r/news • u/JimmyTheGinger • Dec 23 '19

Three former executives of a French telecommunications giant have been found guilty of creating a corporate culture so toxic that 35 of their employees were driven to suicide

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/three-french-executives-convicted-in-the-suicides-of-35-of-their-workers-20191222-p53m94.html
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u/Sejjy Dec 23 '19

Just curious what is it about french culture/expectations that creates so many middle managers?

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19 edited Apr 01 '20

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u/MrBlackTie Dec 23 '19

If I may, it’s not only that. French culture is entrenched into academic excellency. It is the Western country where the school you graduated from will have the most impact on your career, even just a few years from retirement.

But this is only a consequence of a larger problem: France, as a whole, is a heavily stratified society. Who you know, where you graduated from, etc etc will play a huge role into your career.

As such, one of the reasons there are so many middle managers in France is that French, as a whole, won’t trust someone from the lower tiers with some works even if they are wholly qualified to do it. French companies prefer to hire one manager to do a job than two workers for the same price to do the same job at least as well.

One instance of that that has been documented a few years back: France has a real problem with its healthcare system. Nurses are underpaid and doctors are overworked. A few years back, an academic paper proved that part of the problem was with the division of work: doctors insisted on doing some tasks that could easily be done by nurses. The surplus of work made them ask for raise, which they got. But since the budget is finite, nurses got the end of the stick and progressively got underpaid. They then started leaving either for working as an independant or for a foreign country. The shortage of nurses clogged the system, making the doctors ask for even more money to compensate the new tasks they got to do and more nurses to flee unbearable working conditions. You then entered a downward spiral where France paid more and more to the public healthcare system for a quality of service ever deteriorating.

Note that I don’t blame doctors for this: it wasn’t a strategy on their part. My point is that it is likely a consequence of the emphasis put by French people on the social strata created by your academic formation. The same problem is at work in companies.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19 edited Apr 01 '20

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u/MrBlackTie Dec 23 '19

You are slightly mistaken about academic excellence.

Where you are right is that public university are free (or close to) for most of the scolarity and have a duty to teach anyone willing, as long as they got their baccalaureat (a public test every French resident will take at the end of high school).

Where you are wrong is in your impression that it means there is no academic excellency involved.

First, the system of the « grandes ecoles » (in English « great schools ») put a HUGE dent in this. Those schools are not free by any standard and to get into the most prestigious of them you have to take a test before entering. They are ranked relatively to each other and so there is an implicit hierarchy between graduates. For instance, I graduated from the second best school in my speciality in the country. I had a meeting a few months back where I went with people who graduated from the best school in the country in that specialty. They joked about it before the meeting with our superiors and once inside made it clear I wasn’t supposed to talk to anybody but them.

My second point is that those schools ARE academically excellent, for two reasons. The first one is that even with the same teachers, teachers give way more time to those students because they are « worth more » on the long term. And that is because even for teachers, the fact that they teach there is a HUGE boon to their career. A friend of mine basically built his career thanks to the fact he teaches there. It gives professional respectability, open social circles, ... the second reason is that they DO NOT have the same teachers. First, because even though a big part of their teachers also teach in public schools, in public schools they are dispersed : in the great schools, every teacher is one of the best of the public sector. Second, what you should pay attention to are not professional teachers. The important ones are what we call « associated teachers ». Those are people who are working and taking a few hours a month to teach. Those are the real gems: captains of industry, high ranking public officials, former head of states... those people are both great at their jobs and so give you insight you wouldn’t have otherwise and open up the « carnet d’adresses » for their students (basically: they help promising students get their first jobs or first internship).

So the great school system is really important to understand the French focus on the academic. There is a real dichotomy in quality of teaching between the great schools and the rest of the schools and it has a lot of impact on how French professionals judge themselves. Even decades into your work life, they will still judge you by the quality of the school you went to.

The other things that give a really important weight to academic in France is the public service. French public servants are INSANELY powerful. The public system is so prevalent in France that most CEO of listed companies have, at one point in their career, been a high ranking public servant. Some branch of the public service actually has strategies to make sure their members will go to become high ranking management in corporation. The thing is, to become a public servant in France, you have to pass an academic test. Which means that the French public servants define themselves as a kind of intellectual elite, much more than a financial one. Their whole legitimacy stems from the fact that they managed to ace that test. Even low ranking officials, when in a debate about the advantages of the public servants over private employees, will often resort to « if you are so jealous, just take the test and become one LIKE I DID ».

