Root comment is excellent. Makes some but not all of the points I would make in response. I think it would mostly be more enlightening for me not to say much more on the subject here and let the conversation unfold, so that’s the plan.
I’m currently left with the feeling that I raised a few points plausibly against mazes, and comments pointed out how those points could plausibly be pro-maze instead. I don’t have enough gears to evaluate which we should really expect. So my current models fail to be predictive.
Factor 1: more people moving between companies / between different careers.
On the one hand, having more autonomy means you can opt out of toxic environments. To my eye, this severely weakens your story about super-perfect competition.
On the other hand, moving between companies is an additional way to cover your tracks, promoting shorter memories and less skin in the game. Taking a biological analogy, this is horizontal transfer, which promotes parasitism.
The answer might be “both”, but this leaves the question of which effect is larger.
It also leaves the question of whether super-perfect competition is really important to moral mazes and whether it’s really prevalent in today’s middle management (despite a lot of apparent freedom to move).
Factor 2: more fragmentation of big companies into more highly specialized companies.
On the one hand, you named fragmentation as a way to help reduce maze levels.
On the other hand, maze levels seem to be increasing with fragmentation.
Fragmentation in the modern context seems to increase maze level, as more fragmentation somehow means more managers. You get companies splitting into specialized entities, but continuing to have deep management hierarchies below the top.
My best explanation for this at the moment is simply increasing background expectation that you need a deep management hierarchy to run things.
Root comment is excellent. Makes some but not all of the points I would make in response. I think it would mostly be more enlightening for me not to say much more on the subject here and let the conversation unfold, so that’s the plan.
I’m currently left with the feeling that I raised a few points plausibly against mazes, and comments pointed out how those points could plausibly be pro-maze instead. I don’t have enough gears to evaluate which we should really expect. So my current models fail to be predictive.
Factor 1: more people moving between companies / between different careers.
On the one hand, having more autonomy means you can opt out of toxic environments. To my eye, this severely weakens your story about super-perfect competition.
On the other hand, moving between companies is an additional way to cover your tracks, promoting shorter memories and less skin in the game. Taking a biological analogy, this is horizontal transfer, which promotes parasitism.
The answer might be “both”, but this leaves the question of which effect is larger.
It also leaves the question of whether super-perfect competition is really important to moral mazes and whether it’s really prevalent in today’s middle management (despite a lot of apparent freedom to move).
Factor 2: more fragmentation of big companies into more highly specialized companies.
On the one hand, you named fragmentation as a way to help reduce maze levels.
On the other hand, maze levels seem to be increasing with fragmentation.
Fragmentation in the modern context seems to increase maze level, as more fragmentation somehow means more managers. You get companies splitting into specialized entities, but continuing to have deep management hierarchies below the top.
My best explanation for this at the moment is simply increasing background expectation that you need a deep management hierarchy to run things.