Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, sitting in meetings all day, essentially accomplishing nothing really is bullshit. Granted, there are some super productive management teams out there, but the majority of time is spent dealing with nonsense politics, and having meetings to schedule meetings. Stereotypes have basis in reality.
Having held a few of those jobs, I understand the sentiment, but that doesn't mean those positions are unnecessary, especially as organizations get beyond a certain size. I understood his take on it to be that it just wasn't for him since he likes to be able to see something he has built in a fairly short timeframe, and at a place like Motorola in the '90s, middle management and probably many of the executives wouldn…
Employee 1: Yahoo
21–30 of 115 posts
Re: Employee 1: Yahoo
#22>> Come out to Silicon Valley and get a regular 9 to 5 at a place like at SGI [Silicon Graphics], and then you can moonlight with us. And we’ll see where it goes. That sounds so absurd. Today that would be like, "hey come out here and get a job at Instagram, and them after-hours we'll work on our own thing"
Interesting that SGI would have to be explained. Once upon a time in computing that was as well known as SUN, Apollo, Commodore and Data-General.
Re: Employee 1: Yahoo
#23>> Come out to Silicon Valley and get a regular 9 to 5 at a place like at SGI [Silicon Graphics], and then you can moonlight with us. And we’ll see where it goes. That sounds so absurd. Today that would be like, "hey come out here and get a job at Instagram, and them after-hours we'll work on our own thing"
Why is it absurd? It's not uncommon today. It's basically the plot of season 1 of Silicon Valley on HBO (replace SGI/Instagram with Huli).
Re: Employee 1: Yahoo
#24Excellent article; I thought the section copy-pasted below to be a rather non-trivial, unintuitive, and meaningful lesson: > Craig : How was it to ride that wave, especially when the bottom fell out in 2000? > Tim : When things are going well and you’re in a growth industry, you don’t have to deal with many difficult issues. It’s the old cliche, winning solves everything. > Craig : For sure. > Tim : It’s really true.…
It's a different kind of challenge but just as fun.
Re: Employee 1: Yahoo
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I saw how they spent their time and didn’t find it interesting or very rewarding." it may not be interesting but I'm sure it's quite rewarding (as in money/wealth)
In my thirties now, after spending my twenties in pursuit of wealth. I can tell you unequivocally, as cliche as it is, accumulating money/wealth is not rewarding. Of course one needs a certain amount to be comfortable, but obtaining more has absolutely not made me a happier person. Relationships, interesting purposeful work, and travel has been what I have found to be the most rewarding. Basically experiences over th…
I have not been able to find meaningful/purposeful work in any organization. The life lessons I've learned can basically be summarized as: there is no such thing as purposeful work for which you are paid a wage, and businesses rarely extract meaningful labor out of you. Businesses are rarely punished for being unproductive, and most effort within any organization is spent intensely focused on politics, both internal and external, to ensure the business can create Dutch books and survive any possible outcome without needing to actually be productive.
The closer you get to pure knowledge work, the worse all of these effects become. In my field, machine learning and statistics, it is about as bad as it can possibly be. Because policy is ostensibly supposed to be based on evidence and sound, statistical reasoning, and it's very fashionable right now to try to characterize all aspects of business planning as if they are "data driven", all that it means is that the corporate politicians now hawkishly focus on statistics/machine learning and "science" as the means by which they control politics.
It unequivocally does not mean that businesses are actually shifting to truly be more scientific in their decision making, nor are they less wasteful, less driven by prestige or politics, less hyper-focused on short-term thinking, etc. If anything, firms are worse on all of these dimensions, and waste vast sums of money setting up big data infrastructure than truly does nothing but give glossy data visualization facades that decisions are somehow being made based on hard data.
What it has taught me is somewhat of the inverse of what you say.
I agree that pursuit of material wealth and power is uninteresting and highly unfulfilling. The problem is that pursuit of meaningful work turns out to be even more uninteresting and even more unfulfilling and you simply end up poorer and sounding like a burnt out crank.
You are probably better off (if you can; I unfortunately cannot) sublimating away any desire for creative, autonomous, meaningful, purposeful, or interesting work -- simply delete that from your genome with hardcore unhealthy repression. Then try to amass enough wealth doing horrible, horrible politics as you can to retire early, start your own small business, or something else where you are personally in charge of what you do and where you don't have a need for anyone else to pay you for your labor output.
The one part I will agree with you on is to definitely value relationships. Whether you are burning yourself out chasing the carrot of so-called meaningful work, or you are killing yourself slowly playing political games to get promotions and money, do not allow either toxin to infiltrate your personal life, and really try to slow your brain down and savor the moments you have with family, friends, and loved ones.