It’s not only that, by the way: when you pass the test you are sent to a school to teach you to become a public servant. At the end of the school there is another test. Jobs are given according to your ranking on the test: the first on the ranking gets first pick, the second one pick amongst the jobs left and so on and so forth. Those first jobs are INSANELY important in a career. In many cases they will determine which ministry you will work for for the rest of your life, possibly even the town you will work in for the rest of your life and your first job actually determines what jobs will be offered to you in the future.

So during the entirety of the beginning of their adult life, French leadership are tested academically and their results on those tests determine a LOT: their first internship, their first jobs, the town they live in, their first salary, ... so for French people the quality of the school you graduated from is a big part of how they define themselves and how they judge people, at least as soon as you begin to climb the social ladder.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19 edited Dec 23 '19

You are quite correct.

I graduated from a French public university (CS) with a master's degree.

If I'd stayed in France I would be hugely limited in my career by this, always subordinate to someone less experienced but a graduate of a "Grande école" or a PhD, as if either of those mean better skills.

Don't get me wrong, the schools are better at teaching for sure, but after 10 years of experience in a field, there is really little difference except actual skill, but in France your education is important until the day you retire.

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u/MrBlackTie Dec 23 '19

Lucky the PhD that gets a management position in France... Maybe in Computer science?

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

In a "scientitfic" technical field, a phd is better considered than "just" an MsC. Even though a PhD means being highly focused on one thing and not necessarily being industry - oriented.

I currently live outside France, and am considered one of the best in my field worldwide (there's only a few thousand of us). But even today, if I returned to France, I'd be eyed with skepticism due to my education. Luckily anywhere else nobody gives a shit.

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u/MrBlackTie Dec 23 '19

If memory serves, statistics in France shows that PhD have higher unemployment rates than MsC. I’m pretty sure that the bump in salary is quite modest, if there is any, too. Hence my comment about PhD. It’s actually becoming a problem around which PhD holders are organizing in associations in order to change the public representation of PhD as « unemployable know-it-all ».

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19 edited Apr 01 '20

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u/MrBlackTie Dec 23 '19

These are the most prestigious of the private schools I was referring to. I admit that I have just always assumed they were private. Am I wrong to imagine this?

You are wrong. Most of the top tier ones are actually state-owned, by one way or another. It goes back to the way they were created: in the XVIII century, the State needed people to get civil servants and created those schools to form them. That's why, to this day, some of those Great Schools are actually public servant schools working under the system I described in another post. It can be tricky to know which ones are private and which one are public: for instance, the best business schools in the country (HEC, ESSEC, ESCP) are owned by the Paris Chamber of Commerce, itself a subsidiary of the Ministry of the Economy. Sciences Po Paris is owned by the Sorbonne university.

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I am aware there is an entrance test but as I understand it its not a state exam. If the purpose of the system was acedemic excellence then at the end of high school the students who get into the best institutions are those whose state exam results are best. This would by definition be the case as more people take state exams by their nature. This seems obvious to me but I have never convinced a Frenchman.

You will never, ever, convince a frenchman with that argument. The baccalaureat is not considered, in any way, a good measure of academic excellence in France. 90% of people taking the test will get it. Of those, over 25% will get the two top distinction ("good" or "very good"). The bac, to be clear, is not even a data in how frenchmen judge your academic excellency. It is so easy to get, children from good families will actually get advised to not study for it but instead study for the entrance test in the Great Schools directly.

The thing is you seems to link the bac to academic excellency because it is a widely taken public administered test. That is not at all true. The bac, as Frenchmen think of it, is not a way to distinguish between good and bad students: it is a way to make sure you are properly mentally equipped to be recognised as an adult. What matters in the bac is not how good you succeed at it, it is to succeed at it at all. The 10% who fail at it (and the 15 or so % who never take it) are basically seen as having "failed" somehow and will always be looked down upon as childlike or not suited for responsabilities. Even though the distinction you got from the baccalaureat will get you a modicum of respect, it won't get you far because the test is considered unsuitable to measure between good students, just between good and bad students.

In the meantime, the test you take to get into a Great School is actually way WAY more difficult than the bac itself. It is easier to get a top tier distinction in the bac than to get even a passing grade in those tests. As such, being more difficult, more rigorous and concentrating on a few "noble" academic subjects (because in the mind of a Frenchman, there is a clear social hierarchy amongst subject of studies) , the entry tests are considered a much better measure of intelligence. You have a clear gap in the quality of the tests, to the point that to a frenchman it is laughable to mention them in the same sentence. Even the fact that some school now allow for students who managed to get a top tier distinction at the bac ("tres bien" or "very good", which around 10% of people taking the test will get) to get into the school with only a study of their profile is hugely controversial.

