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Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

ludic.mataroa.blog

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Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#161

Post by swiftcoder »

Shaanie wrote: post #114
js8 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I am a fan of democracy, even in economic sphere (aka socialism or cooperatives). Giving everybody the same single vote (same power) about the organization (and making it into an unchangeable fact) removes lots of these incentives that prevent improving the organization. But lot of people are blindly accepting capitalism, because.. well it's incidentally also explained in the article, why.

It's interesting then how cooperatives aren't more popular or more successful. You'd think that if they were significantly more efficient than the typical dictatorship companies then they'd outcompete them, but as far as I'm aware that doesn't happen.

I think there's often an issue of how you measure success. Co-ops seem to have much lower tendency to try and take over the world than corporations inevitably seem to display at scale - quite content to return comfortable salaries year-after-year to their employee-owners, rather than reap profits at all costs.

As a concrete example, Mondragon has been operating very successfully for ~70 years, but barely anyone from outside the region registers its existence.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#162

Post by borroka »

konschubert wrote: post #148
borroka wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a company that employs 100k people. The effects of my work strategy and behavior on the company's revenue, profit, vision, products are zero. On the contrary, the effects of my work strategy and behavior on my salary and position can be quite pronounced. My company can fire me tomorrow, they will forget my name in 5 days. To "fire" my company, I need to find another job, maybe in another city, working with…

I respect that you probably have loved ones to take care of, and that what you are doing is probably a responsible choice. Don't hate the player, etc. But damn, if it isn't depressing to go to work every day and not caring about impact, just impression.

It is not black and white, both morally and in terms of the way I work.

Let's say that certain choices, strongly supported by my boss, who is ultimately responsible for my career in the short term (and the short term career consequences of my actions then inform my career even further down the line), are seen by me as not particularly brilliant, maybe even "dumb." If I say nothing and nothing happens, the product we are developing may not work as well as it could, perhaps the company's revenue will drop by a 50th of a percent. But should I risk my career to tell my boss that their ideas are not brilliant?

Years ago, when I was younger and more idealistic, I would have expressed my opinion on the choices made, even forcefully so. After I got fired at one of my previous jobs, I tend to side with the boss, strategically.

And before anyone, legitimately, thinks I am a coward or a "bloodsucker," let me make it clear that I was not the one who put my boss in the position they are in, the company is not mine, and the company can fire me tomorrow for any reason, even for no reason. Then, maybe at some point it will be too much to handle and I will decide to leave, but as I wrote, it is not black and white.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#163

Post by Shaanie »

coxmichael wrote: post #120
Shaanie wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting then how cooperatives aren't more popular or more successful. You'd think that if they were significantly more efficient than the typical dictatorship companies then they'd outcompete them, but as far as I'm aware that doesn't happen.

It’s harder to get finance as a co-operative, so it’s hardly a fair competition. Also, in most studies, co-ops and employee ownership models do actually end up being more profitable and sustainable in the long term [0, 1]. [0] Page 23+ in this UK government review on employee ownership: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... [1] ONS report showing the rate of survival of cooperatives in the U…

Skimmed the first report and it seems like employee-owned companies perform better up until around 75 employees, after which there's no benefit? That would explain why they aren't outcompeting the larger companies - their advantage disappears when they grow.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#164

Post by lordnacho »

achenet wrote: post #152
lordnacho wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 happ…

uh iPhones aren't just made by well dressed Stanford educated designers and engineers in California, you know. The number of people needed to mine the metal/silicon for them, to make the circuits (and to build the factories which make the circuits), and to actually assemble them (for example [0]), the global supply chain of container ships and port personnel and police forces to fight piracy... it's a lot of people.…

The fact that there's a lot of real jobs making iPhones just means there's a lot of BS jobs that will hang onto them.

Of course it's true, you need a LOT of specialists to make iPhones.

I would also wager that a lot of real jobs are lost because there's a tradeoff between gunning for such a job and just settling for a moocher job. Some of those real jobs would consist of automating away the assembly line jobs. It's just that we don't have that society yet, so the manager who doesn't know how to do the automation hires miners and assembly workers, who are obliged to do something in order to make a living.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#165

Post by coxmichael »

depr wrote: post #145
pixelfarmer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is systemic fault. It starts with hierarchical structuring. It doesn't mean that hierarchies are inherently bad, but there are consequences from that and the additional things that people usually imply that come with it. This can seriously hamper productivity, for example, even in the small scale. Once you start to think that through you will also see how far reaching the agile manifesto truly is and that the c…

If you have no explicit hierarchy then an implicit hierarchy will start to form in most cases, which can be even worse. In many cases you have both.

I’m not convinced this is inevitable, but it certainly feels it within the current system. Co-ops exist and can be very successful.

