The Sincerity Problem: Why Your Job Makes You Fake

nassim taleb dropped this line the other day: "sincerity is incompatible with (non-blue collar) employment" and it's been rattling around my head because... yeah. that's exactly why linkedin feels like a fever dream and why most office jobs slowly hollow you out from the inside.

there's this show called severance where workers get their memories surgically divided so their work self and personal self never meet. sounds dystopian right? except... we're already doing this. just without the brain surgery.

when's the last time you sat through a meeting nodding along to obviously terrible ideas? or had to translate your actual thoughts ("this is fucking stupid") into corporate speak ("i have some concerns about the implementation strategy")?

white collar work is just professional theater. you're not getting paid to be real... you're getting paid to perform being real in a way that doesn't threaten anyone.

the outie problem

but here's what severance really nails: the outies (regular people) know something's wrong but they still sign up for the procedure. they're willing to literally split their consciousness in half just to afford rent in a world where good jobs require you to become someone else.

the blue collar workers in the show? they're the ones protesting outside lumon. because they can see how fucked up it all is. they don't need to split themselves in half to do their jobs.

your plumber shows up, fixes your toilet, takes your money, leaves. simple transaction. no one expects him to be passionate about pipe optimization or excited about innovative drainage solutions. he gets to stay whole.

but if you work in marketing or consulting or really any job that involves powerpoint, you have to constantly signal that you're not just there for the paycheck. you need to be "passionate about driving synergistic outcomes" and "excited to leverage cross-functional partnerships."

the more corporate your job gets, the more layers of bullshit you pile on. it's not enough to be good at your job... you need to look like you're thriving. you need to network. you need a personal brand (??) you need to convince yourself that quarterly metrics actually matter.

the lumon playbook

you know what's genius about severance? it shows how corporate culture creates true believers out of people who literally don't know any better. the "innies" love lumon because they've never experienced anything else. they think waffle parties are the height of human joy.

meanwhile we do the same thing to ourselves. gradually. voluntarily. we convince ourselves that team building exercises matter and that open floor plans foster collaboration and that our company's mission to "democratize synergistic solutions" or whatever actually means something.

linkedin is basically the waffle party. people posting about how grateful they are for the opportunity to work 60 hour weeks, how much they learned from their latest corporate restructuring, how excited they are about new KPIs. pure lumon energy.

the scary part isn't that companies brainwash people... it's that people brainwash themselves. because admitting that most corporate work is meaningless busywork designed to justify other people's paychecks is too depressing to live with day to day.

we're all already severed

here's where severance gets terrifying. the show treats work/life separation as this extreme sci-fi concept but... we're already there. we just did it gradually instead of with surgery.

most office workers aren't naturally fake, they're just responding to incentives. if being authentic means telling your manager they're incompetent or admitting that half your company's initiatives are pointless busywork, well. that's not exactly a career building move.

so you learn to code switch. you develop this professional persona that says the right things at the right times. you become fluent in corporate speak. you master the art of disagreeing without actually disagreeing: "that's an interesting perspective, let me build on that..."

over time this performance becomes muscle memory. you might even start believing your own corporate propaganda because it's easier than maintaining the cognitive dissonance between what you think and what you're supposed to say.

sound familiar? in severance, the "innies" genuinely love their meaningless work because they don't remember anything else. we do the same thing, just... slower. more voluntary. we gaslight ourselves into caring about quarterly metrics because it's psychologically easier than admitting we're trading our lives for money.

why this actually matters

the problem isn't just that this is annoying (though it definitely is). it's that constant performance creates institutions full of people who optimize for looking good rather than being good at their jobs.

you end up with managers who are great at managing up but terrible at actually managing. strategies that sound impressive in powerpoint but make zero sense in practice. entire industries built around producing plausible sounding bullshit rather than actual value.

when sincerity becomes a career liability, you get organizations that can't adapt to reality because acknowledging reality would require admitting that most of what they're doing is pointless.

what now?

taleb's observation isn't just social commentary... it's a warning about how institutional incentives warp behavior. when your paycheck depends on not rocking the boat, you stop rocking the boat. when advancement requires political skills more than technical skills, people optimize for politics.

severance is terrifying because it's not really science fiction. it's just taking what we're already doing and making it literal. we've already accepted that work requires becoming someone else. the show just asks: what if we made that split surgical instead of psychological?

the real horror isn't the brain procedure. it's that most people watching probably thought "honestly... that doesn't sound that bad."

maybe that's why blue collar work is looking more appealing to people who are tired of pretending their job is their identity. maybe the real luxury isn't money... it's staying whole.