Note: The Sunday podcast is back!. It will be an evening performance until I get settled in the new place. There is a post about the cost of groceries and a post about driving the Jeep Gladiator for a week. Subscribe here or here.
Last week someone posted a video of herself getting fired by Cloudflare via a zoom call and the video went viral. It has nine million views at this point. The reason the video caused such a stir is it touches on many of the things that people find unpleasant about the current age, but either lack the language to discuss or feel they should not be discussing out in the open. That last part turns up in the resulting thread as people naturally turn it into a black hat versus white hat issue.
That last part is the most obvious, but the least interesting. Whenever these sorts of topics arise on social media, conservatives begin rhythmically chanting phrases like “toughen up snowflake” or “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” What they are instinctively doing is rallying to the defense of the giant corporation as they have been trained to do by conservatism. When challenged, the retort is some form of “The world does not owe you anything”, which is complete nonsense.
The basis of all human societies is reciprocal obligations. Social contract theory rests on this assumption. Monarchy rests on a collection of reciprocal vertical relationships that bind the king to the lowest peasant. The social club assumes the members will be loyal to the club and its members. In return, the members get benefits from the club and fellow members exclusive to them. A club that has no duties to the members is not a club, but a random collection of strangers.
This is the central defect of conservatism. When the people we call the left claim society has some new moral duty, conservatives never challenge the moral duty, but instead fall into a form of bourgeois anarchism. Terrified of challenging the left on moral grounds, they instead argue that society has no duties at all. In the case of the mega-corp screwing its employees, they say the company has no duties to them. Conservatism is always an answer to a question no one asked.
Putting that aside, you see the horrors of managerialism in that video. Clearly, senior management screwed up and hired too many new people. Instead of admitting this and reducing their staff, they send out flunkies from middle-management to chant nonsensical gibberish at people via Zoom call. Odds are neither of these two zombies could name a single metric they reference or what it means. For them these are abracadabra words that make the employee go away.
The woman getting let go has a reasonable expectation. She was hired under a set of conditions, and she met her end of the bargain. At one point she concedes that the company has a right to change the bargain. They over-hired and now need to trim the staff and her name was picked from the hat. If they were honest with her the video probably never gets posted. It is clear that the woman is not offended by the firing so much as by the lying about it.
This is one corrosive effect of managerialism. It turns everyone into a sociopath by forcing them to lie even when the truth makes more sense. The two zombies chanting corporate catchphrases are doing it so as to avoid being on the other end of one of these zoom calls. Like the Nazi camp guards given a choice of being a guard or being one of the guarded, millions of Americans are forced to be terrible people in middle-management positions, doing the bidding of management.
This is why we get the weird language. It is a way for the people at the top to manipulate their flunkies into doing this stuff. Instead of cutting jobs they are enthusiastically reducing newly discovered redundancies. They are not eliminating a department and the people in it, they are efficiently implementing a new compelling initiative in furtherance of corporate goals. No one can be upset at these words because they are stripped of anything meaningful to humans.
Managerialism, whether on the small scale like at a corporation, or at the large scale as in a society, is a system that seeks to socialize the cost of decision making while subtly privatizing the benefits. Senior managers enjoy the bulk of the benefits but spread the cost of failure across the organization. It does this by distributing the decision making across senior management. No one person at the top gets the blame when things fail, because it is always a group decision.
We see this in politics. The banks fail and the Fed has to print up trillions to bail them out and no one gets fired, much less jailed. Instead, all the top people agree that the system failed in some way. Top men are tasked with addressing this system failure, which of course pays them handsomely. After the banks get bailed out and things return to normal, the bankers congratulate themselves with bonuses. Managerialism is an aristocracy with none of the social benefits.
This is not without consequences, and we see it in politics. When no one in the managerial elite is ever held accountable, the selection pressure for membership in the elite shifts from aptitude to obsequiousness. You see this in every established corporation and in the government. The people at the top are increasingly incompetent while increasingly obsequious. Politics is packed to the gills with oleaginous grifters because the system selects for such people.
While it is true that the Pareto principle works in the elite as it does everywhere, eventually that smart fraction within the elite is overwhelmed by the growing number of sociopathic grifters slithering into the elite. Again, we see this writ large in politics where incompetence and failure seem to be the goal. The logical end of managerialism is a committee room stuffed with narcistic simpletons waving their credentials at one another as the riots rage outside the committee room.
This may be one bit of subtext to the statue toppling. “No one builds statues honoring committees” is an old truth that haunts managerialism. Statues to great men offend the managerial elite not just because those men were white. It offends because it is a reminder that it is great men that make the world, not the boring mediocrities who come to dominate managerialism. The latest thing is just a convenient excuse to remove the shadow of the great men that haunt the mind of the manager.
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“What they are instinctively doing is rallying to the defense of the giant corporation as they have been trained to do by conservatism.”
They will also staunchly defend Marxist institutions like colleges, as long as you owe those institutions money. “When are you going to pay off your loan for your useless degree, snowflake?”
There is a famous statue to a committee: The Burghers of Calais.
And, aptly, they have nooses around their necks.
Boeing fired 65 people for “racism” in 2021. I wonder how many they fired for things like, I don’t know, being bad at welding?
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-says-it-fired-65-employees-racist-discriminatory-conduct-2021-04-30/
I wonder how many of those 65 were Hutus?
Yes, but. I think that every vertical organization cannot admit it made a mistake. Including monarchy. Only in horizontal relationships do you say: sorry, I screwed up, here is your refund.
I think that’s the reason liberalism can’t persist in holding power. The core beliefs in human rights and equality mean that a true liberal has to acknowledge the horde of anklebiters (like say Zman had to address every single comment on his posts personally, impossible)
Liberals obviously get around this problem in reality by just replicating the standard ape hierarchy where if a lower ranked ape goes ook at you too much you bite its face off to shut the other chimps up. Then they slather on a nice thick coat of bullshit over that reality so they can still claim moral superiority.
As regards this young lady in the video, two remarks: (1) Welcome to Globohomo, babe. What, did you think you hired on at a local hardware store? (2) Thank you for posting this. It exposes Globohomo for the heartless, humanity-destroying machine that it is.
Don’t have time to read all the comments to see if anyone has mentioned this yet. Companies like Cloudfare intentionally over hire for sales positions figuring there will be a wash out rate. If not enough of the lower performers voluntarily quit in the first few months, they let a few of them go. If they are going to do this, they should be forced to be up front about it in the hiring process. It is hard to believe some cockroach trial attorney hasn’t already taken a run at a company for doing this by now. Must be too hard for them to prove.
Every job I’ve ever applied for was at will employment. Contracts are for government scum or people who actually have leverage in the first place.
I guess she hasn’t seen Office Space.
“I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS!” 😂
Question : What are, ontologically speaking, Conservatives, in ontologically leftist countries like the US and GB?
Answer : they are the army of those which want to conserve the leftist system. I used to mock the US tradition of calling the left as “liberals”, but I have to apologize : you Anglo-Saxon were right on that topic. Liberalism have its roots on the left. As its cousin, Socialism.
“Classical Liberalism” is just the ultra-selfish version of Liberalism, aka, a leftist system.
In a materialistic universe, the only alternative of individualism is a monstrously powerful state government.
In a Christian universe, like medieval Europe, there was an alternative, which fulfil the individuality and the community.
Community is represented by natural associations, aka families (biological), guildes/corporations (work), village (place), Church (spiritual).
welfare, such as free medical care, pension, work accident, etc. wasn’t provided by the state but by corporations and church (via monasteries).
School wasn’t provided by the government but by the Church.
Army wasn’t centralised but under local control.
People, by jury and peers judgement, had a guaranteed not totalitarian justice system (as opposite to justice based on roman/napoleonic system).
Economy was extremely reglemented, with protectionnism and high-quality verification of products.
Capital was in the hands of the Workers, but with corporate natural hierarchy (apprentices and masters).
Advantage was given to the producers, to quality of products, against consumers and quantity.
Of course, in the future Christian system, parameters will have to include speed of transport, high level of energy and development of AI, etc.
But hierarchy, famuly, Christian God, Church, Corporations, democracy in villages, aristocracy in provinces and monarchy in the state will have to be reestablished.
(for those which have abilities to read french, I highly recommend the books published by a now totally forgot catholic journalist (he even haven’t a Wikipedia page) on google books. He’s named Jean-Baptiste Victor Coquille. He explained with high knowledge in laws, juridictions system, how great was the Christian civilisation of medieval era.
He also saw, IN THE YEARS 1870, what will happen : neopaganism, migration invasion, split between biological blood roots of nations and immigration, extended free-trade, schools as Propaganda machine which would produce millions of “politicians” every years, etc.
Really, really, extraordinary work.
https://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:coquille&tbs=,bkv:f,cdr:1,cd_min:1+janv.+1863,cd_max:31+d%C3%A9c.+1898&num=30
Could it be that they call it a dark age because you aren’t supposed to know about it, and because it was an era in which “their” control was stifled
Why is Satan called Lucifer? Why did Zeus punish Prometheus? Why does untempered reason suck the life out of things?
Colbert: I don’t know French, but excellent comment on the oft misunderstood and mischaracterized medieval system.
“Of course, in the future Christian system…”
Maybe you are thinking about subsaharan Africans in Europe. The indigenous people of western Europe and their diaspora, if we survive at all, will never again be mostly Trinitarian except in isolated, beseiged pockets We’ve crossed too many bridges. Those Christian chapters of our history were substantially completed after textual criticism of the holy scribbles discredited the faith of blood-drinking, cannibaliatic shamans.
Trinitarians can’t even overcome the reasonable objection that the first theologian, JC himself, divided the substance while dying on his cross of assisted suicide. “eli, eli”, cried the first theologian, “why have you abandoned me?!” Yes, why was JC abandoned by the god with whom JC is supposed to be one in being? It’s a fair question, and it reminds us that good theology begins with asking the right questions.
Let me present, however, a consolation prize. Muhammadists, who were in a hurry to conquer the world, borrowed the ascension superstition without stopping to think about the motive for writing it. If the Christ were resurrected but still on the Earth, faithful and skeptics alike would demand to know where he is. Simpletons would want to bow down to him idolatrously. Skeptics would want to ask him why he accomished so few of the tasks of moshiach, the Jew’s nationalist gangster who will, among other deeds, lead a conquest against the nations. Early Trinitarians thought it best to avoid those awkward moments, so they hid the body in the sky, so to speak.
Muhammadists, lacking the wisdom of patient men, took up the ascension myth needlessly. Their masih, as they call him, could have lived out his life on Earth as a mortal and died in a regular way. (Though this would lead to another problem, like why call him masih if he’s not the Jews’ moshiach?) This terrible truth about the alleged ascension—which our scientists have shown to be impossible—needs to be exploited to subvert faith in Muhammadism. As that faith declines so wiill the Moe’s birth rate. It can work the same way with other tunnelites who are having far too many children.
Now if you’re paying attention at all, you can work put for yourself just who would be motivated to destroy the nations whose scholars and scientists pulled the rug out from under their paleonazi plan to subjugate the world and to make theirelves into the master race. If you’ll recall how far advanced the Germans were 100 yrs ago in science, technology, and scribblestudies,, you’ll understand also the special vindictiveness which the wannabe master race has toward the Germans.
Jesus was both human and divine, dying on the cross in his human nature, completely united with the Father in His divine nature.
What’s with the gay avatar?
Question : What are, ontologically speaking, Conservatives, in ontologically leftist countries like the US and GB?
They’re conservative Liberals.
They want to conserve the state of liberalism that existed yesterday.
Their counterpoint is progressive Liberals that want to advance the liberal agenda in a new direction.
I’ve never considered myself a libertarian but I’ve increasingly become libertarian curious. One of the biggest problems I’ve noticed is how large corporations have become states into themselves and how Americans are increasingly at the whim of a privatized totalitarianism.
I had always assumed libertarians were pro corporation and that corporate personhood (think the citizens united case) is there ideal. But over the past few years, I’ve increasingly become of the view that corporations have abolished the right to freedom of association.
If Walmart comes to your town and forces most of the family owned business to close, you’ve effectively had your sovereignty taken away. So couldn’t you make the case from a libertarian standpoint that a community has the right to either force the Walmart out or to the very least have the city government take over the operation of the store?
