, who were brilliant and hard-working - but they always fucked them over - if you will excuse my French. The Clueless never realized, or never admitted, that they had been had. That is why they are Clueless.
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