Situational. Can a man tire of being a leader, tire of being asked to head up another task force or committee, or serve on the church council again and again? Tire of being asked for his opinion all the freakin time? Is the role for life or do alphas move to delta status at periods in their life, maybe a decade here and there? Would this be considered situational yet your status is what it is, was and will always be?
Everyone gets tired, but it doesn't change their core behavioral set. The roles you've described are all temporary situational work type roles as opposed to the core behavioral set. That's the point of the article. In brief even if Michael Jordan quits the NBA he's still Michael Jordan.
To illustrate the point better, you've described an alpha who gets tired of being on a church council and wants a break. Now consider a gamma who is tired of being on a church council and wants a break. Both are stepping down from the same situational role, both are tired, and both are going to handle the situation entirely differently because of their core values. An alpha retreats in an alpha manner, a gamma in a gamma manner and so on.
On a vaguely related note, Tubcuddle's creepy-as-a-millipede Tumblr page makes me feel better about almost every woman I've ever dated. Nines pages of photos and all of them together don't add up to a 10.
Kind of like Frank Burns in M*A*S*H when he was in charge. He figured out the M stood for mobile so he made the crew move the entire camp across the road and back again.
The purpose of managerial structures in artificial limited liability firms is to obviate natural leadership. Little tests and the tyranny of quantities and aggregates are in their nature. It's been a while but IIRC Frank Burns's rationale was to drill and be prepared for the job. In hindsight, the writers always had Capt. Pierce, who was good at getting girls and an officer as a surgeon, busy undermining Maj. Burns's authority and denigrating the broader institutional structures with his wit and comic timing. MASH was a pop culture institutional underminer of Monty Pythonesque weight on the heels of and to cap off the vibrancy and bike thefts of the summers of '67 and '68.
"The one reason that being able to correctly identify your own SSH pattern is useful is because it allows you to seek appropriate situational roles and avoid those situational roles in which you are likely to fail."
Been a wine professional for nearly two decades. Status in that world can be exceptionally fluid, exceptionally touchy. Wine is such a unique beast.
You may have a $15,000 bottle, which correlates with a certain type of High Status. However, have you been to that estate? Have you spoken to that winemaker? Have you visited those cellars? A man with a $15,000 bottle can be "trumped" in status by a man who cannot afford that bottle within his lifetime, but because of his talent, skill, industry position, what have you, that man has access to a level of "situational status" the rich man cannot buy. It flips the script. Suddenly no one cares who bought the $15,000 bottle; they just want to hear from the man who KNOWS about it.
Countless times I've had to defuse an alpha wine boomer/bro/techie because they simply didn't know what they were talking about. I do this without condescension, arrogance, or triteness. Reaction goes one of two ways: defensiveness or submission. With defensiveness, I simply allow it to happen, for my "status" at that point means nothing and I'm not in a position to force anybody to accept anything. With submission, suddenly I am the alpha among alphas simply through knowledge and experience alone, not necessarily through any type of material social/physical markers (money, physique, etc).
Back to Vox's quote. Some alphas instinctively knew this and would defer to me immediately. It's quite a thing to have a man who has exceeded you beyond all metrics genuinely hanging on your every word. The reverse of this is that, when this situational context ends, all parties understand that we go back to our typical roles. I have no trouble carrying your wine cases to your Maserati.
Gammas in alpha roles are unfortunately quite common, especially in technical fields, since clown world promotes feminine, passive aggressive behavior. The fact that being a "nerd" is "cool" now makes them especially insufferable.
Another insanely frustrating thing about having a Gamma boss in an Alpha position is their abject refusal to lead. One important Alpha task is to give the green light. To say "Okay, this is what we'll do!" Gammas hide away in their office or work remotely and refuse to answer emails whenever there's a decision to be made. But then they love to nit-pick, accuse and question the decision after it's been made - especially if it didn't turn out perfectly.
Women diffuse responsibility, so no-one gets the official credit or blame, even though everyone but the hopeless sperg knows who owns it.
It preserves relationships in the female matrix, and allows kids, especially emotionally volatile and tender teens, to save face, so they can learn from failure.
