The Disneyfication of a University • Hacker News Board

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#191

Post by zweep » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #55

Seenso wrote: post #25

Several years ago, I had to attend a full day "culture training" session given by Senn Delaney (a division of Heidrick & Struggles) [1]. It was also a massive waste of time. Our company actually has a really great culture, and what I remember of the training amounted to a somewhat subtle attempt to indoctrinate employees to be more blindly obedient to management change initiatives. There was some other stuff, but I h…

Not long ago at $JOB I sat through what I call "mandatory psychobabble day". The particular psychobabble being peddled to, or rather, imposed on, us was the DISC system -- a variant of which was recently outed on Hackernews as pernicious hucksterism which somehow held much of Sweden in its sway. It was supposed to make us better collaborators, under the rubric that understanding the traits of both your own star sign…

Or he also realizes that it’s bullshit. I led a “diversity workshop” in my company at the request of management because I’m known to be an excellent public speaker. The content was 100% crap but I was commended for my work and was rewarded for it so I’d gladly do another.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#192

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #109

cs702 wrote: post #24

It's part of the ongoing "corporatization" and "MBA-ization" of US colleges and universities. GW's attempt to institute a "culture" using techniques developed at Disney is just one of many possible examples, although I will admit it is a particularly easy one to mock. (Quoting the OP: "The GW culture initiative can be summed up in two words: Mickey Mouse.") Much of higher education in the US is now controlled by an a…

> According to federal figures, as of a few years ago, the number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at US colleges and universities has more than doubled in the past quarter century, outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty.[a] Just as an aside - this does include professional staff, which is advisors, academic support staff, and other student facing services. The problem with…

> One of the two of those positions actually provide value to the student experience.

It's not clear at all that academic coaches provide value to students.

Being advised by actual professors would provide far more value to students.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#193

Post by zweep » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

Seenso wrote: post #25

Several years ago, I had to attend a full day "culture training" session given by Senn Delaney (a division of Heidrick & Struggles) [1]. It was also a massive waste of time. Our company actually has a really great culture, and what I remember of the training amounted to a somewhat subtle attempt to indoctrinate employees to be more blindly obedient to management change initiatives. There was some other stuff, but I h…

My trick for no multitasking: pen and paper notebook. Looks like I’m taking notes, I’m actually working on my novel.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#194

Post by zweep » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #138

Seenso wrote: post #25

Several years ago, I had to attend a full day "culture training" session given by Senn Delaney (a division of Heidrick & Struggles) [1]. It was also a massive waste of time. Our company actually has a really great culture, and what I remember of the training amounted to a somewhat subtle attempt to indoctrinate employees to be more blindly obedient to management change initiatives. There was some other stuff, but I h…

When Japanese companies came to the West some of them tried to push the Japanese company culture into their subsidiaries without any modifications. Starting workday with everyone standing in attention outside and singing company song when company flag was hoisted did not go well.

LOL. I’d do it if they had those adorable Japanese mascot characters.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#195

Post by Consultant32452 » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #187

Consultant32452 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One time my wife explained to me that she didn't feel like I appreciated her doing my laundry. I responded that she should stop doing my laundry. I didn't feel like it was her "job" to do the laundry and if it was the source of some emotional problem, it could easily be avoided. I thought I had solved the problem. She's my ex-wife now.

This reminds me of some web article I read a while ago complaining about how women suffer more "emotional labor" in relationships. It was of course written by a women, but to me, it really seemed like a lot of whining, which amounted to "I think all this stuff is necessary, so if my husband doesn't pitch in and do half of it, it's unfair." So, for instance, if the wife insists on having an immaculately clean house, a…

I saw the same: https://twitter.com/thebettinaarndt/status/12256288137003212...

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#196

Post by falcor84 » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

aspaceman wrote: post #164

inviromentalist wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have this mentality until I tried hiring minimum wage workers. Minimum wage workers are extremely low quality. They have 0 skills and require education on everything. Sure Engineers need to learn too, but there's a gigantic difference. Minimum wage workers are hard to find. Most people won't work for that little, so turnover is high. Minimum wage workers don't care. They know they can find another job easil…

You have to pay for quality work. If you pay the minimum you get the minimum quality of work.