Is this what some libertarians believe? I assume the mises guys would be more likely to agree with this
There is a faction of “left”-libertarians who are anti-corporate in the sense of favoring progressive-style corporate regulation—as every established corporation and oligarch does. They’re the ones funded by corporations and
oligarchs.
There’s also a faction of “right”-libertarians who consider incorporation an injustice as it creates a class of people shielded from normal prosecution/liability, and that special elevated/extra-legal status perverts the market toward fascoid monopoly (etc.). They oppose that kind of “legal fiction” shield for all (other) agents of the state, too. There are seventeen such libertarians and they’re on all the gulag lists maintained by corporations.
The problem is the standard libertarian conservative who shares with the “left” above the idea that incorporation is a *necessary* legal fiction, because number go up/progress—and pretends that corporations aren’t the architects and drivers of globohomo/clownworld/etc. because why would they do that? That’s not profit! The government makes them do it!
kk,
Ludwig von Mises, a Jew, wrote a book in German with the title “Liberalismus”, and in that work, Mises called for a Weltüberstaat. . Yes, Welt means world, and Mises wasn’t daydreaming about something wimpy like the League of Nations, which he critcized. Probably both the German original and an English trans are still available for free in pdf from mises.org.
Lew Rockwell, who knew both Mises and Murray Rothbard afaik, claims to be “anti-state”, but he does not advocate abolition of the utterly statist racket of incorporation with ltd liability. Every now and then one of his people takes up the matter only to conclude that rootless irresponsibility capitalism is holy. Make of that double standard what you will, bearing in mind that Rockwell is a papist, too, like Tom Woods, a convert from Protestantism whose work often appears at Rockwell’s website.
Another one to look out for is Walter Block, who specializes in defending the indefensible and who has run in that libertarian circle for more than 50 yrs. I think this guy knew Ayn Rand, author of a notorious book about a capitalist engineer who accelerates civilizational breakdown so that he can get his hands on the distribution networks of bankrupted electric companies. (John Galt invented a gizmo which could generate power at extremely low marginal cost, but he didn’t need obsolete generation equipment.) Fyi, Rand was a crude materialist with a naïve love for the USA, and she hated libertarianism.
Back in the 70’s, Rothbard got mixed up with the Kochtopus, the network of the Koch brothers. Rothbard, Ed Crane, and Charles Koch established Cato Institute, the slippery Beltway outfit which sends out pocket sized editions of the DoI, the AoC&PU, and some imperialist fake law called the Constitution. MR didn’t last long there, however.
Reason Foundation and Reason mag are west coast operations; one or both are now active in an office in DC. When last I checked there was no good explanation from them about why it would be good to set up Capitalism, Inc., if it didn’t already exist to destroy us. Probably their most famous personality is Nick Gillespie, a former chief editor who likes to wear a black leather jacket.
The true purpose of the libertarian factions mentioned in this comment seems to be to steer potential communists into a cul-de-sac where they won’t be useful to Marxists and similar trash but where they, and others, also won’t become a threat to Capitalism, Inc., let’s just say by organizing a revolution to abolish it. If the libertarian follower never has a sharp word for Jewish supremacism, so much the better. One of these factions, as suggested, has its fair share of idolaters who are angry that the shoe of persecution is on the other foot.
P.S. Rothbard, another Jew, was a Holocaust skeptic.
I got laid off at a company once, after 13 years. I had been there since nearly the start and was the guy who implemented and installed the company’s first-ever product sale. I was laid off by a Chinese grifter, new to the company, who knew nothing about the company’s products. In fact, he was aggressively ignorant about what went into them. He wanted to reengineer every single thing and was committed to making all the mistakes his predecessors had made and fixed, because he didn’t care at all about understanding the existing code base.
I failed to be the nice, compliant corporate citizen. I tore him and the HR drone new ones. It’s probably fortunate for all of us I was laid off over the phone — I was a remote worker. I burned all the bridges. It was okay, I already had an interview set up for what was to be my next job. I knew it was coming.
I’d figured out a few years before that the company had no intention of honoring its reciprocal obligations. It had made a lot of big promises to early employees at hire time — various perks after so many years of employment, and serially stripped those perks just as they were about to have to honor them.
It been sold to Boeing a couple years prior and the executive team, including the HR VP who’d been there less than a year, filled their pockets with cash and told the rest of us to be happy with the couch change they thew at us. But this manager was extra special. I’ve never hated another human being as much as I hate him. I researched his background. He made all his money from settlements suing the companies that used to employ and contract him. He was an absolute piece of shit. And he hired in new Chinese employees to replace me and others.
Postscripts: They called me back a month after laying me off and asked if I could do some work for them. Hahahaha. No way. And the company was out of business within a year after laying me off.
Vizzini: I was one of those who used to at least sympathize with the “Toughen up, snowflake” comments. But I’ve changed my thinking about this, along with so many other things since I began reading Zman and learning from the commenters here.
My husband works for a privately-owned company. Started small. He wasn’t one of the earliest employees by far, but the company was still small when he got hired. The pay was small, too, fwiw. We went without extras for years; his customers routinely assumed he earned double or triple what he actually did. While I am obviously partisan, my husband worked very hard and loyally and earned the company many, many multiples of what he was paid annually. (I think the b-school formula is that one ought to expect 10-15% of the profits one generates? Not even close.)
Anyhow – company recently stopped, due to general economy and reduced profits, what had for a short time been very generous bonuses. Fair enough, but taking past 3 years’ of inflation into account, it’s akin to taking a 30% paycut to go back to base salary now. And he/we learned that a few of the top office guys recently spent multiple tens of thousands traveling to one international business conference.
No, we didn’t help found/establish the business. Yes, we are grateful he has a reliable and now decent-paying job. But the blatant inequity and lack of concern for those who bring in the profits that pay for those luxury items in lieu of employee bonuses really rankles. I’m far from stereotypical ‘socialism’ but I loathe untrammeld corporate capitalism as practiced in AINO today.
For me it was a xirlboss who returned from maternity leave and promptly engaged in a power struggle that resulted in me and several others being laid off. I love how even motherhood doesn’t humanize the modern powerxirl. The power struggle was above my level and not with me or any of us IT people directly. I’m getting pretty desperate now since that was back in Sept. The IT field is now bloated with all these people that should have never been hired in the first place getting the ax now. I’m just looking for a normal programming job that pays reasonably well. Actually feel free to leave a message at the headline post in my blog (linked in my sig here) if you know a place that needs a great C++, Java, or Python guy. That goes for all of you guys too! 🙂
Do you get the same thing where you get hounded by recruiters but they’re asking for an electrical engineer and completely ignoring the fact that all of your resume is software engineering? And it’s always a stupid pajeet recruiter.
Seems they’re pretty much all pajeet recruiters nowadays.
As BigJim notes it’s now always a pajeet. It’s also true that they seem to make no distinctions among the various technical fields and spam you with all kinds of random shit, everything from tech support to PhD level research science. I’ve tried, on a few occasions, to engage with these people. Even when the job they send me is basically the same thing I’ve been doing they never follow up. This makes me think it’s all part of some lame effort to game the visa rules. They send their email out to a bunch of people with White guy names and they can check that box and proceed to push their cousin Sanjay forward.
They also love to leave voice mails. They often speak in a very strange soft mumble on these. I’m tempted to call it the Mumbai mumble. In the worst cases, it’s impossible to understand them at all. I suspect this is part of the game too. Only other Indians are meant to understand them. It makes me angry and sad to be watching this takeover knowing that, like the southern border invasion, no one will do anything to stop it.
Blech. Well I gave up and just reply to questions about what I do for a living with a belligerent “What you think you’re better than me?” followed by a long nihilistic rant about how no matter how hard they work they’re still going to die alone in an uncaring universe, and that their award for most punctual tire salesman will dissolve into dust through the ages like everything else.
I haven’t been invented to as many children’s birthday parties though.
Pozymandias
I might have something if you are good with C++
Programming not IT.
A rust belt state, based outside a larger metropolitan area.
I will try to reach out to you somehow for a CV
James, you can leave a message at the blog in my sig. Just make a comment on the “New Year’s” post. Thanks for thinking about me!
I don’t use 10 $ words like oleaginous or obsequious, but I sure do like how you choose to use em Z man. “No one builds statues honoring committees”, no one builds anything for Western ‘societies’ no more. Except for rainbow sidewalks for pedos and suicide pods for old folks.
They will have cast plaques made for committees. I have been involved many times for designing and procuring these and always for local governments to install for some new park or building renovation etc.
Every councilman, mayor or cit administrator get’s their name prominently displayed above the contractor who actually does the work. Then the group photo to go along with it.
Road signs are not statues or plaques, of course, but they do cost money and they’re paid for by taxpayers. Aside from vanity, why do the signs at the state line crossings into NY State require that the governor’s name be included? We NYers go through governors in a hurry – Spitzer, Patterson, Cuomo, now the broad – and the signs of course need replacement with every change in the public face of the ruling junta. Or maybe they just repaint them. Not sure… Ancient Roman coinage was the same; had to strike new obverses every 1-10 years depending on whose armies won the day or on who poisoned whom in the imperial palace… Which reminds me: Have any of you checked out the backs of the weird new quarters, the ones with Washington facing right? The progs have taken over the Mint like everything else. Maya Angelou is sacralized in one series; haven’t paid much attention to the others but Edith Kanaka Ole turns up on a quarter I just now pulled from my pocket. Yeah, I don’t know who she is either, or even if she’s a real person… Oh yeah, we are a conquered people… As regards statues, has anyone seen that MLK thing in Tubman? It looks like a hybrid of Chairman Mao and King Tut,
“Have any of you checked out the backs of the weird new quarters, the ones with Washington facing right?”
Yep. One quiet day in the laundromat, I looked at my quarters and did a double take at “Wilma Mankiller”. Turns out, she was the early feminist who orchestrated the Amerindian Communist takeover of Alcatraz Island. Short-lived… nobody cared.
Is it an indictment of me for never having heard of this woman who is on “our” money, or is it an indictment of the system that put her there? After looking at her wikipedia page, I don’t think I’m the problem.
In addition to which, palm a current quarter and palm a quarter from say, 1965 and feel the difference in weight.
Current quarters are nothing more than plastic coated with a thin film of alloy. The quarters of the 60’s and 70’s, you feel like you actually have something in your hand, something with a bit of weight. The new ones are hollow, nothing like the beauty of the past. What better way to showcase the lightweights of today.
The Sacagawea dollar coin is a thing of absolute beauty. The finest looking coin ever made in America or possibly anywhere else.
The state quarters were a nice touch. Then the mint lost its mind. Everything since is just awful. The presidents dollars were hideously cartoonish. The national parks quarters were undistinguished scribbles (except for the one with Jefferson’s Nose. That had to have been a joke by some smart aleck juvenile).
I haven’t seen these new quarters, but it sounds bad I don’t care if they feature some no-accounts as long as they LOOK good. There is no excuse for ugly currency.
In the current year, admitting responsibility is tantamount to self-incrimination. It’s literally dangerous — at least financially — to do so.
No MLK Jr. Post, Zman? I’m shocked.
That’s DOCTOR!!! MLK – puhlezze
Doctor Droll would know lol.
You dam’ him with faint titles! It’s Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace be upon him…
They’ve dropped the “Reverend” bit in the post-Christian world.
It’s “Doctah Kang” now… doctor of what, they never mention.
Doctor of bangin’ hoes and wyte wymins.
My late father-in-law called it MLN day. I will leave it to the reader’s imagination to guess what the ‘N’ signified.
steve w: Just refer to him by his birth name of Michael. Pisses all of them off.
Really? So Mike King? Heh. No “Doctor”, no “Luther”, just call me Mike. And bring the pussy…
They get even more exercised when you call Michelle Obama by his birth name “Mike”.
In honor of the good Reverend: https://news.yahoo.com/martin-luther-king-laughed-rape-friend-fbi-documents-145714868.html
I guess I will be the contrarian here. Her video smacks deeply of solipsism. As Tired Citizen noted, all big companies are soulless borgs, and have been for decades. Mass layoffs are part of the game, and you just have to roll with the punches. By the time that call comes in the corporate decision has been made and nothing is going to change it. Somehow, Brittany Pietsch believed Cloudfare should an exception for Brittany Pietsch, because girlpower I guess.
