91–100 of 176 posts
> “ How much are you getting paid? How much equity do you have? All that shit becomes very important because it is often all you have.“ Yeah, “all that shit” like the way you can buy food or send your kid to college...
Sorry, the story totally lost me after she was describing the interaction with the FBI. I did not easily take away some conclusion about what she had done wrong or what deep pile of shit she had just created for herself, or what on 2 paths she had just chosen incorrectly, or daringly? (The paragraph ending, "I trusted the FBI to be good at their jobs." The next paragraph jumps right to generalizations, and I didn't c…
Sorry, the story totally lost me after she was describing the interaction with the FBI. I did not easily take away some conclusion about what she had done wrong or what deep pile of shit she had just created for herself, or what on 2 paths she had just chosen incorrectly, or daringly? (The paragraph ending, "I trusted the FBI to be good at their jobs." The next paragraph jumps right to generalizations, and I didn't c…
Sorry, the story totally lost me after she was describing the interaction with the FBI. I did not easily take away some conclusion about what she had done wrong or what deep pile of shit she had just created for herself, or what on 2 paths she had just chosen incorrectly, or daringly? (The paragraph ending, "I trusted the FBI to be good at their jobs." The next paragraph jumps right to generalizations, and I didn't c…
I think she's saying that it's odd to her, as someone who innately enjoys doing highly consequential work, that other people don't share in her enthusiasm. Similarly, coworkers must find it odd that she doesn't actively dodge such work or deal with it in a robotic, CYA manner, devoid of enthusiasm. Her realization about them and their realization about her are asymmetric in consequence. Even if she judges them it won…
You have, however, correctly summarized some aspects of my experiences working for the government, more succinctly and dispassionately than I could have. Thank you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same for me. I feel like the essay makes some good points about the type of people who gravitate towards middle management, but I'm unable to make the connections myself because the essay jumps around. I'm still confused -- is Matt Cutts the "idiot running my engineering org"?
I think this could and should be a lot clearer, but I doubt it. When you're bad mouthing your former boss, you usually don't state their name. Even better if you can leave the circumstances ambiguous enough that few people can guess. If you do name them, that's scorched earth. I'd expect a lot of clear anger directed towards Matt if he was the idiot. So I read it as her having a good working relationship with him, he…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> She has a manager who (apparently) has a low tolerance for risk. He probably got to where he is by spinning situations so that it's not his fault. He was upset that she contacted the FBI about a situation and took on more risk than he was comfortable with. I get that this appears to be the conclusion the author wants you to draw. But what's missing, to me, is that she has provided no evidence whatever to support it…
The missing piece of the puzzle is that we never meet the idiot manager in the story. She's in an organizational situation where her team has oversight over a team in the government implementing on a project but does not have the ability to directly set policy, constrain goals, or otherwise apply direct managerial leverage. The idiot in the story is the guy charging full speed ahead with a deployment of a product tha…
Ah. That makes sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> She has a manager who (apparently) has a low tolerance for risk. He probably got to where he is by spinning situations so that it's not his fault. He was upset that she contacted the FBI about a situation and took on more risk than he was comfortable with. I get that this appears to be the conclusion the author wants you to draw. But what's missing, to me, is that she has provided no evidence whatever to support it…
The missing piece of the puzzle is that we never meet the idiot manager in the story. She's in an organizational situation where her team has oversight over a team in the government implementing on a project but does not have the ability to directly set policy, constrain goals, or otherwise apply direct managerial leverage. The idiot in the story is the guy charging full speed ahead with a deployment of a product tha…
That's interesting, I didn't see it as reporting the other team to law enforcement. The law breaking was anticipated to be done by people outside government. The whole raise your right hand thing seemed weird (perhaps a formality) unless you think she was implicating specific people. In that case it makes more sense.