The Gervais Principle: The Complete Series, with a Bonus Essay on Office Space

by Venkatesh G. Rao

The complete Internet cult classic series, the Gervais Principle, plus a bonus essay on the movie Office Space and a TV, movie and reading guide for connoisseurs of workplace politics. Written in six parts between 2009 and 2013 by Venkatesh Rao on ribbonfarm.com, and "Slashdotted" twice, this widely acclaimed series examines organizational dynamics through the lens of the NBC show, The Office and offers a comprehensive tragic philosophy of work for the modern world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Psychology, Leadership, Management, Politics, Philosophy

171 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 16, 2013

Reviews

[Keith Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gervais Principle, named after Ricky Gervais, the creator of The Office, and coined by Venkatesh Rao, of the not as popular blog, Ribbonfarm, states that at the top of any organization are sociopaths, at the bottom are losers, and in the middle are the clueless.

In case that isn’t self-evident to you, let me explain. A sociopath with an idea recruits losers to do the work and a company is born. The losers accept a bad bargain for the sake of a steady paycheck. They know who cashes in big, and it’s not them, it’s the sociopaths at the top; so, they punch their clock, put in their time, but derive most of their satisfaction in life, if any, from what they do outside of work. The clueless, the middle managers or any hard worker, don’t acknowledge that the sociopaths are in bad faith. They believe they can get ahead by playing the game and busting their butts for the company. The sociopaths snicker, give the clueless a pittance more than the losers, and use the clueless to shield them from the people at the bottom who know the truth. The clueless believe they will rise in the organization, but they never will because they don’t understand how the game is played. It’s played according to the sociopath’s rules, not the rules in the employee handbook.

Folks from Wall Street, or any other rapacious, dog-eat-dog field readily agree that the Gervais Principle is an accurate summation of the firms in which they work. I’ve been employed by a few non-profit organizations that have proved to be headed by sociopaths and staffed by losers and clueless, as well. I can admit that I’ve been a loser, stuck in dead end jobs that weren’t going anywhere. While at a local health system, I was largely a member of the clueless, until I caught on to the game. Finally, I quit to go my own way, to private practice, taking a few of the local health system’s customers with me, as well as the skills they paid me to learn, thus becoming a small time sociopath with no losers or clueless to exploit.

If you agree with this characterization about organizations, what can you do about it? How is a person to behave if he wants to be successful, but also wants to sleep at night? True sociopaths don’t have any trouble sleeping, no matter who they screw; but, if you cannot be as ruthless as all that, what else can you do, but take your place in the ranks of the losers and clueless?

I think this is the place where we should turn down the hyperbole. The terms: sociopath, loser, and clueless, are amplified to help you understand the situation, but they don’t tell you what to do about it. Therefore, lets tone it down a little and reduce the heat. I don’t think, to be successful in an organization, you really need to be an actual, bona fide, clinically certified sociopath, with all the baggage that entails; I think it means that, to succeed in business, you have to be a businessman, to get rich, you’ve to be a capitalist, to prevail in office politics, you’ve got to study your Machiavelli. You’ve got to turn away from morals and ethics just a bit and trust that the market, with its blind hand, will sort things out.

The clueless are not entirely clueless, at least they don’t have to be, to be successful middle managers or satisfied hard workers. You should be able to love what you do and work hard at doing it for its own satisfaction, without being derided as clueless because the one percent reap most of the benefits. The prototypically clueless believe the lies the one percent makes them swallow: that they, too, will thrive in the same way the one percent thrives. Actual middle managers and hard workers know that its rigged, but take pleasure in work for its own sake.

When I’m on the soccer field, I put it all out there, I try my best, and do whatever I can do to bring my team victory; but, I’m not clueless because, when the game is over, I know it was just a game. I know that, even if we win, it doesn’t mean we’re all rich, famous, and get the hot chicks. If I score the winning goal, my teammates may hoist me on their shoulders for a celebration, but, by the end of the night, after so many beers, I can be as annoying to them as ever.

