The Tiers Of Work And Life

Gervais Principle and more.

You may have heard of “The Gervais Principle,” which is a way of explaining organizational structure in the context of The Office. You may have also heard of “The Michael Scott Theory,” which is similar and I’ll outline briefly here. If you want a nice deep-dive on both concepts, click that second link. The other benchmark we will be using here is “The Three Ladder System.”

The three working tiers

Broadly speaking, these tiers are:

• Economic losers: People say this is about 80% of an org. I’d say it’s maybe 65%. Mostly we are still discussing white-collar type work here. These are rank-and-file workers. They execute on stuff. They have tasks and deliverables. They can essentially be fired at any moment. Most do not have direct reports, but some do. When you get to the top of this “losers” tier, you are essentially in charge of labor — you are making good money and societally you’re not a “loser” by any means, but you have absolutely no leverage.