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You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

paulgraham.com

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Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#151

Post by jimbokun »

weakfish wrote: post #145
jimbokun wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly has to be considered. China and the Soviet Union are the largest scale attempts to implement a cooperative system and they failed in spectacular and tragic ways. So you certainly need to consider why the new plan will be different and won’t meet the same fate.

"Cooperative system" is such an immensely broad net. I could also say that the largest scale attempt ever at implementing a competitive system failed when the market crashed in 2008, so you probably shouldn't try starting a company again. But that would be silly, wouldn't it? For whatever it's worth, I'm not a communist or a Soviet apologist or what have you. I also just think it's incredibly silly that Westerners ar…

I’m not saying you can’t argue for more cooperative systems. I’m saying you better be prepared to explain why your proposed system will work better than Soviet and Chinese communist systems when asked if you want to be taken seriously.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#152

Post by jimbokun »

lowercased wrote: post #117
jimbokun wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah a lot of management isn’t just a desire for power and control over others, but just the unglamorous and boring work of tracking what everyone is working on and how it fits into the bigger picture. In large organizations it becomes harder and harder for individual contributors to see how their work fits into the larger organization.

"In large organizations it becomes harder and harder for individual contributors to see how their work fits into the larger organization." ... because the planning and reasoning and vision aren't shared? As an IC - in small and large companies - I would often get this "you just don't understand" and "you don't see the big picture". Well.. because it's not shared. Decisions made in secret, or in boardrooms without any…

Yes, good management is rare.

I believe companies where ICs understand how their role ties into the overall success of the company will outperform other companies on average.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#153

Post by weakfish »

jimbokun wrote: post #151
weakfish wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cooperative system" is such an immensely broad net. I could also say that the largest scale attempt ever at implementing a competitive system failed when the market crashed in 2008, so you probably shouldn't try starting a company again. But that would be silly, wouldn't it? For whatever it's worth, I'm not a communist or a Soviet apologist or what have you. I also just think it's incredibly silly that Westerners ar…

I’m not saying you can’t argue for more cooperative systems. I’m saying you better be prepared to explain why your proposed system will work better than Soviet and Chinese communist systems when asked if you want to be taken seriously.

Right, but my point is that I think that being the baseline requirement is silly. I get why that reaction exists, but I think it's over-fitting. Like I said before, cooperative is so broad.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#154

Post by mrkstu »

LordGronk wrote: post #129
maxerickson wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, local governments are often far worse than state and federal governments. In general, it's because it's harder for the larger entities to get away with playing favorites (I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying that it happens a lot more in smaller units). Paying all your taxes to the corrupt local judge (county official) is in fact not a win.

It’s also that, with the current system, a person who is young, talented, and ambitious who is interested in public service has little to no reason nor incentive to work outside the beltway or a state capital, leaving local governance to retirees and incompetents.

And developers

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#155

Post by WalterBright »

fragmede wrote: post #135
WalterBright wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apollo program was not a weapons development program. The Manhattan Project resulted in nuclear power plants.

The Apollo program wouldn't have happened without Sputnik and against the backdrop of the Cold War. Getting to the moon is cool and all but the subtle hint to the Soviets is "we have ICBMs".

The US had ICBMs in the 1950s. The Saturn V was not an ICBM. Staging was not necessary for ICBMs. None of the lunar landing module and equipment was usable for military purposes. NASA was run by civilians, not the military.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#156

Post by perilunar »

voakbasda wrote: post #53
antipurist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any relevant research, but to answer the "So what can we do about it?" question I have a wild idea: invert the power structure, with cooperative of workers hiring their managers instead of managers hiring workers. And no, this doesn't automatically lead to the same tree, just inverted, it could form a much flatter structure. I imagine that a cooperative can hire a person who measures the value genera…

Don’t stop with work. Governments need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Local first, with taxes flowing there first, and only then do they start to trickle up to the county, state, regional, or federal levels. Central governments should be emergent properties of local systems working together, not a choke point of all power and taxation revenue. The current system is completely backwards, if democracy and representa…

> Local first, with taxes flowing there first, and only then do they start to trickle up...

Works well with Georgism. If all tax is land and resources, it makes sense to collect locally. If most of your tax is income and company tax, it's bound to be collected at state or federal levels.

I've always believed that power should be devolved to the lowest level possible, but you're right that powers-that-be will not willingly give up centralised power.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#157

Post by perilunar »

andyferris wrote: post #125
voakbasda wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t stop with work. Governments need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Local first, with taxes flowing there first, and only then do they start to trickle up to the county, state, regional, or federal levels. Central governments should be emergent properties of local systems working together, not a choke point of all power and taxation revenue. The current system is completely backwards, if democracy and representa…

One problem I see is even in representational democracy (I'll use the Westminster system for concreteness) we get a lot of indirection leading to policies people don't actually want. Even more indirection is bad. Assume members of parliament are chosen fairly (popular vote approximates number of seats etc). The winning party (or parties) form a cabinet - their own little hierarchy. What we tend to see is a majority o…

> local representatives choosing state representatives choosing federal representatives

You don't have to have that though. You can still have a local population electing local, state, and federal representatives. But you need the taxation, and thus the financial power, to flow upwards from local government, not downwards from federal governments.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#158

Post by perilunar »

maxerickson wrote: post #128
voakbasda wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t stop with work. Governments need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Local first, with taxes flowing there first, and only then do they start to trickle up to the county, state, regional, or federal levels. Central governments should be emergent properties of local systems working together, not a choke point of all power and taxation revenue. The current system is completely backwards, if democracy and representa…

In the US, local governments are often far worse than state and federal governments. In general, it's because it's harder for the larger entities to get away with playing favorites (I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying that it happens a lot more in smaller units). Paying all your taxes to the corrupt local judge (county official) is in fact not a win.

But local governments are much easier to leave than state or federal governments. And easier to influence if you decide to stay.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#159

Post by BrenBarn »

dentemple wrote: post #34

Without a firm proposal of what a company can or should do instead, this just becomes another example of complaints being easier to make than actual solutions. We all know that large corps are structured in a way that eliminates individual initiative. So what can we do about it? I've heard of "hierarchy-less" company structures being attempted before. I've also heard that each and every one of those attempts always e…

> We all know that large corps are structured in a way that eliminates individual initiative. So what can we do about it?

Well one thing is to break up large corporations into small pieces.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#160

Post by perilunar »

rainsford wrote: post #137
dentemple wrote: post #34

Without a firm proposal of what a company can or should do instead, this just becomes another example of complaints being easier to make than actual solutions. We all know that large corps are structured in a way that eliminates individual initiative. So what can we do about it? I've heard of "hierarchy-less" company structures being attempted before. I've also heard that each and every one of those attempts always e…

I'd be curious if there was research in the opposite direction able to prove that hierarchy is necessary in large organizations if you want to do BigCorp scale things. Intuitively it seems like this might be both a reasonable and a provable conclusion. No matter how smart they are or how well-intentioned, it seems improbable that 10,000 individual contributors running around doing whatever they think is best will eve…

> it seems improbable that 10,000 individual contributors running around doing whatever they think is best will ever result in engineering a new airplane, for example.

Individuals and small groups build new airplanes all the time. It's only large aeroplanes that require large teams of people.

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