Nor are the losers really losers. Sure, they’ve accepted what one many may characterize, in a sociopathic frame of mind, as a bad bargain; but, is it, really? Your average worker, toiling in a factory, office, or school may never be the one percent, vacationing in Capri. They may not get the stock options, the inflated CEO pay, or the golden parachutes the sociopaths relish. Stuck in mindless, repetitive, and meaningless labor, it might be hard for them to find joy in what they do, to grab for all the gusto they can; but it doesn’t have to mean they are losers.

They are not entirely losers as long as they have an adequate, steady paycheck. I was a loser a few times; but every turn I took as one resulted in a net gain. While I worked in food service, I built my house. While I milked cows, I raised small children. While I sawed logs, turning big pieces of wood into little pieces of wood all day, I went to school at night. While I worked at that local health system and saw the groundbreaking mental health program I developed, shut down by the bean counters, I did the grunt work of shrinking heads eight hours a day and wrote my first book. Loser, my ass.

So, you see, the Gervais Principle can illuminate many things about the organization in which you work. Just don’t take the terms too seriously.

Keith Wilson writes on mental health and relationship issues on his blog, Madness 101

[Caroline · Rating 1 out of 5]

What the heck did I just read?

Do you think everything from The Office was incredibly true to life? Do you want someone to explain to you the underlying principles that make the world work as depicted in The Office? Do you agree that companies are made of exactly three types of people - Losers, Clueless, and Sociopaths? (I am not making this up!) No? Then I suggest you not read this.

This felt like an attempt at the Forer effect that got too specific and got all the specifics wrong. A lot of individual parts of the book rang at least somewhat true. I'm sure everyone has heard seen some amount of empty posturing (Posturetalk in this book). But the book claims only middle management does Posturetalk, and they do it 100% of the time. Upper management instead does Powertalk, which is like Posturetalk except there are real stakes. Except when they are talking to ICs, at which point upper management does Straight Talk, where they say exactly what they mean (!). Really, upper management never does any empty posturing? Middle management never has anything at stake? The entire book was like this, and none of it matched up to my experience.

[Aman A · Rating 5 out of 5]

6/5

Highly recommend to my The Office obsessed friends.
I read this book in a day and then a year later reread it in a few days. As someone who has seen the American version of The Office multiple times and found myself obsessively analyzing it, this was a very interesting and captivating read. I'm not sure how much of the theories presented I believe and if I would at all apply them to my life but nonetheless it was very enlightening at times and I particularly enjoyed the last section on theists vs atheists vs "sociopaths".
Once the framework of "loser", "clueless", and "sociopath" were established, it was crazy and unbelievable how perfectly the interactions in the show fit into this framework.
The parallels to Improv theater were also very interesting and have put the book Impro by Keith Johnstone very high on my to read list.
The author of the book, Venkatesh Rao, has a blog called Ribbonfarm which is a vast and enticing rabbit hole that I have only begun to explore.
The Gervais Principle suggests that in any organization, at the top are the “sociopaths”, at the bottom, the “losers”, and in between, the “clueless”, and he defines these three terms very specifically.
“””
The Gervais Principle is this: Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing Losers into middle-management, groom under-performing Losers into Sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort Losers to fend for themselves.
“””
This book delves into the psychologies of the characters and explains why each character is either a Sociopath, Clueless, or a Loser.
This book talks about the different ways in which each of these groups speak with one another and primarily focuses on “PowerTalk”, the language Sociopaths use amongst themselves. Rao also points out that PowerTalk, if it can be learned, can only really be learned through trial and error and practice and failure, learned through experience, as opposed to from textbooks.
Rao talks about “Arrested Development” where someone’s development as a human being stalls because they focus on furthering their strengths, and that their addiction to their strengths results in a failure to truly grow as an individual.

We see the immature nature of the Clueless Michael, Dwight, and Andy, with sufficient psychological detail that it forces me to consider those in my own life who fit the mold of Clueless.

Rao on status illegibility and group dynamics is extremely eye opening to someone who has never read about group dynamics. While there may be other books on group dynamics that are more thorough and correct, the sheer magnitude and concentration of examples provided by the show gives me a way to really better understand the concepts. It is not rare for Rao to explain a concept and follow it up with a long bullet point list of examples that illustrate the concept, something that is rare in books talking about complex, hard to grasp concepts.

