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STATUS ❧ FLAT AFFECTS
A new study of of thousands of U.S. financial-services firms that cut management over the last two decades demonstrates that as organizations “flatten,” they replace the visible hierarchy of titles with an invisible one of temperament. After what the University of Vienna researchers euphemistically call “de-layering,” workforce scores on big five traits change: conscientiousness rose 2%, agreeableness 3.6%, and openness 3.4%. Not huge numbers, but enough to suggest sorting. Job security accrued those who performed agreeableness convincingly as power accrued to the few at the top who didn’t have to.
The researchers found that these shifts had nothing to do with hiring – only attrition1. Couple that with the fact the personality scoring came from HR sources and the picture becomes clear: Flattening companies aren’t finding more agreeable people, they are retaining workers willing to perform agreeableness. There’s a good reason for this: Without hierarchy, workers must secure cooperation through coordination, self-promotion, and diplomacy. Personality is actually more important post-layoffs. But it’s not simply that companies get nicer – it’s that niceness becomes mandatory.
C. Wright Mills saw this coming in 1951, when he described the rise of the “personality market,” in which “the personal or even intimate traits of the employee are drawn into the sphere of exchange.” He was mostly focused on front-facing workers, but the new study suggests the back of house is now involved. All roles become client-facing when coworkers are granted the autonomy to act as clients. Mills worried that personality would be commodified; he did not foresee a world where no one would be exempt from that exchange save those at the top – the few still allowed to say “fuck off.”
➺ What does affection look like online? ➺ Preppy2 murderer’s neighbor: “This is the town – things happen, then you hear nothing about it…. They’re good at keeping things quiet.” ➺ Deferential interviews aren’t interviews – even when Amy Poehler is the one asking questions.
The “FINANCIAL WHOOPSIES SURVEY” is an attempt to understand how members of the Oat Milk Elite manage (and mismanage) their money. Full results will be shared with Upper Middle Research members and those that complete the survey.
TASTE ❧ After the ‘unt
In Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt3, Julia Roberts’s philosophy professor dresses in business casual with a layer of post-feminist polish and just enough glen plaid to acknowledge the dearly departed dons who would have preferred to keep her in the typing pool. The tailoring is perfect if a bit butch (very 1990s Julia) – sharp shoulders, soft wool, serious buttons. It’s all intentional. It’s all triangulation. And, yes, it looks about right.
Those unrumpled blazers are a long way from the nicotine-stained bathrobes Michael Douglass sported in Wonder Boys, a film with a somewhat similar premise and a starkly different romantic vision of academy. Released in 2000 (with that good Bob Dylan song), Wonder Boys portrayed college as a place where brilliance excused a near total lack of self-care. It was a place of ill-fitting ideas – more atelier than store. Corduroy and tweed held sway, but the guest speakers wore dark blue suits. At the time, it looked about right. Then the guest speakers took over.
What we didn’t know then was that higher education was getting reeled in by the service economy. In After the Hunt, academia is still a hothouse, but it’s also a public-facing professional nursery. Roberts’s Alma is tasked with preparing students for the market and dresses accordingly – despite the fact that philosophy departments tend to be the most rumpled enclaves on neoliberal modern campuses4. Like other Foucault-quoting continental philosophy professors – and specifically female continental philosophy professors – Alma dresses like she’s going to a meeting. In fact, she is. And when she gets there, there isn’t a rumpled analytic philosopher in sight, much less a writer in a bathrobe.
➺ Wallace & Barnes is back. The real ones know. ➺ Restaurants are adapting to people not drinking anymore. ➺ Does running even count if it’s not on Strata? Rose Byrne may be too skilled dramatic acting for her own good. ➺ “Honestly fuck Le Creuset. I thought after the shitshow in Hartford it couldn’t get worse and then Le Creuset Germany said ‘watch.’”
MONEY ❧ DEFENSIVELY AGGRESSIVE
Mr. Market is Andrew Feinberg, a retired hedge fund manager who has beaten the S&P 500 for the last 30 years. He is the author/co-author of four books on personal finance.
Dear Mr. Market,
I just heard Paul Tudor Jones say on CNBC that we could see a true market melt-up in the fourth quarter. What do you think?
Greedy in Galveston
Dear Greedo,
Jones is smart and he might be right. A bubble may be upon us. Jones says investors should focus on gold, crypto, and NASDAQ. I agree.
I’ve done well in bubbles, and here’s what you can’t do. You can’t go crazy. Selling must be on your mind every day. Otherwise, disaster looms. Bubbles always end in tears. Speculative stuff crashes.
In a bubble, be defensively aggressive. If Bitcoin is zooming and you’re thinking,’ Bitcoin’s for Grandpa,’ it’s okay to buy some Shitcoins named for an incel’s dog. But don’t put it all Fluffycoin (unless there’s a ransom demand for your child 2X your net worth). And don’t get hung up on an early retirement date. Such specifics can rip your face off. Just take what you can get and don’t worry about some asshole dumber than you who just doubled your haul.
So, if Fluffycoin triples in a month, sell it – or nearly all of it. And when you sell anything and it leaps another 50 percent, don’t grieve by diving back in. That’s the classic way people self-destruct. No one can foretell bubble peaks. Reason leaves the building. There’s euphoria and then there’s gravity. Where one yields to another is anybody’s guess.
Going in, promise yourself you won’t lose money during the bubble. Vow to sell crap early, not late. In the dot-com bubble, I owned a POS web-hosting company that tripled in February 2000. Then the CEO sold half his stock and it fell 50 percent. I bailed. It was bankrupt before year-end. In a bubble, it can get late early..
Sincerely,
Mr. Market
➺ America’s new bumper crop of millionaires have extremely little cash. (Welcome to Upper Middle motherfuckers!) ➺ How to win a conference – if you can’t get out of it. ➺ “Apocalypse Insurance” is a billionaire must-have.
➺ The Bottled Elite
“The greatest mystery about a human being,” Sinclair Lewis wrote in Main Street, “is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day.”
➺ Making It Up In Volume
The fight over free speech matters, but the fight over paid speech will ultimately determine the direction of American culture (whether the New York cocktail party crowd likes it or not).
➺ STATUS REPORT: Quiet Nepotism
Survey results suggest that though most members of the professional managerial class benefit from some form of familial advantage, many are reluctant to admit it or to fully acknowledge the degree to which they are (probably) responsible for their own success.
[1] Interestingly, the study stresses that a lot of the attrition was the result of disengagement leading to quitting or, in some cases, firings. The point being: Businesses are very effective at making situations untenable for people who don’t want to play the game.
[2] I mean… most Americans go to some kind of college. Aren’t most murderers just a bit preppy at this point?
[3] So… like… this movie is about Amy Chua, right? The Hymn of the Tiger Mother lady? J.D. Vance’s big champion? The second most press hungry prof in the Ivies (can’t beat Cornel).
[4] Because academics are kinda narcissistic, there’s a literary subgenre consisting of academics studying how other academics behave. It’s a rich text rooted in despair, which is to say guys in the sociology department wondering why women in the French department won’t date them.
