Employee 1: Yahoo • Hacker News Board

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#91

Post by jsn117 » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 1:16 AM UTC

overcast wrote: post #11

jshen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fine to decide you don't want their jobs, but it's a mistake to frame it as "bullshit" which he does after the section you quote. Human nature isn't bullshit, and any endeavor which requires a large number of people to accomplish requires the management of human nature.

No, sitting in meetings all day, essentially accomplishing nothing really is bullshit. Granted, there are some super productive management teams out there, but the majority of time is spent dealing with nonsense politics, and having meetings to schedule meetings. Stereotypes have basis in reality.

> Stereotypes have basis in reality.

Why else would they exist?

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#92

Post by ben_jones » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 1:35 AM UTC

jsn117 wrote: post #91

overcast wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, sitting in meetings all day, essentially accomplishing nothing really is bullshit. Granted, there are some super productive management teams out there, but the majority of time is spent dealing with nonsense politics, and having meetings to schedule meetings. Stereotypes have basis in reality.

> Stereotypes have basis in reality. Why else would they exist?

As a way for people to feel like they understand something that they really don't. The human mind will make all kinds of contraptions (religion etc.) as an attempt to rationalize and understand the unknown. I think stereotypes serve the same purpose.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#93

Post by emmfr » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 1:56 AM UTC

brianpan wrote: post #34

hitekker wrote: post #5

Excellent article; I thought the section copy-pasted below to be a rather non-trivial, unintuitive, and meaningful lesson: > Craig : How was it to ride that wave, especially when the bottom fell out in 2000? > Tim : When things are going well and you’re in a growth industry, you don’t have to deal with many difficult issues. It’s the old cliche, winning solves everything. > Craig : For sure. > Tim : It’s really true.…

I don't know if it's apropos to talk sports, but in a very real way this is what happened to the Warriors. They had an historic, record-breaking season that allowed them all sorts of bad habits. In the Finals when they are on the verge of reaching their goal, those bad habits showed and contributed to their falling short. Coach Steve Kerr talked about recognizing those mistakes during the season but it is hard to cor…

Or maybe we are just making up narratives to explain regression toward the mean?

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#94

Post by overcast » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 2:03 AM UTC

jsn117 wrote: post #91

overcast wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, sitting in meetings all day, essentially accomplishing nothing really is bullshit. Granted, there are some super productive management teams out there, but the majority of time is spent dealing with nonsense politics, and having meetings to schedule meetings. Stereotypes have basis in reality.

> Stereotypes have basis in reality. Why else would they exist?

They could exist in someones mind, make believe, not reality.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#95

Post by steve371 » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 2:15 AM UTC

It is get to my heart

>I need to point to something and say to myself ‘that’s what I’ve been building.’

But then reality kick in. You want money, you want good work/life balance. Well, it is hard to have them all sometime, imho.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#96

Post by Dr_tldr » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 2:46 AM UTC

mwfunk wrote: post #66

hitekker wrote: post #5

Excellent article; I thought the section copy-pasted below to be a rather non-trivial, unintuitive, and meaningful lesson: > Craig : How was it to ride that wave, especially when the bottom fell out in 2000? > Tim : When things are going well and you’re in a growth industry, you don’t have to deal with many difficult issues. It’s the old cliche, winning solves everything. > Craig : For sure. > Tim : It’s really true.…

Success hides failure...every company does some things right and some things wrong, but when things are going well it can be very hard to get anyone to acknowledge the wrong things. People can always point to the profits and use that as evidence for staying the course, even on internal issues that don't directly relate to P&L. IMO this is what ultimately kills successful companies- once they've conquered their market…

Interestingly, this problem of decadence and decay scales to countries, royal dynasties, empires, etc. We don't yet have any companies so large that their period of decline has been able to last for centuries, but it's theoretically possible.

I don't think Oracle and IBM will be around in 2050, but I wouldn't have thought they'd be around now in 2005, so my perception is probably off.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#97

Post by jshen » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 2:51 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #86

jshen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing I didn't do that.

Well, the author talked about meetings after meetings, slow progress and a huge hierarchy of bosses, and you assumed they are wrong to call it bullshit because "Human nature isn't bullshit, and any endeavor which requires a large number of people to accomplish requires the management of human nature." As if its inevitable that the "management of human nature" should necessarily take the form the author argued against…

A hierarchy of bosses is not the same thing as Dilbertesque management culture. An organization above a certain size requires managers of managers and meetings. There certainly are bad managers and bad meetings, but it is bad logic to jump from that to a dismissal of management and meetings in general.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#98

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 4:33 AM UTC

Meegul wrote: post #82

douche wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good spaghetti monster, if you don't recognize Sun or C64, you really need to study the history of your industry a little better. I am not that old, that I remember Java before it was mostly abandoned by Oracle.

I'm familiar with what a C64 is, but I have never seen one in my life. The majority of my fellow undergrad students know next to nothing about the history of computing. But in reality, that's just fine. If our goals are to become functioning software engineers, all that really matters is what's in use now. Provided, a little historical context can help us make some better decisions, but you don't see people coding in…

> But in reality, that's just fine. If our goals are to become functioning software engineers, all that really matters is what's in use now.

I used to agree with you, but I've come a full 180 on this. I now believe that 'functioning software engineers' need a thorough understanding of what has already been done in the past to avoid endless re-invention of that past (but usually worse). The amount of resources that is squandered because present day engineers have no idea of how we got where we are today easily weighs up against the extra cost of requiring a class in computer history prior to becoming a functioning engineer.

If we don't do that we'll be stuck forever at the present 'local maximum', which is essentially mostly a rehash of old ideas but with some eye candy thrown in and usually more latency and waste. I suspect that we can do a lot better with our current hardware than we are really doing.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#99

Post by itchyouch » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 4:56 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #30

overcast wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was that he was emphasizing the bosses bosses bosses boss. Many levels of nonsense, leading to politics. Managers do need to exist, and I agree they have a purpose, but often times, even in the company I work for currently. There is more management than there is workers.

Well somebody has to manage the managers! The whole flat org with minimal managers "ideal" has been tried lots of places and always failed. I think even Google tried it at some point. Let me tell you a few things that happen when your org gets flatter: 1. Decisions get bottlenecked Typically, the "flat org" thing gets tried without empowering the rank-and-file to make big decisions. So decisions that would normally g…

There's a balance to how flat an org can be. One can still have a 100,000 person organization that is only 7-8 levels deep. e.g. Starbucks has ~120k US employees and is about 8 levels from a barista to CEO. My organization is about 3k people and is about ~5 levels to the CEO.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#100

Post by itchyouch » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 4:58 AM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #72

cableshaft wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm....That's basically where I am now. I look at what my superiors are doing and it's just constant meetings with the occasional writing up tasks and doing code reviews, pretty much nothing else. I'm not sure I want to get promoted into that role. I've had project management roles before, but the meetings were minimal and I still got to code at least 40% of the time.

I am going through that right now. For a long time I was working more on infrastructure in the background where we just had to make things working for other engineers without execs paying much attention. Now I am working on a product and the whole process is a nightmare. - Long meetings with directors and project managers who never read any previous reports so you spend hours explaining the same thing again and again…

Once you're in middle management, it's all about putting on a show like you're contributing in order advance & not get laid off. Honestly, I think it's a survival tactic.