My favorite example of this is the curmudgeonly tech lead in any significant organization. Such a tech lead ends up splattering all the young'uns with spittle as she rails against all manner of neophyte mistakes and useless new acronyms (that don't do anything new except rename things she's been doing her entire career). Maybe call it code rage. All the while, the curmudgeon drives her career further and further into the ditch as the young'uns move on to new gigs within competitors and sibling organizations, to which the curmudgeon will soon be applying for a job because the apparent value of her produce drops below the apparent value of her salary, despite the vital role she plays on the team.
(I scoured my experience and did, actually, remember a female that fit the pattern ... only one, mind you, but extant. So, I don't feel entirely disingenuous using "she" and "her" above. But my guess, based on stereotypes, is that most use cases will see a male -- perhaps with a spittle-flecked gray[ing] beard -- in the role.) On 10/31/2016 12:43 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
One point of clarification. Altruistic (i.e. group fitness-enhancing behavior that diminishes the actor's fitness) does not have to be "nice" behavior. One of my favorite candidates for altruistic behavior in humans is road rage. A road rager risks his own safety to enforce a norm of driving behavior on somebody who has violated that norm. It doesn't feel like altruism when one is doing it, but it is.
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