The original title of this article was “Meetings serve a purpose”, but that focused too much on one side of the equation. I have often had my attention drawn to the cultural divide between white collar and blue collar workplaces. While there is a long list of differences in norms, a lot of the small details can be glossed over as facilitating the purpose of the culture in the first place. Well, what do I mean by that. To start the illustration, I’m going to share something I heard thirdhand that thus counts as little more than an anecdote since I can’t point to the data anymore. Purportedly there was a study where the participants were split into two groups and given a task to complete within a deadline. Unknown to the participants, they’d been sorted into people from blue collar families and people from white collar families. Since these participants were all students, they didn’t have a great deal of real-world experience to fall back on. The blue collar group selected a leader who kept the rest on task while the white collar team spent so much time consensus building that they didn’t finish the original task. I don’t know if this study every happened, but it rang true to my mind and made me ask the obvious question – why?
I sorted out the Blue Collar cultural structure quite quickly. It was a task-based organizational structure found throughout human history. It formed into a work gang/squad/hunting party with a designated boss/sergeant/chief who made sure the team stayed on task. While efficient at completing the defined task, Blue Collar culture exhibits a very strong ingroup preference. If you are not one of the guys, you will be largely shut out until you have earned your place. This reinforces the norms of the group, and silently informs the newcomer of what to expect if they do something against the rest of the team. It is a very strong structure that is very effective at getting things done.
So why is the managerial culture so radically different?
After mulling it over, I came to the conclusion that white collar culture emerged as a means of interfacing with outgroups. There are a lot of social niceties, false pleasantries and polite fuck yous that lack much of the directness you’ll find in blue collar communications. While those in the white collar world have no more preference for the outgroup than their blue collar brethren, they have to work with them far, far more often. Whether it’s negotiating with vendors, customers, other divisions of the same company, or government regulators, deal with the other is the white collar bread and butter. The floor workers can focus on getting shit done, and largely deal with the same people, including the same representatives of the outgroup. They get their regular delivery drivers, the same management representatives, and so on. These people develop a liminal status of “Not one of the guys but we can work with them”. This same liminal status is something the white collar folks are trying to cultivate with people why infrequently interface with. And they’re doing it all the time.
When you can’t rely on sharing a common boss to enforce decisions, and are dealing with people who can walk away from the table if things go south, what’s left? Endless consensus building. You get together in a room (or these days on a teleconference) and you talk, and you talk, and you talk… Eventually, if things go right, you walk away with some measure of agreement, even if there are things left undecided. It is more important to know that they will come back to that room again rather than resolve every outstanding question. The reputation of “someone we can work with” is the foundation to getting anything done. It does, however, lead to a lot of spinning wheels and pointless meetings from people who don’t grasp the real purpose of meeting in the first place.
White collar people are not more fundamentally agreeable, far from it, but the cultural differences emerge from the role being performed. Look around and you’ll still see the ingroup and the outgroup and no shortage of hatreds and rivalries, but in a functional office, they don the mask of geniality and make-believe they get along.
Tell me I’m wrong – I know you will.
I’ll also accept “You’re not my supervisor” or its variants.
You aren’t my commanding officer!
Green collar.
You make a really good point, and there’s just one thing I’d add, which is that we can solve the problem for you if you’ll just send a change order too or existing agreement for the low price of $150k and add some time to the contract while you are at it to make sure you meet all your goals with this post.
Nah, we’re good.
Interesting stuff. More to dig in later.
If you are not one of the guys, you will be largely shut out until you have earned your place.
*looks around* The problem is women.
Long ago, when I was in business school, I saw an article in some magazine in which they asked junior executives what class they wished they had paid more attention in. By a large margin, it was Organizational Behavior.
Oh! Something about bdsm…
đ
That’s a subject I know nothing about and have no interest in.
I was thinking the clergy.
Their collars are white.
*Creosote Achilles to the red courtesy phone, please*
“What, exactly, do you do here?”
Well look, I already told you! I deal with the ******* customers so the engineers don’t have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
“The blue collar group selected a leader who kept the rest on task while the white collar team spent so much time consensus building that they didnât finish the original task. I donât know if this study every happened, but it rang true to my mind and made me ask the obvious question â why?”