Rao also speaks on humor and it's effects on group status. This section was very entertaining because I love making jokes in groups and to see an analysis of various kinds of jokes was both eye opening and simply fun. Both the section on jokes and in group dynamics has made me wary of my desire for group status and made me aware of how changes in group status are ultimately peanuts compared to overall status.

The Office is the show best known for crime humor. There are many people who prefer to not watch the show because of the high levels of cringe. Rao very clearly explains why the lack of self awareness in mainly the Clueless causes us as an audience to cringe.

Finally Rao focuses on the Sociopaths. He claims that they play a game of altering realities.
"""
Seasoned Sociopaths maintain a permanent facade of strategic incompetence and ignorance in key areas, rather than just making up situational incompetence arguments. This is coupled with indirection and abstraction in requests given to reports. The result is HIWTYL judo.
"""
HIWTYL = Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

I think it is imperative to understand and even be able to play this game that Sociopaths play in order to not be manipulated yourself. Rao touches on key points on how they get and keep and grow their power. It isn't so much that they forcefully take the power but rather it is handed to them by those unwilling to face reality and it's infinite complexities.

The book ends with a highly philosophical discussion on the socially constructed realities we live in and that Sociopaths in pursuit of unmediated reality acquire power or rather it is acquiesced to them by those afraid of peeling off the masks. This is where the connections to Improv come in. Finally the book ends with a discussion of Toby, the failed Messiah figure, a Sociopath who refuses to play the power fame and instead uses his nihilistic knowledge to protect the blissfully unaware from facing reality and escaping their paradise of ignorance. The last bit in its reference both to Messiac figures and Priests and The Hero's Journey, is Peterson-esque.

All in all, this book is a 6/5, which is to say, a "Must Read".

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book comes out of a certain genre of techbro blog that claims to rip the façade off of modern American reality and expose it for what it really is: think Slate Star Codex, The Last Psychiatrist, and their imitators. I’ve never been a fan of that narrative voice: the big insight of this genre seems to just be a Darwinian analysis that hey, what if everything is actually a status struggle for power/sex? It’s not a useless insight, but I think just about any rigorous work of history or philosophy is more explanatory, and a lot of these blogs have a “theory of everything” that seems to ignore historical context and contingency.

So I was skeptical of the premise that this book would lead you to achieve a sort of redpilled organizational literacy (Rao denies the redpill metaphor in the intro, but he also…self-consciously brings it up) that lets you see through your organization’s bullshit through the book’s theory of everything.

But what redeems the book, and why I loved it, is that the absolute best thing that this “theory of everything” genre can do is analyze a work of culture and provide a theory of why that work has an internally consistent worldview. That’s the project of this book and it’s just awesome. The Gervais Principle elevates The Office beyond a generic sitcom (not that it needs help).

There’s a lot of arguments in the book, ranging from standard character analysis to an entire religious theory of desire based on people’s role within organizations. The most compelling thesis is: while most TV shows focus on society’s Losers, The Office uniquely and artistically explores the delusions of the Clueless middle managers. I buy it. I also left convinced that The Office really is the canonical fictional work of my generation, far more than say Harry Potter.

Overall, highly recommended. This book is amazing when it’s analyzing The Office, good when it analyzes roles within organizations, and should be taken with a grain of salt when it verges into spiritualist manifesto on modern society. But honestly, it's fun to read even then.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun, nasty, bitchy taxonomy of social class / psychological theory of the firm; a mishmash of economics, psychoanalysis and literary criticism; a series of massive blogposts apologising for being a book.

It splits employed people into three classes with terrible names - Leaders ("Sociopaths"), Loyalists ("Clueless"), Workers ("Losers") - and throws a massive amount of fictional evidence at each. That's obviously a formal hierarchy, Leaders > Loyalists > Workers, but Rao's first big left turn is to impose a second contradictory ordering on the 3 classes in developmental psychology terms: Clueless < Losers < Sociopaths. I like his subdivision of Losers into: Minimum-effort rationally-disengaged; Overperformers; future Sociopaths. It looks nasty, and Rao is uninterested in making it seem moral or immoral, but if this is how the leaders actually think, Rao is doing us (the 99%) a service.

