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Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)

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Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)

#31

Post by pm90 »

karaterobot wrote: post #22
sweetheart wrote: post #4

A "wartime" business person is a hilarious idea. Gotta feel manly somehow, I guess!

I cringe when I see businesses using the vernacular of war to describe really mundane, essentially riskless goals. One company I was at had a "war room" dedicated to... increasing MRR to the arbitrary goals they'd set that quarter. They put a sign on the door. Another CEO told us in an all hands that the company was on a "war footing" until we found product market fit, and he'd use phrases like "total war" all the ti…

Yes its very cringe and only appeals to a certain section of people.

At a previous company I worked at, they took this even further, organizing themselves into "squads" (teams) which were part of "platoons" (orgs). Someone that interviewed pointed out that this was pretty aggressive/warlike terminology and wondered why they used it and they didn't really have a good answer.

Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)

#32

Post by pm90 »

bynkman wrote: post #30
luminouslow wrote: post #13

Companies often seem to employ terms related to armed conflict to heighten the sense of urgency and action. In reality noone working at a software company is "getting their asses shot off" or even "goes to war". Stop using silly terms like that in business. We are not here to murder people or commit genocide, using this vernacular diminishes and marginalizes the immense suffering of humans caught in an actual war for…

Related, I've seen many business leaders overuse sports analogies in talk. (I don't really follow sports that much.) The message ends up being very white male cis, and not inclusive. It muddies the message, especially in tech companies with a diverse group of employees.

+ international folks, who have no clue what American "football" is, where many of these terms come from.

The need to like/watch sports and be fluid in this vernacular has been the no.1 reason why I have been put off from any foray into management, tbh. Its so childish to hear grown men (its generally always men) engage in banter around sports. Just because its been the norm doesn't mean its ok.

Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)

#33

Post by montagg »

fairity wrote: post #29
sweetheart wrote: post #4

A "wartime" business person is a hilarious idea. Gotta feel manly somehow, I guess!

Poking fun at what other people choose to hold important is childish, imo. Because, ultimately what people choose to value is subjective, and there’s no right or wrong. Put another way, what you perceive as valuable is equally hilarious from many others’ valid perspectives. As long as they’re not hurting anyone, people are free to choose their own adventure.

They are not free from criticism of it though.

The idea of a “wartime” person is anchored in machismo. It romanticizes, and excuses, really crappy behavior that is long-term destructive.

Calling something a “war” is a convenient justification for all sorts of terrible, foolish actions. The “war on drugs” or the “war on cancer” are good examples. Cancer doctors would try to one up each other in how extreme they could be in their treatment of breast cancer, and it turns out a lot of those tactics, such as literally tearing out pectoral muscles down to the bone, don’t actually help patient survival. But the “wartime” framing made that kind of action without thinking okay.

So I disagree that framing things as if they are war doesn’t hurt anyone. It has. And the framing deserves critical attention, so we can find a better framing for a challenging time that requires sacrifice and effort that doesn’t turn into “the ends justify the means.”

EDIt: More on [reframing the war on cancer](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8749321/) and why it can be harmful.

Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)

#34

Post by scottyah »

pm90 wrote: post #31
karaterobot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cringe when I see businesses using the vernacular of war to describe really mundane, essentially riskless goals. One company I was at had a "war room" dedicated to... increasing MRR to the arbitrary goals they'd set that quarter. They put a sign on the door. Another CEO told us in an all hands that the company was on a "war footing" until we found product market fit, and he'd use phrases like "total war" all the ti…

Yes its very cringe and only appeals to a certain section of people. At a previous company I worked at, they took this even further, organizing themselves into "squads" (teams) which were part of "platoons" (orgs). Someone that interviewed pointed out that this was pretty aggressive/warlike terminology and wondered why they used it and they didn't really have a good answer.

> certain section of people.

Veterans who are used to the terms?

Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)

#36

Post by vsareto »

scottyah wrote: post #34
pm90 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes its very cringe and only appeals to a certain section of people. At a previous company I worked at, they took this even further, organizing themselves into "squads" (teams) which were part of "platoons" (orgs). Someone that interviewed pointed out that this was pretty aggressive/warlike terminology and wondered why they used it and they didn't really have a good answer.

> certain section of people. Veterans who are used to the terms?

More likely non-veterans trying to sound serious

Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)

#37

Post by notahacker »

jmchuster wrote: post #35
sweetheart wrote: post #4

A "wartime" business person is a hilarious idea. Gotta feel manly somehow, I guess!

This isn't just a Godfather reference?

Yeah, this. It's even quoted in the article. Picking the terminology from mafia movies is more cringeworthy than picking it from analogies to government, of course...

the idea that Page needed to step up as "wartime consigliere/CEO" in 2011 because Google was staring down existential threat if it didn't do stuff drastically differently to stave of the threat from social media is also quite funny in hindsight.

Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)

#38

Post by AlwaysRock »

God I hate this essay. Every time the economy goes south people repost it. I've had ceos send it to me in the past. If you are running mega corp then sure. This all very well may be true. But for just about anyone else its insane to not plan for bad years.

Save in the good years and build a war chest so instead of having 3 incredible years where you're going to Cabo for corporate retreats and you all get 250% bonuses and then 1 year where you layoff 15% of your staff...

Just have 4 fine years where you are profitable.

Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)

#39

Post by luminouslow »

andsoitis wrote: post #18
luminouslow wrote: post #13

Companies often seem to employ terms related to armed conflict to heighten the sense of urgency and action. In reality noone working at a software company is "getting their asses shot off" or even "goes to war". Stop using silly terms like that in business. We are not here to murder people or commit genocide, using this vernacular diminishes and marginalizes the immense suffering of humans caught in an actual war for…

> using this vernacular diminishes and marginalizes the immense suffering of humans caught in an actual war for any reason. I don’t know that anyone (or at least a sizeable number of people) in an actual war views it this way. What is the causal link in your mind? Should we also ban the phrase “I’m starving”? What about “I’m sick and tired…”? Upping the intensity factor, what about “the underdog annihilated the #1 ra…

Im not saying we should ban any phrases, just using war talk when the worst that happens to you is you got to find another job is silly IMO. Feel free to use any ohrases you like, this is just my personal opinion, not here to police anyones speech.

Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)

#40

Post by mschuster91 »

logicalmonster wrote: post #10
mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ship of Theseus adjacent, when does Twitter stop being “twitter”? When the users that people are interested in - politicians, news organizations, certain brand accounts, celebrities - go away. The problem for Twitter is that politicians and celebrities don't really want to hang around on a platform where they have to deal with abusive content all the time.

> The problem for Twitter is that politicians and celebrities don't really want to hang around on a platform where they have to deal with abusive content all the time. Maybe. At a certain point, that's probably true, but are we close to that? Sometimes you have to look at what people do, not what they say. It costs a celebrity nothing to say nice things about seeking peace and love and opposing hatred and wanting to…

> Sometimes you have to look at what people do, not what they say.

At least in the "science bubble", I've seen a lot of people say they are fed up and moving to Mastodon. And particularly regarding COVID, it's clear why: they already had to fight insane amounts of trolls and deniers before Musk bought Twitter, and now Musk has made clear he's going for the radical-libertarian interpretation of "free speech" - evidenced by a ton of far-right trolls coming back or, worse, getting the real blue checkmark [1].

That means that the sane voices providing facts and context slowly leave, which is objectively bad as it allows misinformation to go uncontested, and leading more people to leave.

FFS, even here on Hacker News one can clearly see on any debate that touches COVID that positions advocating for continuing combatting the pandemic get downvoted.

[1] https://twitter.com/TabitaSurge/status/1592895889575915523

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