Her LinkedIn profile is a portrait of a girl boss wannabe. Of course, she has the pretty girl picture on her profile. Her “About” section is a cut and paste of Cloudfare corporate word salad. She received a BA in musicology and ethonomusicology (whatever that is) from Kennesaw State University (whatever that is) in 2018. After stumbling through a couple jobs in the performing arts field she landed a sales job in the IT staffing industry. It appears she switched into software sales in February, 2022. She bills herself as a Midmarket Account Executive, but has less than two years of relevant experience. She is the living embodiment of title inflation and of the corporate bloat that zero percent interest rates drove.
It’s worth spending a few minutes to scroll through the comments in response to her video, which she posted on LinkedIn. It’s mostly a combination of other girlboss wannabes giving girlpower kudos and corporate drone men simping for the pretty girl. Nobody is telling her the truth, which is that her resume is not going to be 86’d by HR in any decent-size organization if she doesn’t take down this stupid video.
Guest —
Yes. Brittany Peach :O) took a little bump, and now demands that the world change to make her feel better.
Times 100 million in the U.S. This is the Way of Women.
I’m 100 on board with your take on feminism but I don’t agree here. Assuming she’s factually in the right that her evaluations and feedback from here supervisor were all good, it’s understandable that she feels blindsided and gaslighted by “hey, you’re doing really great. Next day, oh btw you’re fired”. Such fake signals are uncomfortable to say the least.
Another thing, very common I think, is that she is being fired not by her supervisor or someone who could tell her how her name was picked. But by people she’s never met or interacted with. And who can’t answer her questions. That is just a sh*tty way to treat people, common or not, imo
I agree. The video exposes a lack of common humanity in the ones entrusted to do the firing. As Z man says, these are mid-management flunkies, who know they may well be on the next list if they don’t stick to their scripts. This young lady may be a liberal dipshit with no relevant experience, as summarized at length by ‘Guest’ above. It doesn’t matter. She was given no coherent reason for her dismissal, by two complete strangers.
Bet she’s still a liberal, extolling the virtues of the government’s heavy hand that crushes freedom in ways to make her firing look like an isotope of carbon in a supernova.
Typo in last sentence. Her resume is going to be 86’d by HR if she doesn’t take down the video.
@Guest, @Ray
You are not wrong my friend. Having witnessed countless numbers of corporate layoffs, including one at a well known automobile company, they did the layoffs exactly like this girl boss experienced. There were women crying, hiding under their desk…. I shit you not. They had to send security zombies to fetch them.
The reality is, while poor Britney is feeling empowered by her video – you know – by sticking it to the patriarchy, the only thing she changed was that she ensured she will never have a job in corporate America ever again. She has the wrong color uniform and even her female victimhood is not enough to save her. It will be business as usual at mega corps.
I should have clarified in my comment that her “About” section is a corporate word salad almost certainly because she has no idea what it is that Cloudfare’s products and services actually do. It’s evident from her background that she is completely unqualified to be in any form of technical sales. She’s a people person, which is fine, but she is not a tech person.
Back in my corporate days when I had to explain technical concepts to people with no technical background I would draw the relevant product/service as a black box labeled FM Converter, which received an incoherent signal and output a coherent signal. Heads would nod in compliant agreement. When the more inquisitive drones would ask what FM stood for I told the F**king Magic. Always got a laugh.
I think the point is that we shouldn’t have to live this way. Even girl bosses shouldn’t have to live this way. You get that, right?
Great point, I don’t know her but I can guess who and what she is but no one deserves to be treated in such an inhumane way. That’s why the big corporation is the most anti-human organization ever, big government is equally bad too.
Girl bosses need to be taken down at least a few notches. Girl boss dom needs to be crushed. Mercilessly.
‘Even girl bosses shouldn’t have to live this way. You get that, right?’
I do not ‘get that’. Your women ALREADY have taken over your nation. And here you are, looking after the interests of the Poor Girl Bosses.
Do I want Girl Bosses in Girl Boss Amerika to be ‘treated well’. NO.
Do I want Girl Bosses, period. NO. It is right there in Scripture: women bossing men is rebellion against God. NO I do NOT want to make their happy little rebellion easier.
With respect, she does not have to live this way. She has a degree in musicology and ethnomusicology, whatever the hell they are. She would be eminently qualified to teach music, theater, or the like. Or to get married and have babies.
Nothing in her educational background qualifies her for a corporate position in technical sales, or even suggests she had any interest in business. She made a deliberate choice to chase the corporate life, presumably for the money, status, and power. Girlboss.
In the long run, this might be a blessing for her. Hopefully, she will reflect on whether her corporate career choice is the right situation for her. If not, she’s still plenty young to change tracks.
I suspect Pietsch is the lesser of two evils, here. I have little sympathy for her, but I absolutely loathe corporate AINO.
Just like The Zman said: People get screwed over by the Mangerial Class and right-wingers gang up on the screwees.
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“You talk like everyone owes you a living.”
“Nobody owes nobody nothin’. You owe yourself.”
” You’re wrong! Friends owe”
“No! Friends do because they wanna do.”
Not a society of friends no mo. not by a long shot. Some welfare is fine with upstanding people. Not a divided population full of low lives and people of bad faith.
(Vietnam, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan) “They was hand picked!”
“Set ups?”
“No, not set ups, they was good fighters. But not this guy (Russia). He’ll knock you into tomorrow.”
sorry couldn’t resist
I’ve worked for large corporations my whole career, including a very prominent tech company for a lot of years. I learned very early on about how things really work. Right around bonus time, we would be sold a line that we only met “80%” of our goal for the organization, and some other bullshit numbers conjured magically out of thin air. Our bonuses were then cut to reflect the “numbers”. Meanwhile, the executive overseeing the organization got 100% of his bonus. How does that work?
Nowadays, people look at me funny because I have zero investment in my company. Sure, I work hard and do my best, but everything I do is solely to benefit me. Every decision I make is to benefit me. I do not attend any all hands meetings, I do not attend company “functions”, I have an email rule that automatically deletes DIE emails and I never attend any off site meetings. I couldn’t be more disinterested in how the company is doing. As long as every two weeks, my check clears. If that’s no longer the case, by keeping my skillset sharp I try to be as hirable as possible and I’ll go to another “black worship center”.
The level of incompetence in these executive suites is mind numbing. I assume everything they say is a lie and it is the correct assumption.
The big mistake the young girl made was ever thinking she was working for a company “she could believe in”. I nearly spit my water out when she said it. No such thing exists, especially if you are white and not a trans or gay mutant. Hopefully she learned something.
IMO a out of these kids come out of the public schools ready to buy into this BS. They are “googlers” after all, and even when they get s-canned, they are spoken to as if they still have skin in the game, ‘for the company’ and its future and all that.
Yep… also the guys on top have parachutes, you don’t…and the management consulting companies are always telling them to cut staff and make everybody else work harder to compensate, while putting incompetent blacks and women into management positions…Good thing for them that they have monopoly power, or they would collapse…
This was an amazing rant TC. “Black Worship Centers.”
Yes. We can’t use the word master any more everyone. All the blacks we are going to force you to hire are so emotionally fragile and incapable of understanding that this word has many context dependent meanings, (in this case the golden master, the master copy), we can’t use it anymore.
I’ve been there TC. What I just described did happen and it was probably the least absurd of things that I experienced at a BWC. That term is apt. That is an amazing meme idea.
Have a look at all of the bios at Anthropic.ai as well as its stated purpose.
Yep
At my company, they tried renaming the “master” branch to “main” but strangely enough, no one would have it on my immediate team. It’s not like they aren’t leftists, but it was even too stupid for them.
Oh yeah, and our chief diversity she-boon decided that it was no longer ok to address folks as “Ladies and Gentleman”.
The world we live in should be nuked from orbit – it’s the only way to be sure.
“Nowadays, people look at me funny because I have zero investment in my company. Sure, I work hard and do my best, but everything I do is solely to benefit me. Every decision I make is to benefit me. I do not attend any all hands meetings, I do not attend company “functions”, I have an email rule that automatically deletes DIE emails and I never attend any off site meetings. I couldn’t be more disinterested in how the company is doing. As long as every two weeks, my check clears. If that’s no longer the case, by keeping my skillset sharp I try to be as hirable as possible and I’ll go to another “black worship center”.
My God, this describes me to a tee. Only here in Canada DIE has not quite gone that far yet. But they are working on it.
Our HR has a new girlboss VP who has rebranded HR as “People & Culture”.
Of course if you pinned them down they would say that “culture” refers strictly to the company’s Kulture. But I think at this point no one is fooled.
I work remotely and do not attend even “mandatory” events.
Being highly competent helps, but so is being old and white. I figure they do not really want someone like me along anyhow, despite their cajoling and threats.
Perhaps that is the future: a world managed on the surface by Diversity but where a lot of white and East Asian men do all the heavy lifting that keeps everything running.
The Wizard of Oz behind that curtain was an old fart ….
That is a brutal video. The HR word salad was beyond unbelievable. I honestly thought it as an AI firing her by the tone of the voices. The total lack of respect for who that young lady was as a person, let alone an employee, was just incredible.
She asked fair and reasonable questions about why she was being let go and they came back with, “Three plus purple equals banana.” Just incredible.
That is so typical for American companies. Hire and fire has always been the name of the game with no consideration for the little guy or how these cold, calculating decisions affect people as human beings.
But as we all know, there are lots of people out there who can do these low level pseudo-management job where everyone is a “Manager” or “Assistant Manager” of nothing. And if next week the company decided to hire someone to replace her, they will.
The real lesson here is that this will continue to happen to young people with little education or who lack professional skills. Or worse, they wasted tens of thousands of dollars for a useless marketing or business degrees from colleges who just print diplomas. It’s why parents should push their kids into STEM majors or if they are not college material, then at least take up a professional trade.
Thank God we have nothing like this kind of HR/worker relationship here in Germany. Yes, companies do go under and people do loose their jobs. But no one get tossed out the door like yesterdays garbage.
Keep in mind around 90% of German companies are small, privately held family owned companies who know each and every employee, and often their families too. Unlike giants like Krupps, Siemens or VW, the majority of German companies are not run by invisible management teams who have never even visited the factory and have no idea who works there.
“Keep in mind around 90% of German companies are small, privately held family owned companies who know each and every employee…”
How has it happened that almost all German companies are small and privately held? My assumption is that, given the drive within capitalism to always expand into giant coorporations, there must be some sort of legal protection for these small companies. Is that correct?
I’m guessing, maybe it’s cultural or favorable inheritance tax treatment.
I am not sure that necessarily is the natural or predetermined course of capitalism. Japan, to some extent seems to also have avoided the ruthless financialization of the manufacturing sector, albeit with many very large corporations.
Conversely, I think Britain went down the financialization dead end with a vengeance.
Maybe it’s a legal and/or political thing?
Might be a race thing. Anglos have a desire for puritanical ideals and a bizarre sense of universalism. Women, Jews and other “minorities” tend to have the most power in the Anglosphere.
Anglos are genetically very close to Germans and Britain and Germany are the two most common ancestor countries for white Americans so I doubt it is biological. But maybe it’s related to Anglo business culture and individualism?
Margaret Thatcher ruined the UK. She’s a hero to many but Britain today owes the shamble it’s in directly to her.
Why, yes indeed. Remember that she expressed the firmly- held opinion that there was no such thing as “society”. And she put this into practice as the female equivalent of “Chainsaw Al”, showing no sympathy for, or perhaps any awareness of, the historical social distortions of British culture that led to the impasse in society to which she fell heir. A sententious wrecker. Puts me in mind of the “former communist”, Angela Merkel, in the level of damage they both wrought on their peoples.
Western Europe, especially France ,Belgium and Sweden, is in a shambles. Thatcher was,in every sense, unremarkable.
German manufacturing is in steep decline and can only “survive” as a patent feeder for the Chinese.
In terms of financialization I don’t get why peole always ignore the Dutch or the French. Don’t assume the Anglos are the worst offenders in this regard.
