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The Rise of the New Groupthink
41–50 of 86 posts
Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink
#42In 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 w…
> 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.
This is what's so hard to explain to people.
It's the necessary, painful part of any project: where you get to the part that you may not know exactly how to solve. A more communal individual would be prone to throw their hands up and call for a meeting. (I hate when people try to make their problems be everyone's problems.) But, they're cheating themselves out of a wonderful experience. Going at it alone in the face of uncertainty is a delicious thrill; you start hacking away at it, hoping for something to give, but ultimately knowing you're just making it up as you go, and it may not work out. Eventually, you learn enough about the problem such that you can talk about it semi-coherently. But until then, talk is useless, no, it is an impediment. Without understanding, there is no use attempting to articulate anything. Intuition begets understanding.
I believe some companies simply cannot accept this level of uncertainty. It's too dangerous to take something on that might fail. They can hire all the cogs they want.
Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink
#43If the group thinkers can re-invent Bolshevism for the classroom and the workplace, allow me to invent my own journalistic sociological gloss to bring attention to a physiological trend that the group thinkers might not appreciate.
It is an anthropological finding that the human brain decreased in volume by 10% — about the size of a tennis ball — around the dawn of civilization 20,000 years ago. It is believed that the decrease in volume coincided with the emergence of cooperative, prosocial behavior, which enabled the members of reduced-cranium groups to solve some problems that eluded their more amply-brained relatives. The larger brains were adapted to more independent modes of survival. Bonobos have smaller brains than chimpanzees, but can solve problems that larger-brained chimpanzees will not solve, unless they decide to cooperate, which is unusual. [There are videos online of cooperating chimpanzees in the lab.] Successive generations of domesticated animals exhibit reduced brain volume in comparison with their ancestors.
The assumption that assimilation into the group is always good ignores the flip side of cooperation among prosocials. Prosocial behavior doesn’t imply feeble-minded docility. Fear of separation from the group, and antagonism toward larger-brained independent individuals is deeply ingrained. The reduced brain volume is compensated for somewhat by vindictiveness. Prosocials reward conformists and will punish transgressors at some cost to themselves. Road rage is an example. The capacity for revenge, even if this is costly, is the flip side of cooperation.
Groups are good at solving some kinds of problems, but not all problems (cf. Jaron Lanier, DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism http://edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html).
One should exercise caution when internalizing group values.
In a study published on July 15, 2011, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society’s New Journal of Physics, researchers have shown that swarming, a phenomenon that can be crucial to an animal’s survival, is created by the same kind of social networks that humans adopt. … Locusts rely heavily on swarming as they are in fact cannibalistic. As they march across barren deserts, locusts carefully keep track of each other so they can remain within striking distance to consume one another — a cruel, but very efficient, survival strategy. — Science Daily (July 15, 2011), Swarms of Locusts Use Social Networking to Communicate
It’s a locust-eat-locust world out there.
Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink
#44My 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'm a young guy who works the same way you do. The insights I have after a few hours of hard work are worth the increased mental energy required. (It can be exhausting, and I don't want to talk to anyone after I'm done.) The downside is, as you've said, very few people seem to even attempt to focus for long periods of time.
I think a big part of the problem is the obsession with collaboration, as the article mentions. I feel it often leads to more and more 'fake work,' where employees deliberately work in an unfocused manner to avoid real work.
Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink
#45This is very interesting, especially in light of certain software development approaches such as XP, where you're told to work in pairs as much as possible. Many people argue that you haven't truly experienced teamwork until you've pair developed for a whole workday together for months at a time. The approach works for several companies, Pivotal Labs comes to mind. I've personally experienced benefits of that work st…
I vaguely recall reading somewhere that pair programming wasn't meant to be for more than a few hours a day (like 4). An agile coach I know agreed with this. But I can't easily find this caveat on the net.
Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink
#46My 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.
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Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink
#47"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…
Variance is the reason groups can be powerful.
Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink
#48"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…
I used to be a teacher and received training to instruct exactly as you describe. The idea is that students are supposed to ask each other first, and if no one else in the group knows, then they ask the teacher. I have very mixed feelings about the push towards group work, but I will say that in much of the inner-city, asking a peer for help on anything is considered pitiable weakness. So the idea of getting kids to learn to work together and help each other when they can, is, at least in it's conception, not altogether terrible.
Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink
#49In 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 w…
> 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. This is what's so hard to explain to people. It's the necessary, painful part of any project: where you get to the part that you may not know exactly how to solve. A more communal individual would be prone to throw their hands up and ca…
I feel what you're putting down. It is very hard to explain to people what it is like when you are at the point of a project where you are not really even looking for answers yet. No, you're still determining what the questions are. You're still figuring out what the "what" is. They just don't get it, but I really think you have to go through that to produce a useful product.
Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink
#50Thank 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…
Poor communication is a cultural problem. No magic tool or seating arrangement will fix a company with poor communication skills. The only thing I've seen help in that situation is daily standups led by somebody who knew how to draw out more than "I fixed two bugs yesterday."