Organization probably doesn't want to improve things • Hacker News Board

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#131

Post by isthispermanent » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 9:12 AM UTC

aiunboxed wrote: post #125

I believe the issue isn't necessarily with the organization itself, but rather with the inherent nature of most individuals who may not actively seek improvement or introspection. Many people tend to gravitate towards comfort and familiarity, resisting change even when it's beneficial After all, an organization is ultimately a reflection of its people. Sometimes people need direction and for that direction having a v…

This is my thinking, people hate change. It explains so much of human behavior.

Natural selection would say that those that can handle change well are the ones whose genes will likely carry on. But that does not mean that they want to handle change.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#132

Post by politelemon » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 9:13 AM UTC

smokefoot wrote: post #4

This is a painfully cynical take and beyond that I’m not sure what he’s trying to say. If it’s all crap, make it better. Do something, don’t just complain!

That doesn't make sense. People who aren't in a position to change things shouldn't have to hold their opinions back. I have opinions about how my country is run, what trending with people, and reddit's latest decision making. I have limited to no control over each. It does not mean I need to be quiet though, that's how nothing happens.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#133

Post by oblio » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 9:15 AM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #7

That article was a very nice surprise and apart from how crushingly accurate it is (before somebody jumps in to defend all the corporate chaos, of course) it also had me giggling several times while reading it. The answer of course is financial incentives. It is the answer 99% of the time, I know quite a few high-profile managers at this point and they are all very smart and get stuff done people and yet they allow t…

Centuries? Try hundreds of thousands of years. We've been social and hierarchical creatures since back when we were great apes.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#134

Post by isthispermanent » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 9:20 AM UTC

l0b0 wrote: post #2

Working at a medium-size government org, 6 years into a reorg, with projects being cancelled after two years because nobody actually needs it, dropping rebuilds because they might overrun, not hiring anybody who actually has a background relevant to the original system so that it can be maintained, not allotting any devs to groups which desperately need a code monkey to automate things, then assigning a senior to be…

I can’t imagine the infosec, security department puts a moment of thought into the lived experience of dealing with all the security. And I get it, it is important, but I often think to myself that it seems like they don’t want me to get any work done and that must be why they put all these security hoops in front of me. I must spend an hour+ a day logging in and out of things, and then another hour waiting for security checks on a deploys.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#135

Post by gawa » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 9:21 AM UTC

politelemon wrote: post #119

I am intrigued by the spreadsheet to control infrastructure bit. > the engineers responsible for it elected to use spreadsheets to control the infrastructure Can you explain what this means, how would you control infra through spreadsheets? Is it something like terraform... You change a '1' to a '2' in a particular cell and some script queries that XLSX and notice the change and create a new EC2?

Not OP, but shokingly, what you describe _does_ exist. Or at least something similar for managing kubernetes. [0]

In my own experience, I at least once found one slack app that was configured throught spreadsheet. [1] It actually worked quite well.

Although in this context, I assume that by "infrastructure", OP was probably refering to the whole configuration of some Microsoft tools (PowerBI). I don't think it was about provisionning infrastructure. But I'm not familiar with PowerBI so it's only my guess. I would also love to hear more about InfrastructureAsSpreadsheet, if anyone have fun or horror stories to share :)

[0] https://github.com/learnk8s/xlskubectl [1] https://emmti.com/tiny-elf-a-slack-bot-with-google-sheets-an...

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#136

Post by imkehno » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 9:27 AM UTC

ajkjk wrote: post #101

opportune wrote: post #73

The most jarring thing about entering the workforce to me, and it seems to the author as well, is the nigh-pathological lack of pride (or “passion”, which I think is a loathsome term) most people put into their jobs. I don’t accept that all of those people intrinsically are lazy morons - maybe some or even most are, but a lot of people get that attitude metaphorically beaten into them by lazy and disengaged coworkers…

I think it's basically circular. If you try to have pride in your job, your pride gets destroyed by the frustration of it all and you either quit or give up on the pride. So what deserves is pride-less work, which causes the frustration. The best teams I've worked on were ones where we managed to locally have pride by feeling like a little team who cared about each other's work and occasional sacrifice (being on-call…

Yeah, this is what I’ve also experienced. You can have a great team, and a lot of influence in that team context. Scaling up that common feeling from 5-10 people gets harder. Realizing this, I’m not really interested in working in larger organizations anymore. All the overhead that bogs down speed just sucks the life out of me.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#137

Post by ksec » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 9:31 AM UTC

>Sturgeon's Law, 90% of everything is crud, and that explains almost everything.