Men who adopt this mode who are not officially eunuchs (and even then...) are creepy and disruptive.
This is one of my biggest gripes with Gammas in work situations -- the cowardice to do anything. I now only permit input/opinions, and forbid them recommendations, because I know it will just be a clever scheme to do nothing at all.
I've only reliably seen that commanding leadership in women when it's about her family and her children. It's the only time when she leads and carries risk herself. Otherwise, her ways and the gamma's ways are identical.
There's at least one other female behavior I've seen in those roles: shopping around for someone else to make the decision for her. She may call it "consensus building" or "fact finding" or "valuing all inputs," but it's really about offloading the burden of responsibility.
If she is decent, pleasant, grateful and does her thing well, then I help her. You help your friends and your friends help you. It's called 'Tend and befriend' in psychology. Talk with friends, be decent enough to be invited, listen very carefully, and eventually you'll find a way to handle it.
If not, I try to be indifferent. This is what boundaries are for. Big girls solve their big problems. If I don't think she'll protect me or my solutions, then she's alone.
That's exactly right. The second part of that effort is turning the good idea that the 'consensus built' into her idea that she can later take credit for.
Pattern/position mismatch can be quite comical, if predictably frustrating for some. My M.A. advisor was a French sigma. He'd literally fly into Dublin for three days every week to take care of his obligations then fly back to Paris. He began his undergrad courses by saying:
"As you know, we are supposed to meet for 12 weeks -- and as you know, it is... impossible, to meet, all 12 weeks... and so, we will meet for... 8 weeks? Hmmm? We will not make up the missed time. Please do not email me. Okay? Okay. Let's begin."
We got along great, but a lot of folks found his aloofness frustrating. Same thing with my own students. Some struggled without the involved leadership that alphas provide or all of the excess work that deltas do (e.g., putting notes online for students). Some found it frustrating that I didn't assign specific paper topics, insisting they wrote on whatever it was from the text that struck them. Others struggled with the absence of due dates or general refusal to micromanage.
"When are our two papers due?"
"Whenever you finish them. If you want feedback on the first, don't wait til the end of the semester. I stop accepting papers three days before grades are due." Smiles on some faces, total lostness on others.
Such people could easily simulate autonomy by following rules on these things.
My parents taught me a rule, for example, that you should always try to complete assignments as close as possible to the assignment date, not the due date. If you get that paper done, then you don't have to worry about it anymore.
How does situational status effect desire? I've seen gammas and deltas as situational alphas who tend to have better than expected relationships with the women on staff, and it's been puzzling me. Is this a fractal thing, or something else?
Good relations as in the friend zone? Or good relations as in generating the desire within the women to follow Mr. Alpha’s lead? The alpha’s ability to create the desire to follow his lead seems like a critical element. The man that forces compliance due to his position is not an alpha.
A friend of mine recently observed the new Sharia police in Vancouver accosting young women wearing sun dresses on the street. These brown shirts are not alphas. They might be deltas, but they appear to think of themselves as alphas. It is as if a piece of the SSH needs to be discussed before Vox releases his book. What is the soulless compliance officer in a company, the rapist in back alleys, and the male that simply takes sex-and will murder to get it? Where do the Sharia police fit the SSH or the rape gangs in the UK?
What am I missing from the SSH concept that describes the violent ones that take sex by force rather than utilize personality?
You could have a whole gang of men who rape and pillage all day long, and within that group you'd find raping alphas, raping braves, raping deltas, raping gammas and so on. A man's SSH rank isn't affected by his culture or morals. Watch gangster movies and you will see the SSH play out amongst the scumbags. You'd also see the SSH in a group of pious monks.
My confusion comes from low status men rising to owner status in companies such that the women at that company seem more friendly both to their face and behind their back, and whether this phenomena was due to the situational status boost. Friend zoning makes sense as the company I'm immediately thinking of was a drone factory, so it might just be compartmentalizing.
I think it would depend greatly on environment. Gammas will do it to be superior in their own minds, but Deltas would do it because that's what is expected of them in a given society.
