I don’t think this particular societal ill is capitalism (I know, I know, they usually are), but rather a symptom of tree-shaped hierarchical management structures. I saw the same shit working for the government.
Middle managers are judged by how important the stuff they manage is, which their bosses guess from reports and how many headcount they have, neither of which are actual work. The further you are from the executive board (who are directly exposed to the whims of capital) and the line-level workers (who are exposed to, you know, the material reality underpinning actually getting anything done), the further you are from any sort of grounding in fact, and all you have is reports by people trying to make themselves look important.
I don’t think this particular societal ill is capitalism (I know, I know, they usually are), but rather a symptom of tree-shaped hierarchical management structures. I saw the same shit working for the government.
Middle managers are judged by how important the stuff they manage is, which their bosses guess from reports and how many headcount they have, neither of which are actual work. The further you are from the executive board (who are directly exposed to the whims of capital) and the line-level workers (who are exposed to, you know, the material reality underpinning actually getting anything done), the further you are from any sort of grounding in fact, and all you have is reports by people trying to make themselves look important.