Most of these are not actually barriers to exit. Many of them do enter the calculation of value of the job (relative to opportunity cost), but those are not exit barriers. Exit barriers are a one-time cost incurred by exit (example: cancellation fee), not lost ongoing benefit (example: foregone salary) - that’s why they’re called “exit costs”, not “opportunity costs”.
Let’s go through a few.
The sunk costs are huge. You give up all of your investment, lose the related social/human capital.
Sunk costs are not a barrier to exit—that would be the sunk cost fallacy. The fallacy itself may be a barrier to exit, though, and “middle managers are committing the sunk cost fallacy in droves” sounds entirely plausible.
You’ve built your life around this job—you’ve chosen your friends, your location, your skills, often your family.
My girlfriend is a software engineer at Google. One “barrier” to her leaving is that she’s pretty close friends with her co-workers; we all hang out pretty often outside of work. That’s not an exit barrier any more than “not getting paid salary” is an exit barrier. The job provides value partly in friends and culture, and that’s a perfectly reasonable way to get paid.
If managers gain negative value (net opportunity cost) from their jobs, then friends/culture/etc need to be included in that calculation. If friends/culture/etc make it net-positive, then that’s fair—the job provides value.
You’ve self-modified to get this far, in ways that make leaving or failing painful to you, and which will hurt you on the outside
There’s two claims here: (1) people have self-modified to create their own barrier to exit (by “making it painful”), and (2) people have self-modified in ways which will hurt them on the outside. Of those two, only the first is a barrier to exit. The second enters into the net value calculation.
As you invest in this, you give up other opportunities to learn how to work outside a maze and be effective.
Sunk costs again.
Other than self-modification to make leaving painful, the only other item in the list which is actually an exit cost is:
your income right now drops through the floor
i.e. the temporary loss of income while job-hunting. (There may also be a long-term loss of income if the new job pays less, but that goes in the net value calculation, not the exit cost.) Of course, this item applies to all job-hopping, and I see no reason at all to think it’s especially relevant to managers or people in mazes.
Bottom line: there is still no viable case here for super-perfect competition, or at least no more so than in most jobs. There is potentially an interesting case for people self-modifying in ways which make their opportunity costs less appealing, or their current job more appealing.
Most of these are not actually barriers to exit. Many of them do enter the calculation of value of the job (relative to opportunity cost), but those are not exit barriers. Exit barriers are a one-time cost incurred by exit (example: cancellation fee), not lost ongoing benefit (example: foregone salary) - that’s why they’re called “exit costs”, not “opportunity costs”.
Let’s go through a few.
Sunk costs are not a barrier to exit—that would be the sunk cost fallacy. The fallacy itself may be a barrier to exit, though, and “middle managers are committing the sunk cost fallacy in droves” sounds entirely plausible.
My girlfriend is a software engineer at Google. One “barrier” to her leaving is that she’s pretty close friends with her co-workers; we all hang out pretty often outside of work. That’s not an exit barrier any more than “not getting paid salary” is an exit barrier. The job provides value partly in friends and culture, and that’s a perfectly reasonable way to get paid.
If managers gain negative value (net opportunity cost) from their jobs, then friends/culture/etc need to be included in that calculation. If friends/culture/etc make it net-positive, then that’s fair—the job provides value.
There’s two claims here: (1) people have self-modified to create their own barrier to exit (by “making it painful”), and (2) people have self-modified in ways which will hurt them on the outside. Of those two, only the first is a barrier to exit. The second enters into the net value calculation.
Sunk costs again.
Other than self-modification to make leaving painful, the only other item in the list which is actually an exit cost is:
i.e. the temporary loss of income while job-hunting. (There may also be a long-term loss of income if the new job pays less, but that goes in the net value calculation, not the exit cost.) Of course, this item applies to all job-hopping, and I see no reason at all to think it’s especially relevant to managers or people in mazes.
Bottom line: there is still no viable case here for super-perfect competition, or at least no more so than in most jobs. There is potentially an interesting case for people self-modifying in ways which make their opportunity costs less appealing, or their current job more appealing.