The soulless compliance officer is a Delta, the rapist in the back alley an Omega and the rapist-murderer a Gamma. The Brownshirts probably are a mixed bunch.
Nancy Micholson - each of those male groups (Sharia police, rape gangs, whatever) will have their own hierarchies among themselves, and within their broader community.
The SSH is amoral. Ugly foreign Muslim rapists can be Alpha too.
To their eyes, the most high status Western celebrity male is a faggy kaffir of no value who is going to hell unless he converts. Most of these kaffirs don't even have replacement level families, so they are functionally eunuchs, and their refusal to throw gays off roofs like a civilised person is at least Lambda adjacent.
Thank you for clarifying it further, Vox. As much as I might not want to admit who or what rank I am, denial harms more than it helps. Omega is the most plausible rank.
Do you think Alphas or Bravos benefit from having close proximity to their team? I'm specifically thinking about return to office/remote work conversations. I understand there's other economic/political considerations but I've wondered if this has any impact.
What is your ssh rank if you like to lead others and do your job well as it pertains to stuff you care about (your side hustle, for example) but not while working your career job?
No, you can tell from "likes to lead others", which isn't a lone wolf at all. Sigma is neither desirable or some sort of goal, it's just a behavior pattern.
Disinterested in that he's not applying himself to his own advantage or the advantage of his family. "Not influenced by considerations of personal advantage". He applies himself to things he cares about and not to things he doesn't, in this case his job.
JackedGuy - Depends how many attractive women are in your life and treating you nice, and how honest you are with yourself about where your side hustle is & is going.
A considerable amount. My side hustle is growing and I know that eventually it will be what I do for the rest of my life and no longer have to work a conventional job
Once you have made enough money (or a preplanned endgame) from your side hustle, would you retire immediately, or would you feel an obligation to your team to continue?
Part of Alpha/Bravo-ness, is that sense of duty towards your subordinates.
JackedGuy - Congratulations. Leading a group of guys is more Alpha sounding, doing your own thing business-wise is more Sigma sounding.
Would you say you are the life and soul of the party, spending a lot of social energy on people you don't really care about in order to keep a good vibe going, or are you more reserved and don't engage much with people you don't have some interest in?
SDL has historically not been keen on this question, but who knows, this may take off:
What if I'm not particularly socially dominant. Like, I can be when necessary. But not all of the time. Now, with that being said, I have phenomenal social skills. No social awkwardness
I do my own thing. My friends try to interact with other dudes at bars to convey social proof to chicks but I don't do that because I don't like talking to low value dudes. I'd rather just entertain myself with whoever I'm with.
JackedGuy - Sounds more Sigma to me. The two Alphas I know well are like the unofficial Mayors of their towns/neighbourhoods, regularly dealing with low value people and mingling with everyone at the social venues.
The local grannies love these guys, they are always stopping in the street to say hello to some old dear.
One of them is keen on his Christmas card list, I believe he sends over 700. He is a local legend for that alone.
I've been at a company that replaced the CFO and the CTO at the same time I started there. The CEO was a 50-year-old Ultra-Alpha and a third-generation-CEO. (I've never known anyone with such a natural authority.) The new CFO was a 40-year-old lawyer and a Sigma, and the new CTO was an Alpha who switched careers from being a Major in the Army to his first job in civilian life, also 40 years old.
After three months they had their first official appearance in front of the whole HQ-staff, around 300 people. The event's purpose was to present these two men and a plan on how to reshape the company's "spirit".
The CEO kicked it off by introducing his new colleagues, making jokes about specific departments and their heads, highlighting the excellent quarterly performance. Everyone was blissfully happy to be graced by his presence and the fact that he spoke to them, hoping he would address their department next.
The CFO took over and switched into a Bravo-role, praising the CEO for all the outstanding work he has done so far, praising the employees for the company's unusually high ROI.
Then the CTO took over, and that dude wasn't going to "bravo around", he went full-Alpha. He described how the company needed to change in order to expand and that the C-level "now" has a plan on how to do that. The CEO didn't like that one bit, but he kept his cool because he knew something about him the others didn't.
