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

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#171

Post by Arbortheus » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 10:49 AM UTC

isthispermanent wrote: post #134

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 secur…

This comment has made me appreciate my company’s security team and their pragmatism and effective prioritisation. Thank you :)

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#172

Post by LudwigNagasena » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 10:50 AM UTC

isthispermanent wrote: post #124

astrange wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep remembering this old article -- "Bullshit Jobs" -- and yep, it still rings true to this day, and will likely do so for decades more, likely centuries even because our societal changes are slower than glaciers... That idea is fake, Graeber is a moron, and it's rude to look at other people's work and conclude that it's useless just because you don't personally watch them all day.

David Graeber, the author of Debt, is a moron?

Just a run-of-the-mil humanities professor aka social activist.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#173

Post by smeej » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 10:51 AM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #140

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 happ…

So "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"?

I hate to tell you this, but you've very much missed your target of "not something that's already been talked about for 200 years."

Who does the selecting? Who says, "You, there! You shall devote your time to programming robots, so your neighbors can 'be good friends' and have meaningful relationships. Buck up, comrade. Look how good it will be for everyone (...else)!"?

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#174

Post by achenet » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 10:52 AM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #164

achenet wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

I'm really skeptical that it's easy to automate those assembly line jobs away, or to automate mining. For one thing, robots are expensive to build. For another, while it's possible to make robots do tasks like that, there's a good chance they'll be less efficient at them than humans. And of course, if you're profit driven, given the choice between paying foreign sweatshop workers starvation wages on a high margin product and blowing billions on a risky R&D project that has a 50% chance of not working and a 50% chance of being copied by all your competitors if it does (assuming you develop something that's actually cheaper than cheap wage slave labor, which is far from a given) is pretty obvious...

that said, if you can actually build an iPhone factory that doesn't need workers, I'm believe there are many big companies willing to pay you a small fortune for that.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#175

Post by Drakim » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 10:53 AM UTC

bryananderson wrote: post #169

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…

The thing is, there isn't one singular measure of value in terms of how the product can be "bad" or "good". I've very often seen less experienced engineers make stuff that helps a specific customer (good), but makes the app just a little less organized and understandable in the long run (bad). I often have to step in and fix the damage done that might not be visible at first glance for a lot of my coworkers. I wouldn't say it's 90%, but maybe 60%.

The thing is, it's not like said engineer didn't actually deliver a useful thing to a customer, so it's not like he did objectively universally bad. But they might not realize that if everybody worked like this, a few years down the line, our entire product would be beyond saving.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#176

Post by lordnacho » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 11:02 AM UTC

smeej wrote: post #173

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…

So "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"? I hate to tell you this, but you've very much missed your target of "not something that's already been talked about for 200 years." Who does the selecting? Who says, "You, there! You shall devote your time to programming robots, so your neighbors can 'be good friends' and have meaningful relationships. Buck up, comrade. Look how good it will…

I'll admit this isn't fully fleshed out. I've yet to design the gulags.

But the core of it is a change of focus away from "everyone must contribute as much as they can" which the lefties also support. It's more the recognition that actually we could (maybe!) get more done if we didn't insist on everyone doing something.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#177

Post by lifeisstillgood » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 11:02 AM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #51

addicted wrote: post #16

> My current organization has 8000 staff members, and I used to glance over the usage metrics of the dashboards my old team produced. I believe three dashboards were used, out of somewhere around 50 - 100. Of those being visited, it usually turned out they were being visited by members of our team checking to see if the data had refreshed for the day. I'd estimate the cost of maintaining our team was approximately $1…

Can anyone here look at " identify a change which improved employee efficiency by $125 annually " and think it isn't going to be complete bullshit? That's in the region of 50c/day. "I told employees to reuse paperclips which I predict will save the company $1M per year"[1] PR/marketing/self-promotion - surely nobody believes it?. And that saving 50 cents per day is supposed to come from a manager who can influence al…

I agree with pretty much everything you say here. But a thought hits me on the dan luu kernel issue - let's say we fund a team of kernel devs and they reduce TCO by .5% - the nature of FOSS means that the reduction in cost is illusory - all their competitors get the same TCO.

The funding of the kernel team is similar to paying taxes to fund science research ... it's just the more I look around the more I see a vast socialist society we live in that we think is some red in tooth and claw capitalism.

The main value of capitalism seems to be the creative destruction- replacing old inefficient companies with ones newly formed, built differently.

It's just that if we found a way to close down companies after say ten years and forced them to build new, would that solve as many issues as schumpter?

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#178

Post by lordnacho » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 11:03 AM UTC

achenet wrote: post #174

lordnacho wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

I'm really skeptical that it's easy to automate those assembly line jobs away, or to automate mining. For one thing, robots are expensive to build. For another, while it's possible to make robots do tasks like that, there's a good chance they'll be less efficient at them than humans. And of course, if you're profit driven, given the choice between paying foreign sweatshop workers starvation wages on a high margin pro…

Well yeah, it's not easy right now, because we are doing precisely what you are saying, basically short term optimization.

Not saying that hasn't served us well for a long time, but I think there are improvements we could make in our society.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#179

Post by badpun » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 11:08 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

Perhaps I'm a natural-born sycophant, but I always understood that my primary role in the company is to serve/help my boss, and, most notably, making him look good in from of his boss.

Incidentally, I'm already financially independent and retired at 42 yo.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#180

Post by birdstheword5 » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 11:09 AM UTC

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

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

Translation: everyone except me is stupid.

Why do we let people say things like this without calling them out on it?