Succeeding on the Ladder
September 12th, 2006[ Office Gossip ]
Cause Paul Graham says…
“Where the method of selecting the elite is thoroughly corrupt, most of the good people will be outsiders.”
“If it’s corrupt enough, a test becomes an anti-test, filtering out the people it should select by making them do things only the wrong people would do. Popularity in high school seems to be such a test. There are plenty of similar ones in the grownup world. For example, rising up through the hierarchy of the average big company demands an attention to politics few thoughtful people could spare. Someone like Bill Gates can grow a company under him, but it’s hard to imagine him having the patience to climb the corporate ladder at General Electric – or Microsoft, actually.”
“I think that’s one reason big companies are so often blindsided by startups. People at big companies don’t realize the extent to which they live in an environment that is one large, ongoing test for the wrong qualities.”
Taken from “The Power of the Marginal” article. It sounds interesting to me but I’m sure on the day I head back into a traditional office I’ll magically come up some great justifications for the opposite.