It persists partially because tech industry workers are especially susceptible to class confusion. That is, the startup culture stock option lottery deludes them into thinking they are a part of the ownership class rather than the working class. Thus, they allow basically all of the fruits of their labor to be stolen from them.
Very well said. They take everything literally and accept management's account of all things uncritically, which makes it really easy to run divide-and-conquer games over them.
It also lowers their status (as I discussed here: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other...) because they out themselves as chumps when they take a shitty deal. If you make it clear that you'll let people take advantage of you, they never stop doing so.
On the other hand, those who show themselves to be politically astute are either tapped for executive roles or "culture fitted" (read: fired for their threat to the cult of cluelessness, although it's often dressed as performance-based). Which of those two outcomes one gets tends to happen for political, rather than "meritocratic" reasons, and can be hard to predict before the fact. So that's a risky avenue, too.
And I don't think there are really any Losers destined for Cluelessness. The Clueless are the people who don't understand office politics, or think they can climb the career ladder simply by working hard and being loyal employees (not through strategic social climbing). Losers are people who understand and see the ladder there but choose not to be social climbers. They gossip, do crossword puzzles, punch out and go spend time with their kids. There are lots of Clueless destined to become Losers once they get burned out and realize what's up. Once you've learned that you can't unlearn it.
Low status people tend to divide into three camps: delusional, apathetic, and confrontational.
Low status, delusional: Clueless.
Low status, apathetic: Losers.
The confrontational ones either (a) learn how to play the game and become Sociopaths, (b) consciously develop apathy and learn how to slack and become losers, or (c) continue raging until they're expelled/fired from the organization.
Very well said. They take everything literally and accept management's account of all things uncritically, which makes it really easy to run divide-and-conquer games over them.
It also lowers their status (as I discussed here: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other...) because they out themselves as chumps when they take a shitty deal. If you make it clear that you'll let people take advantage of you, they never stop doing so.
On the other hand, those who show themselves to be politically astute are either tapped for executive roles or "culture fitted" (read: fired for their threat to the cult of cluelessness, although it's often dressed as performance-based). Which of those two outcomes one gets tends to happen for political, rather than "meritocratic" reasons, and can be hard to predict before the fact. So that's a risky avenue, too.