Hmm, I’m sure you’re right that blue collar work tends to be more internal focused vs external communications. However, I’ll posit another reason why they developed the need for consensus building vs. ‘getting it done’.
Blue collar work is routine, white collar work is(or should be) innovative. White collar work tends to involve high dollar value items/decisions and so it is worthwhile to get agreement internally before making a choice. And lastly, hitting back on the external coordination, it is harder to back out once an agreement has been reached at the white collar level. It damages your reputation if you need to back out (because you didn’t build internal consensus before ‘getting things done’) and external partners will be wary of you.
These are broad generalizations, obviously there are blue collar jobs that use multimillion dollar equipment and can cause lives to be lost etc, but you don’t need a committee to have the operator follow the SOP… You do need one to write the SOP.
I disagree. Most white collar work is routine as well.
Well, you’re wrong.
So, what isn’t routine in the bulk of the work crossing the desks of the file clerks, supply chain managers, middle managers, HR, Legal, Sales, IT?
IT? Come on, that’s a softball one on this site to disprove.
The times I get to do the same thing I did previously (other than the corp bookkeeping and the like) is a blessing and a rarity. Half of my job is getting accurate problem descriptions/statements from people to even begin to know where to start looking.
Quite the opposite, it’s an easy one for this site to Prove.
Teir 1 is IT as well.
Even the tickets that get past them all tend to be the same sort of tasks.
3/4 of my group processes standard requests.
IT is drudgery. The fact that you are in a spot away from it does not change that fact.
Tier 1 IT would fit better into the routine roles, but that’s just a fraction of IT. I’m on a full team of people in the same style of role as me (just assigned different customers to support). We don’t even have a lot of crossover between issues we run into there.
A lot of data center services are just as routine.
You have found a niche in the “Handle irregular stuff” portion of the field. This is a minority.
Yeah anything routine I pass down the ladder. So it exists but not so much in developerland.
… And the people doing the routine work are expected to “get it done” without consulting much with others. Almost like it’s a blue collar culture in an office.
Depends on the position.
I consider my accounts payable department to be “white collar” and while the job does require thinking and innovation at times its mostly routine.
In times past, the accounts payable department would have been split between white collar and pink collar jobs.
Ya know, in my remark about this below I almost proposed the term “pink collar”, without bothering to find out whether it was a thing.
I don’t subscribe to the divisive assertion that this represents a separate category from the other white collar roles.
I first recall hearing Pink Collar back in the 90’s, referring to service jobs (at the time, primarily fast food/retail jobs). I’ve seen quite a few groups that lump IT into that grouping as well instead of White Collar.
Prior to today, I have only ever heard the term used by people attempting to drive more divisions to advance radical objectives.
White collar involves all the jobs that used to be called “paper pushing.” Bureaucrats are white collar and they are supposed to be the complete opposite of innovative.
And blue-collar work can be brain taxing as well. Think of, say, a plumber having to solve a never-seen-this-one-before issue.
Plenty of problem solving work in the skilled trades.
However, it’s rather narrow. How can I run a drain line at the right pitch to the right place without destroying structure?
It’s amazing the difference between a skilled pro and even an experienced amateur.
Back when I was productive we had what we called participatory management. When a truck showed up everyone helped unload. If the owner(s) happened to be driving they helped with the physical work too. It allowed the newest employee to see that when work had to be done there were no exemptions. It helped make a cohesive unit.
I have never had a committee write an SOP. Not only that, I was told the BKM for writing an SOP required two people. Overwhelmingly, they’re written by one person however.
That’s interesting.
I would say that usually one person is the primary author, but it’s worth having many people look it over to think of situations which may come up and weren’t considered by the author.
An SOP is not a troubleshooting guide or an OCAP, though those are written in similar ways.
I guess I have the best of both worlds. I am white collar but my team functions in a mostly blue collar manner. We have associated teams who deal with most of that shit for us. The groups don’t really intersect below a couple rungs above my place on the ladder. Nothing I really thought of before but I think it goes a long way to explain why I fit well in this and similar positions I’ve had over the last couple decades.
I read about a study that was done a very long time ago. They took a large group of students and gave them something to drink that tasted horrible. Then they asked the students to say good things about the drink (like in an advertisement). They then scored the students on how good they were a lying.