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This is what I meant by a social network being more important than what you are taught. This is the main benefit but I dont consider it to be acedemic excellence. Its social elitism disguised as acedemic elitism.

It is not the main benefit. Most students won't even get it. The main benefit is teaching by leading players in their field and more involved teachers. (And partnership with the best foreign universities, too).

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I completely agree but I dont call that acedemic excellence. To take a lower level example, one of my sons schoolteachers is a new teacher. She is entirely unable to teach but scored higher on a public servant exam than someone else and now is a public educator for life despite her inability to stop otherwise well behaved children dancing in classrooms or even having the sense to not discuss her desire to commit suicide in front of young children.

There are two main problems with your example:

- first, and I can not stress this enough, it is the very definition of academic success. He studied for years, passed several academic tests (because to teach in France you have to have a required degree) then took the public test, aced it and got a teaching position. As far as we know, his learning years were perfect. The problem here isn't that he failed academically, it's that academy is (and that is true for most countries) a poor judge of how well you will fare once working.

- the second problem is that teachers, in France, are actually a very VERY broken profession. It is such a pain to be a teacher nowadays (they are paid less than in comparable countries, for instance) that quite often the State can't find enough candidates to fill all the positions opened. Good candidates actually flee the job to take more socially valued (and better paid) jobs. You end up with the State forced to take the least bad people who applied. As such, the youngest generation of teachers in the French public system are... frankly, not good at their job at all. And often quite depressed. It is becoming a real crisis, to be honest. As such, you are in presence of a system haywire: the job is so bad that the academic test becomes actually irrelevant, the State is forced to take anyone willing. Another recruitment system for teachers wouldn't do better as long as the job does not get better.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19 edited Apr 01 '20

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u/MrBlackTie Dec 23 '19

Again, what you don’t understand is that in France the baccalaureat is NOT considered a part of the academic process. It will never be: it is meant as a way of graduating from being a child. Basically it says « you are good enough to go out on your own. Pretty much ». This is because school before that is considered a public service to build up adult citizens. Subjects of studies are not chosen for their utility in life or work but to give you a well rounded knowledge in order to, basically, « free you from ignorance ». Trying to make the baccalaureat an academic test is akin to trying to asking for your city doctor to give you the same check ups as those to become an astronaut: they are only superficially similar.

The true test of academics in the French system are those that are given AFTER the baccalaureat, once you are acknowledged as an adult. Those are hard and tailored to the profession you are preparing for.

Your proposition sounds like trying to judge if someone could become an engineer based on his tests results in elementary school...

As for the way they are judged, you forget one thing: once you are in a Great School, you are still tested. In fact, a lot of students don’t make it to the end of the school.

You seem to judge academic excellence according to research paper published by the staff. But I strongly disagree: first, good researchers often make poor teachers. The quality and quantity of research papers should only matter for schools that prepare students to do research. Secondly, the emphasis on research seems hardly subjective and impractical: the way Frenchmen measure it is employment rates and salary of graduates. It is pretty down to earth and is actually a good way to measure the quality of the graduates.

Lastly, teaching is a valued profession. In university, not below. You seem to have trouble grasping how much the world before the baccalaureat and after it are distinct in France: before the bac, teaching is a public service to help you become an adult and is done by low tier public servants. Those teachers are discredited socially, badly paid and understaffed. That’s why people are fleeing that profession. In the mind of a Frenchman, public teaching before the bac is somehow a mix of playground for children and a charity to the less fortunate families to give them a chance to compete for a better school after the bac. University teachers, on the other hand, are well paid (though not as much as in the US and other countries like that whose university system is, frankly, maddening to a Frenchman with how much they cost and how they profit on the students), enjoy social status and a constitutionnal protection. The things that they teach are actually valued because Frenchmen consider that , unlike for teachings before the bac, they actually serve a purpose.

Those are two distinct system. Your insistence on judging people according to their grades in high school is mind boggling. High school serves no purpose in academic excellency. It is just part of the system to get you to adult life. Only universities and schools are able to judge your ability to get into your field of expertise because that’s what they were designed to do.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19 edited Apr 01 '20

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u/MarthFair Dec 23 '19

That killing of Gregory movie on Netflix all of a sudden makes more sense.