The Hartz 4 reforms in Germany gutted the German Working Class; this was a policy that deliberately impoverished the German worker to out compete the southern Europeans. Government financial chicanery with the same effect as Thatcher’s reforms.
It’s still the case that the German minimum wage is much lower than that of the UK.
There seem to be more Anglo Saxons in France and Germany than in the US or UK.
It is childishly simply to prevent companies from getting too large. Antitrust is one way. Another way is the tools we used to use backs in the day – things like the Interstate Commerce Commission (regulating interstate commerce is literally in the Constitution, guise!)
Firms like UPS would have to justify their entry into a new state by making the case for the common good before the ICC. I’ve seen documents from the ’30s or whenever. They would have to show that current state of shipping in Ohio or wherever was not meeting the needs of the people and that their entry would be a net benefit to all the citizens.
Because the average German business owner isn’t a money greedy so-and-so. Germans are about responsibility and hard work. Responsibility to the people who work for them, and working hard to take care of the business. We don’t live for the here and now, we look down the road for our children.
Of course successful business owners will have a very nice house and very nice car and take lovely vacations. But everyone who works for him also earns enough to buy a nice home, a nice car and take 30-days of vacation.
Karl, this is probably too big a question, but why are the German business owners like this when the white business owners in most other first world countries are not?
Those German business owners, who still feel a sense of community, must face constant temptation and pressure to maximize profits over community.
There’s an answer, but its that thing if you make a German mention will cause him to collapse in paralysis like Alex in Clockwork Orange trying to grab a titty
I think the word you are looking for is “contentment”. These companies and their owners are content with what they have and understand the limits of what they can effectively manage while providing excellent quality products and sustaining a thriving business focused on their employees.
When you stop caring about your employees, they stop caring about the company.
For example, there is a company called FKT GmbH. You’ve never heard of them but they manufacture the wind guard used in Audi, Mercedes and others. This is typical of the smaller companies that supports much larger industries.
https://www.fkt-gmbh.com/
There have been at least a few exceptions. I used to watch them at the casino in Monaco, the German bosses with their escorts parking in front of Hotel de Paris. Their money was bet to loss in terms of gambling winnings and call girl pay. They were German company owners who clearly wanted to step outside their predictable lives. But it was the company money that apparently got spent on the “business” junkets. I had a ruling citizen as a client, and I was fortunate/unfortunate/tough choice to participate for a time. Power corrupts absolutely.
I’ll take “Who doesn’t live in Germany anymore” for $100, Alex
“Keep in mind around 90% of German companies are small, privately held family owned companies who know each and every employee, and often their families too.”
That’s still true in America, too. That’s how the Labor Department keeps coming up with imaginary unemployment numbers by fiddling with the birth/death rate of small companies. The reason the States are in the situation they are is largely the rules are written for and by the big players.
You can hang your shingle out, but you can’t get Tax Increment Financing. You can grow your company into a going concern, but watch your pennies, because unlike the big boys, there will be no bailouts for you. Environmental mitigation of imaginary risks, which costs the big boys a fraction of a percent of revenues, digs deeply into smaller businesses, sometimes a quarter or more. Just plain old litigation destroys small businesses, while it just gives the legal departments at megacorps something to do.
I truly hope German manufacturers do not devolve into financial firms with manufacturing on the side. This has happened to many American brands that used to be standards of quality. The most famous is no doubt Boeing but Remington and, I think, general electric and general motors as well. Bottom line, or even worse stock, obsession destroy a culture of excellence
I think Germans, and most Europeans, tend to shy away from huge corporate conglomerates. Smaller companies are more flexible and more dynamic and specialized. So even in a down economy like we are experiencing with a decline in automotive production, these small shops can quickly change to something else, or at least support other industries quite rapidly.
Historically, German engineers and technicians were separate from Management. Engineers and Technicians hired new employees and trained them themselves, with no interference from Management.
Management was responsible for finance, marketing, sales. They were never involved in the day-to-day work of engineering or the trades.
Managerial involvement in the technical side is a relatively recent thing. And even then, they approach us carefully. They know they need us, we don’t need them. And we make a point to politely remind them of it all the time.
“Historically, German engineers and technicians were separate from Management. Engineers and Technicians hired new employees and trained them themselves, with no interference from Management.”
Sounds like the Philadelphia Eagles could take a lesson from this.
“I think Germans, and most Europeans, tend to shy away from huge corporate conglomerates.”
That doesn’t mean you don’t have them. In Germany that would be companies like Krupp (Krupp Thyssen today) and Siemens. Every major industrial power has a handful of major industrial conglomerates at the apex of the economy. For various reasons they are needed. In Japan it would be zaibatsus like Mitsubishi and Mitsui. It’s the USA that now lacks these major industrial outfits as it has allowed parasitic finance to run unchecked and allowed its previous large industrial outfits to bit the dust, or shift offshore, or be raided and made hollow by the likes of Gordon Gekko.
This sounds like the very different, and salutary role played by Mittelstand firms play.
The US economy is wildly distorted by the very different rules for large, often multinational corporations.
Also, the outsized influence of the Military Industrial Complex with its deliberate policy of siting of its branches throughout the country in as many different Congressional districts as possible to force multiply its political support to assure fulfillment of its expectations for support contributes..
Lincoln’s destruction of States’ Rights and Powers, sedulously built upon, coupled with the concomitant gigantism of the Federal government and the ceding of the vast swathes of administrative law to that bureaucracy have been beyond poisonous.
The German is not telling you the whole truth and is being diingenuous when it comes to his idealized German elite.
The same elite invited in 1.5 million guests into their country in 2015!
Germany has a large percentage of middle sized businesses but so does the US,or the Netherlands or the UK.
German corporate TV commercials remind the Germans that the future German WILL be brown eyed and brown skinned.
Don’t buy the hype
I used to work for a family-owned newspaper and media conglomerate that had been in business for more than 100 years. It used to periodically mention as a point of pride that it had never laid off an employee in all those years.
Near the end of my tenure, they were running out of competent family members to manage the business and started brining in corporate MBA types. One of the first things they did was change the name of our “Employee and Labor Relations” department to “Human Resources.”
The layoffs started not long after that. I’d already seen the writing on the wall and was gone, though.
It is an interesting history lesson to look back and see how many self made men built massive businesses and fortunes in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. But when they handed the company to their sons, it often failed.
This was very true in America and the UK as well. Although the great estates of the UK suffered horribly with the loss of sons during WW1. You should look up the history of Philip Danforth Armour and Gustavus Swift. Both incredibly successful, but only in their time. Massive family fortunes were made, and lost.
It may have a lot to do with timing (right person in the right place at the right time) and scale. As I said, the majority of small German family owned and run companies go back 100 years.
In fact, The Coatinc Company, Germany’s oldest family-owned firm, was founded in 1502. We have breweries that are even older. The Bavarian State Brewery of Weihenstephan opened in 1040 and you can still enjoy their beer today.
I think you have a false impression- most developed countries have large “middle companies”.
Germans are impressed by an economic characteristic they share with all countries in the OECD
Nothing quite so odious than the mega-corporation refrain:
“We’re a FAMILY here at Corporation X!”
I hate it even more than the DEI crap. If anything, this tiktocker is learning in real time that no, you’re not “family” and never were. This “family” meme is weirdly paternalistic , in every HR manual and most communications, and manifests itself in very weird ways when headcount reductions take place.
Most men would kill for their family. They’d die for their family. They’d take huge pay cuts and sacrifice a great deal to keep their family afloat.
For their job at mega-corps?
FUPM.
Slogans are a sign of decadence because they are always insincere
“Democracy dies in darkness” probably takes the cake although I am confident they can come up with something even faker and more gay
I am sure they are up for more gay.
You & me both,
One of the best/worst examples is Dave Ramsey, Born-Again Sociopath. One day, his business is like a family. The next you are only worth what the market will pay you right now.
The use of “team” is every bit as noxious.
What Cloudfare did is in no way excusable; but this woman started out strong by calling them on the bullshit then devolved into the snowflaky “trauma” rant. Was that a product of the safe-space-seeking shame tactic so many U.S. college students adopt in the current age? Instead, she should have immediately pivoted to demanding a severance package for an economically induced downsizing. If that was met with similar dismissiveness and faux concern, she should have ended the exit interview immediately thereafter.
The reality is that corporate weasels who try to engineer a “lack of acceptable performance” justification are neither going to provide meaningful feedback or a future reference beyond dates of tenure. The whole goal is to avoid any possibility of litigation. Young people, conditioned by social media to share, indeed overshare, need to be mentored to understand that exit interviews are a complete waste of time and never benefit the separating employee.
On the up side, I would counsel her that claiming the separation as an economic layoff on her resume is an ethical response that has almost no likelihood of being challenged by Cloudfare if a future recruiter calls to verify her tenure.
So, the cringe part of this video is her apparent need for emotional satisfaction resulted in a viral video that completely undermines that resume strategy. She outed herself and will be explaining in future interviews just how competent she was with no one like her direct manager in a position to back that up. As they contemplate the optics of their organization being the subject of a similar negative viral video, they’ll politely thank her for interviewing; round file her application; and she’ll return to her job as a barista living hand to mouth in hopes of once again ascending to the Cloud. She’s attractive enough; so she’d be better off marrying a solid guy, having some kids, and embracing the life of a wife, mother and homemaker. I predict that Hell will freeze over first; but I’d be delighted to be proven wrong.
my thought too: “why this bitch working?”
good breeding stock, should have 2+ kids by now instead of this horseshit.
If she went to Kennesaw State, she is working because her family doesn’t have money. Might be first generation to go to college.
It is known.
btp – probably so. I lived a few miles from the campus 15 – 20 yrs ago – glorified community college
I used to think that in these situations, that she should be home raising children. However, given her girlboss profile posted above by Guest, do we really want her raising American children? They already have enough going against them. Imagine the mental castration she would perform on her little boys. And Girlboss, Jr., would be the scourge ot the IT department, or even better, the ethnomusicality department at some woke junior college. Not to say the latter wouldn’t deserve it.
She will pivot into a fine wife & mother if she finds the right man.
Women will change ideals and opinions to suit them best at the moment. Single women in corp.world want big gov’t Uncle Sam, you-go-grrl affirmative action for gals, and welfare. They get married and now that her hubby may be given short shrift come hiring/promotion time, his income over-taxed, and those no-goodnik laztbums costing her money and security; impacting her & her kiddos; she is more traditional in viewpoint.
Solipsim, thy name is woman.
To an extent, maybe. Many of the young women I see out in the work world are married with children, and still hardcore feminist libs. This cultural and school programming as well as having her own money has overcome a lot of natural instincts.
This whole thing is like trying out a netflix series and realizing there isn’t one character that you might possibly like.
Liberated, dun gotta listen to no man.
Maus: Yes, I would agree that she had no incentive to talk to HR lizards except to request severance. It appears that her tenure was very short, so unless she could talk her direct supervisor into providing a reference (likely, since they should have done the firing, anyway and may actually feel bad about it), she should just leave the whole thing off her resume and start over. Making videos of all life’s unfortunate events is the current fad, but I agree with others here that it will backfire. Expecting respectful and dignified treatment from a large employer is a thing of the past. Mutual trust is gone. Never trust a corporation. Always have a Plan B, and that’s from the first week of employment. Even if Plan B is just to stash away money for a rainy day.
Chauvinist pig!
😀
“This is not without consequences, and we see it in politics. When no one in the managerial elite is ever held accountable, the selection pressure for membership in the elite shifts from aptitude to obsequiousness. You see this in every established corporation and in the government. The people at the top are increasingly incompetent while increasingly obsequious. Politics is packed to the gills with oleaginous grifters because the system selects for such people.”
Biden is the apotheosis of this: a worthless p.o.s. who never accomplished anything and doesn’t have enough brainpower to light a 1.5W light bulb. Incidentally, if you want to know how third world sh!tholes are governed, you’ve described them to a T. Mediocrity, committees, servile behavior to the scumbag immediately above you while kicking those beneath you, constant jockeying for position, the paramount importance of optics rather than real performance, and grift and corruption everywhere.
At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, there’s no social contract between those ostensibly governing and marks and rubes like us. The risks and responsibilities have been shoveled on to us, with the rewards to those at the apex. Heads we win, tails you lose.
