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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

#231

Post by pdimitar »

TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #209
lordnacho wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet everyone can think of someone who has been handsomely paid for producing no value. The theory is wrong, basically, if that's what it says.

Just because you don’t see the value doesn’t mean there is none. Granted bad deals get made from time to time.

No, those bad deals are likely at least 50%, maybe even 80%.

I've seen way too many PMs and middle managers twiddling their thumbs and just inventing tasks and reports just so they are busy and are not fired.

How do I know? We had some of them go to a conference once; they were all gone for two weeks.

Work was going faster and smoother.

And that's not a single anecdote, it's supported by many other programmers.

Truth is, nepotism and "we've been buddies at the uni" is happening much more than you are willing to admit.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#232

Post by pdimitar »

TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #202
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…

Capitalism in theory doesn't support jobs that produce no value. Shareholders would have demanded that waste be optimized out of the company.

I am sure shareholders are demanding that in many places but they are demanding it from the people who provide no value themselves and who are perfectly positioned to inflate their importance and perceived value-add.

That's like asking the corrupt politicians to uproot corruption. Obviously it will never work.

So the shareholders get bulshitted exactly by the people who are very likely superfluous.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#233

Post by pdimitar »

RandomLensman wrote: post #183
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…

The other answer is risk: large, poorly reversible changes can go wrong and there will be blame. Even if there is golden parachute, within the respective social group that matters - and to regulators where applicable.

Well, thicker skin is one option. I have no problem admitting fault when I thought I can help but ended up harming something. However, that also happened extremely rarely.

People are just way too risk-averse. Though I get why the useless managers are like that, they don't want anything shining a light on their team more than absolutely necessary because they know they could be the first ones on the chopping block should an objective analysis ever take place.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#234

Post by RandomLensman »

gcapu wrote: post #210
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…

God points but: 1) For someone in BigCo it is fun to read. 2) BigCo is not a bad place for most people. Management should just shut up about efficiency and data driven. No one believes them, not even themselves.

The audience for the management statements, such as investors and analysts, might just want to hear certain things. These things will have certain fads and fashions as to what needs to be uttered.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#235

Post by xmcqdpt2 »

TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #202
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…

Capitalism in theory doesn't support jobs that produce no value. Shareholders would have demanded that waste be optimized out of the company.

This is actually a very well known problem in management,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_prob...

The shareholders are uninformed and disorganized. They might take their money out but that will take a long time. Meanwhile, management and the board control the flow of information and can take decisions together.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#236

Post by pdimitar »

oblio wrote: post #133
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…

Centuries? Try hundreds of thousands of years. We've been social and hierarchical creatures since back when we were great apes.

At this point, I am mostly preferring what the great apes of our age have in terms of a social structure... At least there is some merit there, not just who screams the loudest and packs the hardest punch.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#237

Post by neogodless »

Draiken wrote: post #218
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…

If we lived in a world where money wasn't so important I would fully agree with you. But it is. I can't earn the same as you all can because I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever. So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice. Choosing to earn less and hope for a lottery ticket win l…

> No it's not really a choice.

Hard disagree. Have never worked for "terrible big company" (though some mediocre medium companies!) But outside of the super high cost of living areas like NYC and San Francisco, it's trivially simple (if not easy) to live on $50-60K USD each year (adjust this number for inflation as needed) while still enjoying yourself, having high performance technology, doing some travel, etc. You can't buy every damn thing you want or live like a millionaire, but you can live a great life.

How many software / engineering jobs in the U.S., excluding terrible big tech companies, pay more than $60k USD per year?

Almost all of them. In fact, it's not hard to make well over $100k. And live on half that. So you don't have to work forever just because you're not making $500k USD each year at some huge terrible tech company.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#238

Post by pdimitar »

MattGaiser wrote: post #98
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…

> At the same time, I've known a few company owners long time ago who were just BEGGING their managers to tell them the problems exactly as they are, swore on their lives they will not fire the managers for bringing them bad news (and made contracts that made sure of it in no uncertain terms)... and yet all of the managers below those people were sycophant yes-men. Contracts are insufficient here. A contract doesn't…

Yep, I get that, but what should an open-minded company owner do?

They can't exactly promise "you will all be here for 5 years, guaranteed, no matter what" too, because for most Homo Sapiens that's a signal to immediately become useless.

My point is similar to yours: that the incentives are indeed not aligned, and that this is quite tragic because even when some people make an honest try to break the vicious cycle they still get treated like everyone else.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#239

Post by neogodless »

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…

You're saying if you can't maximize your pay, it's not an option?

I cannot wrap my head around it. Being happy with your life is not a one-to-one correlation with income. You can make less money than "maximum" and still have a great life.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#240

Post by FrustratedMonky »

>>"Most managers have never had an independent thought on how to manage people effectively (hence the Agile parroting),

>>> most programmers don't know what an abstraction is, etc, etc. "

So many programmers think they are the next Dijkstra and are upset with LLM's producing crap code, but really over inflate themselves in their own reflection and forget that it is better than 90% of programmers.

Remember in collage, when 1 guy did the group project and the 3 other people on the team coasted and got the A. Well 75% of who you are working with now, are the ones that didn't finish the project, and likely you are one of them.

That's why LLM's are going to cause sweeping changes.

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