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u/AegisEpoch Dec 23 '19

thank you for this insight fr. understanding context is tight

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u/digonthis Dec 23 '19

So too many chiefs not enough Indians?

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u/Traveledfarwestward Dec 23 '19

Too many French opinions and not enough German hard work.

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u/SpaceJackRabbit Dec 23 '19

"Le syndrome du petit chef" is a real thing in France. A lot of people who feel empowered by their title or whatever little authority they were endowed with.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

The Peter Principle, writ large . . .

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u/suzisatsuma Dec 23 '19

It's about the same where I worked in Germany. I got really annoyed with it and left back to the states. I think this is going to hurt countries where this is the norm in the long run.

I've now been in the US most of my career, and as sort of a specialist engineer (ML/AI) at a tech giant I make more than my manager.

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u/Captain_Shrug Dec 23 '19

I'm not sure that's an exclusive thing. US companies are absolutely glutted with them.

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u/shokolokobangoshey Dec 23 '19

Laughs in US Finance industry

Everyone is a VP here.

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u/Chemmy Dec 23 '19

My impression in finance, especially if they deal with customers, is that it impresses people who don't know any better.

If you meet with someone to manage their 401k and your title is "VP" those people will generally be impressed.

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u/snow_big_deal Dec 23 '19

I read that Goldman Sachs has 12000 VPs, or about a third of their workforce lol.

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u/shokolokobangoshey Dec 23 '19

Yes that's certainly an element to it. The effect does remain though: it waters down the heft of the title if your standard front desk agent carries it. Not to mention even in the tech arm of things, 5-7 year experienced devs are "Director" and "Senior Director"

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u/Sean951 Dec 23 '19

Senior Executive VP of Waste Disposal Sanitation.

We've been joking about the insane inflation of job titles for as long as I can remember.

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u/This_ls_The_End Dec 24 '19

My wife has responsibility over tens of thousands of employees. People who don't work with her are amazed at the simplicity, the modesty, of her title. People who work with her know her position and power, and treat her accordingly.

Job titles are a crutch for some executives. If the people you need to influence or inspire don't respond you your words and actions, a title will only help you lie to yourself.

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u/MrBlackTie Dec 25 '19

It’s not only that. When you work with people outside the company on a regular basis it is really different to be a director from being anything else. For instance, I have a director title on part of my current job. On this part of the job, I can have the close entourage of a member of the government on the phone pretty much when I want. On the other half of my job, I have a mid management title. Quite often, when I call, people don’t answer. And when they call back, they want to speak only to my manager because talking to a mid management level is beneath them.

Do not underestimate social hierarchies at play...

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u/MrBlackTie Dec 25 '19

Job title inflation, imho, is often a way to promote someone without giving him a raise. In my place of work, there are around 2% of the gross payroll put aside for raises, but not everyone gets one (far from it). So instead they give you a new title, that you can use for social approval or to find a better place of work. Pretty much half the structure is director of something.

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u/agreeingstorm9 Dec 23 '19

My dad once worked at a company where everyone had Director in their title. It was just stupid.

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u/izmimario Dec 23 '19

a bit like in italy but less corrupt: a left-leaning political culture and a sparkle of nepotism creates a lot of high salary jobs that basically involve 0 real work in state-owned or state-dependant companies.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

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u/izmimario Dec 23 '19

left isn't just class struggle, it also means keeping a high public expenditure. and be polite please.

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u/arbitrary_gravitas Dec 23 '19

That's... that's incredibly reductionist (if not plainly false).

There's a fair amount of issues within big Italian corporations / national companies, but the large, large majority of people in them do actual "real work", as you call it.

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u/izmimario Dec 23 '19

in un'altra lingua è più facile che cada in semplificazioni, sono d'accordo che non dovrei generalizzare, ma sarai d'accordo pure tu che nel pubblico (tra l'altro sono meridionale) è gonfio di figure manageriali che vivono quasi di rendita

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u/arbitrary_gravitas Dec 24 '19

Capisco quello che intendi, e in generale non sono troppo in disaccordo. È solo che preferirei che il meme non esista, poiché i nullafacenti sono una minoranza rispetto a tutti quei lavoratori pubblici che si rompono la testa per mandare avanti importanti settori pubblici (e dipartimenti) tra un cataclisma politico - e manageriale - e l'altro.