Re: Employee 1: Yahoo
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's fine to decide you don't want their jobs, but it's a mistake to frame it as "bullshit" which he does after the section you quote. Human nature isn't bullshit, and any endeavor which requires a large number of people to accomplish requires the management of human nature.
No, sitting in meetings all day, essentially accomplishing nothing really is bullshit. Granted, there are some super productive management teams out there, but the majority of time is spent dealing with nonsense politics, and having meetings to schedule meetings. Stereotypes have basis in reality.
Re: Employee 1: Yahoo
#27>"Craig : Hahaha." What is the point of including this?
- Give the illusion that the interview is raw, unedited, so closer to truth.
- Elevates the social status of the interviewer, because he's on joking terms with interviewee.
Re: Employee 1: Yahoo
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's fine to decide you don't want their jobs, but it's a mistake to frame it as "bullshit" which he does after the section you quote. Human nature isn't bullshit, and any endeavor which requires a large number of people to accomplish requires the management of human nature.
No, sitting in meetings all day, essentially accomplishing nothing really is bullshit. Granted, there are some super productive management teams out there, but the majority of time is spent dealing with nonsense politics, and having meetings to schedule meetings. Stereotypes have basis in reality.
Re: Employee 1: Yahoo
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I saw how they spent their time and didn’t find it interesting or very rewarding." it may not be interesting but I'm sure it's quite rewarding (as in money/wealth)
In my thirties now, after spending my twenties in pursuit of wealth. I can tell you unequivocally, as cliche as it is, accumulating money/wealth is not rewarding. Of course one needs a certain amount to be comfortable, but obtaining more has absolutely not made me a happier person. Relationships, interesting purposeful work, and travel has been what I have found to be the most rewarding. Basically experiences over th…
And how big does your fuck you fund and/or financial stability in general have to be to be able to say No to uninteresting unpurposeful work?
And how much do you need to both pay for travel and to be able to afford the time to travel?
Wealth accumulation is freedom accumulation. You need the freedom to lead a purposeful rewarding life. You can't do that, if your days are consumed by struggling to make ends meet.
A lot of modern inspiremotivationstuff neglects that part.
Would your thirties be as fulfilling as they are if you hadn't spent your twenties in pursuit of wealth? I'd guess not.
Re: Employee 1: Yahoo
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having held a few of those jobs, I understand the sentiment, but that doesn't mean those positions are unnecessary, especially as organizations get beyond a certain size. I understood his take on it to be that it just wasn't for him since he likes to be able to see something he has built in a fairly short timeframe, and at a place like Motorola in the '90s, middle management and probably many of the executives wouldn…
I think the point was that he was emphasizing the bosses bosses bosses boss. Many levels of nonsense, leading to politics. Managers do need to exist, and I agree they have a purpose, but often times, even in the company I work for currently. There is more management than there is workers.
The whole flat org with minimal managers "ideal" has been tried lots of places and always failed. I think even Google tried it at some point. Let me tell you a few things that happen when your org gets flatter:
1. Decisions get bottlenecked
Typically, the "flat org" thing gets tried without empowering the rank-and-file to make big decisions. So decisions that would normally get resolved one or two levels up the chain all get bottlenecked at the GM or CEO, who (now having 100 reports) does not have the knowledge or context to always make the right call.
2. Extreme micromanagement
A counter to #1 is if those decisions actually DON'T get bottlenecked: If you think it sucks to have your manager nit-picking over every little engineering decision you make, imagine how bad it is having the CEO do it, and feel he has to because he has no other managers to make those decisions. Let me tell you from experience: It sucks.
3. You get less time with your boss
When your boss has 4-5 direct reports, they can spend time with you weekly to chat about current challenges, help you with career development, give you pointers on things, etc. When he/she has 20-30 directs, good luck getting any airtime at all.
4. Shit rains down on you
A great manager shields his reports from 95% of the shit that gets rained down on him by the higher-ups. Uninformed complaints, decision churn and flip-flopping, "strategic enterprise synergy workshops", requests for perpetual motion machines and features that defy mathematics: If your boss is good, he doesn't let any of this crap get down to you. Without management, you as 3rd engineer from the left on WhatsitApp Project, get a firehouse of this in your face every day.
5. No career advancement
Granted, this is not important to everyone, but if your boss is the CEO or if his/her boss is the CEO, you're unlikely to get promoted at all during your tenure at that company, or you're going to have to wait for one of them to quit. Whereas if you're manager #6 down, there will be plenty of opportunities to find a #5 level manager position to move up to at some point.