Eventually the CTO concluded his speech with: "So, people, you see that we know what we're doing. Leave the important things to us, and you do what you do best: Nothing!" The guys and I broke out in laughter and couldn't believe he really said that to all the Deltas and women who were generating the unusually high ROI the CFO was talking about. The staff was mostly shocked and couldn't comprehend what they had just witnessed. The CFO had to turn around to hide his laughter. And the CEO just stood there, looking at him with a slight smirk on his face. He waited for just the right amount of time to pass by to let the shame sink in, but not enough time to ridicule the C-level, and then went over to the CTO, congratulated him on his "unique" performance, and did his thing to save the day.
So, while the Sigma did the correct thing to play the Bravo, the ex-Major, who had only led male soldiers before, failed to read the situation completely. That "doing nothing" remark was intended as a joke, and it certainly works with a company of soldiers who are listening to their Major, but with a bunch of women and civilian Deltas who hear him speak for the first time, that was definitely the wrong move. His original failure to adapt to his situational status evolved into a disaster. From then on, the CFO and the CEO were doing the corporate events that addressed the general staff. The CTO focused on events where only the managerial class was present, and he was an excellent and truly inspiring Alpha in front of that audience.
If you don't like leading and prefer to just do your job well and undisturbed, you're not an Alpha, but life may put you in that position nevertheless sometimes. I see it happening more often, in fact...I wonder if there's a dearth of alphas going on?
Many people who are not alphas enjoy leading when it’s appropriate to their level of competence because it’s a recognition of their rightful status and taking on responsibility confirms our worth and competence.
That last picture looks exactly like a roomate I had years ago. He was and "aspiring" chef, going to school I think for culinary arts, but he rarely ever cooked anything.
I was just learning how to cook being on my own, & was cooking every day. Foolishly I would ask his opinion on my dishes & he would nitpick every single aspect with a smug look while he ate frozen pizza. Eventually I stopped asking his opinion cuz it was tedious.
Every time I cooked he would just get irritated. In hindsight now, it's the Gamma not willing risk failure for trying, & getting mad at the higher status man who in spite of multiple failures keeps trying.
Situational. Can a man tire of being a leader, tire of being asked to head up another task force or committee, or serve on the church council again and again? Tire of being asked for his opinion all the freakin time? Is the role for life or do alphas move to delta status at periods in their life, maybe a decade here and there? Would this be considered situational yet your status is what it is, was and will always be?
Sort of. Different SSH types respond to situational roles differently.
A Delta will quickly get exhausted filling an Alpha role.
A Gamma will melt down filling an Alpha role.
A Bravo will ignore the strategic parts of an Alpha role.
An Alpha in many ways gets energized from being in an Alpha role.
Everyone gets tired, but it doesn't change their core behavioral set. The roles you've described are all temporary situational work type roles as opposed to the core behavioral set. That's the point of the article. In brief even if Michael Jordan quits the NBA he's still Michael Jordan.
To illustrate the point better, you've described an alpha who gets tired of being on a church council and wants a break. Now consider a gamma who is tired of being on a church council and wants a break. Both are stepping down from the same situational role, both are tired, and both are going to handle the situation entirely differently because of their core values. An alpha retreats in an alpha manner, a gamma in a gamma manner and so on.
On a vaguely related note, Tubcuddle's creepy-as-a-millipede Tumblr page makes me feel better about almost every woman I've ever dated. Nines pages of photos and all of them together don't add up to a 10.
I’d love to see an article going into detail about what happens when a hierarchy is led by core gammas acting as situational alphas.
What about gammas as situational sigmas? That’s piles of burning bodies kinda stuff.
Breaking Bad seems like a story about a gamma who becomes a sigma and leaves a trail of utter ruin in his wake.
Gus was definately an Alpha. He died and the whole series plunged into chaos.
I think you'd see a lot of petty abuses of power.
Kind of like Frank Burns in M*A*S*H when he was in charge. He figured out the M stood for mobile so he made the crew move the entire camp across the road and back again.
