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The Rise of the New Groupthink

nytimes.com

31–40 of 86 posts

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#31
"In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question."

This is the essence of what's so destructive and horrifying about today's obsession with groups: the idea that everyone in the group is equal. Equal in talent, equal in work ethic, equal in drive, and equally entitled to being heard. And that the consensus of the group of purported equals is more important than the achievements of any of its constituent members.

The plain, and perhaps un-PC truth is that that's a load of hogwash. Some perspectives are better than others. Some people are smarter than others, or work harder, or are better read, or are more knowledgeable, or are more capable. Some creative visions are more correct than others, even if we imagine that it's not possible to be "correct" or "incorrect" in the praxis of creative expression.

Beyond these variances in ability or capability, we also encounter variances in style. As noted in the article, some people simply work best alone. Some disciplines -- writing, coding, art, etc. -- simply lend themselves well to conditions of quiet, relative isolation, and to long bouts of individual effort. That effort can be in service of a team, or as part of a team, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that creating by committee is in some way ideal.

The creative output of a committee tends to revert to the average creative capability of the least creative member on the committee. Social psychological studies have borne out that fact, and anyone who's ever been on a design committee knows it from brutal experience.

That's not to say, of course, that group brainstorms and the like can't be productive. They certainly can be. But the people in the group are everything. They need to be very sharp and very creative. They need to get along well enough not to clash over personal matters -- but not so well that they simply agree with one another and revert into groupthink. But such groups are rare, and I dare say that they're the exceptions to the general rule. High-functioning creative teams are things of beauty, but they're not for everybody or every situation.

Finally, the structure of a group is critical to its success (or failure). Groups with well established divisions of labor tend to be more productive, and far less painful, than groups in which everyone does everything together. Ever try to write a school paper as part of a team? It was either a horrendous experience or a fantastic one. The horrendous teams sat down together and drafted every sentence, laboriously and unceasingly, by committee. The fantastic teams either divided up the sections by areas of interest or expertise, or delegated the task of drafting the paper to the person who expressed interest and professed great ability in writing -- allowing everyone else to do research, discuss and debate the topics, and so forth.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#32

My current company, a startup, has an even split of developers, half under 30 and half over 45. I'm one of the old guys. The development environment and approach, mostly set up by the young guys, is pretty modern -- lots of open source tools, hosting on launchpad, test-driven development, code reviews, all developers in one big open space, everyone does everything (as opposed to developers doing development, testers…

I am most productive when I have a problem to solve and I can immerse myself in it for hours every day, days at a time, without interruption.

That's what's most productive for you, but it might not be what's best for the organization as a whole.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#33
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No whiteboards? What kind of startup doesn't have loads of whiteboards? You should go buy a load of that paint you can use to turn walls into whiteboards and paint your desk and cupboards and floor - www.ideapaint.com

No, we have whiteboards. They're just across the room on the outer walls where I can't reach them easily. We also went cheap and bought melamine bathroom panels that are impossible to erase.

[whiteboard] melamine bathroom panels that are impossible to erase

I had this exact problem. Citrus cleanser in a spray bottle solved it perfectly.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#34

There are many parts of this article that boil my blood. The biggest of which is the use of "Groupthink" to describe a practice of creativity. Groupthink has a very specific meaning in many peoples minds which does not apply in this situation. Dilution of the word Groupthink as well as the mischaracterization of a practice the author happens to dislike are both egregious. Creativity is often spoken of as an end. I do…

However, that does not scale. If we have 50 programmers working in complete isolation then we will have 50 different programs. Collaboration becomes key to scaling the craft.

Sticking 50 people into the same room does not guarantee true collaboration. Especially if they have different goals, which is often an overlooked factor in large companies.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#35
post #34

There are many parts of this article that boil my blood. The biggest of which is the use of "Groupthink" to describe a practice of creativity. Groupthink has a very specific meaning in many peoples minds which does not apply in this situation. Dilution of the word Groupthink as well as the mischaracterization of a practice the author happens to dislike are both egregious. Creativity is often spoken of as an end. I do…

However, that does not scale. If we have 50 programmers working in complete isolation then we will have 50 different programs. Collaboration becomes key to scaling the craft. Sticking 50 people into the same room does not guarantee true collaboration. Especially if they have different goals, which is often an overlooked factor in large companies.

Nope.

