If you have hierarchy in a company, regardless of whether people are “middle managers” per se, there’s a tendency for people to come to care about advancing in the hierarchy. It’s a natural thing to want to do.
I would take this a step further and say that once maze levels are high enough, it essentially becomes a requirement to care (or at least pretend to care) about advancing in the hierarchy. Instead of advancement being something that some employees might want and others might not want, it becomes almost an axiom within the organization that everyone must strive for advancement at all times. But although advancement can be a natural thing to want, it’s certainly not a universal thing to want. And for people like me who aren’t strongly motivated by their place in the hierarchy, this can lead to a lot of conflict, stress, and low morale.
When I was a kid (maybe around 10) I learned about the Peter Principle, how everyone in an organization gets promoted to the level of their incompetence. I thought that was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard. Why would everyone try so hard to get promoted to a role they weren’t good at? Just for the extra money? I decided that when I started working, I would rather stay in a role I was good at and enjoyed on a day to day basis than get promoted to a managerial role which already sounded awful, even if it meant staying at a lower salary.
Once in the maze, however, I found it a lot harder to stay in my happy, productive role than I was expecting. I constantly felt pressure to want to get promoted. But I secretly didn’t want to, because that would mean spending less time doing the actual hands-on work that I liked and more time spent in the maze world interacting with other managers. This led to a lot of tension with my bosses. They couldn’t comprehend why anyone wouldn’t be excited about getting promoted. Higher level jobs were just better; why couldn’t I see that? But to me, they weren’t better and I couldn’t get them to see my perspective. Ironically, their desire to promote me incentivized me to be less productive than I would have been otherwise—if we had been able to come to an agreement where I could stay in my desired role, I would have been more motivated to work harder without the fear of accidentally getting promoted too quickly.
This was all very frustrating and confusing to me for a long time. Eventually I came across the Moral Mazes sequence and the Gervais principle, which together seemed to explain a lot of what I was experiencing and ultimately gave me the courage to leave that organization.
Anyway, that’s my story of working in a maze—happy to discuss further if this was useful or informative.
Goldman Sachs explicitly works on an up-or-out system: if you work in a low-level position and you haven’t been promoted after a certain length of time, you’re automatically fired.
I would take this a step further and say that once maze levels are high enough, it essentially becomes a requirement to care (or at least pretend to care) about advancing in the hierarchy. Instead of advancement being something that some employees might want and others might not want, it becomes almost an axiom within the organization that everyone must strive for advancement at all times. But although advancement can be a natural thing to want, it’s certainly not a universal thing to want. And for people like me who aren’t strongly motivated by their place in the hierarchy, this can lead to a lot of conflict, stress, and low morale.
When I was a kid (maybe around 10) I learned about the Peter Principle, how everyone in an organization gets promoted to the level of their incompetence. I thought that was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard. Why would everyone try so hard to get promoted to a role they weren’t good at? Just for the extra money? I decided that when I started working, I would rather stay in a role I was good at and enjoyed on a day to day basis than get promoted to a managerial role which already sounded awful, even if it meant staying at a lower salary.
Once in the maze, however, I found it a lot harder to stay in my happy, productive role than I was expecting. I constantly felt pressure to want to get promoted. But I secretly didn’t want to, because that would mean spending less time doing the actual hands-on work that I liked and more time spent in the maze world interacting with other managers. This led to a lot of tension with my bosses. They couldn’t comprehend why anyone wouldn’t be excited about getting promoted. Higher level jobs were just better; why couldn’t I see that? But to me, they weren’t better and I couldn’t get them to see my perspective. Ironically, their desire to promote me incentivized me to be less productive than I would have been otherwise—if we had been able to come to an agreement where I could stay in my desired role, I would have been more motivated to work harder without the fear of accidentally getting promoted too quickly.
This was all very frustrating and confusing to me for a long time. Eventually I came across the Moral Mazes sequence and the Gervais principle, which together seemed to explain a lot of what I was experiencing and ultimately gave me the courage to leave that organization.
Anyway, that’s my story of working in a maze—happy to discuss further if this was useful or informative.
Goldman Sachs explicitly works on an up-or-out system: if you work in a low-level position and you haven’t been promoted after a certain length of time, you’re automatically fired.
Yeah having this as a concrete illustrative anecdote seems helpful.