Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops • Hacker News Board

Re: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops

#21

Post by aschearer » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 9:24 PM UTC

slt2021 wrote: post #18

chrisdbanks wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workers vs investors shouldn't be seen as a zero sum game. If it is then that's short-term thinking. Simon Sinek explains this all very well in The Infinite Game.

Any non-zero sum game can be re-formulated in zero-sum game terms, this is a rule. Give me example of any non-zero sum game, and I can prove that under the hood it is actually a zero-sum game. The trivial proof is that profit/revenue pool available for Corporation is limited, and the main question is how that profit pool is to be divided among Labor (employees) and Capital (investors/shareholders). The fundamental la…

Giving and receiving love is not zero-sum. Cultivating mutual trust is not zero-sum.

Re: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops

#22

Post by GuB-42 » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 9:30 PM UTC

> and maybe try to keep the other managers from interfering with the work also.

I think that's what good managers are supposed to do. As in, that's their entire job.

Managers are not necessarily good at doing the actual work, but hopefully, the people they manage are. The thing is: running a business involves a lot more than doing the "actual work", coordination, dealing with customers, etc... Managers are supposed to shield workers from all that, so that they can concentrate on the "actual work".

For example, a somewhat idealized but not so far from the truth exchange with my manager could look like:

- The customers is unhappy with the latest release, he says that X doesn't work as expected, can you tell me why?

- Uhm... X wasn't in the specs so it wasn't tested, but sure, it is a bug

- Ok, how long you think it will it take to fix it?

- Probably around two days

- Ok, let's make it 4 to account for risk and management. It shouldn't cause major delays but I may need to find some extra budget, I will negotiate with the customer since it wasn't originally planned. In the meantime, work on fixing that bug and tell me how it goes.

Re: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops

#23

Post by slt2021 » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

aschearer wrote: post #21

slt2021 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any non-zero sum game can be re-formulated in zero-sum game terms, this is a rule. Give me example of any non-zero sum game, and I can prove that under the hood it is actually a zero-sum game. The trivial proof is that profit/revenue pool available for Corporation is limited, and the main question is how that profit pool is to be divided among Labor (employees) and Capital (investors/shareholders). The fundamental la…

Giving and receiving love is not zero-sum. Cultivating mutual trust is not zero-sum.

it is not zero-sum between two parties (as in if one party shows more love, there is a chance it will create more mutual love from the other party).

But, the problem can be reformulated as zero-sum in terms of time: Time is the ultimate scarce and zero-sum resource, you cannot create time, only redistribute.

The more time we spend with the loved ones, less time we have for other things like hobbies and work. Company wants people to spend maximum time on work and worker efficiency (so called "career growth"), and less time on personal life etc. For corporation - worker's attention is absolutely zero-sum game and they want maximum of worker's attention, on top of 9-5.

That's why they create more employee love by throwing benefits, free food and snacks, corporate parties so that they spend less time on personal matters and work more toward the company's goals.

Re: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops

#24

Post by AndrewKemendo » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

capitalsigma wrote: post #12

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are there to crack the whip and collect the spoils This is historically correct Here's a recent unambiguous proof from Tesla's own words: "Tesla argued that stock options were used to ensure Director's incentives were aligned with investor goals." [1] Said another way, "we massively over-paid directors in order to give them an incentive to prioritize investor goals over all other goals" In the parlance of finan…

Most big tech firms give engineers RSUs for this reason

Indeed, which are sub class of stock with no power.

So it’s the same story and is effectively a lottery ticket.

Re: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops

#25

Post by slt2021 » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 10:19 PM UTC

snovv_crash wrote: post #20

slt2021 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any non-zero sum game can be re-formulated in zero-sum game terms, this is a rule. Give me example of any non-zero sum game, and I can prove that under the hood it is actually a zero-sum game. The trivial proof is that profit/revenue pool available for Corporation is limited, and the main question is how that profit pool is to be divided among Labor (employees) and Capital (investors/shareholders). The fundamental la…

How does this model account for varying growth based on employee alignment with company goals?

Think of annual profit generated by company as a fixed pie. or total market as a giant pie.

Question is how to slice a pie between Labor and Capital?

Now we know that IT is a growing market, and next year pie will be bigger, much bigger. That's why Capital needs Labor to cooperate along and work as efficiently as possible to capture maximum slice of pie for the Corporation next year and the year after.

That's why they give variable compensation and give sense of ownership. Just by giving out 0.1% of shares, Capital is able to extract max value form Labor and make their pie grow at 30-40% per year.

Absolutely killer deal for Capital.