Is this system justified and true? No. Rao writes the best clickbait in the world, what he calls "insight porn". It is the verbal equivalent of the noise an F1 engine makes on a 200m straight. The class theory in this would make for a great literary theory, a blueprint for future Office Spaces. Myers-Briggs is marginally better than the dumb view of people as more or less defective versions of one character. So too is this better than "bosses/workers" cod Marxism.

(He could have massively increased his audience and reduced unwanted connotations by renaming "Losers" to "Workers"

the Loser — really not a loser at all if you think about it — pays his dues, does not ask for much, and finds meaning in his life elsewhere

)

He has a weird relationship with the amoral elites - he often says things like

In the big games of life, those involving the Darwinian dimensions of sex, money or power, we don’t get to define the rules. And it is only those games that can create social value.

putting destiny and ultimate value in their hands. And he clearly thinks of himself as a post-reality-shock enlightened figure. And yet he rags on the inauthenticity, nihilism, cruelty, hollowness of his 'Sociopaths'.

There are dozens of acute, contentious, boggling passages like

For high-empathy people, all this is natural. By participating in collective feeling in groups of any size, and reacting to basic attraction/aversion drives, you can actually safely navigate all the complexity by instinct.
Not only can you do this, you will actually feel good doing this. This feeling is called happiness. I don’t have time to go into this, but happiness is entirely a social phenomenon, and there’s plenty of evidence that the best way (and from my reading, the only way) to get happy is to get sociable. Non-social feelings that seem like happiness turn out, upon further examination, to be distinct emotions like contentment, equanimity or hedonistic pleasure

the level of abstraction that we are concerned with, all theories of developmental psychology – Freud’s, Piaget’s, Erikson’s, Maslow’s – say roughly the same thing about arrested development: you are born Clueless and clue up in fits and starts. Bits of you get stuck and left behind at different points, and eventually you exhaust your capacity for real change and stall (though you may retain an illusion that you are on a path of “lifelong growth and learning,” itself a pattern of arrested development)

I can imagine a teenager reading this and becoming absolutely insufferable. But much great writing can lend spurious superiority to fools - for instance Nietzsche.

[Free! here]

[Rahul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't write book reviews but this is by far one of the most insightful and brilliant pieces of commentary I've ever read. The fact that it's based on The Office, a personal favorite, makes it all the more enjoyable.

[Nicolay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just saw Office Space last night to finish the book with the required essay. It fits the tone of the rest of the book perfectly.

Something like this is being played in all offices in the world, by both enlightened and unsuspecting parties.

This is a bit like taking the Red Pill in Matrix...

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Who knew the office was so deep. Or more like - who knew that other people were watching the office at 100x the level I was? Every character, every line is the embodiment of one of three roles that we play as members of any organization. We are all Losers, Clueless, or Sociopaths.

These descriptions are not used as we use them in a social sense, but more as the "deals we strike" with the rest of the organization and eventually - the level of reality that we chose to participate in. And if we don't choose, its chosen for us.

As it continues, the essay leaves the realm of concepts demonstrated in the show. It's more like Rao's quickstudy on management/game theory/human psychology which The Office happens to fit into perfectly. And very well cited by the way which is what makes the essay work so well - so much less dry than a management book. I believe the writers would at least have to agree with the ideas in this essay if they don't admit that they inspired the show to begin with.

This type of categorizing always feels suspiciously good to me.. kind of like horoscopes or personality tests. Here its especially dangerous because it includes a spectrum of development with clueless being the least developed on to sociopaths. There are assumptions made here that Im not sure are true. However I certainly am glad to have read it as I enjoyed it despite that.

[Gwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, I decided to bump it up to 4 stars. I read this with a friend of mine, and I had to raise the rating because of how much fun that was.

