Upward Mobility is a Lie

I have too much fun relating everything to pyramid schemes

Senior Brogrammer
2 min readNov 14, 2023

Every organization has some sort of career ladder. Usually, it’s titles/numbers on a chart that show upward mobility with gaps in between to make you work toward something. Guess what? You’ll take that org chat like the bitch you are too. It’s ok, though, it wouldn’t be fun if I had nothing to bitch about.

At some point in these charts, a split will have to occur. Generally, in management, this happens the most. Find multiple people to report to you or replace what you currently do. This will allow you to move up to the next stage. In simplest terms, instead of overlooking eight people directly, you’ll want two managers who manage those eight people reporting to you. The implication is more responsibility because two teams of people are encompassed by the proxy managers you’re in charge of. Of course, it doesn’t break down this cleanly in reality.

Assuming everyone is attempting to do this because cocaine is expensive, when does this nonsense stop? If it doesn’t explain how this organizational pyramid below is any different than a standard pyramid scheme.

Tell me it’s not a pyramid scheme that everyone can move up. And I’ll show you a pyramid of everyone moving up.

--

--