The MacLeod pyramid has bare-minimum players (Losers) at the bottom. They aren't really losers in the sense of being undesirable or weak; they know employment is a losing proposition and commit minimally (rational disengagement). In the middle are the overeager Clueless, destined for middle management but rarely able to cross the barrier (effort thermocline, which is where jobs transition from getting harder as one moves up to getting easier) between them and the cynical, politically savvy but rarely eager executives. At the top are the Sociopaths who are openly out for personal gain. Again, Sociopaths aren't all bad (the label is more negative than what it describes) but what they are is self-interested and insubordinate. They won't put the organization's interests above theirs, and why should they?
The Clueless tier is the worst place to be, because you become the company's true janitors. You're always cleaning up the messes made by the bare-minimum players below you and the self-interested, capricious gods of industry above you. It leads to overwork and burnout (which can be the first step toward cluefulness and cynicism). You eat buttloads of a pie you don't especially like (even if you once did, in moderation) and the prize for winning the pie-eating contest is... more of that same pie.
Software culture embraces the culture of the middle tier (the Clueless). Startup cults are even worse. They hire specifically to maintain certain illusions, and exclude people who might contradict those (i.e. over-40 engineers who might say, "I've been here before" when a death march begins or a ridiculous executive promise, never to be delivered, is made to motivate people to sacrifice their health.) The real reason these cultish startups discriminate on age and gender is that they don't want to let in people who have the perspective to call the execs out on their bullshit.
Some people, steeped in middle-class eagerness and Cluelessness, struggle with the cognitive dissonance that hits when they realize that (a) there are no adults over adults-- something people've desired for thousands of years, so much as to make them up out of vapor and call them "gods"-- and (b) no organization is a meritocracy and advancement is always political. It's not "who you know" over "what you know". It's what you have over those other two things. Knowing people isn't enough. What can you do for (or to) people? Rather than acknowledge the ugly truth, they plow into their work (heads in sand) hoping the ugliness will go away. It never does. It starts to look like a context-driven case of OCD ("I have to get this done and it has to be perfect"). For some, it leads to exactly this.
The MacLeod pyramid has bare-minimum players (Losers) at the bottom. They aren't really losers in the sense of being undesirable or weak; they know employment is a losing proposition and commit minimally (rational disengagement). In the middle are the overeager Clueless, destined for middle management but rarely able to cross the barrier (effort thermocline, which is where jobs transition from getting harder as one moves up to getting easier) between them and the cynical, politically savvy but rarely eager executives. At the top are the Sociopaths who are openly out for personal gain. Again, Sociopaths aren't all bad (the label is more negative than what it describes) but what they are is self-interested and insubordinate. They won't put the organization's interests above theirs, and why should they?
The Clueless tier is the worst place to be, because you become the company's true janitors. You're always cleaning up the messes made by the bare-minimum players below you and the self-interested, capricious gods of industry above you. It leads to overwork and burnout (which can be the first step toward cluefulness and cynicism). You eat buttloads of a pie you don't especially like (even if you once did, in moderation) and the prize for winning the pie-eating contest is... more of that same pie.
Software culture embraces the culture of the middle tier (the Clueless). Startup cults are even worse. They hire specifically to maintain certain illusions, and exclude people who might contradict those (i.e. over-40 engineers who might say, "I've been here before" when a death march begins or a ridiculous executive promise, never to be delivered, is made to motivate people to sacrifice their health.) The real reason these cultish startups discriminate on age and gender is that they don't want to let in people who have the perspective to call the execs out on their bullshit.
Some people, steeped in middle-class eagerness and Cluelessness, struggle with the cognitive dissonance that hits when they realize that (a) there are no adults over adults-- something people've desired for thousands of years, so much as to make them up out of vapor and call them "gods"-- and (b) no organization is a meritocracy and advancement is always political. It's not "who you know" over "what you know". It's what you have over those other two things. Knowing people isn't enough. What can you do for (or to) people? Rather than acknowledge the ugly truth, they plow into their work (heads in sand) hoping the ugliness will go away. It never does. It starts to look like a context-driven case of OCD ("I have to get this done and it has to be perfect"). For some, it leads to exactly this.