Rabois says "I resisted some of this approach during the PayPal years, I am now a proponent of it and have even devised a theory of why it is crucial"

Being anti-Thiel is not a shortcut to actually evaluating something on its own merits.

http://www.quora.com/PayPal/What-strong-beliefs-on-culture-f...

Care to at least share your experience instead of only attacking Thiel?

I'm guessing you either had a really bad day and are venting on the internet, or peter thiel did something awful to you in your past?

In what ways in Thiel full of BS?

In what ways is this type of thinking myopic and detrimental?

In what situations would you advise someone not to spend their time working on the most important thing they could be doing?

Thiel has some hits and misses. I actually agree with him in this one. Most people in the corporate world end up split between several tasks (coming from several different managers, who may or may not be different people) and put forth a mediocre performance on all of them. That may be fine in a big company, but it's fatal in a startup.

The main problem with a single-priority system is the question of who sets the priority. If the employee is autonomous and trusted (e.g. open allocation) it can work. In a traditional managed environment, you already start out with 2 priority sets: the manager's goals, and the employee's career interests.