Yeah, that actually makes perfect sense. I suppose you could say that when a state sets a minimum wage, it creates a new 'zero' level for productivity, and then companies need to pay 'x' above that to compete for productive employees. If it indeed works that way, then that's policy as intended, right?

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#197

Post by zweep » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #150

riyadparvez wrote: post #48

As someone who is not from North America, this positive/good vibe culture really baffles me. You are a human being. Negative emotions are part of life. World is full of pain and sufferings. You are supposed to feel empathy for other people and feel bad for their misfortune even if you have the good luck of not going through suffering. I just don't understand this obsession of feeling good all the time. I don't know h…

A saying I learned from a Russian coworker: "The only people who smile all the time are idiots and Americans." As an American, I find that quite amusing. I'd say it brings a smile to my face, but there's likely one there already.

The flip side is when Lisa Simpson asks a Russian man for directions to the bus and he politely answers her but she mistakes his gruff Slavic manner for hostility.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#198

Post by im3w1l » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

safety-third wrote: post #129

riyadparvez wrote: post #48

As someone who is not from North America, this positive/good vibe culture really baffles me. You are a human being. Negative emotions are part of life. World is full of pain and sufferings. You are supposed to feel empathy for other people and feel bad for their misfortune even if you have the good luck of not going through suffering. I just don't understand this obsession of feeling good all the time. I don't know h…

It comes from two religious movements in the U.S. that became popular starting in the 50's and has been gaining momentum ever since: Prosperity Gospel and New Age Spirituality. They both focus on you projecting "good vibes" and only allowing others who also project good vibes around you. If you can do this, then (Nature/God/the Universe) will reward you.

It's interesting you brought up religion, as to me it has always seemed that Christianity strongly embraces bad vibes.

Like all the pictures of Jesus being crucified and wearing crowns of thorns, and the talk of how we are all sinners and bad people. And the talk of writhing in lakes of fire.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#199

Post by AgentME » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

odiroot wrote: post #119

brightball wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on the right track, but I think you're taking a more cynical view of it (just to be frank). Whether you're a business, volunteer organization, sports team or anything else you want the people working with you to be motivated. No matter what. Motivation is the goal. If you get into motivational psychology, especially for people in the software field, studies consistently show that motivation for us boils down t…

> Motivation is the goal. I cannot speak for everyone but nothing motivates me more than a well defined task/problem, a reasonable amount of time to solve it, and a follow up letting me know how much my solution helped. No amount of gimmicks is gonna win with that.

I would consider the normalization (or lack) of what you mentioned as part of company culture.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#200

Post by karatestomp » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #65

The most common reason people leave companies is not compensation. It's usually about relationships, primarily with the boss but also coworkers. I'm on the spectrum, so I function a bit like an automaton which places little value on the social aspects of work, but most people aren't like that. This is how "on the spectrum" I am. One time I was on a team that did a team building exercise where we went to a local chari…

> One time I was on a team that did a team building exercise where we went to a local charity for sick kids and performed manual labor all day.

One small company I worked for once did this, but with gathering apples that would otherwise have gone to waste ("gleaning") to give them to homeless shelters or something. Took up two or three hours, total, lots of driving (gas burnt), and so on. Fifteen or twenty people.

We wouldn't even have had to pay minimum wage workers to do what we did to substantially beat our productivity that day. Simply buying apples with ~3x the average worker's hourly wage times the number of workers we had there would have been embarrassingly more effective. I question the entire exercise and charity org behind it, actually. I suspect someone's making money off it one way or another, maybe just by building a "personal brand" as a corporate charity consultant or some such. The market's pretty efficient at getting cheap food to paying customers, and you probably can't beat the efficiency of simply buying food even at minimum wage rates, by manually harvesting from leftovers, however sad it may seem to let that food rot.

It's kinda a dumb idea, if your main goal is improving the world, to such a high degree that I think it'd set of alarm bells for even people who aren't into the effective-altruism thing.

[EDIT] back-of-envelope we could have bought 750-1000 pounds of apples without even getting some kind of bulk price. I think we "gleaned" like 200-300 pounds, tops, and it may have been less. It'd be much higher still if we figured it using company revenue for that span of 3 hours, rather than worker pay, and that's not factoring in all the costs of driving-people-to-the-orchard and all the driving-apples-all-over-the-place that the organization's volunteers did, nor their time. Overall I bet we weren't much more than 10% as effective as just buying apples.