The purpose of managerial structures in artificial limited liability firms is to obviate natural leadership. Little tests and the tyranny of quantities and aggregates are in their nature. It's been a while but IIRC Frank Burns's rationale was to drill and be prepared for the job. In hindsight, the writers always had Capt. Pierce, who was good at getting girls and an officer as a surgeon, busy undermining Maj. Burns's authority and denigrating the broader institutional structures with his wit and comic timing. MASH was a pop culture institutional underminer of Monty Pythonesque weight on the heels of and to cap off the vibrancy and bike thefts of the summers of '67 and '68.
Or order the team to refactor the code you still haven't delivered to the client for no other reason than you have no way to contribute.
Or demand you to waste another month attempting to reimplement a feature in a way that's fundamentally incompatible with your systems.
To imagine some examples
There's a YouTube video called "If American Psycho were about Programmers" that this comment made me think of...
Condensing it into an article could be informative and entertaining.
If you're interested in an object lesson on this subject, look into the SFWA's unlawful ejection of our host.
I give as an example every nation in the old British Commonwealth. Gammas, Lambdas, and women.
No need for an article, or even a adjective, to cover that scenario: "Disaster"
"Corporate Cancer" doesn't directly refer to it as such, if I recall, but it does talk about such things.
"The one reason that being able to correctly identify your own SSH pattern is useful is because it allows you to seek appropriate situational roles and avoid those situational roles in which you are likely to fail."
Been a wine professional for nearly two decades. Status in that world can be exceptionally fluid, exceptionally touchy. Wine is such a unique beast.
You may have a $15,000 bottle, which correlates with a certain type of High Status. However, have you been to that estate? Have you spoken to that winemaker? Have you visited those cellars? A man with a $15,000 bottle can be "trumped" in status by a man who cannot afford that bottle within his lifetime, but because of his talent, skill, industry position, what have you, that man has access to a level of "situational status" the rich man cannot buy. It flips the script. Suddenly no one cares who bought the $15,000 bottle; they just want to hear from the man who KNOWS about it.
Countless times I've had to defuse an alpha wine boomer/bro/techie because they simply didn't know what they were talking about. I do this without condescension, arrogance, or triteness. Reaction goes one of two ways: defensiveness or submission. With defensiveness, I simply allow it to happen, for my "status" at that point means nothing and I'm not in a position to force anybody to accept anything. With submission, suddenly I am the alpha among alphas simply through knowledge and experience alone, not necessarily through any type of material social/physical markers (money, physique, etc).
Back to Vox's quote. Some alphas instinctively knew this and would defer to me immediately. It's quite a thing to have a man who has exceeded you beyond all metrics genuinely hanging on your every word. The reverse of this is that, when this situational context ends, all parties understand that we go back to our typical roles. I have no trouble carrying your wine cases to your Maserati.
"I have no trouble carrying your wine cases to your Maserati."
Alpha who carrying stuff to beta car? Why would you do that?
I'm not an alpha, and that car wasn't a beta.
Gammas in alpha roles are unfortunately quite common, especially in technical fields, since clown world promotes feminine, passive aggressive behavior. The fact that being a "nerd" is "cool" now makes them especially insufferable.
Another insanely frustrating thing about having a Gamma boss in an Alpha position is their abject refusal to lead. One important Alpha task is to give the green light. To say "Okay, this is what we'll do!" Gammas hide away in their office or work remotely and refuse to answer emails whenever there's a decision to be made. But then they love to nit-pick, accuse and question the decision after it's been made - especially if it didn't turn out perfectly.
Facing raw reality as it is. Is much more a masculine trait. We submit to and integrate said reality to our advantage.
Alphaness is definitely the pinnacle of that on a group level.
Society cannot afford men who cannot.
Women diffuse responsibility, so no-one gets the official credit or blame, even though everyone but the hopeless sperg knows who owns it.
It preserves relationships in the female matrix, and allows kids, especially emotionally volatile and tender teens, to save face, so they can learn from failure.
Men who adopt this mode who are not officially eunuchs (and even then...) are creepy and disruptive.
Behavioral cross-dressing in a sense. As creepy as that.
This is one of my biggest gripes with Gammas in work situations -- the cowardice to do anything. I now only permit input/opinions, and forbid them recommendations, because I know it will just be a clever scheme to do nothing at all.