The book (freely available online) is a collection of essays analyzing The Office. It's very entertaining to go through and likely shouldn't be taken too seriously. The author has a lot of really interesting blog posts too on his website that I plan on checking out. It's sad to me that psuedo-intellectuals like Jordan Peterson or Robert Greene can make a name and cult-like following for themselves while those like Rao are left as a hidden, unspoken gems of the internet.

I recommend if you have the time and enjoy cynical perspectives on corporate life.

[Gagi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for anybody who look to understand how people tend to organize themselfs and others

It's fantastic take on organization. For those unfamiliar with the show it could be little too much in a sense of references, but it's manageable and above all deep and profound look on organization and the people within it.

[Satyaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Office according to The Office
The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

[Alexej Gerstmaier · Rating 3 out of 5]

ACX review of this is better

[Sylwia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible stuff! I wish it was available on audio.

[Bharat Bheesetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long winded, but an amazingly original book that surfaced a lot of stuff that I only vaguely suspected about life. A must read.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book like this whose primary evidence base is fictional has to get its authority from a "click" response in the reader - where the author makes a claim and even though they don't offer evidence, once it's been articulated the claim is so obviously right that the reader buys it. This book is cleverly written and easy to read, but unfortunately I think it often falls short of that bar, and so I just don't believe many of its basic claims.

Notes
- “mccloud hierarchy”: sociopaths, clueless, losers (not culturally)
- Sociopaths characterized by wanting control of their org /themselves, move around, contribute creativity and ruthlessness
- Clueless: loyal to firm, idealize the firm
- Losers: move around as necessary to meet needs for some goals outside org world
- Lifecycle: S+L, S+C+L, S+CC+L, death
- Peters principle, Dilbert principle
- Gervais Principle: S intentionally move over performing L to C and underperforming L to S
- Why???
- Says that C are necessary to separate S and L and insulate them from one another, so the org doesn't explode? What?
- Obviously S(**)* are needed for steering, and L are efficient for rowing, but I still don't get C
- Languages
- Posture: C→*
- Power: S→S. Examples focus on competent subtext, status/information/social maneuvering, etc
- Baby: S→C
- Game: L→L
- Straight: S→L
- The whole “power through emptiness” nihilism thing is just realizing (at some gut level) that the normativity that comes from social reality isn't real/authoritative. No adults, few peers

[Kishor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating. I'm a bit hesitant to overly generalize based on Venkatesh's thoughts, but the scary part about reading this series of blog posts is that there are parts that are guaranteed to resonate with any reader who's ever worked in a corporate hierarchy. I particularly enjoyed the bit on how humor works when n=1,2,3+. I skipped the Office Space essay.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think that it's overdoing it to say that this book (really a series of curated blog posts) will probably change how you think about work. As a synthesis of the Peter Principle (thesis) and the Dilbert Principle (antithesis), The Gervais Principle is a fitting synthesis of many timeless theories of organizational genesis, growth and stagnation, as well as organizational coercion and internal politics. It's an easy read, and well worth your time, although it is, as the introduction states, a bit of a matrix-book; it's hard to look backwards, and does really force some real self-reflection.

It's hard to describe this; I got some of the same feelings I got while reading Finite and Infinite Games, and there are just so many zen-like counterintuitive concepts within the overall framework that you should probably just go read it. Phrases like "the mediocre will inherit the earth," "happiness is a social construct" and "in traditional accounting, you'll have a net deficit of blame," all jostle for position within a somewhat counter-cultural, but relatively resonant world view.

At the end of the day, the Gervais Principle is something that will stick in your head and provide a valuable mental model for navigating the world. Like all mental models, they are most valuable in aggregate, but that doesn't diminish the joy in finding a new one.

[Julian Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really funny, and maybe not to be taken too seriously, but still very thought-provoking. I think there are some real insights here into big corporations as well as general interpersonal dynamics. I certainly came away with lots to think about w.r.t. my own experiences in big corporations as well as my personal life and motivations. I think the ideas here apply more obviously to non-tech companies, just considering the skills, nature, and role of labor vs management and some general cultural differences in tech vs the companies of The Organization Man. But anyway I would certainly recommend this to friends who 1) have corporate jobs, tech or not, and 2) are familiar with the US version of The Office.