I could believe the sanctions on Russia were Biden’s thing, because who else could have such a combination of stupidity, arrogance, and recklessness. I remember, years ago, an interview he gave, which seems lost to time, in which he expressed the sentiment that an action’s worth was judged by whether you could “you could get away with it.” In the context that a heavy handed, unethical, or illegal action was ok if you could get away with it. Felt like it gave me some insight into the man. And I have viewed some of his actions, nord stream, the border, in this light.
I forgot to add nepotism. Which brings me to the interesting developments in France, where a homosexual has been appointed prime minister, who then appointed his husband as foreign minister. This, coupled with the rumors that Macron himself is homosexual (thinly camouflaged by him marrying his grandmother), mean that France is now a government of homosexuals. This is what Europe has sunk to.
You don’t exactly need ‘gaydar’ to figure out the Macron thing…
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s excellent book ‘The Happiness Hypothesis’ talks a good deal about reciprocity as a fundamental expectation among all primates, including humans.
Reciprocity is my main argument against civic nationalism. Whites can model a society where no one sees race, but the non-whites are unwilling and often unable, even if they wanted to, to reciprocate this behavior, due to their instinctual ethnocentrism. It can’t work without strict punishments for those who try to form racial collectives.
The worst thing for her is the borg is going to fight back. Next company considering hiring her is going to take great offense at her uploading the video of her being fired to the internet.
When I first went into the full time work world, people were constantly telling me that the world had changed, that companies had no loyalty whatsoever to employees. It absolutely was true. Corporations want to suck the lifeblood from its employees and then discard them the second they run out of blood to be sucked. They would love to suck even more blood even faster. They would implement the system called 996, which is what they supposedly use in China. 9AM to 9PM 6 days a week and a worker is considered worn out by 35.
In the old days, the Elite had to own their screw-ups. Historians estimate that 30% of the Roman Senate perished at the Cannae disaster. The French Elite losses at Agincourt were appalling. The Aristocracy of Europe really suffered in WWI. This “skin in the game” is what bound the lower classes to the upper classes.
Today, the CEO of Boeing gets on TV and emotes about the MAX debacle like a bitch. They outsource everything so they own all the upside stock-option benefits and then cry on TV when the downside scenario appears. If he had any dignity, he would resign.
So we stumble forward, emoting and virtue-signaling, while reason and accountability (pace Jack Nicholson in “As Good as it Gets”) are thrown out the window. The final collapse won’t be followed by a sober autopsy but instead a good crying session with boxed Kendall-Jackson and Ben & Jerry’s.
It’s hard to say exactly when how or where it ended, but the death of noblesse oblige in AINO was no doubt one of the early indicators of its demise. Certainly by the 1960s it had ended.
“The Aristocracy of Europe really suffered in WWI.”
Agreed, but their sons did the majority of the suffering.
The peasants’ sons suffered more than anyone, right into the oblivion of death.
I am closely acquainted with the company you mention and at the highest level. The C’s have visited my home and I theirs.
Routine meetings have been all about DIE for years. It is talked to death with religious fervor. Because the C-levels’ comp packages are heavily weighted by DIE, they have no choice in their private views, conveniently. As a consequence, policy is illegally in my view dedicated not to hire or retain straight white males unless there is no option. Outside consultants are used to patch known holes so-to-speak.
This is all being driven by the money suppliers who control the board. They are literally micro-managing who gets to do the actual work and in my opinion they will penalize an employee at any level who should happen to hire a straight, white male.
It is a blood vendetta like the show in Ukraine except that my demographic is the one targeted for erasure. The demographic imposing DIE knows jack squat about aircraft and spacecraft, if you investigate the history of aviation you do not find the surnames found in other fields, not at the frequency certainly.
White guys do spatial reasoning better than any other people, period. We should naturally be employed in aviation design and construction positively disproportionate to our relative numbers. Instead, we are being excluded increasingly, the opposite direction, which demonstrates the company “leadership” is motivated by concerns other than shareholder profit. Why this isn’t being litigated in the courts tells you a lot about the money people because they are going to lose a lot of money but proceed with DIE anyway. It evidences their priorities.
Forgive me for the rant, it’s -9F/-30F outside and I’m cranky.
OT Chicago side bar – yes, it’s cold but at least no one going to have to sit outside at Soldier Field to watch DaBears in a playoff game. I stop caring about DaBulls long tie ago, but read that recent ‘ring of honor’ event was a debacle.
I have a love-hate relationship with our winter. It culls the invaders, ferals and other bipedal beasts residing here in West Lagos. But dang if the wind doesn’t sting and turn denizens grumpy and even more inclined to murder. Also I can’t bike the lakefront, which is a thing with me (47 miles U.Chicago and N’western as my pylons).
I never followed professional sports although I’ve represented some owners, players and front office types so Go Team. I’m a U. Mich A^2 alum and follow, somewhat, Meechigan feetsball, hockey and rugby. (I started on the #2-ranked intercollegiate Michigan Rugby team back in the day, yea us.)
The ring of honor comedy, our mayor and this state’s hybrid Cetacean-in-Chief/bullfrog just shows how typically imbecilic we are here. We even managed to screw up the architecture and kill off most German restaurants.
Can’t wait to buy that floatplane and join my buddy flying packages in Alaska.
Hang in there – spring should be sprung…by June
We’re back to it really is a genocide against us
Three thousand innocent people were killed on the morning of 9/11/2001. Who was fired? [instead of deporting all muslim visa holders, we invaded Iraq. WTF?]
(yeah, yeah, yeah truthers bring it on… That’s not the point).
You knew that the war on terror was complete B.S. when the USA borders were not completely locked down on September 12, 2001. Even during the Trump years illegal immigration was only reduced in relative terms.
It turns everyone into a sociopath by forcing them to lie even when the truth makes more sense.
Ever take a school-bus-driver test/CDL “B” test?
Hypocrisy reigns supreme. The number of lies one tells in order to pass that test is very large, indeed. Saying, e.g., that one literally crawled under the bus to inspect the brake pads, rotors, and lines, or that one did not detect a broken leaf-spring, or that merely looking at the engine assures one that there are ‘no missing nor damaged parts’ is simply lying. Nobody actually does crawl under the damn thing except the mechanic when he’s inspecting or working on it.
I did the training for being a mailman and they have a similar ridiculous checklist of inspections that supposedly every postal worker does before driving their van. No way in hell they actually do it.
I’m a strong proponent of the attitude that “The world doesn’t owe you anything.” Not because I’m some lolbertarian but because of the inner peace it grants you. You will never be disappointed if you have no expectations to begin with. This will also help with feeling the appropriate gratitude when someone does make an accommodation for you or does some other act of kindness.
Besides, if we are supposed to have reciprocal duties and obligations why would I want to have any duty to a psychopathic corporation? I’d rather see them liquidated Soviet style and their precious corporations broken to pieces and scattered to the winds. I want to see HR Karens loaded into boxcars and shipped off to forced labor camps for the remainder of their miserable lives. I want to see the soyboy geldings in middle management turned into eunuchs and press ganged into collecting garbage and sweeping the streets. I do not want to owe to, or be owed anything from people I have no respect for. At this point I’d rather serve some post-apocalyptic neighborhood warlord. At least if I get terminated (from existence) by him it will be for actually failing to meet his performance metrics and not some made up bullshit.
The world doesn’t owe you anything, but the people who get some good out of you ought to give you some good back–if there is to be such a thing as a “society” anyway.
Having been on both sides of the table, the time for expecting, demanding reciprocal obligations is at your employee review. Women tend to be particularly crappy at that, which is the biggest reason they ought to choose a different lifestyle. They will always be disappointed because the corporation didn’t sense her needs and will take it out on her husband, kids or cats as appropriate.
Only a fool would ask for promises like job security, titles, future compensation. The future is unknowable. Congress could and does slip stuff into 2,000 page bills that destroys otherwise valid business plans. Pensions and benefit plans went by the wayside in the 70s and 80s in exactly this way. If it’s not in your hands, you don’t have it.
“You will never be disappointed if you have no expectations to begin with.”
Living without expectations sounds like a very empty and soulless existence.
As for the rest of your post, of course none of us feel any obligation to corporations or any other societal institutions because our society is stone-cold dead. But society died, in part, because the reciprocal obligations Z described were obliterated. Like you, I wish to see all of the monsters who control postmodern society destroyed. But after that, when society is rebuilt afresh, I want to see reciprocal obligations restored.
“Reciprocal obligations” became welfare, busing, affirmative action, and, come to think of it, keeping up with the Joneses in the 1960s and 1970s, as the Greatest Generation shut down all powers of discernment and turned the culture into corporations, cocktails, and cruises.
I consider those statist impositions, not reciprocal obligations.
My point was that the middle and upper classes considered that their fulfilling their “reciprocal obligations.” Even when they got nothing back.
“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall get it.”
Golly. (snerf, sniffle) That was beeutiful!
2 words in reaction to your comment:
RIGHT ON!
Behold the feminization of the modern workforce! On display, the non-confrontational, get-along gang, treacly-twee, feelings-uber-alles language we are all forced to mimic. The patently fake deep concern masking complete corporate indifference. The cowardly dismissal over the ether, avoiding the potential meatspace unpleasantness of an in-person interview. A kinder, gentler backstabbing.
I’m surprised the HR harpy didn’t end the call with “I just think we need to see other people. But we can still be friends.”
I am SURE crying fired girl would have told you to put your mask over your nose and told on you to management.
And stand six feet apart.
Unfortunately, they do build statues to useless committees. See here https://www.superstock.com/asset/sculpture-europe-coeur-ludmila-tcherina-symbol-european-union-european-parliament/1848-672261. Which goes hand in hand with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU. One silly committee bestowing honor on another silly committee which had done nothing to produce the result for which it was being awarded. The EU being roughly analogous to the student government council at your high school.
If you want a glimpse into hell you could google “empowerment committee”
George Floyd got a statue.
Speaking of ignoring Great Men: James Webb was nominated for Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy some years back. There was squealing from the usual suspects about his opposition to women in combat, so he withdrew his name.
Decorated Combat Veteran
Best Selling Author
Secretary of the Navy
U.S. Senator
Candidate for President of the USA.
NOT a distinguished graduate. No doubt some ass-kissing turds in the mold of Lloyd Austin ARE distinguished graduates.
Withdrew his name. He’s part of the problem.
Exactly he cucked which negates everything else…
And when the Norwegian Nobel Committee can’t out-and-out award the Peace Prize to another (commie) committee, they disguise it as an award to Barack Obama.
I think that you meant to refer to the Peter Principle: In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise until he reaches his level of incompetence. There is a Pareto distribution (80-20).
No. Pareto Principle. Even in the elite there are a “vital few” who make the system work.
You are correct. I had always heard it referred to as a Pareto distribution, but it can now be referred to as a principle. And it makes sense; even in upper management: 20% of the actors produce 80% of the results. I’ll wager that a different 20% of upper management produce 80% of the problems.
One of the worst things about “managerialism” is how it’s co-opted the language and tone of person-to-person concern as a mask for self-interest. It’s a grotesque form of industrialization: Say these words in this way and get this inevitable result.
Except, of course, that assumes that the recipient of the “magic phrase” is just a robot who will process every input in a predictable way. I hand it to the girl in the video for asserting she was a person, and exposing the callers as the automata who were just executing their programming.
Meanwhile, this kind of managerial approach has been a real poison to interpersonal relationships. It’s driven sincerity and mutual respect—and even justified criticism—out of the equation, and replaced it with a paint-by-numbers form of mollifying while avoiding accountability or legal consequence. Back in the ‘90s, the Pick-Up Artist guys took a lot of flak for gaming the emotional system of women in order to selfishly manipulate them. But what you see in that firing video is really no different. Yet instead of being a disreputable practice, it’s an approved part of the HR handbook.
‘Agree and Amplify’ is a common technique from ‘Pick-Up’ that HR pansy types often use. Of course, in the night game, it’s more for bitchy shittests to show you don’t care while not being combative and staying aloof. In HR it never works because it’s obvious pandering and corpo speak, ‘we hear and understand you’ … Anyway they use a lot of ’emotional’ appeal but it never works how they think it does. A committee is not a person, nor are they ever capable of using emotional manipulation past the 3rd-grade level.
