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Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

leadingsapiens.com

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Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#131

Post by a_bonobo »

pjdesno wrote: post #129

I run into a fair number of good undergraduate students who are terrible phd students. Same problem. They did well solving problems that someone already knows the answer to, applying concepts that were explained to them in class. Suddenly they face problems no one knows the answer to - otherwise we wouldn’t be trying to solve them. And they fall apart. I think this is one part missing from the OP - some people just c…

Funny enough, I was an academic for close to a decade before I resigned in disgust; and I feel like OP's article could be Work is not Academia. As an academic, all I needed to do is write papers and get grants, metrics that are easy to game and fairly clear to achieve.

Now in industry I had to learn the hard way that my fancy academic skills are mostly useless, and that my visibility within the organisation counts far more towards my career progression than my skills or what I actually contribute: co-workers who objectively produce trash but spend time selling it internally raise far faster through the ranks than me. My technical skills aren't that important, working towards visibility is. And OP's article is a great summary of that conundrum.

(I do not work in a US-style tech company, FWIW)

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#132

Post by Garlef »

lordnacho wrote: post #77

The drawing of the pyramid addresses something I've been saying to people for years on this topic: School is conveyor belt. Everyone can be educated, everyone can learn what they teach you in school. Depending on where you went, you can all be high quality or you can all be terrible. You can pretend to compete, but in the end, nobody is really stopping you from anything. Work, and by that I mean high-achievement work…

One addendum: The pyramid has a top by construction; The top exists no matter what.

In a sports tournament: Someone is going to win, no matter how good the participants are.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#133

Post by M95D »

lordnacho wrote: post #77

The drawing of the pyramid addresses something I've been saying to people for years on this topic: School is conveyor belt. Everyone can be educated, everyone can learn what they teach you in school. Depending on where you went, you can all be high quality or you can all be terrible. You can pretend to compete, but in the end, nobody is really stopping you from anything. Work, and by that I mean high-achievement work…

> [...] top 1% achiever in education. Most of them by far (like really far) will not be MD or CEO.

It's called the Dilbert principle [1], and also Putt's law [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putt%27s_Law_and_the_Successfu...

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#135

Post by mcdeltat »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #127
apwell23 wrote: post #5

it used to be that tech provided somewhat a safe space for autists like me to hide out. now its full of management ppl who would've gone into other industries but were lured in by high pay in tech. i miss the days where tech pay only slightly above average and ppl in tech were considered losers and dorks.

I'm currently one of those "management ppl" you are referring, or at least on track to be one, but I swear its not my fault! The industry pays a lot better than any other job I could swing, and my background is very relevant and I know for certain that some of these projects wouldn't run without me. And also, there is no "balance" here, being dorky or "autistic" does not make you a good programmer. There are many bri…

> Being able to work with others is an important skill

Are we seriously claiming that average office socials/politics is no more than being able to play nicely with people?

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#136

Post by jiggawatts »

lmm wrote: post #123
array_key_first wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all works out, unless everyone is doing it, and then entire swaths of the economy just burn down. In lower level jobs like retail and food service, nobody can retain workers. You would think then "oh, labor market, the cost of labor goes up" But no. Everyone is greedy, stubborn, and stupid. Instead, you just run your business with half the labor. Does it work? Not really. So then you think, "oh, well free market d…

Well, maybe fast-food restaurants were a low-interest-rate phenomenon or whatever the equivalent term is (a high-labour-supply phenomenon?). If that kind of business can't afford good enough working conditions to get a decent supply of labour while selling its products at a decent price, then yeah, the whole industry will burn. But if there's a demand for it then sooner or later someone will start offering it. I thin…

During COVID a new kind of food business sprung up called a virtual restaurant (or a ghost kitchen), where instead of having to rent a restaurant space and hire wait staff, they just had a kitchen and delivery drivers. Lower expenses, fewer staff.

Eventually, those delivery drivers will be replaced by delivery drones.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#137

Post by MichaelZuo »

rendaw wrote: post #125
majormajor wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. On the flip side, you now have the means to have a much more comfortable and pleasant life than the high school dropout classmate you haven't seen in six years. You have already made it very far, in that sense. You put effort in, you've gotten rewarded. The washouts from the up-or-out places have lots of soft landing places available compared to most people. Whether you crash yourself against the rocks of…

You say no but you're not disagreeing - you're saying that there's enough space in the middle of the pyramid for all the people who didn't drop out of school which AFAICT is orthogonal to GP's point, that there's not enough space at the tip of the pyramid for all the talented people who work very hard.

There’s obviously can’t be enough space for every moderately above average person who works very hard… since that adds up to tens of millions to hundreds of millions of people across the world.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#138

Post by thunderfork »

Danjoe4 wrote: post #130
aidenn0 wrote: post #89

This is somewhat funny because many of my classes in school barely even managed a veneer of objectivity in scoring, and grades for many things were far more opaque than any annual review I've had at my job. - In general any class with subjective grading where the work was not anonymized, the name on top would affect the grade (sometimes significantly). - Some friends actually did an experiment once; person A said tha…

Male instructors are more objective.

Source on this?

I've read that male instructors are expected to be more objective, and that female instructors are rated more poorly when they are more objective (https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/what%E2%80%99s-name-exposing-gen...) but not anything on the rates of objectivity itself

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#139

Post by cainxinth »

> You can call it organizational absurdities. Or more bluntly, institutional stupidity.

Sure, there is plenty of that, but some of what the author is describing can be chalked up to another principle: realpolitik. Every organization has values and practices that can become lip service when practical realities intrude. The inefficiency that is causing you a burden might be benefiting someone else who is working hard to keep it in place.

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