In the next step of the study, they split the students into many groups and assigned the groups tasks to do. They watched the groups behavior and identified the students that became leaders of the groups.
There was a very strong correlation between those who were good at lying and those who became the consensus leader in a group.
I interpret those results to mean that being able to hide your distain for people you don’t like helps you to work in large, disparate groups. This also helps to explain why certain toxic personalities also wind up running things.
There may be some carry over affects to the differences between blue collar workers and white collar workers.
So sociopaths like politicians who are good liars tend to worm their way into leadership.
NPD, yes indeed.
“being able to hide your distain for people you donât like”
LOL pretty sure I flunked every attempt at an early age to get that skill out
of me.
I can do that over the phone and email.
In person, I can’t control my expressions. Even when I think my expression is polite and accommodating, somehow…they know I think they’re an idiot.
That tracks with me. At my last job, one of the boss’s sisters who worked with us could be, shall we say, unpleasant. There was a clique in the office who hated her. But she never did anything to me personally, so I made it a point to say Hi to her and find out some of her interests so I could chat with her occasionally. I also got along just fine with the clique. I think that’s served me well in my career.
That is exactly how I made it thru HS and avoiding the stereotypical treatment a lot of nerds claim is routine.
That’s how it went for me too. I wasn’t popular, only had a few friends I actually hung out with, but I was on good terms with everyone and only one guy ever gave me trouble. And then some of my older acquaintances took him aside and had a little talk with him. đ
“Oh, he’s very popular Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads – they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.”
…and how the Link was SF’d.
Rarely. Most of the meetings I am force to go to would be better served by an e-mail.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fc5fvw87w55a11.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D699aa3af246fe38b50db153e6469d17d60d2a249
As the one who has to type up the minutes of some of the highest level meetings in a relatively small organization, I note that a lot of the information relayed is routine and often the only action required of the Board of Directors is to approve the report of each month’s routine information. I guess that’s just the way it has to be.
Case in point, the financial institution I work for is going through our annual audit. Today my boss told me that the auditors want the minutes of each Board meeting to specifically include the total dollar amount of charged-off loans, information that is sent to the Board in advance of each month’s meeting and approved along with several other monthly reports en masse as part of a “consent agenda” at the start of the meeting. But the auditors want that specific figure specifically mentioned in the minutes, so there you go. đ
A. You’re not wrong.
B. I think I would use different definitions of “white-collar” and “blue collar” than you are, based on your paper-pushing comment above. To me, white-collar implies leadership-level decision-making. Blue involves more technical/executional work. Where does that leave paper-pushing? Dunno.
High performers have to be able to at least function in BOTH collars, though they’ll really/mostly live in one or the other. When I do coaching or feedback, I put it in terms of being able to zoom out and zoom in, and being able both to conceptualize and execute. Maybe the paper-pusher crowd is the crew that can’t do either. Again, dunno.
My concept of white collar is office-based work where the office cultural norms are expected as opposed to spaces like the warehouse or factory floor where a different cultural norm is expected.
It’s less about the work and more about the expected behavior.
There are plenty of fields where those meld together. Mine for example. I have a lot of facetime with management and in the field turning a wrench. Makes it fun to keep the mental acuity to switch those personas on/off when needed.
That’s the problem with anthropology, the nuance of reality rarely makes a perfect fit to the models.
But by that concept, lots of those workers only relate to the ingroup, which is blue in your model. So if I had to choose (and not say pink), I’d say that clerk-y paper-pusher routine stuff is blue.
My uncle said to me once when I was very young, “You know the difference between a white collar worker and a blue collar worker? A white collar worker has to wash his hands after he takes a piss. A blue collar worker has to wash his hands before he can takes a piss.”
Nuh uh! My uncle told me that!
You and CPRM are cousins?
But did he say it while he was using the mineral water sink in the shop to wash the grease off his hands before he went to go take a piss?
White collar, blue collar, and pink collar definitions have no real meaning today.
In the past, the trades and factories populated with men who wore uniform shirts (mostly blue, but khaki, green, and other colors exited). The business offices were run by men that wore white shirts with ties. And the secretaries wore shirts with frilly colors with girly colors.
Those rules are mostly gone these days.
Fashion marches on.
I never got good marks on “plays well with others”.
Teacher to my Mom:
“Halfscore gets his work done early and wants to go home.”