Hierarchies can be time-limited, or democratically limited, it just depends on the legal and organisational framework.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#166

Post by marcosdumay »

ajkjk wrote: post #107
zoomablemind wrote: post #45

It's obviously a rant-inspired introspection about a specific kind of organisations. These orgs are not truly functioning per market principles, yet for various reasons are stuck in a captive energy state that no one dares to disturb. It could be a niche product sold out to big orgs or other steady clients. It could be a subsidiary or some other steady org. Either way, there is no market pressure to really push such…

> These orgs are not truly functioning per market principles, yet for various reasons are stuck in a captive energy state that no one dares to disturb. All signs point to market principles leading directly to this kind of situation. It seems like markets produce ruthless competition but that's a rudimentary and naive extrapolation from the prediction. Reality gives good evidence to a more sophisticated prediction: th…

Absolutely this.

People keep thinking about markets as some all-knowing relentless optimization machines. But they are just a bunch of distributed computing acting on extremely limited data trying to act over a completely chaotic environment.

Markets are neither all-knowing nor relentless. They are always extremely conservative and risk-adverse. That holds for times of crisis too, they just become a little bit less risk-adverse.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#167

Post by marcosdumay »

reactordev wrote: post #39

While I don’t disagree, I think labeling and calling people “bad” is wrong. Derek is doing the best he can. He hired you to help make the company better, more profitable, etc etc. He’s trying anything to get you to understand that you need to deliver value, a product, a service, research output, something so the Bob’s have something to sell/offer/justify grant money. I’ve met a lot of engineers that think they were h…

> Derek is doing the best he can.

He's doing what is best to keep his job. Not what leads to his best work.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#168

Post by smeej »

borroka wrote: post #162
konschubert wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect that you probably have loved ones to take care of, and that what you are doing is probably a responsible choice. Don't hate the player, etc. But damn, if it isn't depressing to go to work every day and not caring about impact, just impression.

It is not black and white, both morally and in terms of the way I work. Let's say that certain choices, strongly supported by my boss, who is ultimately responsible for my career in the short term (and the short term career consequences of my actions then inform my career even further down the line), are seen by me as not particularly brilliant, maybe even "dumb." If I say nothing and nothing happens, the product we…

I think you just gave words to something I'd noticed about myself but had never been able to articulate, which is the reason I can't operate in large companies. Every time a company gets past its first thousand employees, I have to find another job, because it starts to become as you describe and it feels like it grinds my soul to dust.

I'm convinced there do need to be big companies, therefore I'm glad so many people can work in them and I appreciate the difficulty of it. This is not meant as a criticism in any way.

It just helped me understand why my career has consisted largely of startup-hopping every couple years as the companies finally reach a point where I have more than three layers of management, a majority of whom have no idea how to do my job effectively, but have to prove they're "doing something" by telling me what to do.

It's not that I'm "flaky" or "have commitment issues." It's that there's something that happens to companies when they get large that turns a work environment I enjoyed into one that's really (intolerably) unpleasant for me.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#169

Post by bryananderson »

There’s some worthwhile stuff here about how perverse incentives lead to pathological outcomes in large organizations, but…

> Here's the pressure if you're in the 10% of people that aren't crud at their jobs - you're surrounded by people that are crud.

> In professional settings, approximately all of my time goes into solving problems introduced by people that are just indescribably bad.

Jesus. If this is really the case, consider that your organization might be abnormally bad and that you should leave.

I’ve worked with a few incompetent engineers, but never have I ever worked somewhere where 90% of ICs are so bad that they’re actively making the product worse and burning all of the other 10%’s time on trying to undo the 90%’s work. Of course it’s also not true when an organization claims that everyone there is a “10x ninja rockstar”. Most people I’ve worked with are smart but human. If I worked somewhere where 90% of my peer engineers were as bad as OP’s are, I’d leave ASAP by any means necessary.

The alternate hypothesis, of course, is that I’m part of the 90% but don’t know it!

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#170

Post by coxmichael »

Shaanie wrote: post #163
coxmichael wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s harder to get finance as a co-operative, so it’s hardly a fair competition. Also, in most studies, co-ops and employee ownership models do actually end up being more profitable and sustainable in the long term [0, 1]. [0] Page 23+ in this UK government review on employee ownership: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... [1] ONS report showing the rate of survival of cooperatives in the U…

Skimmed the first report and it seems like employee-owned companies perform better up until around 75 employees, after which there's no benefit? That would explain why they aren't outcompeting the larger companies - their advantage disappears when they grow.

I’d wager that’s more to do with raising finance than organisational productivity, but I’m not aware of any actual research on something of that scale or even how to accurately study those effects without it turning into more of a qualitative theory.

Still, it’s quite an interesting possibility worth pursuing in my opinion. (Full disclosure, I work for a small nominally employee-owned company, and have mixed thoughts about how it works in practice).

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