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Why I left iNaturalist

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Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#151

Post by mrguyorama »

rvba wrote: post #68
doctorpangloss wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the two mix it doesn't always go well (see Mozilla). you've written more than 20 paragraphs of comments but I stopped here, because if you think this way about Mozilla, a very successful company and philanthropy, you probably are not making generalizable judgements about others

Mozilla the one which: * lost market share of its product from 30 to 2% * spends money on fun projects and acqusitions that generate no revenue, while taking away what the users wanted (addons, extensions, customizing) since supposedly this is hard to do * spends money on politics instead of core product And many more You should read a business book too. Focusing on core product (firefox) should be top priority, espe…

What do business books say you should do when the primary way you lose your market is illegal and anti-competitive business practices from a megacorp in a political environment anathema to punishing anti-competitive business practices?

Please tell me how Firefox was supposed to compete with Chrome being bundled with nearly any download of any software anywhere, and with a one click installer on the Google homepage. The value of that advertising alone far exceeds what Mozilla could afford.

People who think it's Mozilla's failure to have been utterly crushed by illegal business practices are so strange to me.

What did you expect to happen? Why do you think we have laws against this stuff in the first place? How would you have outspent the behemoth on advertising? How would you have overcome a competitor being included with nearly everything done on a computer?

Google Chrome's abuse of installers was so bad that Microsoft had to change how it sets "default browser" because Google was setting itself as the default entirely without user interaction! Tons of the marketshare that went from Firefox to Chrome did not do so intentionally, did not even know, and did not mean to

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#152

Post by tristor »

mrguyorama wrote: post #148
PunchyHamster wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of cults together with all the worst aspects of high school. Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying favour, autocratic fiefdoms emerging without people having the mental framework to even identify that they exist. But that's just how it works in typical normal hierarchy. The normal hierarchy just makes it easier to "pick a target" you need to please The fallin…

You specifically need a culture that considers "Unskilled labor" to be an oxymoron. Where a literal assembly line worker feels like they have enough expertise to say "No, this is a problem worth stopping production over". American car companies for example have always preferred to just keep the line moving and have a later QA step fix up the problem, or literally push the problem onto the dealer. You need to treat ev…

> Yet Japan DOES have a strictly hierarchical work culture, where openly countering something your boss says isn't exactly welcome. So I wonder how this sort of "Trust your employees to have good ideas" thing came about.

What happened is that they bought into the Edward Deming viewpoint of Total Quality Control (TQC), and instituted this throughout their business in a way which melded correctly with their culture, ultimately resulting in Kaizen and The Toyota Way. It didn't happen overnight, it happened over a period of about 20-30 years, so that now we think of it as something inherent to Toyota that is not possible to replicate. Because of Toyota's strict commitment at the upper levels and the strict hierarchy of Japanese work culture, once they had committed they expended every necessary effort until the thing was done, which differs from American companies where it's often hard to get folks to even try anything new in the way they approach their work.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#153

Post by PaulHoule »

specialist wrote: post #150
PaulHoule wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the famous Tyranny of Structureless essay https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm which describes issues that people struggle with to this day. When it comes to activism I think the most effective organizations I've been in have been "structureless" like that with a few people who lead because they are dedicated and have time and energy. Personally when it comes to structure and the issues Jo talks abou…

The purpose of RRO assumes majoritarianism while ensuring the minority is heard. As you know, there are light weight versions, for boards and committees. But nothing I'd advocate for product development. > the most effective organizations As a fellow recovering activist, you might be interested in Vincent Bevins' If We Burn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_We_Burn Connected some dots for me. Things I experienced but…

I agree there is more than one way to look at it. There are good points to RRO but I think the legalism drives away a "silent majority" [1] of people who out of their background or temperament are particularly repelled by it.

Over the long term I've seen the governance of organizations like my food co-op be quite complex and not what I thought when things were going on. For instance we had a conflict that boiled for years which looked like a conflict over the vision of the organization but in retrospect it really was the bad personality of the manager because that manager left and went to run Borders [2] and had the same problems over there whereas the conflicting camps reconciled pretty quickly when that manager was out.

But there really are tensions over professionalism, vanguardism, and such that we'll be arguing about for a really long time. The asymmetry between the left and right wings is also interesting -- I think left wing organizations have an unhealthy tendency towards centralization because fundraising is more difficult and you get the "membership organization" model that inevitably fails because of the issues pointed out in [3] [4] vs many right wing millionaires that fund parallel right wing causes that compete in a healthy way and always stay on mission because they can be defunded when they go off mission.

In 2026 I have a new commitment to activism but Jacobin magazine would rip into my approach as being radically apolitical but I think that is what is needed in 2026.

[1] 20 years ago I didn't think I'd be talking like Nixon...

