I got your thirded right here.

Now if only we lived in a world where proving your merit was anywhere near as important as proclaiming your merit...

Well, to be fair, both are generally necessary to get ahead. The proclaimers can get ahead to some extent, but they tend to be exposed pretty quickly as they become more and more visible within the company.

Those that prove their work, but never say anything, get looked over quite a lot.

It's those that manage to walk the line between proof and proclamation (especially proclamation by giving credit to their teams) that really get ahead.

That used to be the case, Ron. One of the unfortunate side effects of the information revolution is that it magnifies the power of the old adage, "A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still tying its shoes." People who proclaim without proof are now profiting more than people who proclaim WITH proof, simply because they need not waste the time marshalling their evidence, only making unsourced allegations. That's why spam scams are such a huge industry, and continue to grow despite federal laws directly targeting them.

To be fair, I should've said that I'm limiting my response to the business world. That might've helped clear things up.

As for the other (spam in specific), to me that's user error. Scams abounded prior to the info/rev and people continue to fall for them. Now, if anything, the failures are more visible (think of home contractors, or those calling the elderly, etc.)

If folks are profiting off of unsourced allegations, aren't those that are providing for their profit somewhat at fault for not doing a modicum of research?

The communication issues take place in the business world, too. I've seen people whose only skill was enormous charisma get fired for embezzlement, but get away with it in the end because they convinced their employers they would suffer enormous embarrassment were the ex-employee's crimes made public, and then get hired with a clean record elsewhere the same day through Monster.com and do the same with the next business that hires them. The only thing that puts a stop to them is getting caught up in an unconcealable Enron-style scandal, but most manage to stay under the radar until they can retire as millionaires.

The fact that nobody likes to think about is that all economies are built on subjective merits rather than objective reality. Mass and volume are objective properties; value is not. For this reason, economies will always favor those who proclaim their subjective merits rather than produce objective results; only when the economy collapses do objective results matter, and even then not because they are objective, but because the market's judgement of its subjective values usually *but not always* takes a sharp turn toward the production of objective results.

Maybe that's the difference between the companies that you've seen and what I've seen. Anywhere I've worked embezzlement = lawsuit/firing, reputation be damned.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen the incredibly charismatic salesmen get ahead - but they had used that charisma and were signing accounts (and leaving us to pick up the pieces when we couldn't deliver on their promises). More often, however, is the difference between overall company goals and department/local goals. Someone may be pissing the customer off, but they're meeting their internal goals so I have no leverage to get rid of them.

But, self-promoters with no bottom-line impact have almost always been identified and removed from play where I've worked.

YMMV.

Which sorta gets back to the "markets == good" central point. Of course, "markets == good" is not the same as "markets == perfect", which is why assholes sometimes get ahead. It's the aggregate result that matters.

In other words, sometimes least worst really isn't all that bad at all.

Which sorta gets back to the "markets == good" central point. Of course, "markets == good" is not the same as "markets == perfect", which is why assholes sometimes get ahead. It's the aggregate result that matters.

In other words, sometimes least worst really isn't all that bad at all.

The embezzler was a close friend of the CEO, and it wasn't exactly a privately owned nor a publicly held business. The only reason I even learned who it was, was because a co-worker told me about it, after I was let go because they thought I was responsible for the irregularities (though they had no proof, of course).

Still, I'm pretty certain similar things happen in other businesses, in office politics if not in criminal offenses.

Not sure how the business could be something other than private or public (barring non-profit). I think those are the only choices, but I could be wrong...

The friendship angle saves a lot of people. I've know people who had done well by a company and were allowed to quit due to expense account irregularities, but it wasn't straight embezzlement (cue "did you expense the lap dance").

They do happen, that's for sure. But normally those folks hit a wall because the next company, or the company after that, isn't one full of friends.

Well, that takes us back to my original point... proclaiming versus proving. People who both proclaim and prove their merit are usually too busy with one or the other to suck up to the bosses, while those who only proclaim their merits are not so limited. Result: the incompetant prosper, the competant fail (or even end up taking the blame for the incompetant), even when both advertise.

Depends on your strategy. That can happen initially, then the competent learn to balance the appropriate amount of proclamation, proof, and working with the bosses.

Doesn't have to be sucking up, though. I'm not all about that - but I'll happily prove and proclaim. Might take me a bit longer to get ahead, but I'll get there soon enough.