The point I should have made clear was that data-entry clerks don't exist outside of corporations, because in isolation they're useless. More generally, mass production has been made possible by the production-line paradigm: break down the undertaking into tiny discrete jobs and assign a bunch of people to doing each one over and over again.

Once you get that kind of framework, exceptionally good workers aren't very helpful, because the people to either side of them in the production line aren't necessarily going to keep up. You just need to shut up and do your job, the same as everyone else.

At the high levels - the people wielding their collective underlings as a tool, rather than the people who are part of that tool - this obviously no longer works.

Important note: all of the above, including my original comment, is 100% psuedo-intellectual wank, since I've never been part of a corporation, never taken a business management course or seminar, and never conducted or read a study on the efficacy of various business practices.