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'''There are fewer of you''': This stands to reason: there are lots of [[fungible]] Belarusian minions at the bottom taking home 30,000 rubles a year for carting around huge hunks of stone and occasionally getting squished — but hey, hose down the rock-face and get a new one, you know? — but only one [[Hank]], taking home twenty-five mill for the inconvenience of having to flit around the world in a corporate jet and moralise at Davos. Generally, the more units cost, the fewer you can justify, but the irresistibility of this logic runs into the immovability of fat birds who, having made it to the thin branches, find themselves disinclined to make way meaning that, over time the poor, old tree gets rather top-heavy. As a result, when you multiply take-home comp by rank title, it looks a bit like the snake who ate the elephant in ''Le Petit Prince''. | '''There are fewer of you''': This stands to reason: there are lots of [[fungible]] Belarusian minions at the bottom taking home 30,000 rubles a year for carting around huge hunks of stone and occasionally getting squished — but hey, hose down the rock-face and get a new one, you know? — but only one [[Hank]], taking home twenty-five mill for the inconvenience of having to flit around the world in a corporate jet and moralise at Davos. Generally, the more units cost, the fewer you can justify, but the irresistibility of this logic runs into the immovability of fat birds who, having made it to the thin branches, find themselves disinclined to make way meaning that, over time the poor, old tree gets rather top-heavy. As a result, when you multiply take-home comp by rank title, it looks a bit like the snake who ate the elephant in ''Le Petit Prince''. | ||
'''You spend more time managing other people''': We take this to be a trivial observation: the contractor at the call-centre in Belarus has no direct reports, so spends | '''You spend more time managing other people''': We take this to be a trivial observation: the contractor at the call-centre in Belarus has no direct reports, so spends ''no'' time line-managing; [[Hank]] ultimately has every direct report, so spends almost ''all'' his time line-managing. | ||
'''The more homogenous you become''': | The gradations between are not inevitable — every firm has those grand, gnomic elders who float about sprinkling their ineffable magic on things without having any portfolio in particular or any direct reports — but, as a rule the further up the chain you go, the more time you spend ''managing other people''. Especially given fat-bird syndrome: the porky tweeters on the upper branches don’t really have anything else to do ''but'' manage their lines (and [[Dotted line|dotted-lines]]!) | ||
'''The more homogenous you become''': A multinational corporation is basically a machine for systematically ''eliminating'' [[Diversity|cognitive diversity]]. This is how [[Evolution by natural selection|survival of the fittest]] works. What, after all, is “fitness” if it is not conforming oneself to the expecations of the [[Ouija politics|management ouija]]? Life as a corporate grunt is not for everyone: a large portion of the population self-selects by not applying for employement in the financial services sector from the get-go. Those who inadvertently fall into it — perhaps by misapprehension, inattention or cruel accident of fate — make it their business to exit via the first available gift shop and, we are given to understand, thereafter live fulfilled lives as actors, restaurateurs, HGV drivers and whatever else the ''hoi polloi'' get up to by way of making ends meet. Those aspiring bankers who stay on, and who grasp the survival techniques quickly enough to hang on — are already homogenous enough, and that is before they are rigorously chiseled, sanded, polished and buffed to a high sheen by the ebbs, flows and microclimates of their organisation. The longer you stay the smoother you become, and the more a functional part of the organisation ''as it currently is'': ''the firm'' domesticates ''you''. You grow ''fitter''; ever more perfectly adapted to the organisation’s ''prevailing'' ecosystem. Just as you don’t bite the hand that feeds, nor do you seek to ''change'' an environment which already lets you live your best life. | |||
The graduate intake might have all kinds of pink-haired, wild-eyed loons on induction day: by the end of the year most of them will be gone. The class of senior administrators, by contrast, will be interchangeable; rendered thoroughly in the corporation’s image. You may have difficulty telling them apart. | The graduate intake might have all kinds of pink-haired, wild-eyed loons on induction day: by the end of the year most of them will be gone. The class of senior administrators, by contrast, will be interchangeable; rendered thoroughly in the corporation’s image. You may have difficulty telling them apart. | ||