This is an interesting idea, that the sociopathy we see from people nowadays could simply be a product of them mirroring the behavior of the managerial elites. It’s kind of like the problem the aristocracy always had where they’d find a new funny looking article of clothing to wear to mark themselves as aristocrats but pretty soon the peasants were copying them.
If your experience with the institutions in life (incidentally the entittes with all the money and power) are entirely sociopathic in nature then the logical assumption one would make is that it’s normal to treat everyone like garbage and just lie to their faces to achieve whatever goal you have in that moment. And really that’s what you see with the way people are incredibly flaky nowadays.
I had to get some real estate appraised recently and it took the guy three months of me calling him every week to ask about it. Every single time it was “oh I should have it done by the end of the week”.
Having been laid-off myself late last year I can say that the worst part of *any* dealing with the HR machine is the language it uses. I spend my miserable days now reading job ads and then trying to apply to the jobs that look possible. Reading this garbage all day leaves me feeling deeply dirty and soul-sick. It’s hard to imagine actually *being* one of the creatures who writes these things.
I’m in software and even there it’s also increasingly difficult to figure out exactly what the hell a given job even is. Concrete skills such as programming languages, software packages, and operating systems are increasingly replaced with a hollowed-out, desiccated corp-speak. The main part of the ad is no longer devoted to describing the job but is now three paragraphs of DIEversity propaganda mixed with business school bullshit about “disrupting the ___ industry” and of course “empowerment”.
These ads also often imply that you (the applicant) need to be overjoyed about the company’s “mission” however vague, utopian, or just nonsensical it is. I see a lot of “green energy” startups that are particularly bad in this. It’s astounding to think that entire new companies are being spawned based on notions about energy that are at odds with basic physics combined with equally absurd understandings of human beings to guide hiring and guarantee that no one capable of understanding this can be hired.
Best wishes on your job search, Poz.
“…eventually that smart fraction within the elite is overwhelmed by the growing number of sociopathic grifters slithering into the elite.”
As this takes place, the entropy that makes for the structural weakness in the system takes its toll. The remedy tends to be dissolution of the top elite or the conspiracy that, vanquishing the other conspiracies, evolves into the rule of the “strong man.” Takimag has a good article today on the potential global future and suggests that China’s main weakness (main not sole weakness) is the consolidation of power in the person of its current dictator.
To some extent our regime may have avoided this outcome by allocating top managerial decision to a committee whose large semi-visible membership vies for power within an overall consensus. But consensuses are prone to empathy as well.
This may be partly why Nikki Haley may run as both a Dem and a Pub, the de facto candidate of both parties, to keep a wobbly consensus from further deterioration.
An Indian president to match Britain’s Indian prime minister. You talk about taking over without firing a shot. God, Anglo-Saxons are stupid.
God, let us hope not. No society/organization should be run by Indians.
Look at India. India is run by Indians and it’s a complete shithole.
“millions of Americans are forced to be terrible people in middle-management positions, doing the bidding of management.”
According to The Gervais Principle, they are the Clueless, a name that matches my experience. Most of them are happy to be in their positions, because they think that being a manager means something more than being a buffer between the top and bottom.
No one wants to be led by charlatan poseurs who are utterly lacking in character, integrity, competence, or even soul. That is an easy reaction to the dilemma we find ourselves in. And an all-to-easier followup is whiny pissing and moaning about it, as if that was a solution to anything. At some point, you have to get up off the couch and do more than just hurl boos and catcalls from the bleacher seats. For those with a BMI<25, taking to the streets is about as active as they will muster. And no, voting harder is not an activity, its a self-deception.
Some day, the environment will significantly change for the worse and there will be no choice but to do or die. Both endpoints are necessary for societal redemption. Choose carefully.
Amen Brother I think also that a lot of our side don’t want to be led either even if someone stepped up that was capable of leading…
“The logical end of managerialism is a committee room stuffed with narcistic simpletons waving their credentials at one another as the riots rage outside the committee room”.
Ain’t that the truth. I also see said simpletons further derangement when ordered go to sit in the corner of a circular room.
Re: That linked video. “I am sorry that you feel that way” – this is a cowardly way to say “f*ck you”. When I hear someone talk like that, I know I am talking to a spineless coward.
That’s a perfect definition of Libertarianism
Amen on that Brother…
Spectacular, Z.
How true. My last employer was a family run business. The CEO was a WW2 vet, in his 80s when I went to work for him. When I first started I was getting killed by the company’s mid-level psychotics and managerial “elite”, so one day I just said “Screw it! If I get fired for telling the truth so be it!”
I called the Old Man up, told him what was going on and asked him what he wanted to do. He flew in from Montreal the next day unannounced… and suffice it to say – our local managerial elite were caught with their pants down. They were not so elite when he left. Dealing with him was a dream – you had a problem, ya called him up, dumped it in his lap with the available options…and he made his call and stood on it. Done. Like dinner! 👍 It was old world employment – probably what it used to be like before the Boomers reinvented the work environment.
I personally think that crap like this is largely driven by the presence of women in the workplace. The vid had all the hallmarks of female misbehaviour: secret recordings, squid language, character assassination…I don’t think you’ll get a straight answer out of either the HR fatty or the young lady. Ironically…Only a Yesterday Man could sort this mess out. He’d have to go in, dig into the mess personally, take responsibility for the problem, identify the culprit and put the whip on her ass. Today men like that are thrown out the airlock and spaced.
Instead we have a pretty young lady who should be at home raising kids of her own – in a cubicle farm. As she gets older she’ll inevitably become the same kind of carbunkle as the one that laid her off.
This is why people go to work with AK47s…
And here I thought showing up to work with my Glock 20 10mm was sufficient. Tomorrow I’ll remember to pack my AK.
When C-levels talk with the “losers” at the bottom, they often talk straight and appreciate the same in return. On the other hand, they treat the middle managers like kids.
I once had the opportunity to meet the President of a Fortune 500 vompany. The man spoke plainly and clearly.
We had a short interaction. He told me he appreciated a honest man. At the time I didn’t quite understand why he said that.
As I got older, I started realizing just how mucj bullshit is in the middle. He must’ve been constantly dealing with yes-men and yes-women who are more concerned with their status than doing and saying the right thing.
In the Spanish-speaking world, a Corporation is called a “Sociedad Anonima” – anonymous society. I think this captures the spirit and intent of blame-avoidance and irresponsibility much better.
I’m a capitalist but I’m beginning to think the corporate form has outlived its usefulness. The old Patron-Owners Filthie describes here – the “Old Man” – are probably a better model for the future.
Small can’t resist Big, Big can’t hold itself together. Round and round we go.
“The old Patron-Owners Filthie describes here – the “Old Man” – are probably a better model for the future.”
Good luck getting that done with womyn running amok. I tell the young men who work for me that they are going to have to get control of females or they will see a world in further ruin than it already is. Most of them turn ashen at the prospect of putting their collective foot down.
WATV —
Well said. Those male faces turn ashen because they know who has the power, in the corporation and the courtroom.
Thanks, Ray. At my age, I remember the effortlessly masculine men of the 60s like my dad who quietly but consistently and confidently made the country work without female interference. I miss them.
Tell them to Tribe Up if they want to get a hold or control the women of their community…Women respond to power and social status so if you are the dominant tribe in your area then the women will fall into line…
“This is why people go to work with AK47s”
Not in Canada, Bub… Justin doesn’t like evil assault weapons in Snow Paradise — unless they’re in the hands of his RCMP security team
Today men like that are thrown out the airlock and spaced.
Yep fooled into individualism so they would be weak and easily taken over by a bunch of shit individuals that were tribal…So simple a cavemen could see it and yet most can’t grasp it especially the smart ones…
People are often educated out of understanding very elementary and important truths. Which is a very serious indictment against the university
I would say propagandized Brother and it affects anyone that can’t self reflect which seems to me to be the majority…
Last year my teen daughter’s car was rear ended and totaled. I settled on a figure with the insurance company. I thought the payment would be forthcoming but weeks started going by with no money. All calls and emails to the insurance company went unanswered. My credit union held the note on the car. I spoke with the female branch manager about having the credit union bring pressure on the insurance company from their end. The credit union has $1 billion in assests so it is a decent size operation. The female manager said that these things take time and to wait a few months. I emailed the male credit union CEO the next day and received a call from the male credit union lawyer a few hours later who started pressing the insurance company. I received the money in less than a week. The credit union got their loan payoff and I was able to get my daughter another car. Often it really is a waste of time to speak to anyone but the top guy. So many people are just coasting at work and don’t want to make even a minimal effort.
““Screw it! If I get fired for telling the truth so be it!”
I called the Old Man up, told him what was going on and asked him what he wanted to do. He flew in from Montreal the next day unannounced… and suffice it to say…”
Tried that years ago – VP, local branch complete crook, fake files, old guy. Instead it was ME that was out the door, got a new job at advice of my boss, an old military guy. Great guy – but see, new younger management had taken the reins as of late.
So old VP, crooked mfer, stays Ends up suing the company for age discrimination and taking them for a big fat ride when they finally replaced him a few years later. I still laugh thinking about it.
‘When the people we call the left claim society has some new moral duty, conservatives never challenge the moral duty, but instead fall into a form of bourgeois anarchism.’
The Left essentially is empowered women plus an assortment of fellow-grifters — homos, commies, globalists, race players. E.g., the feminist movement BEGAN in the mid-Nineteenth Century by co-opting abolitionism and ‘race relations’. Joined at the hip.
The Right essentially is men, mostly but not exclusively white men.
WHY is the question not asked here.
WHY does the Right consistently fail to challenge and annul the endless ‘progressive’ schemes of the Left, instead always seeking refuge in ‘bourgeois anarchism’?
Because modern American men are simps and cowards, and they are afraid of both their wives/daughters/mommies etc., and of the collective political power of women, which has been running the country the past four decades. DC is basically a coven.
Your points about managerialism are valid and well-presented. But — somewhat like conservatives — you leave out the most important factor, by far. The managerialism of the modern West is feminine and feminist in character, that’s why everywhere you look, women are taking over.
The Regime isn’t just a-masculine, it is rabidly and violently anti-masculine. Until men face that horrible and heart-shattering truth, nothing changes.
Who TF downvoted this? Chris Christie?
No. Lardass Larry.
> Who TF downvoted this? Chris Christie?
Women. Who took it personally and responded emotionally, helping to prove Ray’s point.
Not me.
Although I believe that all these feminists and assorted misfits who inflict such misery and think they are running things are really the useful idiots of the totalitarian males like Soros who run Globalist, Inc. Joke’s on them.
WATF —
That is so. And Soros etc. in turn are only tools of other ‘elites’. Ole Jowly is not the source of the evil. He’s a few levels down.
For the moment I can’t get at the source directly. That will change.
Masculine system is either absolutist or aristocratic Monarchy or Fascism.
Feminine system is democracy, socialism or a constitutional monarchy.
Robert Dabney: American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. . . .
Thank you. The full quote, from which your trenchant section is drawn, packs even more punch…
“It may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent, Northern conservatism. This [Northern conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always when about to enter a protest very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance: The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy, from having nothing to whip.”
Some things haven’t changed a bit.
You speak Truth Brother I’ve heard countless times over the years that excuse of my wife or girlfriend won’t let me or wouldn’t like it so I can’t do that…It’s an epidemic that won’t get fixed until good men band together to put a stop to it…
In one episode of the MTM Show, Mary asks Lou Grant what is the secret of his success, and he answers, “I know how to delegate blame.”
‘There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.’
I don’t care about getting the credit; I just don’t want to get the blame.
“…oleaginous grifters”
Off-topic, but “oleaginous” brought a pleasant memory and smile to my face remembering Pat Buchanan and Michael Kinsley on “Crossfire” on a beautiful June night in the mid-1990s laughing over this word, which had been the Waterloo for the runner-up the night before at the National Spelling Bee. A recollection of a time when — if nothing else — we were still sane.
I disagree that we were still sane in the 90s. It’s more like the cancer had not yet spread to every major organ of the body by then. But all of the root causes were there.