He-Man Woman Haters Club
Several U.S. business leaders met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday, when he made his case calling for closer ties between the two largest economies in the world.
The all-male meeting was held in Beijing and came as the U.S. and China have had a steady improvement in relations in the past several years. Xi expressed that the relationship is mutually beneficial, despite U.S. pushback on the influence of the Chinese Communist Party, The Associated Press reported.
——-
The AP noted that trade and tariffs between the two countries have drawn attention in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election in November, where Biden will likely face a rematch against former President Trump, who has spoke highly of Xi and other authoritarian leaders.
âThe respective successes of China and the United States create opportunities for each other,â Xi said, according to Xinhua. âAs long as both sides regard the other as partners, respect each other, peacefully coexist and join together for win-win results, China-U.S. relations will improve.â
There’s some management culture for you.
How about No.
Cooperation with China only serves Chinese interests.
What I always find fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) with these opinion pieces is how the discussion aways goes off on some tangent.
In this example, I had focused on the question of “what purpose did this culture emerge to fulfil?”
The discussion ran off down “How do we classify occupations?”
đ¤ˇââď¸
At any rate, there is probably some real correlation to the differences in the work behaviors between the modern working class vs managerial class and the historical peasant/serf class vs the noble class.
So, getting shit done versus posturing and negotiating.
OK, I’ll play ball: I think it emerged because early industrial work needed lots and lots of manual labor. Any typically (cotton mills in the South or steel mills in England or auto plants in the Midwest) that labor pool was mostly built from the existing agricultural labor base. And there, there was already a similar distinction. So in another way, the purpose from a capitalist standpoint was to drive more productive, predictable use of the capital and labor than could be found in agriculture.
Note that my comment sticks with the two-part formula, and ignores the fact that in family farms and small businesses, the capital and a lot of the labor are from the same pot, so they wear both collars.
I guess I picked up on some lamentation where you, as a white collar worker, see blue collar work as a more fulfilling endeavor because they actually get shit done. I feel this way constantly because while compliance is an important function in the world we live in, it’s also completely unnecessary when I think taxes on the extreme should be 0 or the more moderate take of easy to understand and pay. I never get the satisfaction of having built anything other than spreadsheets and PDFs.
I admit there is more satisfaction when I can point to something real and say “I made that.”
One of our standard interview questions for Engineers, but also for programmers or project managers, is “what’s the best thing you’ve ever built?”
Which in organizations I’ve worked results in people building “something” for the sake of building it and advancing his or her career.
Young hotshot MBA on the fast track program creates some program or process held together by chewing gum and prayer and that overtaxes the existing staff with multiple manual processes. Gets the obligatory kudos from senior management and moves on to the next rock star assignment.
Existing staff and long term executives now get to deal with either killing the thing or making it viable and actually run properly.
Yeah that’s not what I mean. And if they are dumb enough to give a work-centric schmoozy answer then I’ll just put my pen down and smile and nod for the rest of their interview.
I’m looking for someone who actually likes creating things and can express it. Custom knives, a guitar, a book, etc.
My answer is a dock on my pond. I’ve built lots of things, but that’s definitely my favorite and I could tell you all about it.
Books aren’t built, they kinda just slither out onto the keyboard and need to be cleaned up.
Creative outlet though.
Ah, I didn’t realize you meant on a personal level.
For me it’s probably my home shop. Nothing fancy but a bench, pegboard, electrical off various circuits and good lighting. All done in a compact space.
It’s nothing special, but it makes doing whatever project both of the elective and emergent categories much more pleasant to deal with.
In my out-of-doors admin assistant career, building things and taking initiative were highly discouraged.
I don’t know what it would be like to have someone ask/require me to improve on a process or build something new.
“This is the way we do it. Do it the way we tell you to do it.”
Mojoeaux – it’s a matter of making it controllable for the employee.
You are responsible for the expense reports for 5 executives. This is the required documentation for the IRS. Feel free to design the process that gets that information and gets it from the executives and gets them reimbursed. Have at it!
Recognizing this is new for you – we can review in x days and iterate it. After you and I finalize it send it off. The idea is that you are one person that can only do so much and the 5 executives need to get you what the IRS requires and do some of the lifting, but not all of it.