This is indistinguishable from female behavior in the same roles.
I've only reliably seen that commanding leadership in women when it's about her family and her children. It's the only time when she leads and carries risk herself. Otherwise, her ways and the gamma's ways are identical.
Agreed
There's at least one other female behavior I've seen in those roles: shopping around for someone else to make the decision for her. She may call it "consensus building" or "fact finding" or "valuing all inputs," but it's really about offloading the burden of responsibility.
If she is decent, pleasant, grateful and does her thing well, then I help her. You help your friends and your friends help you. It's called 'Tend and befriend' in psychology. Talk with friends, be decent enough to be invited, listen very carefully, and eventually you'll find a way to handle it.
If not, I try to be indifferent. This is what boundaries are for. Big girls solve their big problems. If I don't think she'll protect me or my solutions, then she's alone.
That's exactly right. The second part of that effort is turning the good idea that the 'consensus built' into her idea that she can later take credit for.
Only once it's paying off. If it's not working, her mistake was trusting her team.
She'll make no bones about saying that very thing to her boss. I've witnessed this in person and it's ugly.
I work with a gamma who is exactly like this. Luckily he is not a manager.
Pattern/position mismatch can be quite comical, if predictably frustrating for some. My M.A. advisor was a French sigma. He'd literally fly into Dublin for three days every week to take care of his obligations then fly back to Paris. He began his undergrad courses by saying:
"As you know, we are supposed to meet for 12 weeks -- and as you know, it is... impossible, to meet, all 12 weeks... and so, we will meet for... 8 weeks? Hmmm? We will not make up the missed time. Please do not email me. Okay? Okay. Let's begin."
We got along great, but a lot of folks found his aloofness frustrating. Same thing with my own students. Some struggled without the involved leadership that alphas provide or all of the excess work that deltas do (e.g., putting notes online for students). Some found it frustrating that I didn't assign specific paper topics, insisting they wrote on whatever it was from the text that struck them. Others struggled with the absence of due dates or general refusal to micromanage.
"When are our two papers due?"
"Whenever you finish them. If you want feedback on the first, don't wait til the end of the semester. I stop accepting papers three days before grades are due." Smiles on some faces, total lostness on others.
Most people like being told what to do.
Such people could easily simulate autonomy by following rules on these things.
My parents taught me a rule, for example, that you should always try to complete assignments as close as possible to the assignment date, not the due date. If you get that paper done, then you don't have to worry about it anymore.
How does situational status effect desire? I've seen gammas and deltas as situational alphas who tend to have better than expected relationships with the women on staff, and it's been puzzling me. Is this a fractal thing, or something else?
Simple, a woman who is attached to the situational hierarchy will be more likely to attracted to you based on your situational status.
Good relations as in the friend zone? Or good relations as in generating the desire within the women to follow Mr. Alpha’s lead? The alpha’s ability to create the desire to follow his lead seems like a critical element. The man that forces compliance due to his position is not an alpha.
A friend of mine recently observed the new Sharia police in Vancouver accosting young women wearing sun dresses on the street. These brown shirts are not alphas. They might be deltas, but they appear to think of themselves as alphas. It is as if a piece of the SSH needs to be discussed before Vox releases his book. What is the soulless compliance officer in a company, the rapist in back alleys, and the male that simply takes sex-and will murder to get it? Where do the Sharia police fit the SSH or the rape gangs in the UK?
What am I missing from the SSH concept that describes the violent ones that take sex by force rather than utilize personality?
You could have a whole gang of men who rape and pillage all day long, and within that group you'd find raping alphas, raping braves, raping deltas, raping gammas and so on. A man's SSH rank isn't affected by his culture or morals. Watch gangster movies and you will see the SSH play out amongst the scumbags. You'd also see the SSH in a group of pious monks.
My confusion comes from low status men rising to owner status in companies such that the women at that company seem more friendly both to their face and behind their back, and whether this phenomena was due to the situational status boost. Friend zoning makes sense as the company I'm immediately thinking of was a drone factory, so it might just be compartmentalizing.