Sane enough in the 90’s that Pat Buchanan was on CNN and later MSNBC, and some topics (not all) were allowed to be debated.
True. But compared to the present, it sure FELT like sanity.
Not sure she’s competent enough to do this but often the best revenge is to start your own gig as a competitor. Kick them where it hurts the most.
Cloudflare is practically a regime gatekeeper for the Internet. I’m surprised they even had sales staff, it’d be like the postal office having a huge sales staff (which, probably explains why her and her compatriots were let go because management there was probably wondering the same thing).
The USPS does have a huge sales force focusing on business clientele. Every carrier and clerk is encouraged to submit sales leads, and station managers are required to follow up with a certain number of them per quarter. USPS aggressively markets EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) and parcel shipping services, because without them it could not even fund its operations. First Class postage is now a small, shrinking, irrelevant slice of the pie.
What this means for Cloudflare I am not sure, but if the analogy carries over, it means that they survive by upselling clients on expensive data and security services above and beyond the standard package, without which the company could not exist.
This touches on something that I’ve talked about for many years. I don’t think the internet is naturally profitable. The enormous infrastructure buildout and constant maintenance it requires are too costly to be supported by any organic improvements in productivity it generates, if there even are any. The internet was and is a gigantic bubble which was funded by unrepeatable one-off events such as the labor arbitrage of shifting manufacturing and programming to Asia, and the demographic overhang of the Baby Boom generation.
Now that that powder is spent, the internet is running up against the limits of complexity and growth. Far from being a permanent revolution, it is going to end being a rather transient phenomenon in human history.
“… The enormous infrastructure buildout and constant maintenance it requires are too costly to be supported by any organic improvements in productivity it generates, if there even are any. …”
Interesting theory. You could say the same about roads, though. Would be nice to see some serious analysis/expansion of your theory and a comparison to roads and other expensive infrastructure with socialized costs.
You could not say the same about roads. Anyone can see that the interstate highway system, for instance, has paid for itself many, many times over. There are maybe a few useless roads here and there, but for the most part all roads pay for themselves. I think ID has an interesting hypothesis here, although I don’t feel qualified to address it.
I did not say whether roads do or do not pay for themselves. I am saying that the cost of road infrastructure is socialized and the returns are not always obvious, just like the cost and returns of digital infrastructure. Before we definitely say that these two things are completely different, I would love to see some numbers, which, I understand, is not a trivial task.
And yes, ID has an interesting hypothesis, hence my comment…
Maybe the post office should get together with the DMV. Instead of just selling your DMV data, the Post Office could share all the mail you have received and combine it with the DMV data.
I’ve been thinking and saying this for a few years, especially around social media. We’ve been on a money printing party since the mid 90s. This dramatically lowered borrowing costs and made all these unprofitable businesses viable somehow.
As a society we should really discuss what we get from our cell phones vs what they cost. The cost has been absolutely enormous. What the heck is Gen-Z going to be like having never lived without it?
ID. The Internet was developed by DARPA. It was developed initially as a communication device for the military—not a commercial enterprise per se.
It’s value spread as various entities desired its use in their enterprises. Initially universities with government research contracts. The initial “build out” was primarily the higher bandwidth, fibre optic links, installed by the large communications companies like AT&T and Secor. Then the software followed from the institutions, such as WWW and search engines such as Google.
After the basic shared infrastructure connectivity installation, the rest was done at the local level. In my institution, this followed a “need to have” prioritization, which of course was based on local financial, bang for buck, considerations. At a point, the “one step at a time” was considered too slow and *the value of the Internet so obvious*, that the entire university was wired for Internet connectivity everywhere in one two year process. A multi-million dollar project, the largest ever funded at that time. Again, proving the value of the Internet at that time. Indeed, if the Internet ceased, most aspects of university automation in records keeping, billing, and instruction would cease as well.
To say that the end of the Internet is neigh, is simply ignorant babble—of which you are well known to spew.
The Internet is not as much an entity as it is an idea—hence the official spelling was changed to lower case “i” a decade or so ago. That idea is very much alive and well. The internet is not going anywhere. It will/is of course morph from limited bandwidth fixed wired connectivity to satellite and cellular connectivity to individual devices, e.g., cell phones.
The complexity of the internet is a product of the lack of fundamental understanding, as you’ve demonstrated. My car is complex to me, yet I manage to make good use of it and if it fails, I take it to a repair shop. My understanding is basic, primarily as a user, but enough to make my car an indispensable and essential device.
Such “complexity” of the internet is offset by the thousands of distributed support functionaries now employed. The value of the internet is proven by its ubiquitous use by the populace and corporations. And corporations do not survive unprofitable undertakings for long.
The internet is an already a permanent revolution. It has completely revolutionized most all aspects of human interaction. It will never be abandoned, although as with all technology, it might be destroyed/hampered via corrupt government interference or societal conflict.
ID. The Internet was developed by DARPA. It was developed initially as a communication device for the military—not a commercial enterprise per se.
It’s value spread as various entities desired its use in their enterprises. Initially universities with government research contracts. The initial “build out” was primarily the higher bandwidth, fibre optic links, installed by the large communications companies like AT&T and Secor. Then the software followed from the institutions, such as WWW and search engines such as Google.
After the basic shared infrastructure connectivity installation, the rest was done at the local level. In my institution, this followed a “need to have” prioritization, which of course was based on local financial, bang for buck, considerations. At a point, the “one step at a time” was considered too slow and *the value of the Internet so obvious*, that the entire university was wired for Internet connectivity everywhere in one two year process. A multi-million dollar project, the largest ever funded at that time. Again, proving the value of the Internet at that time. Indeed, if the Internet ceased, most aspects of university automation in records keeping, billing, and instruction would cease as well.
To say that the end of the Internet is neigh, is simply ignorant babble—of which you are well known to spew.
The Internet is not as much an entity as it is an idea—hence the official spelling was changed to lower case “i” a decade or so ago. That idea is very much alive and well. The internet is not going anywhere. It will/is of course morph from limited bandwidth fixed wired connectivity to satellite and cellular connectivity to individual devices, e.g., cell phones.
The complexity of the internet is a product of the lack of fundamental understanding, as you’ve demonstrated. My car is complex to me, yet I manage to make good use of it and if it fails, I take it to a repair shop. My understanding is basic, primarily as a user, but enough to make my car an indispensable and essential device.
Such “complexity” of the internet is offset by the thousands of distributed support functionaries now employed. The value of the internet is proven by its ubiquitous use by the populace and corporations. And corporations do not survive unprofitable undertakings for long.
The internet is an already a permanent revolution. It has completely revolutionized most all aspects of human interaction. It will never be abandoned, although as with all technology, it might be destroyed/hampered via corrupt government interference or societal conflict.
I had a reply to this posting, but after two attempts to post, have been lost to the “ether”.
Perhaps they’ll show up eventually, however at this point this recurring problem has me wondering whether or not I’m blocked in some fashion.
That’s fine, but really we should be honest about such and then one can save one’s efforts and move on.
As I just now see. This rather short posting immediately went online.
Is there something I should be be watching for or doing when posting.
You’re probably just hitting the filter which then forces Z to manually review the post before it is allowed to appear.
Z’s comment section is usually remarkably free of spam and trolls.
Compsci– my post today only appeared after an hour or so I think.
last year I registered a personal vanity email domain via the iCloud menu on my iPhone (I know… I have several other domain names purchased directly from registrars for other purposes). Apple uses Cloudflare for registering these domains and of course passes on my info to them.
So for ages I kept getting emails from some female sales droid at Cloudfare wanting to offer me Zoom consultations to see what else Cloudflare could do for me. This is just mentally retarded. I mean given the sales channel, it’s clear that I want nothing to do with @#$%ing Cloudflare and the likelihood of their growing their bottom line by upselling some kind of corporate edge presence or turbo DNS solution for multinationals to a private individual who has just purchased a cheap *personal* service is pretty much zero.
But as other posters have pointed out, it’s most unlikely that these sales bints with their marketing degrees have any idea at all about the products they’re pushing. And even when they *do* sell to MegaCorp, just imagine the marketing buzzword bullshit back and forth until after all the contracts are signed and kickbacks baked in and finally the calls go down to the Nobody Nerds in the respective basements to ‘hook shit up and make it sing’. Incredible, really.
> Not sure she’s competent enough to do this but often the best revenge is to start your own gig as a competitor. Kick them where it hurts the most.
LMAO. I don’t think anyone would be competent enough to start a Cloudfare competitor. That it is literally the “just build your own internet” meme!
Yeah, you can’t compete with Cloudfare, but she could leverage whatever qualifications she has into some niche, which is all an entrepreneur is doing anyway. The only real way to make money doing commodities is to be the biggest on the block. (Note, doing commodities, not doing derivatives.)
The only real question is if she has such qualities, or if she is more of a follower. Which is not terrible. That is the traditional role of the fair sex.
A list of companies that are actually the “deep state” of the entire world would have Cloudflare very near the top. A to-do list for becoming its competitor would start with something like “kill every NATO soldier.”
No facet of American libertarian-conservatism, especially not the myth of capitalist economic competition, applies to any real earthly phenomenon.
It’s a terrible thing to know.
Be a lot of 3-Letter tech types working at Cloudflare. Down at the coalface the ‘protection’ ‘services’ it provides make it a surveillance powerhouse.
And if business slumps, they can just DDOS anyone who isn’t their customer and get instant sales. What’s not to like?
We apparently used to have great men who did things to become known as such. Here’s hoping another one arises at some point to lead the charge against this arthritic managerial state psychopathy. It’s draining the life force out of everything.
Things will work out, it’s going to take time and turnover, is all. The waiting and watching is terrible, though. Competent and potentially great men are out there, but the people still have an appetite for humiliation, as long as it’s entertaining and pays well.
Just spend an hour on X and you will see many posts relating to one of these “great men” whom General Geroge Patton referred to as the “wrong enemy.”
Now do the military industrial complex. Of course it’s all the same.
Here is an interesting channel although his solutions are questionable, on being a wage slave. Talks about being let go etc. This is in Sweden.
https://youtu.be/0-Yc1LFzZuY?si=tYE26VesYJ7XVdpN
Zman: Politics is packed to the gills with oleaginous grifters because the system selects for such people.
Zulu Juliet: Field Grade ranks are packed to the gills with oleaginous grifters because the system selects for such people.
Zaphod: Spelling Bees are packed to the gills with oleaginous grifters doing the needful because the system is selecting for such people.
I see this at my job. More and more soulless bureaucrats where there used to be useful employees. Also I see competence draining away over time.
I enjoy the technical bits of my job. It is interesting work and provides real benefits to America & Americans. Problem is, I have to wade through more & more managerialism/bureaucracy/”compliance” BS and such to actually get a chance to do my job. And all the “support” funcitons no longer provide support, but expect me to do the heavy lifting of the support task and then they check a box and allow me to get something done. Kinda crazy.
I do have an exit plan to execute once a few things line up.
Yeah, seems to be the same in most places.
In my role, it is suddenly decided that ‘the customers’ want evidence of compliance to ‘cyber-security’ standards. The customers actually don’t really know what they want, they have just been told that “You must be compliant with with ISO-0290930LGBT to be secure!”… and this is where the make-work begins.
I spend a good half of my working week addressing things that have been flagged by software designed to help make us compliant with these standards. Most of the ‘concerns’ are security vulnerabilities, often marked ‘critical’, that on closer inspection affect packages installed on the computer that are never used, or just won’t be exploited. But we must appease the compliance software.
The net result is less actual work done on making the system better or the software better in-line with what the customer actually wants.
I’ve always said that, at least a waiter in a busy cafe knows his labour matters – he can literally see the customers demanding his services, or the services his employer offers through him. But what about your standard office job? Some manager tells you that we need to re-write our PHP application in TypeScript – why? Fashion? Where’s the demand.
If you can’t see the obvious demand for your labour, your job is probably make-work – more generally, if you work in an office, you job is highly likely make-work!
That’s why I retired early at 54 in 2015. I liked the technical engineering parts of my job but came to despise the marketing/accounting business school newcomers who were ruining our good name with their short-term thinking. They were completely indifferent to the decades of history that built our reputation in the avionics industry (we made the ‘black box’ flight recorders). They acted as though the company was created for them the moment they arrived and they treated our dedication to quality and integrity as an annoyance that got in the way of their short-term goals. It became dangerous to speak the truth when it contradicted the feckless management lies we were expected to repeat.