Signed – the guy that hasn’t had an admin in decades and does his own expense reporting.
They wouldn’t even let you work inside the building?? đ§
I’ve knit socks, gloves, and at least one sweater with an elaborate pattern, and I’m irrationally proud of that (with the disclaimer that I was following a pattern someone else created.) But I’ve also designed spreadsheets for work for which I had to figure out how to create a complex “nested IF function” formula to calculate the results I needed, and I may be even prouder of that because I really had to think it through myself (with the help of the Excel “Help” function) to solve the problem at hand.
Best? I’m torn on that answer, but my knife is still a top contender. Though the clock is putting up a strong fight.
I’ve never built anything professionally. I started as a software engineer and wrote lots of cool code. I transitioned to systems and became an accomplished inventor. But I’ve never put together a working system as an individual.
I have made a really nice sewing center for my wife with walnut and black laminate. Started with clean sheet and finished with an installed piece of furniture.
Professionally?
đ
I built half an agency’s server infrastructure and application ingetrations. It’s almost all gone now.
I make lots of things, but often from patterns/ideas of others (e.g., cross stitch, crochet, home decor, drawing). Even my novels are made out of tropes deeply ingrained in the human psyche. I can’t think of one thing I’ve “built” that didn’t come from the instructions of others.
Don’t sell yourself short Mo. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
Define built. Best biggest achievement was ‘building’ the new ATCT in Las Vegas or rather, the whole of electronics infrastructure from cable pulls to cutover.
Yeah, that counts.
Well, I’ve stood up a 24/7 call center of ~150 agents. But I’m more proud of winning a best of show award at a homebrew competition for a lambic.
Oh boy. It’s under an NDA right now, but it’s going into an airport lobby.
I at least get that rush when I get the chance to actually get to the bottom of a problem, instead of spending my time pointing out why (and how) their employees aren’t doing their jobs.
You answered your own question in the article. Of course we’re not going to rehash it when the reasons WHY this might be is begging to be explored.
I kinda figured the contrarians would disagree with me.
Well, you were wrong.
lol
That taxonomy was built into your argument, so it’s reasonable to assume your premises would be questioned.
Working at cross purposes
The problem is finding enough renewable energy to meet AIâs rising needs in the near term, instead of turning to planet-heating fossil fuels. Itâs a a particular challenge as the global push to electrify everything from cars to heating systems increases demand for clean energy.
——-
As well as the energy required to make chips and other hardware, AI requires large amounts of computing power to âtrainâ models â feeding them enormous datasets âand then again to use its training to generate a response to a user query.
As the technology develops, companies are rushing to integrate it into apps and online searches, ramping up computing power requirements. An online search using AI could require at least 10 times more energy than a standard search, de Vries calculated in a recent report on AIâs energy footprint.
The dynamic is one of âbigger is better when it comes to AI,â de Vries said, pushing companies toward huge, energy-hungry models. âThat is the key problem with AI, because bigger is better is just fundamentally incompatible with sustainability,â he added.
The situation is particularly stark in the US, where energy demand is shooting upward for the first time in around 15 years, said Michael Khoo, climate disinformation program director at Friends of the Earth and co-author of a report on AI and climate. âWe as a country are running out of energy,â he told CNN.
“Climate disinformation director” indeed. We need more energy, but it must come from magical imaginary sources.
I cling to the faint hope these people will all just keep running in ever-decreasing circles until they disappear up their own assholes.
Unfortunately they will destroy the economy of every jurisdiction they pass through on their way up.
We need to get the AI to tell us how to genetically engineer enough farting unicorns to power the planet with clean energy.
What if we ask the artificial intelligence genie how to generate lots of power efficiently?
Huh. The design it gave out involves using humans as batteries and processing nodes.
âwhatâs the best thing youâve ever built?â
Best most useful put the most miles on-
Probably my inch-and-a-half square tube steel welding table (which gets used for everything). A three by three base on casters, with a three by four top. The six inch overhang at each end is good for clamping material to. It’s probably twenty five years old now.
I wrote the code to translate the depth of fuel in a 90,000 gallon horizontal hemispherical headed propane tank into gallons. Its the only time I have used calculus. [white collar]
I also built a timber frame cabin. [blue collar]
Hank Hill says, “thank you!”
That company still uses that code 25 years later.