That's how zuckerberg et al become billionaires, while employees who created the money making machine are mere (multi)millionaires.

you join stage B startup and get 0.01% of company as ISO options, but you do the 100% of the work required to make product and grow company from $10M valuation to $10B valuation. Three orders of magnitude growth for Capital, while Labor get 1/1000 of that growth

Re: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops

#26

Post by admax88qqq » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 10:31 PM UTC

slt2021 wrote: post #25

snovv_crash wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this model account for varying growth based on employee alignment with company goals?

Think of annual profit generated by company as a fixed pie. or total market as a giant pie. Question is how to slice a pie between Labor and Capital? Now we know that IT is a growing market, and next year pie will be bigger, much bigger. That's why Capital needs Labor to cooperate along and work as efficiently as possible to capture maximum slice of pie for the Corporation next year and the year after. That's why the…

> Now we know that IT is a growing market,

That's literally a non zero sum game. You can phrase it as cynically as you like, but that's still the definition of a non zero sum game.

Re: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops

#27

Post by slt2021 » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 10:37 PM UTC

admax88qqq wrote: post #26

slt2021 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of annual profit generated by company as a fixed pie. or total market as a giant pie. Question is how to slice a pie between Labor and Capital? Now we know that IT is a growing market, and next year pie will be bigger, much bigger. That's why Capital needs Labor to cooperate along and work as efficiently as possible to capture maximum slice of pie for the Corporation next year and the year after. That's why the…

> Now we know that IT is a growing market, That's literally a non zero sum game. You can phrase it as cynically as you like, but that's still the definition of a non zero sum game.

it is zero sum when it comes to Labor vs Capital relationship.

Counter example to your claim: if giving out RSUs is not zero-sum, then why don't Companies give me as many RSUs as possible, since they are not losing anything and it is not zero-sum game, by your definition?

Re: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops

#28

Post by ilaksh » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:01 PM UTC

spacephysics wrote: post #15

ilaksh wrote: post #4

A lot of good information. But my cynical worker viewpoint is that the problem is really that upper management doesn't do the actual work and that is by design. It's a class separation. They are there to crack the whip and collect the spoils. The only way for upper management to really understand what's going on and give useful input would be for them to be directly involved on a day-to-day basis. In other words, the…

To be frank, this has an anti-capitalist smell and I don’t feel is written in good faith. Sure there are managers that crack the whip, but most the places I’ve worked for, my manager was a former IC and cared deeply about the health of the product, while protecting the IC team I was on from the business side. Learning more about the business portion and product manager viewpoints, gives me a more sympathetic tone to…

Most of those are good points. I am technically anti-capitalist, but also anti-socialist. I think both philosophies are extreme and oversimplified. We need a worldview that integrates the insights of both with technological developments and is truly a step forward. It must value the application of science to solving society's problems by creating and using tools in core structures. It must value diversity and evolution but also holism and harmony.

Re: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops

#29

Post by robocat » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:13 PM UTC

kaycebasques wrote: post #3

This comment is in reference to the second to last paragraph (there's something weird going on with that page that's preventing me from copying text on my mobile). That paragraph says something like "by being outside silos you can carry information around and tie it all together". I've been thinking about my role as a technical writer (TW) recently. I think TWs have a lot of opportunity to operate in a similar way. T…

> there's something weird going on with that page that's preventing me from copying text on my mobile

reader-mode (if available) is often the best workaround to enable copy

Re: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops

#30

Post by femiagbabiaka » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 12:03 AM UTC

mwerd wrote: post #5

ilaksh wrote: post #4

A lot of good information. But my cynical worker viewpoint is that the problem is really that upper management doesn't do the actual work and that is by design. It's a class separation. They are there to crack the whip and collect the spoils. The only way for upper management to really understand what's going on and give useful input would be for them to be directly involved on a day-to-day basis. In other words, the…

That's a point of view that would change quickly if you were in one of those management positions. You get to a point where it's impossible to do the work anymore. There's too much of it. You have to develop teams, processes, structure, etc. that delivers the outcomes you're accountable for with full knowledge that you cannot do them yourself. It's very different than doing the work and experience shows that fewer pe…

Productivity is not a universal good. Productivity on its own does not lead to better business outcomes. The problem with management that doesn’t do or know how to do the work is that they get detached from what should be done — they can be neither visionary nor maintainer. This can be overcome when management loses their ego and listens to those doing the work, merging their high level view with the data gotten from perspectives on the shop floor. I can count the number of people in management I’ve observed capable of doing that on one hand in a decade.