Comment by Imnimo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Imnimo | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't really relate to the question of middle management, but it's interesting to compare the Canadian and British versions of this article:

https://www.robert-walters.ca/insights/news/blog/Concious-un...

https://www.robertwalters.co.uk/insights/news/blog/conscious...

They both have comments ostensibly from "Lucy Bisset, Director of Robert Walters North" and "Martin Fox, Managing Director of Robert Walters Canada". But the two have eerily similar thoughts on these result:

>Lucy Bisset, Director of Robert Walters North comments: “Gen-Z are known for their entrepreneurial mindset – preferring to bring their ‘whole self’ to projects and spend time cultivating their own brand and approach, rather than spending time managing others.

>Martin Fox, Managing Director of Robert Walters Canada comments: “Gen-Z are known for their entrepreneurial mindset. They prefer to bring their ‘whole self’ to projects, focusing on building their own brand and approach rather than managing others.

Oh, huh, good catch. More of their quotes are just theaurus-substitution rephrasings:

> Lucy concludes: “It’s clear mid-level management remains a lynchpin of any organisation, and to keep these roles filled employers need to innovate their strategies to make them more attractive ...

> Martin concludes: “It’s clear that mid-level management is a cornerstone of any organization. To fill these roles, employers will need to rethink their strategies to make them more appealing ...

And no by-line on the article - no actual human is claiming responsibility for writing this.

This is kind of a dirty semi-secret of corporate PR. When a press release or other company-authored article includes "[Person's Name] says [Thing]," there is not necessarily a Person with that name, and even if there is, that Person didn't literally say the Thing. "Thing" is the narrative that the company wants to push, and they attribute "Thing" to some name and publish it as if it's a news article with a quote.

I was a high-ish level product manager in a medium sized company once, and they would put P.R. "articles" out all the time that "quoted" me by name saying things I never said or wrote. Internally, P.R. would just E-mail me and ask if they could use my name in a press piece, and I said sure. Suddenly I "said" this and was "quoted" with that.

These kinds of articles get copy-pasted in different publications and only the name gets changed.

There's also the bizarre story of Greg Packer, a highway maintenance worker who has been quoted hundreds of times as a "man in the street" in the New York Times and other papers. He apparently just likes being first in line for events and ends up talking to the media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Packer

> Packer's other claim to fame: being the first person in the world to buy an iPhone, on June 29, 2007 at Apple Fifth Avenue in New York City, after having camped out for five days in front of the store.

Another source for that information is greg’s own blog, note the domain name too: https://firstinline.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/hello-world/

That’s a lot of words to say “companies sometimes blatantly lie in public statements”.

Yes this. In an old job i got "quoted" a number of times. Sometimes by my company. Sometimes by the relevant trade press. They'd always double check it with me, and 100% of the time it was way less offensive than what I'd have said. It worked out well for everyone.

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy (according to Sinclair Broadcast Group): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE&t=33s

It's funny when the comedy shows to superedits of a media company's affiliates all reading from the same script. You also see it on edits from CNN and FOX where all of the "hosts" (I refuse to call them anchors) all use the exact same lines.

The "party line" is very obvious as long as you're willing to see it. If party line is too political, then the sports version is that the playbook has been well studied.

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