First. First. First it all out
These are the Firsts that I dream about.
Come on….
I absolutely love how we are about to see a singularity between Critical Drinker, Pitch Meeting and Honest Trailer. Can’t link all three, but their absolute take down of Madame Web is funny
Who wears shirts with collars anymore?
Why would you wear a shirt without a collar?
Who wears shirts anymore?
I do.
And many people should.
No one wants to see those moobs.
Sounds right.
Damn straight.
The humble tee shirt has a valid place in certain activities.
That uncomfortable thing feels like it’s choking me. I can’t find a way to wear one comfortably.
Then find the v-neck tee shirt.
They make a big difference.
https://www.cheapestees.com/products/fruit-of-the-loom-5-oz-100-heavy-cotton-hd-v-neck-t-shirt-39vr?color=J%20Navy&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwqpSwBhClARIsADlZ_Tm-WbKhojwhUF48lyFKc9MA0vX7fyfbZKG6auvTt3MreYnNacMTcoQaAtJ0EALw_wcB
Or, I can just stick with my large collection of button-downs.
Besides, if you look, T-shirts still have a collar. It’s just smaller, and atrophied.
Since I work behind the scenes and so many of the folks formerly in my building have been working from home since COVIDiocy started, I’ve been wearing jeans every day – allowed as long as I wear them with “corporate logo” shirts that are NOT tee shirts. Because I don’t care for polo shirts (I saw enough of them on preppies in college – too many with the gawdawful “collar erection” – to last me the rest of my life,) I’ve become rather adept at finding knit shirts that can pass for “not tee shirts.”
Jeans? It’s like I don’t even know you people
We’ve been allowed to wear jeans at work since the 90s. At first, it was just blue jean Friday. But that switched in the oughts to every day. For lab days, shorts are allowed during the summer.
During the covid lockdown, the few engineers that showed up in the office looked like beach bums during the summer months.
Jeans or cargo shorts. Just depends on the season.
Looking forward to warmer weather so I can start wearing my capri jeans! đ
Neither pants nor shorts. I shall call them Shants or Ports.
As in “I just sharted my shants”?
When I had to wear a polo, I picked up a bunch of geeky ones. Now they sit in the closet as I WFH.
Final Delta IV Heavy is a go for launch T- 5 min
And…hold. Guess ill have to catch the replay if they light it
And scrubbed.
Overall, a good analysis. I’ll add that many (most?) white collars are former blue or other collar.
in the military, officers who were former enlisted are sometimes called mustangs. Sometimes they are disrespected for that. I don’t think there is a single flag officer in the US military who started out as enlisted. If there are some, they are a very small minority. That’s certainly true historically.
wikipedia says:
***
Mustang is a military slang term used in the United States Armed Forces to refer to a commissioned officer who began their career as an enlisted service member. A mustang officer is not a temporary or brevet promotion but is a commissioned officer that receives the same pay and command responsibilities as all other commissioned officers.
Mustang officers are generally older than their peers-in-grade who have been commissioned from one of the service academies (such as the United States Merchant Marine Academy, United States Military Academy, United States Air Force Academy, United States Naval Academy, or United States Coast Guard Academy), Officer Candidate School, or the Reserve Officer Training Corps.[1]
History
The term “mustang” refers to the mustang horse, a feral animal and not a thoroughbred, which is captured and tamed.
***
That last part says it all.
Don’t know if it’s still the case, but the German system used to require service in the enlisted ranks before one could become an officer.
On the other hand, the English system used to make it next to impossible for someone from the rank and file to gain a commission. They were too common.
Russia has lead the way in promoting capable enlisted soldiers. Kutuzov, Suvorov and Zhukov come to mind.
***
In 1757, at the age of 12, Kutuzov entered an elite military-engineering school as a cadet private. He quickly became popular with his peers and teachers alike, proving himself to be highly intelligent, and showed bravery in his school’s numerous horse-races. Kutuzov studied military and civil subjects there, learned to speak French, German and English fluently, and later studied Polish, Swedish, and Turkish; his linguistic skills served him well throughout his career. In October 1759, he became a corporal. In 1760, he became a mathematics instructor at the school.
