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Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#71

Post by npacenop »

Graffur wrote: post #69
npacenop wrote: post #50

I don't want to sound like the bad guy here who defends corporate, but I kind of feel like OP and a lot of comments are missing the point. Which is: large business organizations are complex social structures. You can't have a complex social structure without a lot of communication going on. Of course there are zounds of different ways to communicate with each other and if you (and your colleagues) feel like certain m…

Your argument is that some meetings are necessary to make decisions. That is not what the OP is tired of. He is tired of 'corporate bs'. Productive meetings are not 'corporate bs' so your comment is not relevant.

Not quite... my argument is that a lot of meetings are necessary to keep an organization ticking - decision making is just a part of it. If for anyone that feels like corporate bs (which is a perfectly valid standpoint!!!), well... these people aren't cut for a corporate life. What's the problem in that? If I don't like children I probably wouldn't try to become a kindergarten teacher, if I absolutely can't stand communication and politics, I shouldn't work in a corporate setting.

And it's also perfectly OK to find this out about yourself only later in life, when you have gathered some (more) professional experience.

What's not OK imho is labelling other people's version of work as "corporate bs".

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#73

Post by jdrc »

npacenop wrote: post #50

I don't want to sound like the bad guy here who defends corporate, but I kind of feel like OP and a lot of comments are missing the point. Which is: large business organizations are complex social structures. You can't have a complex social structure without a lot of communication going on. Of course there are zounds of different ways to communicate with each other and if you (and your colleagues) feel like certain m…

> large business organizations are complex social structures. You can't have a complex social structure without a lot of communication going on.

The question is if this is required. Personally i can't wait for AI managers who are optimizing transparent objectives

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#74

Post by djray »

charcircuit wrote: post #25

Why are you going to useless meetings?

In many companies, it is frowned upon to decline meetings to which you are invited as a 'required' attendee. Likewise, it can be seen as rude if you repeatedly leave meetings which you don't think are a valuable use of your time.

Useless/overlong meetings seem to be a consequence of poor middle management and/or just the general structure of large corporations where lines of communication and hierarchies of responsibilities are complex.

What I do personally is to always ask for an agenda before accepting a meeting request. It's not rude to request one and can help focus discussion or see where you can add value.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#75

Post by noneeeed »

taffronaut wrote: post #65

Why not find the person who makes those "arbitrary and weird decisions to make the boss and customers happy"? (i) tell them that the decisions look arbitrary and weird from where you are standing, (ii) ask them why they make them. At worst, you will discover that they are an *hole (which you probably thought already), and at best they'll listen, and talk with you and you'll make a small step on fixing your corner of…

And of course you might discover that the decisions were not weird or arbitrary, and were in fact guided by a genuine need, or some context you are unaware of.

While it can definitely backfire if your product people never push back and agree to things that are impractical/impossible, ultimately "keeping the customer happy" is how the business stays in business and paying people.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#76

Post by fxtentacle »

Maybe you just got unlucky with your company. My startup CEO allows everyone to work remotely and we even got LTE USB sticks so that we can bring our laptop and work from nature. I'm currently surrounded by goats. The only mandatory event is an all-hands meeting once per week.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#77

Post by fxtentacle »

y4mi wrote: post #66
npacenop wrote: post #50

I don't want to sound like the bad guy here who defends corporate, but I kind of feel like OP and a lot of comments are missing the point. Which is: large business organizations are complex social structures. You can't have a complex social structure without a lot of communication going on. Of course there are zounds of different ways to communicate with each other and if you (and your colleagues) feel like certain m…

What you say is my experience as well, with one caveat: the large corporation is usually much less productive then the smallish team that actually able to "just do [thing]". It's just that it's impossible to scale that approach, so the larger the enterprise gets, the less you'll actually be shipping... As pretty much all of them seem to think it's easy to scale development teams, increasing their headcount and runnin…

Agree. My team is small, but everyone has 10+ years of experience. We can get a lot of research prototypes churned out quickly.

But then for the deployment and maintenance, they hired a large army of cheap inexperienced junior developers.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#78

Post by majewsky »

jdrc wrote: post #73
npacenop wrote: post #50

I don't want to sound like the bad guy here who defends corporate, but I kind of feel like OP and a lot of comments are missing the point. Which is: large business organizations are complex social structures. You can't have a complex social structure without a lot of communication going on. Of course there are zounds of different ways to communicate with each other and if you (and your colleagues) feel like certain m…

> large business organizations are complex social structures. You can't have a complex social structure without a lot of communication going on. The question is if this is required. Personally i can't wait for AI managers who are optimizing transparent objectives

> AI managers who are optimizing transparent objectives

All AIs that I've seen so far just optimize the reproduction of existing biases and/or serve to obfuscate policy decisions by ensuring that no person is left to blame. Are you stating a dream there, or did I miss a development towards practical AI systems that make decisions more transparent?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#79

Post by airbreather »

jzellis wrote: post #34

Yes. My answer was to walk away from the tech industry and culture and do part time IT work for my buddy's law firm whilst writing code in my spare time for fun and recovering from my stress-induced triple heart bypass. I make about as much as a Starbucks assistant manager, though, so your mileage may vary. :-D

How old were you when you needed the bypass?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#80

Post by jdrc »

majewsky wrote: post #78
jdrc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large business organizations are complex social structures. You can't have a complex social structure without a lot of communication going on. The question is if this is required. Personally i can't wait for AI managers who are optimizing transparent objectives

> AI managers who are optimizing transparent objectives All AIs that I've seen so far just optimize the reproduction of existing biases and/or serve to obfuscate policy decisions by ensuring that no person is left to blame. Are you stating a dream there, or did I miss a development towards practical AI systems that make decisions more transparent?

NNs dont need to be transparent as long as the objectives are transparent
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