I agree that there are not hard lines and what another commenter said about middle management actually producing real value, but I still think there is an interesting and important dynamic being expressed and explored in this post.
I also feel signalling itself is very useful, it’s just when it becomes perverse signalling games that it becomes a problem. If you are skilled at focusing on some object level thing, you probably should care about being able to create a clean signal to indicate it, but is that taking part in status games?
I think the interplay between signalling, status focus, and object focus is pretty complicated, but worth exploring and trying to understand better.
I agree that there are not hard lines and what another commenter said about middle management actually producing real value, but I still think there is an interesting and important dynamic being expressed and explored in this post.
I also feel signalling itself is very useful, it’s just when it becomes perverse signalling games that it becomes a problem. If you are skilled at focusing on some object level thing, you probably should care about being able to create a clean signal to indicate it, but is that taking part in status games?
I think the interplay between signalling, status focus, and object focus is pretty complicated, but worth exploring and trying to understand better.