I'd assume that religious police would be a natural career for gammas, not deltas.
I think it would depend greatly on environment. Gammas will do it to be superior in their own minds, but Deltas would do it because that's what is expected of them in a given society.
The soulless compliance officer is a Delta, the rapist in the back alley an Omega and the rapist-murderer a Gamma. The Brownshirts probably are a mixed bunch.
Stop using morality in your calculations. SSH is about how well the guys play in the roles. Not if they play for the right team.
Nancy Micholson - each of those male groups (Sharia police, rape gangs, whatever) will have their own hierarchies among themselves, and within their broader community.
The SSH is amoral. Ugly foreign Muslim rapists can be Alpha too.
To their eyes, the most high status Western celebrity male is a faggy kaffir of no value who is going to hell unless he converts. Most of these kaffirs don't even have replacement level families, so they are functionally eunuchs, and their refusal to throw gays off roofs like a civilised person is at least Lambda adjacent.
Thank you for clarifying it further, Vox. As much as I might not want to admit who or what rank I am, denial harms more than it helps. Omega is the most plausible rank.
The AI-generated pictures are on point today. That last one is particularly funny with its caption.
Thanks SDL, well explained.
"My Alpha at work is a total Gamma creep" sounds garbled, but everyone who has had a normie-wagie career gets it immediately.
Do you think Alphas or Bravos benefit from having close proximity to their team? I'm specifically thinking about return to office/remote work conversations. I understand there's other economic/political considerations but I've wondered if this has any impact.
That might be more of an extrovert vs introvert thing.
What is your ssh rank if you like to lead others and do your job well as it pertains to stuff you care about (your side hustle, for example) but not while working your career job?
What's your side hustle? No need to be specific, just the general idea.
Writing and fitness coaching
Fitness coaching as in "coaching one particular individual"?
Multiple concurrently
I mean "one individual at a time" or "a group of people at the same time".
Online coaching and writing. Coaching multiple clients online. Not in a group
You are a 100% bonfide sigma male!
Just because I get girls and like doing my own thing. It's that simple?
No, you can tell from "likes to lead others", which isn't a lone wolf at all. Sigma is neither desirable or some sort of goal, it's just a behavior pattern.
You are just disinterested/unmotivated.
Uninterested/ unmotivated.
Unless you meant neutral and w/out a vested interest?
(Hoping to salvage the word "disinterested" as it has a useful role.)
Disinterested in that he's not applying himself to his own advantage or the advantage of his family. "Not influenced by considerations of personal advantage". He applies himself to things he cares about and not to things he doesn't, in this case his job.
Beautiful. Thanks!
Yeah man, you're a lone wolf.
JackedGuy - Depends how many attractive women are in your life and treating you nice, and how honest you are with yourself about where your side hustle is & is going.
A considerable amount. My side hustle is growing and I know that eventually it will be what I do for the rest of my life and no longer have to work a conventional job
Once you have made enough money (or a preplanned endgame) from your side hustle, would you retire immediately, or would you feel an obligation to your team to continue?
Part of Alpha/Bravo-ness, is that sense of duty towards your subordinates.
Quit immediately. I'm concerned about myself first and foremost
JackedGuy - Congratulations. Leading a group of guys is more Alpha sounding, doing your own thing business-wise is more Sigma sounding.
Would you say you are the life and soul of the party, spending a lot of social energy on people you don't really care about in order to keep a good vibe going, or are you more reserved and don't engage much with people you don't have some interest in?
SDL has historically not been keen on this question, but who knows, this may take off:
https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/the-most-important-question
What if I'm not particularly socially dominant. Like, I can be when necessary. But not all of the time. Now, with that being said, I have phenomenal social skills. No social awkwardness
Again, that sounds Sigma to me, for what that's worth.
The Alpha - Sigma split is going to disappear in many situations where both men would do more or less the same socially dominant thing.
For the Alpha, it's their nature, always 'on', for the Sigma it's a conscious decision, specific to an occasion.
You can tell them apart because the Sigma will be wearing a black crew cut T-shirt with rolled up cuffs.
