I wasn't accusing my interlocutor of merely engaging in social signally. I gave an explanation of the position, which I can be more explicit about: it is an intra-knowledge-worker point. Its the point of a person who, quite rightly, goes around people who neglect to be social at all and impress the importance of it. This is a non-sequiteur when i'm addressing a hypersocial group.
The dialectic of this thread -- the OP beings with effectively a class analysis of why executives misunderstand office-worker employees. My reply is the origins lie in a different distribution of at-work activities in which executives require massive amounts of in-person communication to do their jobs, whilst knowledge-workers do not (and are often harmed by an excess).
> This has nothing to do with maids or private jets.
So you agree with me. It's important not to substitute a position I am opposing for one that I'm not.
As for my slight exaggerations around how I characterise the kinds of people, and work involved -- it is hyperboilic and hoperfully amusing characterisation -- but not one which I think is far off.
The "deep thought" of executive work is shallow, for those who prise complexity and such, no doubt this seems derogatory. But it's not. If you thinking can be readily terminated by the speech of another person, your own thinking process is not that deep. Sure, that of The Group's might be -- and much more so than any person's, but each individual is not engaged in deep thought.
If you can farm out depth to a group discussion, great -- that's one sort of work. It is not the work of a progammer, say, who is tracing execution flow in their own head -- this cannot be half-realised in one person's head and half-realised in another.
The dialectic of this thread -- the OP beings with effectively a class analysis of why executives misunderstand office-worker employees. My reply is the origins lie in a different distribution of at-work activities in which executives require massive amounts of in-person communication to do their jobs, whilst knowledge-workers do not (and are often harmed by an excess).
> This has nothing to do with maids or private jets.
So you agree with me. It's important not to substitute a position I am opposing for one that I'm not.
As for my slight exaggerations around how I characterise the kinds of people, and work involved -- it is hyperboilic and hoperfully amusing characterisation -- but not one which I think is far off.
The "deep thought" of executive work is shallow, for those who prise complexity and such, no doubt this seems derogatory. But it's not. If you thinking can be readily terminated by the speech of another person, your own thinking process is not that deep. Sure, that of The Group's might be -- and much more so than any person's, but each individual is not engaged in deep thought.
If you can farm out depth to a group discussion, great -- that's one sort of work. It is not the work of a progammer, say, who is tracing execution flow in their own head -- this cannot be half-realised in one person's head and half-realised in another.