[Niniane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty interesting analysis of motivations within organizations. It mostly repackages concepts from other writers, and makes it more entertaining by using examples from "The Office".

It is self-important and claims that reading this book will permanently change your life forever.

The author claims to be a "sociopath" (using his own definition, which is about seeing through social constructs and not the clinical term). He claims to have stopped caring about any societal status or constructs. ... until he asks you to please subscribe to his newsletter and also maybe hire him to as a consultant for $1,000 to explain his philosophy. He basically is a wannabe influencer, whose claim to fame is that he's a "sociopath" that doesn't care about anyone or anything.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the reviewers of this book start by asking themselves "What did I just read?"

I feel you, fellow reviewers.

The book--a series of blog posts in fact--starts reasonably enough by identifying three categories of office workers: the clueless, the losers, and the sociopaths. Sure, a bit reductionist, and a bit myopic, but fine, so be it.

It then proceeds to use (the same few) examples from "The Office" (the US version) to drive home the point.

I'm not sure what the author is going for: a sociological study? an economics lesson? a philosophical essay? all of the above?

The result is increasingly hard to follow, and I had to force myself to read (almost) to the end.

Seriously, never again. A blog post is a blog post is a blog post.

[Kars · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read for the most part and at times illuminating too. It fails to be particularly useful for me because I haven't seen the American version of The Office so most of the examples are lost on me.

The cynical labels Rao has chosen for his archetypes may be amusing but ultimately prevent me from embracing his theory as a tool for reading my own work environments. That might make me 'clueless' or a 'loser' (two of the three archetypes) but I just don't like to self describe as a 'sociopath' (the final one).

[Sukh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it at your own risk.
It might give you a new perspective on your job.
Either you will just chuckle and move on saying, 'it was fun to read, but that's not how things are in real life'.
Or you might start thinking about the category you belong in your organization and end up doing some serious shift in your career.

If you are a 'The Office' fan, go for it.

[Bhushan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal book about the social dynamics in business organizations. It got WAY better on re-reading. Seriously, just read it. Perhaps my best psychology and social cognition read till date.

[Omikun · Rating 5 out of 5]

This web-essay series turned ebook is basically a breakdown of the corporate hierarchy according to a sociopath. As a (mostly) non-sociopath this book was very enlightening and opened my eyes to a world I had not been able to verbalize. There are quite a few interesting concepts, from unmediated reality to unreconstructed ideals, that I found difficult to grasp because there was never an explicit definition that had to be deduced by context.

Overall, I think I can break it down to this: Non sociopaths prefer to live in a meaningful world built on social values (ethics, morality, hierarchy, authority). Sociopaths are people who realizes these values are artificial and objectively meaningless. Thus, they operate outside societal norms while manipulating others who live within those norms. They can lie and cheat with impunity because nothing holds them back. They realize that the only thing of value is leverage, everything else is pretend money.

The book then goes on to extrapolate how this affects the rest of the organization, how sociopaths creates a deterministic world where they can claim the rewards for successes and redirects blame to underlings for failures, and how different kinds of redirections work. Except for a few places where some definition of terms would have been useful, I felt this book was really written, came at the subject from a very approachable vector, and was more insightful than the last several recent popular non-fiction books I read (that I shall not name).

[Jude Morrissey · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, Venkatesh Rao introduces us to his very cynical analysis of organizational structure, using the tv show The Office as both model and example. While he focuses primarily on corporate organizational structure, the picture he presents has implications beyond the workplace, as it delves into the mindsets and psychology of the classes of workers involved.

Personally, I found his view interesting, and there is something right in it; but I am unconvinced that it is an entirely accurate portrayal of all organizations. He makes some assumptions that I don't think he can unilaterally make, and many of his conclusions are based on those assumptions. I did, however, think the book made a lot of sense in the context of The Office, although I'm not sure the show was actually conceived and built around these ideas - that might, however, lend more credence to his argument, however, since a satirical look at a thing often picks out truths that are missed when taking it "seriously".