***
***
As a boy, Suvorov was a sickly child and his father assumed he would work in civil service as an adult. However, he proved to be an excellent learner, avidly studying mathematics, literature, philosophy, and geography, learning to read French, German, Polish, and Italian, and with his father’s vast library devoted himself to intense study of military history, strategy, tactics, and several military authors including Plutarch, Quintus Curtius, Cornelius Nepos, Julius Caesar, and Charles XII. This also helped him develop a good understanding of engineering, siege warfare, artillery, and fortification.[9] He tried to overcome his physical ailments through rigorous exercise and exposure to hardship.[23] His father, however, insisted that he was unfit for military affairs. When Alexander was 12, General Gannibal, who lived in the neighborhood, overheard his father complaining about Alexander and asked to speak to the child. Gannibal was so impressed with the boy that he persuaded the father to allow him to pursue the career of his choice.
***
***
In 1914, Zhukov was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army, where he served in the 10th Dragoon Novgorod Regiment, and was wounded in action against the Germans at Kharkov.[11] During World War I, Zhukov was awarded the Cross of St. George twice for heroism, and promoted to the non-commissioned officer ranks in recognition of his bravery in battle.
…
A sense of the nature of the beginning of Rokossovsky’s famous World War II rivalry with Zhukov can be gathered from reading Rokossovsky’s comments in an official report on Zhukov’s character:[53]
Has a strong will. Decisive and firm. Often demonstrates initiative and skillfully applies it. Disciplined. Demanding and persistent in his demands. A somewhat ungracious and not sufficiently sympathetic person. Rather stubborn. Painfully proud. In professional terms well trained. Broadly experienced as a military leader… Absolutely cannot be used in staff or teaching jobs because constitutionally he hates them.
***
Russian victories are costly, but they rarely lose.
Oh neat. This should make the left even more apoplectic.
RFK Jr.’s vice presidential pick calls IVF âone of the biggest lies being told about womenâs healthâ
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/28/robert-f-kennedy-vice-president-nicole-shanahan-ivf-00149523
She’s doing them a favor. They can portray her as a wack job just like they are with RFK.
Most white collar workers are superfluous and bureaucratic, so they behave accordingly. The business would probably get along if a good portion of them just disappeared. Maybe some know that, and that insecurity even heightens their neuroses.
Interesting, UnCiv. I had never thought about it that way, but I think youâre onto something.
I think the good white collar leaders have the ability to switch back and forth when needed. Consensus building/discussions/negotiations are all well and good, but thereâs still an in group – for a CEO, itâs the C Suite. When the out group leaves the room, the good CEO lets his team thrash on it, to a point, and then makes the call. Picking the moment to make the call is an art – itâs probably better if the team gets to a decision on their own at an acceptable rate of speed, but if not, the CEO needs to.
And needs to stick to it. The C suiters who didnât get their idea implemented are likely to try to relitigate it, which has to be shut down (unless there is some change in the situation calling for a change of course).
I see the white collar culture as prone to elevating process over outcome. A process should only ever be a means to an outcome – that whole âitâs not the destination, itâs the journeyâ thing is bullshit when youâve stuff that needs doing. I see a lot of laptoppers who seem to think forming a committee or holding meetings is an outcome, and so the churn is endless. Other dysfunctions include FOMA (fear of missing out), which leads to lots of people who go from meeting to meeting whether they have a purpose in those meetings or not. I suspect an underlying driver of process hypnosis, FOMA, etc. is that we just have an oversupply of laptoppers and this is how they keep busy/justify their paychecks.
White collar criminal sentenced to 25 years in prison…
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/sam-bankman-fried-sentencing-03-28-24/index.html
That guy made a lot of money/lost a lot of money for a lot of very powerful people with that money laundering scheme. There’s no way that guy is spending anything close to 25 years in a cell. I predict he’ll either:
1) Get some insomniac guards in his prison’s suicide ward.
2) Get 24 years and 11 months off for good behavior then swiftly relocate to a tiny island nation never to be heard from again.
I’m out of my depth with marketing. Seriously out of my depth.
My ebook formatting business has pretty much died with the imminent death of Smashwords and “Mark’s List,” which is where people go to find good ebook formatters.
Now I’m putting myself up on Upwork, and getting screencaps of the ebooks I’ve done for my portfolio. Very long and tedious process. Also, I don’t understand Upwork’s bidding (for clicks) process.