I do my own thing. My friends try to interact with other dudes at bars to convey social proof to chicks but I don't do that because I don't like talking to low value dudes. I'd rather just entertain myself with whoever I'm with.
JackedGuy - Sounds more Sigma to me. The two Alphas I know well are like the unofficial Mayors of their towns/neighbourhoods, regularly dealing with low value people and mingling with everyone at the social venues.
The local grannies love these guys, they are always stopping in the street to say hello to some old dear.
One of them is keen on his Christmas card list, I believe he sends over 700. He is a local legend for that alone.
I've been at a company that replaced the CFO and the CTO at the same time I started there. The CEO was a 50-year-old Ultra-Alpha and a third-generation-CEO. (I've never known anyone with such a natural authority.) The new CFO was a 40-year-old lawyer and a Sigma, and the new CTO was an Alpha who switched careers from being a Major in the Army to his first job in civilian life, also 40 years old.
After three months they had their first official appearance in front of the whole HQ-staff, around 300 people. The event's purpose was to present these two men and a plan on how to reshape the company's "spirit".
The CEO kicked it off by introducing his new colleagues, making jokes about specific departments and their heads, highlighting the excellent quarterly performance. Everyone was blissfully happy to be graced by his presence and the fact that he spoke to them, hoping he would address their department next.
The CFO took over and switched into a Bravo-role, praising the CEO for all the outstanding work he has done so far, praising the employees for the company's unusually high ROI.
Then the CTO took over, and that dude wasn't going to "bravo around", he went full-Alpha. He described how the company needed to change in order to expand and that the C-level "now" has a plan on how to do that. The CEO didn't like that one bit, but he kept his cool because he knew something about him the others didn't.
Eventually the CTO concluded his speech with: "So, people, you see that we know what we're doing. Leave the important things to us, and you do what you do best: Nothing!" The guys and I broke out in laughter and couldn't believe he really said that to all the Deltas and women who were generating the unusually high ROI the CFO was talking about. The staff was mostly shocked and couldn't comprehend what they had just witnessed. The CFO had to turn around to hide his laughter. And the CEO just stood there, looking at him with a slight smirk on his face. He waited for just the right amount of time to pass by to let the shame sink in, but not enough time to ridicule the C-level, and then went over to the CTO, congratulated him on his "unique" performance, and did his thing to save the day.
So, while the Sigma did the correct thing to play the Bravo, the ex-Major, who had only led male soldiers before, failed to read the situation completely. That "doing nothing" remark was intended as a joke, and it certainly works with a company of soldiers who are listening to their Major, but with a bunch of women and civilian Deltas who hear him speak for the first time, that was definitely the wrong move. His original failure to adapt to his situational status evolved into a disaster. From then on, the CFO and the CEO were doing the corporate events that addressed the general staff. The CTO focused on events where only the managerial class was present, and he was an excellent and truly inspiring Alpha in front of that audience.
If you don't like leading and prefer to just do your job well and undisturbed, you're not an Alpha, but life may put you in that position nevertheless sometimes. I see it happening more often, in fact...I wonder if there's a dearth of alphas going on?
Many people who are not alphas enjoy leading when it’s appropriate to their level of competence because it’s a recognition of their rightful status and taking on responsibility confirms our worth and competence.
Meritocracy. Not simply based on skill but on the right behavioural pattern for the job.
That last picture looks exactly like a roomate I had years ago. He was and "aspiring" chef, going to school I think for culinary arts, but he rarely ever cooked anything.
I was just learning how to cook being on my own, & was cooking every day. Foolishly I would ask his opinion on my dishes & he would nitpick every single aspect with a smug look while he ate frozen pizza. Eventually I stopped asking his opinion cuz it was tedious.
Every time I cooked he would just get irritated. In hindsight now, it's the Gamma not willing risk failure for trying, & getting mad at the higher status man who in spite of multiple failures keeps trying.
Thank you for posting. I was in a very similar position with a friend, and the issue was writing. My eyes are open now!
Yea it’s something to look back with the tool and knowledge of thr SSH and realize, “Oh yea, now that makes complete sense.”