Sure, securing an economic surplus is sometimes part of an interesting challenge, and it can presumably get one invited to lots of cool parties, but controlling surplus is typically not as central and necessary to “achievement” and “association” as to “power”.
I guess that the ultra-deadly ingredient here is the manager gaining status when more people are hired, but hardly has any personal stake in the money that gets spent on new hires.
If given the choice between receiving the salary of a would-be new hire, or getting a new bs hire underling for status, I’d definitely expect most people to take the double salary option.
Like I don’t expect these two contrasting experiences to really stack up to each other. I think if it’s all the same person weighing these two options, the extra money would blow the status option out of the water.
That’s a pretty clean story for why in smaller, say 2-5 person companies, having less bs jobs is something I’d predict (though I don’t have sources to confirm this prediction). In these smaller companies, when the person you’re hiring gets payed by a noticeable hit in your own paycheck, I wonder if the experience of “ugh, this ineffective person is costing me money” just dramatically cancels out the status thing.
And then potentially the issue here is that big companies tend to separate the ugh-this-costs-me-money person from the woohoo-more-status person?
I guess that the ultra-deadly ingredient here is the manager gaining status when more people are hired, but hardly has any personal stake in the money that gets spent on new hires.
If given the choice between receiving the salary of a would-be new hire, or getting a new bs hire underling for status, I’d definitely expect most people to take the double salary option.
Like I don’t expect these two contrasting experiences to really stack up to each other. I think if it’s all the same person weighing these two options, the extra money would blow the status option out of the water.
That’s a pretty clean story for why in smaller, say 2-5 person companies, having less bs jobs is something I’d predict (though I don’t have sources to confirm this prediction). In these smaller companies, when the person you’re hiring gets payed by a noticeable hit in your own paycheck, I wonder if the experience of “ugh, this ineffective person is costing me money” just dramatically cancels out the status thing.
And then potentially the issue here is that big companies tend to separate the ugh-this-costs-me-money person from the woohoo-more-status person?