One of the best pieces you’ve done. I’m going to print this one out and show it to anyone who has the guts to ask me why I hate capitalism as it’s practiced in the modern world. I have for a while now refused to call myself a capitalist.
Yes it strikes genuine chords. Such as, yes, all genuine relationships are, and must be, reciprocal in nature. The one-sided relationship is the most brutal form of the slave to the master. The bill of rights should be read as what society owes you. That is why the trampling of dissidents ‘ rights are aggravating. Modern conservatism really has messed up terribly
Yea because it’s focused on individualism instead of community so it’s not watch out for your Brother it’s what you can take from your Brother…
Agree fully. I have never objected to people getting paid for useful work, or getting paid for founding a company and making a profit off their labor, their service, or their creation.
But “capitalism” as we understand it today is merely a corporatist ripoff, where money is made by being in bed with the government, by offshoring production to Third World nations, and by paying employees the lowest possible amount and demanding the highest amount of time and loyalty.
Fuck. That.
You do not “get ahead” in this country by “working hard” any more. You get ahead by being a “protected minority,” by being a total subservient lackey, and by obtaining a “job” where you are grifting off the labor of others. I am not going to enslave myself to line the pockets of some corporate HR bitches who will cut me loose at the drop of a hat without conscience over some stupid shit.
Long ago I concluded that in most “jobs” you are actually getting paid for being a lackey to The System, not for anything you actually produce. It is my observation that almost every employer out there prefers a moronic fuck-up who doesn’t rock the boat to someone who thinks for himself, is independent, and truth-oriented.
It practically sickens me to hear “conservatives” like Hannity blabbering about “capitalism.”
I’m not a Marxist or a socialist at all. Marx was wrong about a lot of things but not everything. National socialism — lower case “n” and lower case “s” — is a Third Way between global communism and global capitalism.
“Long ago I concluded that in most “jobs” you are actually getting paid for being a lackey to The System, not for anything you actually produce.”
I too have reached this conclusion, sage words.
All my experience in the public and private sectors have convinced me of this. Now, the interviewers used to say (before although the diversity stuff went into turbo-drive) that “we need someone who fits the company culture.”… basically, someone who is fun and will indulge the largely feminised workforce in their gossip.
A serious man who just wants to get on with circuit-design? Well, you might have the skills, but HR want you brown, sassy and keen to go for drinks on a Friday night.
Very, very tiresome.
Xman-
It’s also still possible for people to get ahead by exaggerating their accomplishments, taking credit for the hard work of many others, and rubbing several bosses’ brown on their face, good and hard.
Best an agrarian, organic capitalism than Fed money-printing and fractional reserve banking, which are surely Satan’s masterpieces.
Here is a typical example of managerial newspeak: castrating boys becomes “gender affirming care”
It’s not harmless
“The bakery is not bankrupt, it just stops making and selling bread”. Our current government in Germany has perfected managerial passive aggressive wordsmithing. That’s a real quote from a minister when asked what exorbitant energy prices will do to businesses, such as bakeries. Amusingly, the closer managerial speak develops to it’s end point of complete absurdity, the closer it gets to 1987 soviet aparachiks explaining why tractor production is up, but alas, they were all shipped with only three wheels.
It is plain old evil.
That is exactly what it is, wickedness of a shade so dark that a term like satanic seems appropriate
A term like Satanic is exactly what is needed – because it is Satan who is in the driving seat.
As commenter ‘sickofitall’ mentions above, lying in the fashion of the minister is reaching it’s absurdity; but it is more than that. Do you see how pervasive lying is in our world? People think it’s no big deal.
But when it is this pervasive, and this distorting – you know Satan has his daemons working full-pelt to get it that way.
Orange Frog:
Yup. I strive to tell folks the truth about other things, but most ardently about this. Somebody is at the top and he ain’t human. Not yet. —
‘So if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are dying. In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe to keep them from seeing the light of the glorious gospel of the Messiah, who is the image of God. (2 Cor. 4: 3, 4)
This is why I encourage anyone, especially competent white males, to drop out of the system to the extent you are able to do so. Learn to live on less, start your own business, and find ways of getting what you need without going through the big megacorps. Obviously not everyone can be an entrepreneur, but if you’re stuck in one of these corporate jobs, don’t give them more than is required of you, and always be working toward an exit plan. Eventually you will be replaced anyway with a DEI hire, so it’s a good idea to start planning for that eventuality now. An added bonus is that the resiliency you build now could become vitally important as things start to break down over the coming decade.
I will continue to advocate for the trades that have an apprenticeship to go through and mine especially because the power that comes with that job(no pun intended) is a bonus for what’s coming…
Apprenticeship is a centuries old form of passing on knowledge, tradition and skills. Its replacement by exams and less continuous relationships between master and apprentice in modern times in places such as the university is part of why standards, competence and productivity is falling there.
And thousands of police officers are dropping out of the system. Very smart men and women. Good luck in the future when looking for help.
How do you know this to be true? Not trying to rattle your chain, I’m genuinely interested in such a statement.
I once met a clerk at a Verizon store who used to be a Sheriff’s deputy. I imagine he took a significant pay and benefits cut doing that. I decided not to ask him why.
This is very solid advice, and in fact has been ongoing since at least the late Eighties/early Nineties. It started with professions such as law and medicine as white male attorneys and doctors saw more opportunities in solo and small practices due to what would become known as “DEI.” This naturally spread to the trades, which Lineman pointed out, and various aspects of technology.
I would suggest that the dissolution and fragmentation of localities, counties and even to a small degree states from the central government represents the same phenomenon. This is a reason for optimism and could prove fatal over time for large government and corporations. Sure, there are pushbacks such as the Covid lockdowns, but at the end of the day those are little more than pissing in the wind futilely.
As ray pointed out above, the young lady who is Z’s focus should be home making babies. If that happens, it will be the best thing for her and society.
We need a hybrid approach. Some ought to pursue the avenues to wealth and power the society provides, keep their opinions/observations to themselves but use said money and power to our ends.
Others should not drop out. We must be careful not to forfeit our place. There goal is to dispossess and displace us. Why make that any easier.
We must also attack. Attacking means suing to the ground any and all institutions as they all engage anti-white discrimination and dispossession – which is illegal under the laws of their regime. We must throw the haymakers they have made available to us.
The same is true of college. Now for primary education we need to drop out and we need to build a curriculum and network of education that is excellent. That will include being of value to industry that needs us. As Lineman says that includes the trades. Let’s support our folk in entering and dominating the trades. This is also true of professions. Let’s
We also need to stay in the fight for becoming judges. We must pack jurisdictions with our folks so the time expiry on the lawfare to punish white dispossession is longer. They are filling the judiciary with their anti-white apparatchiks.
We must not surrender and forfeit. We just have to be extremely smart about how we navigate the ruins. Be truly better than the rest and engage in life, but do it buttressed by a growing and strengthening network of our people at your back and you at theirs.
I don’t see most of us peeling off as forfeiting and surrendering. Anything that financially and personally empowers our people is a net positive and the most secure track to there is outside the main system. Yes, we need to have people in institutional places like the judiciary and the hybrid approach is the proper one there, as an example, but what is inevitable is a parallel society that in time subsumes the established order, which already is falling apart.
I guess I need to understand what that looks like. Does it look like the Amish or like Orthodox Jews?
How do you prevent that from turning yourself into slaves? In other words,
I think we should take advantage of home schooling to build our own school system. Even that will require operating within the system so that you can enact laws where you no longer pay taxes into the school system or you get a rebate if you homeschool.
Can you point me to articles and books that describe what you are talking about? Do they include case studies of where and how this has worked in the past at the scale of 200 million people of 335 (350 now), on a continent?
I am all for building such a network and parallel institutions. I just wonder how that can work at scale – particularly when we pay to keep the system working against us afloat.
“Does it look like the Amish or like Orthodox Jews?”
Watch Witness. Watch Daylight.
Raising barns, or rooting around in tunnels. One of them will appeal more. Take your pick. Far better yet, pick your adze.
Personally, I always kept any job instructions, workarounds and shortcuts on a thumb drive at home, and if asked to describe my job position, dummied up some wordfakery. Let my replacement struggle to figure it out on their own.
Sand in those gears…
“ The logical end of managerialism is a committee room stuffed with narcistic simpletons waving their credentials at one another as the riots rage outside the committee room.”
Brilliant! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Brilliant statement Z, but it is wrong. The riot outside is also managed by managers who have carefully created plans to manage the ensuing crisis into what they want to manage next.
Managerialism is really the management of destruction. The end state of managerialism is total destruction of everything and then them turning on each other. Another option is something I have heard Z describe as, “the guillotines running 24×7.” Another is some manager faction gets serious about taking the radical actions necessary to stop the descent. But, they are all in some way on the take from the benefits of gaming managerialism.
I watched, “The Fall of Minneapolis”, this weekend. Everyone should see this and share it with a personal note with everyone they know. In the doc, Ellison’s son is agitating for defunding the police. Alongside him is a city Supervisor who is doing the same. You look at her bio and it is classic managerialist. Odd degrees at elite institutions and slithering around from political campaign to foundation to elite college. Then you see here specialty – advocating for safe biking communities. She is probably a Soros/WEF plant. It seems straight out of a Batman Dark Knight movie that is writing itself in real life. Destroy Minneapolis to make it a smart city of the future where you ride bikes safe from … … unpoliced savages???
A great example of this on the, “opposition’s side”, is Peter Thiel. Thiel has beautifully said exactly what Z said about great men. He said that we never have ticker tape parades for individuals any more. Yet look at Thiel. His gaggle of IDW reformers are a bunch of useless academics whose primary concern is white men’s inevitable reaction to being dispossessed in an environment where genocide is advocated. I mean, that is one of the initial premises of managerialism – managing perceptions as they called it in the 90s under the Clintonistas. They aren’t concerned about white men being dispossessed and living under threat of genocide and changing that situation, they are concerned about white men organizing to put a stop to this immoral insanity.
That is his tower of guys who will save the West. Meanwhile, he lets his guy Karpenbergerstein run Palantir. This psychopath runs around Europe trying to sell Palantir to governments because it will stop the rise of fascism and prevent terrorism.
You know what will prevent the rise of, “fascism”, which isn’t fascism but European men trying to ensure their survival and prevent terrorism? Stop and reverse the replacement migration. But no! Karpenbergerstein would lose sales. In managerial speak, he would no longer have a value proposition. He would have again as they say, a technology in search of a problem. You see how this works?
Maybe we should have a ticker tape parade for Thiel and Karpenbergerstein. It will be a series of floats with Thiel, the *steins brothers and clansmen, and Karp each on their own float. On Thiel’s he’ll pay his guys who are shooting anasthesia into the masses while behind his back the government he attacks with words will stuff his pockets with money.
On the *stein’s float they will smile on computer monitors while they tape the mouths and bind the hands of white men while hordes of orcs approach with machetes, torches and pipe bombs. On Karpenbergerstein’s float he will smile as he locks a jail cell full of European men who wave their nation’s flags and hold ‘Keep Sweden Swedish’ signs for their particular country. In another jail cell will be a bunch of Muslims living like Kings sending out orders to drug runners. On one side of the float will be the beautiful pre-60s Scandinavian town and city. On the other side will be the surveillance dystopia that Palantir creates to “add value to the society, make government more efficient and provide solutions that ensure trust and safety for all.”
I am not joking. I think this would be a great and powerful memetic moment. Give Thiel his ticker tape parade – but let it show how managers are not going to put an end to managerialism. Maybe I’ll see if I can Gen AI this imagery into existence.
My beautiful Southern city’s downtown has been ruined by those bike lanes, and they are slithering, to use that delightful word that has manifested this morning, out into the more affluent parts of town. They have replaced parking spaces, and what used to be full traffic lanes are now covered in diagonal white stripes as a buffer. And because of the obliteration of those lanes, it takes longer to get through a light.
This is what they call, “nudging you into preferred behaviors.” They sleep better at night adding insult to injury.