A point he makes later in the book stands out as something he should have said earlier - namely, that different people can and do play each of these roles at different times. It isn't always clear which class a person belongs in, then, except in the context of a particular event or role.

Recommended for fans of The Office and Dilbert, or who want a darkly cynical way to approach corporate structure.

[sashrika · Rating 3 out of 5]

a dense study of organizational literacy through revisiting a fictional paper company in scranton, this was a pretty interesting take on the structure of a company/organization and how individual dynamics and in-group/out-group behaviors manifest.

sociopathy in this book is stripping away the abstractions (becoming a doctor, becoming a manager) of a complex concept in an effort to understand it yourself because you are dissatisfied with the explanation (abstraction) you are given. you inadvertently become the knower of the abstraction yourself - in your quest for answers, people end up coming to you for answers. this, linked to maintaining the keys of power in an organizational setting, involves negotiating your knowledge and maintaining the power dynamics between the other groups (“clueless” and “losers”). “The Clueless want to be them, Losers want to be them”, and (in my tendency to existentialize everything) the Sociopaths become the mortal “gods” that seem to control the entropy of the universe (here, organizations and the markets they operate within).

idk if i agree with all the takes but i do think this work presents a pretty interesting paradigm through which to understand organizational structures - whether in management, religion, or TV.

[Jurgen Dhaese · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hilarious book analyzing organization dynamics through the lens of the TV show "The Office".

Basically, each organization has three types of people :

1. Sociopaths at the top. Coldblooded visionaries who see the reality of how the world really works, and put themselves into advantageous economic positions - often at the expense of other people.
2. Clueless people in the middle. Those without competence that have deluded themselves into a sick sense of loyalty to organizations that don't have their best interests at heart.
3. Losers at the bottom. People who have struck bad bargains economically for steady paychecks, and suffer the consequences.

This book analyzes the interplay of all these groups in organizations.

Often far-fetched and reaching, yet at its core wildly fascinating, brutally honest, and probably pretty accurate.

Moral of the story: don't be clueless or a loser. Realize how the economic world really works. And position yourself to take advantage of it.

[Richard Meadows · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, this is a sociological model built around fictional characters from a popular TV show (The Office). Yes, it feels like Rao is just making shit up from the comfort of his couch: arbitrarily dividing the world into Sociopaths, Clueless, and Losers. But who cares! All models are wrong; at least this is one is entertaining and insightful.

I hadn’t even seen The Office, but I still got a lot out of this book stitched-together series of blog posts. Rao is brilliant at surfacing subterranean status dynamics and office politics. One section in particular sent shivers down my spine: the hollowness that comes from seeing social reality as theatre, and running out of masks to paper over the void.

This just so happened to be perfect timing for me, which means it’s probably not a great mass-recommendation. But it’s a cheap and quick option to take out, and if you’re a fan of The Office, surely worth a shot.

[Nithesh S · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that teaches you organisational literacy. I am not sure where I came across this idea in the first place. I read the blogpost on Gervais Principle on Ribbonfarm blog few months ago. It was an eyeopener. However, I had not read the remaining six parts of the series. I realised that the the author had published a book on the same topic.

It is very essential to understand organisational literacy if you are not an entrepreneur. That's because your entire life is going to be affected by the 'organisation' you work for. Your view of your own life or the group of people you hang out with can change once you understand this.

The hierarchy of sociopaths, clueless and losers is the core principle of the book. You might have read something similar if you have come across Dilbert Principle or Peter Principle. The author mentions these things, but does not agree with these frameworks completely.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled across the original blog post for this book and, after digesting the first chapter, I knew that I just had to read the rest. The author lures in the reader with an analysis of the characters and situation from The Office TV show, describing them in terms of organisational psychology. At first you might think that this is just another blog series with some neat theories and examples, but the depth of the analysis, models, and the way that the author encourages you to consider your own workplace experiences, is what really makes this book shine. Though the examples are all fictional workplace settings, you can't help but think if the theories described by the author apply to our own real workplaces and help us understand how to survive within our own corporate environments.