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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

#191

Post by jalapenos »

scaramanga wrote: post #160
jalapenos wrote: post #89

This is feelgood venting, but without addressing the root of the problem. All these managers are paid to do this BS. By the company. And that company is owned by people, who ultimately have the final say how it will be run, and who are paying the price. There needs to be a lot more discussion around corporate governance with regards to this topic. I.e. how is it allowed to happen. Why aren't companies adequently trai…

It reminds me of every layoff ever. It's a remarkable feature of layoffs that the people organizing them never have to lay themselves off. Think of the awkward conversations they would have had to have with their family... "Honey, I did a cost/benefit analysis and found that my role was parasitic value extraction. To maximise the goals of the organisation I have decided to make myself redundant. Further I have decide…

The point of takeover layoffs is that problem you describe in the first paragraph is nullified.

A well publicised example was the recent takeover of Musk of Twitter. He started by firing everyone at the top first, before moving on to cutting general staff second.

That's usually exactly the way to fix this problem, because BS-ing middle management requires apathetic upper management who're only concerned with milking their positions as long as they can (requiring no-one upset the apple cart). That in turn requires owners who are too dispersed, distant, or incompetent to band together and root out such parasites from the top down.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#192

Post by skrebbel »

Blog posts like these are a staple on HN and I’m always mildly offended by them.

It seems to me that there’s a class of programmer that will take an overpaid job at a terrible BigCo, spend their evenings writing ranty blog posts about how terrible it all is, culminating in the inevitable “I quit” article, only subsequently to accept a job at a different terrible BigCo.

At no point does this article, or most articles like it, do any effort to realize that things are not always like this. Even if there is some unavoidable law that huge companies inevitably fill their ranks with idiots, like this article suggests, you do not need to work at a huge company.

Most people do not work at huge companies. There’s lots of amazing tech companies with fulfilling jobs and they want you, now. But there’s this super prevalent idea that keeps getting pumped around the blogosphere that it’s absolutely impossible to not work at a terrible huge company and therefore you cannot possibly escape, and I quote, “going home and despairing”.

There’s some weird kind of suffer porn going on here that’s just unnecessary. If you choose to trade your sanity for a high salary then go right ahead but don’t act like you had no choice.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#193

Post by denton-scratch »

jalapenos wrote: post #89

This is feelgood venting, but without addressing the root of the problem. All these managers are paid to do this BS. By the company. And that company is owned by people, who ultimately have the final say how it will be run, and who are paying the price. There needs to be a lot more discussion around corporate governance with regards to this topic. I.e. how is it allowed to happen. Why aren't companies adequently trai…

> Why aren't companies adequently training and selecting managers

We've never trained managers. My father used to complain about this. He was an army officer before he went into industry; army officers are trained to manage.

I guess the difference with industry is that a trained manager can switch jobs; a trained army officer has a choice of exactly one employer. So training an officer is a long-term investment for the army, but training a manager just gives him an incentive to jump ship.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#194

Post by pdimitar »

theodric wrote: post #149
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…

> People find a cushy place to work in with a good salary, then just work their way up the economical ladder (or the organizational) and will do anything that's needed to achieve that goal. It's as simple as that, and I am convinced that a good chunk of these people (probably 20%-30%) are very well aware they are bullshitters but they think they have no choice. Look, I don't mind if you write about me, but it didn't…

It's fine, man, I get it -- family to feed, goals to achieve, house to buy.

I mostly hate the game, and only part of the players.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#195

Post by zubairq »

Brilliant post. Yes, I agree with 99% of it. I do however think you should start your own business and be your own boss, to see if you can be any better. I used to complain about management all the time, and then I became management, and i was even WORSE than they had been! (But I was able to recognise that I was worse)

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#196

Post by TeMPOraL »

skrebbel wrote: post #192

Blog posts like these are a staple on HN and I’m always mildly offended by them. It seems to me that there’s a class of programmer that will take an overpaid job at a terrible BigCo, spend their evenings writing ranty blog posts about how terrible it all is, culminating in the inevitable “I quit” article, only subsequently to accept a job at a different terrible BigCo. At no point does this article, or most articles…

> But there’s this super prevalent idea that keeps getting pumped around the blogosphere that it’s absolutely impossible to not work at a terrible huge company and therefore you cannot possibly escape, and I quote, “going home and despairing”.

Behind all such writing is an unspoken piece of context: those terrible huge companies pay software devs better than small ones. It's not that they can't work at a smaller company - it's just that it means taking a hit to your take-home pay, so it's Not An Option.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#197

Post by pixelfarmer »

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.

Question is then, why do you have both? Where does this implicit "hierarchy" come from? It is simple: As soon as you have multiple people working on a problem there are communication requirements. You can organize things in a way that they support these requirements or you can just let them figure out how to adapt their needs around some existing hierarchy. Now which one do you think is more efficient?

Hierarchies are just an organizational pattern, a tool. There are neither a religion or "set in stone" as many think, they create communication choke points, induce unnecessary communication, cause "not our responsibility" mentality that may result in things falling through the cracks, have often the "Chinese whispers" problem to it, and so on. You cannot treat every problem like a nail just because your only tool is a hammer.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#198

Post by skrebbel »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #196
skrebbel wrote: post #192

Blog posts like these are a staple on HN and I’m always mildly offended by them. It seems to me that there’s a class of programmer that will take an overpaid job at a terrible BigCo, spend their evenings writing ranty blog posts about how terrible it all is, culminating in the inevitable “I quit” article, only subsequently to accept a job at a different terrible BigCo. At no point does this article, or most articles…

> But there’s this super prevalent idea that keeps getting pumped around the blogosphere that it’s absolutely impossible to not work at a terrible huge company and therefore you cannot possibly escape, and I quote, “going home and despairing”. Behind all such writing is an unspoken piece of context: those terrible huge companies pay software devs better than small ones. It's not that they can't work at a smaller comp…

Agree! In fact, while you wrote this I made an edit (last sentence) to address that. It was supposed to be my core point but I had somehow left it implicit.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#199

Post by rvba »

> I have never met a single manager at any large company that has not said they want to be data driven.

Grinding Gear Games - developers of Path of Exile famously said that they dont use data (probably because they dont know how to interpret it) - explains why their game is very poorly balanced.

On a side note, everyone knows that the game is infested by bots... everyone apart from GGG. There was a post by them, where they noted how it was strange that 15% of players did not make a certain quest... Guess what: bots (at that time) werent advanced enough to make that quest.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#200

Post by astrange »

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?

Yes, that one's bad too.

But the main evidence for this is that he's an anarchist. Graeber is not around to defend this position seeing as he's not alive, but anarchists are all very happy to talk about their philosophy, they will answer any question you give them, and their answers instantly disprove it and show they shouldn't be trusted to implement any of it. Like if you ask where insulin comes from they'll just say doctors will make it in their backyards as a hobby.

Recent example of this is Seattle's CHAZ where the police went away for a few weeks, they posted some anarchist guards, and they instantly shot and killed a black teenager because they thought he was a criminal.

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