the middle manager is doomed to remain just that. Once an office rat, always an office rat.

we live in a world of excess: too many kinds of coffee, too many magazines, too many types of bread, too many digital recordings of Beethoven's Ninth, too many choices of rearview mirrors on the latest Renault. Sometimes you say to yourself: It's too much, it's all too much.

the middle manager is doomed to remain just that. Once an office rat, always an office rat.

any effort at large-scale reorganization - that is, any project spanning more than two years and, more generally, anything that has not already been done - is inevitably doomed to failure.

Culture, which by definition serves no purpose, has now found a role as the consort of business. Right off the bat we have a beached whale, since there is nothing that disdains culture as much as business does. ... In fact, 'corporate culture' is nothing more than the crystallization of the stupidity of a group of people at a given moment.

Never, under any circumstances, accept a position of responsibility. You will be forced to work harder with no other benefits than a few extra bucks - 'peanuts,' as they say, if that.

Remember that work is not a place for self-fulfillment. If it were, you would know it.