But its one of many tools to encourage collaboration.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#36
post #4

Thank you to the writer of this. This is actually the reason I only take work that allows me to mainly work remotely. I used to work in an open layout as described and I would be interrupted for every little thing resulting in not much actual work being achieved. Oddly enough the open layout seems to be'the way' for cool startups - maybe in actuality this driven more by the cost savings of having an open layout offic…

I'm sitting here in one of these "cool startup" offices right now. I absolutely hate it. No place to stack anything, no walls to hang whiteboards, calendars, pictures. No DOOR to close when I just want to get something done. I have noise everywhere that headphones can't drown out. I have people tapping me on the back constantly because, apparently, having headphones on isn't a big enough signal that I'm trying to shu…

In my experience, the open office idea only works well if you've planned your company around it. I worked at one place where we were all open, but by convention, everything short of a true "the site is down" emergency started with asynchronous communication. IM and group chat, mostly. If it took more than a few messages, it might move to verbal, but it always started in a form I could ignore for a while if I felt like it.

Unfortunately, that only works if it's part of the company culture and each new employee sees it pretty clearly.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#37

"In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question." This is the essence of what's so destructive and horrifying about today's obsession with groups: the idea that everyone in the group is equal. Equal in talent, equal in work ethic, equal in drive, and equally entitled to being heard. A…

"In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question."

I'm going to guess that the idea here is that if someone in the group has a question, and another member of the group knows the answer, then they can resolve it within the group. Funny how the same thing can be framed so differently isn't it?

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#38
In East Germany, toddlers and grade schoolers were required to go to the bathroom together, with no partitions between the toilets. Privacy was irrelevant because individualism was irrelevant. Even extending into bathroom habits the communist goal was to make people cogs. I'm sure this seemed like "scientific management" to them, and I bet many of them have no idea why it failed.

At my last job, all the programmers worked at a central table. I was criticized for working in my office (which I shared with one person) with my headphones on. This was called "siloing". They wanted people to work on code together.

I don't know about other programmers, but for me, when solving problems I find I often have many things in my head at once, many requirements to be met for the solution and sometimes a variety of variables whose meanings I have to keep straight.

I literally can't think when I'm constantly being interrupted. I can't think when I'm having to explain each symbol in a line of code to a co-worker.

Its impossible, until telepathy is perfected, for a co-worker to have the exact same understanding of what I'm doing and why. Sure simple obvious things are easy, but when you're constructing something original, you can't communicate it to someone completely because there are always too many details, even things you haven't resolved yet yourself.

At this groupthink place, every other programmer was in their 20s. They were all junior programmers (except for the founder of the company, who worked alone in his office.) They were not very productive. They adopted a whole lot of bad process, but they thought that by sitting around all at the same table they were more productive.

Maybe they were more productive than they would have been. But there was a huge gulf between the kinds of problems I was capable of solving (architecting major components of the product) and the kinds of problems they were solving (each unit test written was a task, everything was broken into tiny little independant, simple tasks.)

After I left, I decided I was done working for other people. I knew it was time to do a startup, because I'd reached my limit.

That company culture represents the view that people are cogs. Just like the east germans attempted to instill into their kids the culture of being cogs.

I think wozniak is right. Great programmers are artists, they live in their head. I wouldn't call myself a great programmer-- I'm competent, and I'm great at knowing my limitations.

But I make a really terrible cog.

That startup failed within a year after I left it. Somehow I doubt any of them think it was due to their process.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#39
post #37

"In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question." This is the essence of what's so destructive and horrifying about today's obsession with groups: the idea that everyone in the group is equal. Equal in talent, equal in work ethic, equal in drive, and equally entitled to being heard. A…

"In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question." I'm going to guess that the idea here is that if someone in the group has a question, and another member of the group knows the answer, then they can resolve it within the group. Funny how the same thing can be framed so differently is…

[deleted]

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#40
post #28
post #4

Thank you to the writer of this. This is actually the reason I only take work that allows me to mainly work remotely. I used to work in an open layout as described and I would be interrupted for every little thing resulting in not much actual work being achieved. Oddly enough the open layout seems to be'the way' for cool startups - maybe in actuality this driven more by the cost savings of having an open layout offic…

I don't understand the appeal of open layouts either. Wherever I've seen them, they have been pushed unto developers from top-down. The arguments I've heard in their favor boil down to "they force people to communicate". Well, obviously, if developers don't communicate than it's a problem, but forcing a layout (or pair programming) does not seem to solve the root cause of the issue. Ideally, I think developers should…

I agree, the ideal offIce has a mix of both. It's great to have an area where everyone can chat and come up with ideas, but after that I want a deep, dark cave with impenetrable force fields and intra-office IM and email forbidden by nazi firewalls. I've taken to coming in on Saturdays just so I can get a solid 5-hour chunk of work done without interruption.
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