Why is this idiot running my engineering org? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is this idiot running my engineering org?

#111

Post by lumost » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

a_square_peg wrote: post #106

whack wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first part of the essay was a very interesting view into bureaucracy and overcoming it via personal connections. The second part seemed to be very hand-wavy armchair-psychologist-esque. The thesis seems to be that: - Some/many workers care more about job stability, as opposed to making a difference at work - Such workers are suffering from "real psychological damage" - They are constantly hounded by imposter synd…

The part that they "end up in startups more often than you might expect" was a fascinating line for me and one that resonates with me quite well based on my experience.

I've often been shocked by how conservative an unprofitable/stagnant growth startups will be with engineering time. I've seen growing teams locked in incremental product/platform investment with no major new customer features in the roadmap.

I wondered where the conservatism came from given that at a business level the status quo was failure. This seems like a plausible explanation.

Re: Why is this idiot running my engineering org?

#112

Post by underwater » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

> The way we fought the bureaucracy was to build networks of people whose goals were aligned and whose skill sets or resources were compatible.

During my stint in a bureaucractic organisation I always considered this types of people as a huge part of the problem.

Instead of being candid about what they wanted, open to dialog, and making the whole system better, they forced through ideas that aligned with their own world view via back channels.

This meant that instead of getting the best outcomes, we got the ideas pushed by people who had longest tenure or were the most political.

Re: Why is this idiot running my engineering org?

#113

Post by sukilot » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #13

mynegation wrote: post #9

I am all for leaders taking risks but talking to law enforcement without a lawyer or without contacting HR first (for professional matters) would probably be outside my limits.

US Digital Service (whom this person worked for) is under/within the Executive Office if the President. USDS folks have latitude others do not (this is from coffee with those who had a tour of duty and from interviews for a role within).

Unless the President is willing to commute your sentence or pardon you, the FBI can still take you down.

Re: Why is this idiot running my engineering org?

#114

Post by sukilot » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #58

polynomial wrote: post #44

She contacted the FBI to initiate an active investigation without informing her boss? Did I misread or misunderstand that?

I think she contacted the FBI in the expectation that they would just do a preliminary, informal assessment of whether an investigation should be started, without realizing they would immediately start one upon her contact.

It's like when you call the police over a noise complaint and don't expect them to roll up guns blazing.

Re: Why is this idiot running my engineering org?

#115

Post by ed25519FUUU » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 4:50 AM UTC

habeebtc wrote: post #109

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always lawyer up. As we’ve learned in the last few years, the FBI loves to catch people “lying” to agents as a precursor to persecuting them for political reasons.

Nah.

You’re right sorry. I forgot the FBI was full of good guys.

Re: Why is this idiot running my engineering org?

#116

Post by shadowgovt » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:00 AM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #100

shadowgovt wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

...the team she just called federal law enforcement on. 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.

It's not precisely that she called law enforcement on them, poor choice of words on my part. It's more that, if you will, she turned the "eye of Sauron" on the project. If the team she had oversight on thought they were going to meet deadlines with open security holes, having the FBI actively looking at what they're doing pretty much torpedoes that hope.

Re: Why is this idiot running my engineering org?

#117

Post by sukilot » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

austhrow743 wrote: post #91

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #52

> “ 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...

I’d put money on this lady coming from a privileged background. Story was a person who works recreationally being disgusted by having to interact with all the filthy proles who need to put food on the table.

Not necessarily. She was a talented, young, attractive, single person who was in the adventure phase of her career, hopping from job to job around the world with no expenses of note, working in government with older staid stable people.

Re: Why is this idiot running my engineering org?

#118

Post by mesozoic » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #71

mesozoic wrote: post #66

Why do people still use the term white supremacists to imply some nefarious group? The term has lost all value and is now used in mainstream best selling books and media to describe every white person. It literally now has no meaning and whenever anyone uses it I just think they're hunting the boogey man.

> Why do people still use the term white supremacists to imply some nefarious group? The term has lost all value and is now used in mainstream best selling books and media to describe every white person. What is an example of mainstream best selling books or media that use it that way? (I mean which specifically, not just in the sense of "it feels that it's used so much that it might as well mean that.") I'd argue, e…

White fragility applies the term so broadly that it implies the author herself is a white supremecist.

Re: Why is this idiot running my engineering org?

#119

Post by sukilot » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:12 AM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #76

> If someone had told me that one of my employees was hunting white supremacists with the FBI I wouldn’t have to ask who it was because, of course it’s you. It’s always you. This is obviously heavily embellished by the sort of person who’s really into Harry Potter as an adult.

It surprised me that USDS, an org specifically created to disrupt government IT, only had one "maverick".

Re: Why is this idiot running my engineering org?

#120

Post by a_square_peg » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

lumost wrote: post #111

a_square_peg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part that they "end up in startups more often than you might expect" was a fascinating line for me and one that resonates with me quite well based on my experience.

I've often been shocked by how conservative an unprofitable/stagnant growth startups will be with engineering time. I've seen growing teams locked in incremental product/platform investment with no major new customer features in the roadmap. I wondered where the conservatism came from given that at a business level the status quo was failure. This seems like a plausible explanation.

Yeah, I've been quite puzzled too, and figured perhaps they were anecdotal but perhaps they are not. I really like this definition of engineering process as "a decision making process (often iterative) in which the basic sciences, mathematics, and engineering sciences are applied to convert resources optimally to meet a stated objective" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_design_process) and have met too many, by their unwillingness to commit and take ownership of a decision, pretty much stall the entire engineering development progress.