[2] Personally I am not inclined to blame individuals, plus that manager had allies, which is why it took me so long to see it

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#154

Post by mmooss »

Aurornis wrote: post #146
mmooss wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one view of how to structure organizations but hardly the only one. Much of SV was built using non-hierarchical organizations, often bragging that nobody had a title. The greater corporate world embraced flat organizational structures for 1-2 decades and did very well. Toyota famously gave (gives?) everyone on the assembly line the power to stop production, and they were (are?) considered the pinnicle of autom…

> Much of SV was built using non-hierarchical organizations, often bragging that nobody had a title. The greater corporate world embraced flat organizational structures for 1-2 decades and did very well. I've worked in several "flat" startups and one big company. None of them were actually flat. There's always a hierarchy. There's always an understand chain of command. > Toyota famously gave (gives?) everyone on the…

All that says is there is nothing absolute in any way. There are no absolute hierarchies; all have a degree of flatness, of people lower on the hierarchy with more influence than people above them, etc.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#155

Post by cindyllm »

PaulHoule wrote: post #153
specialist wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of RRO assumes majoritarianism while ensuring the minority is heard. As you know, there are light weight versions, for boards and committees. But nothing I'd advocate for product development. > the most effective organizations As a fellow recovering activist, you might be interested in Vincent Bevins' If We Burn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_We_Burn Connected some dots for me. Things I experienced but…

I agree there is more than one way to look at it. There are good points to RRO but I think the legalism drives away a "silent majority" [1] of people who out of their background or temperament are particularly repelled by it. Over the long term I've seen the governance of organizations like my food co-op be quite complex and not what I thought when things were going on. For instance we had a conflict that boiled for…

[dead]

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#156

Post by sdwr »

teiferer wrote: post #78
patcon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that I can see plainly that he wasn't interested in certain ways of running the organization, but also... Why do startup people get to talk about their fuckups, and we call it wise and honest and we celebrate the failures -- we certainly don't condemn the very idea of hierarchy or capitalism. But when someone doing something interesting or non-hierarchical talks about their fuckups, we talk about how misguide…

He is not being criticized for talking about his fuckups but for ranting endlessly about how other people were not doing what he wanted, putting the blame squarely on them.

It's a classic problem when someone reaches the edge of their competence, but still cares about success. They don't see anything they can do differently, and the focus becomes how other people are (apparently) screwing up.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#157

Post by auggierose »

Hendrikto wrote: post #100
auggierose wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of interest, how much should the guaranteed salary of a non-profit CEO maximally be?

Guaranteed? Enough to cover living costs. Everything else should be performance bonuses. Of which Mozilla CEO would have gotten none, based on their failure.

How would you measure the performance, given that it is a non-profit? Which self-respecting CEO who is actually good would go for such a deal? I think it is important to understand that the employees of a non-profit are allowed to earn a proper salary.

I think $7 million is too much for the CEO of a non-profit, but $100K would be too low. You can see that there are plenty of CEOs making more than $1 million: https://www.charitywatch.org/nonprofit-compensation-packages...

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#158

Post by WoodenChair »

mmooss wrote: post #154
Aurornis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much of SV was built using non-hierarchical organizations, often bragging that nobody had a title. The greater corporate world embraced flat organizational structures for 1-2 decades and did very well. I've worked in several "flat" startups and one big company. None of them were actually flat. There's always a hierarchy. There's always an understand chain of command. > Toyota famously gave (gives?) everyone on the…

All that says is there is nothing absolute in any way. There are no absolute hierarchies; all have a degree of flatness, of people lower on the hierarchy with more influence than people above them, etc.

Yes, there are degrees of everything. There is cool, kinda cold, cold, very cold. I'm not exactly sure your point? Seems like you are arguing with a straw man. Who said there are not different degrees of flatness or degrees of hierarchy? The previous poster was just saying that there's always some hierarchy, even if it's unwritten, which aligns with "degrees of flatness."

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#159

Post by culi »

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #138

I read the piece. Who exactly, or what, is "Leadership" in this piece? (Always capitalized). A board? Upper-management? Other management? It's hard to understand it in full when "Leadership" seems to be reduced to an unnamed player - an anonymous villain.

Probably done to minimize the amount of bridges burned by avoiding names. I think leadership generally refers to the Executive Director and Heads of Product, Engagement, Development

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#160

Post by cyberrock »

mrguyorama wrote: post #151
rvba wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla the one which: * lost market share of its product from 30 to 2% * spends money on fun projects and acqusitions that generate no revenue, while taking away what the users wanted (addons, extensions, customizing) since supposedly this is hard to do * spends money on politics instead of core product And many more You should read a business book too. Focusing on core product (firefox) should be top priority, espe…

What do business books say you should do when the primary way you lose your market is illegal and anti-competitive business practices from a megacorp in a political environment anathema to punishing anti-competitive business practices? Please tell me how Firefox was supposed to compete with Chrome being bundled with nearly any download of any software anywhere, and with a one click installer on the Google homepage. T…

That argument is a lot less convincing now that Brave (by their previous CTO) has seen exponential growth the last few years while Firefox has just cruised. It turns out Firefox just kinda sucks.
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