I used to think it was an 80/20 split, and later in my life it goes up to 90%. Now I think it is more like 95%. Where it fits the normal distribution curve.

It is sad, but I am also surprised and inspired how 5% of people are pushing the progress so 95% of people gets to benefits, most likely without them knowing it.

The author said 10 years ago. HN used to discuss a lot of these things pre 2015, and it was mostly gone from 2015 - 2022 because it doesn't fit the general Silicon Valley narrative. But I am glad it is back.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#138

Post by prometheon1 » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 9:43 AM UTC

jalapenos wrote: post #89

This is feelgood venting, but without addressing the root of the problem. All these managers are paid to do this BS. By the company. And that company is owned by people, who ultimately have the final say how it will be run, and who are paying the price. There needs to be a lot more discussion around corporate governance with regards to this topic. I.e. how is it allowed to happen. Why aren't companies adequently trai…

Is the article not valuable without address the root of the problem?

The author explains how he copes with the way organisations behave. Without this coping mechanism, he would be less happy and more angry. This coping mechanism could help a lot of unhappy/angry people right now, while solving the root problem requires more time and collaboration. Maybe it is also okay if we make people more happy right now, and work on the root problem in the next article?

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#139

Post by jpc0 » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 9:45 AM UTC

beachy wrote: post #108

jalapenos wrote: post #89

This is feelgood venting, but without addressing the root of the problem. All these managers are paid to do this BS. By the company. And that company is owned by people, who ultimately have the final say how it will be run, and who are paying the price. There needs to be a lot more discussion around corporate governance with regards to this topic. I.e. how is it allowed to happen. Why aren't companies adequently trai…

> Why aren't companies adequently training and selecting managers, when it's the biggest effector of their performance vs their competitors? To the extent that dysfunctional management is nearly ubiquitous? That's how the world used to work, back in the 90s and before. It doesn't work today, since job mobility is so high. What's the point in training up someone, just for them to jump ship to a competitor for a health…

Yep, also pension plans going away and the fact those same employees can even get that substantial pay raise isn't the problem at all.

Pay employees well, give them a dream to catch and make sure they won't die miserable and would you believe they may just decide to stick around.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#140

Post by lordnacho » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 9:49 AM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #7

That article was a very nice surprise and apart from how crushingly accurate it is (before somebody jumps in to defend all the corporate chaos, of course) it also had me giggling several times while reading it. The answer of course is financial incentives. It is the answer 99% of the time, I know quite a few high-profile managers at this point and they are all very smart and get stuff done people and yet they allow t…

This is why I'm thinking we need a new system. Not capitalism, not communism, not anything that's already been talked about for 200 years.

It seems to me that our real problem is that we are wired to demand everybody contributes. Both righties and lefties actually agree on this, they just have different views on how to get it done theoretically, and in practice have also come up with various schemes to make this happen.

But actually we live in a world of plenty. Yes, there are hungry people. Yes, there are people who don't have an iPhone.

But what do I mean? I mean that in general it appears to me that almost everything is produced by a very small number of people. We're no longer living in a world where you need 9 people to feed 10 people. The same is true for a lot of goods and services. We don't actually need a bunch of people to do many things.

Quite a lot of processes, if you ask someone who works in various industries, are really done by a few people, supported by a cast of extras that outnumbers them. Some of these extras make more money than the people actually doing the useful work. Often these extras are are like you allude to, only there in order to pretend they are part of the process so that they can make a living.

To make things worse, there actually is a class of people who have no job at all, which creates a kind of fear among the hangers-on.

What we actually need is to have productive people unimpeded by people who need to scrape a living. We should change our norms so that if you aren't selected to be one of the people who makes iPhones or grow food, you can just be good friend. If you want to be an iPhone maker, study and try to get in there. If you don't make it, you're not a failure. You just go about living while all the robot designers take care of stuff.