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Ask HN: What to do about dogma in a company culture?

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Re: Ask HN: What to do about dogma in a company culture?

#21

Post by jamesku »

majewsky wrote: post #19
tootie wrote: post #8

My company is investing heavily in ML capabilities despite having no strategy whatsoever on what to do with it. The fundamental problem is a lack of customer focus. Technologists get so far up their own butts that they think technology choices are more important than solving customer problems.

This is the correct answer. Whenever someone argues for a certain technology (e.g. for rewriting in a different language or framework), ask for the benefit to the customer.

I absolutely agree. What is a tactful way to convince others of that benefit?

Re: Ask HN: What to do about dogma in a company culture?

#22

Post by jamesku »

fnbr wrote: post #4

It's tough. I experienced that at a previous job, at a consulting firm, which prized Excel expertise over everything else (eg over data science skills with Python). I just left, as I knew there was no easy way to argue. I think you're in a tough spot. Unless you're very senior, and have buy-in from all the higher-ups, it's going to be almost impossible to change the course of the company. Unless you have a specific r…

This has been my experience too, unfortunately, and I'd like to try something different to leaving. I work with amazing people, very smart, and very approachable. I'm questioning whether I should leave whenever I'm in this situation or if there's a more tactical approach I could take to guide them into a more diverse & adoptive mindset.

Re: Ask HN: What to do about dogma in a company culture?

#23

Post by duxup »

jamesku wrote: post #20
duxup wrote: post #18

Is it dogma if it is correct? You didn't really say why your company shouldn't go all in on React Native. Maybe they're small and they would benefit from being focused on React Native for now? I'm kinda confused on why ML and AR need to be focused on instead of or along with React Native.... kinda different things and not mutually exclusive. There's certainly some dogma out there about jumping into a laundry list of…

It's not about ML, AR, or react native, these are just examples you're getting distracted by. There are a ton of other examples anyone could give, but it's a distraction to focus on a specific example when the premise is ignored.

But you choose those, and the decision to focus on something certainly involves what else you might choose....

Re: Ask HN: What to do about dogma in a company culture?

#24

Post by jamesku »

scarejunba wrote: post #13

If you're at a startup (guessing so since it's HN) it's almost always better to commit hard to one approach, have that fail, and just pivot to something else. In any case, you'll be competing with teams who have chosen to commit hard to one thing, so diversifying is likely to win only if there are true synergies in doing these other things. Dogma is it's own thing, and it's easy to spot because the argument in suppor…

You bring up some good points.

Re: Ask HN: What to do about dogma in a company culture?

#25

Post by bradhe »

jamesku wrote: post #20
duxup wrote: post #18

Is it dogma if it is correct? You didn't really say why your company shouldn't go all in on React Native. Maybe they're small and they would benefit from being focused on React Native for now? I'm kinda confused on why ML and AR need to be focused on instead of or along with React Native.... kinda different things and not mutually exclusive. There's certainly some dogma out there about jumping into a laundry list of…

It's not about ML, AR, or react native, these are just examples you're getting distracted by. There are a ton of other examples anyone could give, but it's a distraction to focus on a specific example when the premise is ignored.

I'll be honest: Based on the way you snipe at the replier for _your_ lack of clarity and the tone of your original post you might be in that category of engineers who think they're some kind of super genius but are actually just assholes.

Re: Ask HN: What to do about dogma in a company culture?

#26

Post by oceanghost »

fnbr wrote: post #4

It's tough. I experienced that at a previous job, at a consulting firm, which prized Excel expertise over everything else (eg over data science skills with Python). I just left, as I knew there was no easy way to argue. I think you're in a tough spot. Unless you're very senior, and have buy-in from all the higher-ups, it's going to be almost impossible to change the course of the company. Unless you have a specific r…

So this is one of the hardest lessons for engineers to learn. Being right doesn't actually count for very much in the end.

Re: Ask HN: What to do about dogma in a company culture?

#27

Post by majewsky »

jamesku wrote: post #21
majewsky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the correct answer. Whenever someone argues for a certain technology (e.g. for rewriting in a different language or framework), ask for the benefit to the customer.

I absolutely agree. What is a tactful way to convince others of that benefit?

It's not an argument per se, it's a value system. A rewrite may be warranted if it allows you to deliver more features and improvements to customers afterwards. It's not warranted if it means you'll just stop delivering features and improvements for a year without accelerating the rate of improvements after the rewrite.

Re: Ask HN: What to do about dogma in a company culture?

#28

Post by fnbr »

jamesku wrote: post #22
fnbr wrote: post #4

It's tough. I experienced that at a previous job, at a consulting firm, which prized Excel expertise over everything else (eg over data science skills with Python). I just left, as I knew there was no easy way to argue. I think you're in a tough spot. Unless you're very senior, and have buy-in from all the higher-ups, it's going to be almost impossible to change the course of the company. Unless you have a specific r…

This has been my experience too, unfortunately, and I'd like to try something different to leaving. I work with amazing people, very smart, and very approachable. I'm questioning whether I should leave whenever I'm in this situation or if there's a more tactical approach I could take to guide them into a more diverse & adoptive mindset.

I agree, it sucks. I definitely would rather have worked with the rest of the team rather than leave as the core idea behind the company was pretty awesome.

Are you in this position currently? Are you trying anything different?

Re: Ask HN: What to do about dogma in a company culture?

#29

Post by guidfail »

majewsky wrote: post #19
tootie wrote: post #8

My company is investing heavily in ML capabilities despite having no strategy whatsoever on what to do with it. The fundamental problem is a lack of customer focus. Technologists get so far up their own butts that they think technology choices are more important than solving customer problems.

This is the correct answer. Whenever someone argues for a certain technology (e.g. for rewriting in a different language or framework), ask for the benefit to the customer.

> benefit to the customer

I smell an Amazon employee...

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