Who Gets What and Why

These posts are Version 2 of this material. Please email me with feedback. Sex and Drugs and Guns and Code Restart A Little Psychology How We Got Here More Psychology When the Model is the Harm Privacy, Power, and the Self Who Gets What and Why Bibliography Bueno de Mesquita and Smith’s The Dictator’s Handbook was one of the inspirations for this series of posts. Their model of how people get and hold power isn’t as cynical as it first appears, and it helped me make sense of some of the company politics I’ve endured (and been part of) over the years. Reading outward from that lucky find led to the post below. We’re All Family Here In November 2022, after laying off about a third of its original workforce, Elon Musk sent an email to the remaining Twitter employees asking them to click a button to confirm that they were committed to working “hardcore” for the company’s next phase. Those who did not click by the deadline would be treated as having resigned. A few months earlier,…