This is a description of “sick systems”—jobs and relationships which destructively take people’s lives over.
I’m posting it here partly because it may be of use—systems like that are fairly common and can take a while to recognize, and partly because it leads to some general questions.
One of the marks of a sick system is that the people running it convince the victims that they (the victims) are both indispensable and incompetent—and it can take a very long time to recognize the contradiction. It’s plausible that the crises, lack of sleep, and frequent interruptions are enough to make people not think clearly about what’s being done to them, but is there any more to it than that?
One of the commenters to the essay suggests that people are vulnerable to sick systems because raising babies and small children is a lot like being in a sick system. This is somewhat plausible, but I suspect that a large part of the stress is induced by modern methods of raising small children—the parents are unlikely to have a substantial network of helpers, they aren’t sharing a bed with the baby (leading to more serious sleep deprivation), and there’s a belief that raising children is almost impossible to do well enough.
Also, it’s interesting that people keep spontaneously inventing sick systems. It isn’t as though there’s a manual. I’m guessing that one of the drivers is feeling uncomfortable at seeing the victims feeling good and/or capable of independent choice, so that there are short-run rewards for the victimizers for piling the stress on.
On the other hand, there’s a commenter who reports being treated better by her family after she disconnected from the craziness.
Interesting. I suspect that sick systems are actually highly competitively-fit, and while people who opt-out of them may be happier, those people will propagate themselves less, and therefore will be overwhelmed by Azathothian forces.
Is there any way to combat Azathoth aside from forming a singleton?
As long as the system extracts & uses more work than it’s equivalent healthy system—after wastage—then it will outperform it. It doesn’t matter if the system burns through employees every few years, there are plenty of other employees to burn up.
I would think sick systems have less good judgment than healthy systems—they don’t just burn up employees, management is less likely to get information about any mistakes it ’s making.
On the other hand, sick systems do at least persist for quite a while. I’m guessing that they coast on the conscientiousness and other virtues of the employees. It’s conceivable that some fraction of the excess work isn’t wasted.
How to Keep Someone with You Forever.
This is a description of “sick systems”—jobs and relationships which destructively take people’s lives over.
I’m posting it here partly because it may be of use—systems like that are fairly common and can take a while to recognize, and partly because it leads to some general questions.
One of the marks of a sick system is that the people running it convince the victims that they (the victims) are both indispensable and incompetent—and it can take a very long time to recognize the contradiction. It’s plausible that the crises, lack of sleep, and frequent interruptions are enough to make people not think clearly about what’s being done to them, but is there any more to it than that?
One of the commenters to the essay suggests that people are vulnerable to sick systems because raising babies and small children is a lot like being in a sick system. This is somewhat plausible, but I suspect that a large part of the stress is induced by modern methods of raising small children—the parents are unlikely to have a substantial network of helpers, they aren’t sharing a bed with the baby (leading to more serious sleep deprivation), and there’s a belief that raising children is almost impossible to do well enough.
Also, it’s interesting that people keep spontaneously inventing sick systems. It isn’t as though there’s a manual. I’m guessing that one of the drivers is feeling uncomfortable at seeing the victims feeling good and/or capable of independent choice, so that there are short-run rewards for the victimizers for piling the stress on.
On the other hand, there’s a commenter who reports being treated better by her family after she disconnected from the craziness.
Interesting. I suspect that sick systems are actually highly competitively-fit, and while people who opt-out of them may be happier, those people will propagate themselves less, and therefore will be overwhelmed by Azathothian forces.
Is there any way to combat Azathoth aside from forming a singleton?
Why do you think sick systems are highly competitively fit? They seem to get a lot of work out of people, but also waste a great deal of it.
If your hypothesis is that sick systems must be competitively fit because there are a great many of them, I think stronger evidence is needed.
As long as the system extracts & uses more work than it’s equivalent healthy system—after wastage—then it will outperform it. It doesn’t matter if the system burns through employees every few years, there are plenty of other employees to burn up.
I would think sick systems have less good judgment than healthy systems—they don’t just burn up employees, management is less likely to get information about any mistakes it ’s making.
On the other hand, sick systems do at least persist for quite a while. I’m guessing that they coast on the conscientiousness and other virtues of the employees. It’s conceivable that some fraction of the excess work isn’t wasted.