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Revolutionaries at the Workplace

damnoptimist.substack.com

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Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#11

Post by mohanmcgeek »

Hokusai wrote: post #8

This is just pseudoscience. No studies, no test, just a guy opinion. Stop clarifying people this way. It's not useful, it's not insightfully. I have seen coworkers fighting for one thing but not another. One fights against bad work ethics, another for good tech and another one for their own right too be with his family. People is complex, everything comes in gradients and that changes as people grows and they learn a…

What is even an "Evolutionary"?

Author seems to be just written some intelligent sounding thing seemingly inspired by *Capital in the 21st Century*

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#12

Post by jancsika »

Quick digression--

Was Baudrillard's point essentially that capitalism is always the "main" function (hee hee) in the outer scope with everything else becoming subroutines/subprocesses/etc. of it? E.g., "Revolutionary" here is merely a local variable to a function do_capitalism_more_efficiently, rather than itself being a global variable in its own right.

I mean, I get that Baudrillard was essentially focusing on certain edge cases: e.g., where function challenge_capitalism was in fact running in a VM that was spun up by function do_capitalism_more_efficiently. But with that caveat, is there anything important I'm missing from his writing with my analogies to scope here?

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#13

Post by nineplay »

> Consider the ratio of R to E on the team when hiring

Even accepting his premise of Rs vs Es, this seems absurdly short-sighed. Engineers come and go, engineers can change their R/E approach over time or based on project. If you feel like you can't manage a team full of Rs - and decide to hire a less talented E for balance - then the problem is the way you manage. Take ownership of your employees and find ways to use their talents, don't throw your hands up and hire for some personality type that you imagine you've sussed out over a set of one hour interviews.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#15

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

I’ve adopted one or another approach in different projects and teams, it depends. Sometimes the team lacks someone to “push” the project in the bold, but ultimately right direction, and the only thing stopping is inertia/fear/politics. Other times it’s not clear what the “right” direction is and you need to discover together.

I guess it takes some calibration to know when it’s the time to be the jerk, but there are times it’s definitely necessary.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#16

Post by LaffertyDev »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #9
LaffertyDev wrote: post #2

I like this framing. My previous framing came from `Loonshots`, where Bahcall frames this as "Artists" (Revolutionaries) and "Soldiers" (Evolutionary). I felt that, in the context of engineering, Artist/Soldier felt dismissive against the soldier. Revolutionary/Evolutionary avoids that for the better. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39863447-loonshots

One mitigating thing I remember from that book is that no person is inherently classified as an "artist" or a "soldier" it's more that people can be operating in that mode depending on their current role, or even dividing time between one mode or the other depending on the circumstances.

Agreed. I don't think switching the framework from Artist/Soldier to Revolutionary/Evolutionary detracts from the malleability.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#17

Post by travisgriggs »

Mixed feelings; maybe just feeling a bit defensive as I fear I’ve been playing the role of revolutionary in my current work and don’t care for some of the negative descriptions which unnervingly ring pretty true.

Mid article though, it says

> That’s because organizations tend to become more bureaucratic, political and consensus-driven as they grow.

Is this somehow ever a good thing? Largely, all of those things just seem bad. Luxuries of inefficiency a product can enjoy only once it works itself into dominant/monopoly position where it’s bankrolling becomes secure.

The groups I’ve moved away from over the years (often with other revolutionaries moving on as well), became more evolutionary. And all of them have basically devolved into product lines on life support, the “evolutionary” employees left behind don’t understand why management won’t invest in them and would rather buy up competitive offerings to remain relevant.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#18

Post by AlbertCory »

I like this article, but there's another way of classifying that I also like: letter grades (remember those from school?) which uses hiring psychology a little more. In a successful startup, whom you hire makes or breaks you.

'A' players hire 'A' players.

'B' players hire 'C' players.

Independent of Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary, we have pure intelligence, education, and animal cunning. An 'A' player has all those, and moreover knows when a Revolutionary strategy is required, and when it's not.

A 'B' player tends to be Evolutionary, because it's safer, but occasionally he'll say "me, too!" to a Revolutionary if it seems to advance his career.

An 'A' player can recognize another one. That's all he or she wants to hire.

A 'B' player is bewildered and threatened by an 'A" player, and moreover, the 'A' player wants nothing to do with him. So he wants to hire someone who's safe and no threat to his tenuous position: the 'C' player.

After the startup is successful, the 'B' managers flood it with their resumes. They like a safe bet. Once they get in and start hiring their own, it's all over.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#19

Post by wrnr »

AlbertCory wrote: post #18

I like this article, but there's another way of classifying that I also like: letter grades (remember those from school?) which uses hiring psychology a little more. In a successful startup, whom you hire makes or breaks you. 'A' players hire 'A' players. 'B' players hire 'C' players. Independent of Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary, we have pure intelligence, education, and animal cunning. An 'A' player has all those,…

You like putting people in boxes and therefor others must, just like you, put people in boxes. It must be hard to be autistic.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#20

Post by groby_b »

AlbertCory wrote: post #18

I like this article, but there's another way of classifying that I also like: letter grades (remember those from school?) which uses hiring psychology a little more. In a successful startup, whom you hire makes or breaks you. 'A' players hire 'A' players. 'B' players hire 'C' players. Independent of Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary, we have pure intelligence, education, and animal cunning. An 'A' player has all those,…

That is, pardon the directness, bad pop psychology.

If A players could recognize another one, our industry's hiring wouldn't be so incredibly broken.

The idea that there are clear layers of engineering skill is... just plain wrong, and that's obvious to anyone who's worked on more than a few teams. It's a spectrum, and more, it's multidimensional. So is the idea that somehow people not in the top layer automatically hire worse people. I've worked with top skilled people (think "starting an entire new segment") who couldn't hire their way out of a wet paper bag. I've work with solid performers who weren't outstanding in any way, except they consistently hired excellent people.

I've also worked with people who were mediocre performers by themselves, but who significantly accelerated any team they were on. Not by visible output, but by being clearly necessary "glue" that bound the team closer together and helped people to shine.

I've seen superstars go to mediocre, and vice versa, just based on managers and or team they were on.

If you can't think about people in more subtle ways than "A,B,C" or "Revolutionaries vs Evolutionaries", you are significantly shortchanging yourself and your team.

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