41–50 of 67 posts
The author seems to suggest that secrets will be impossible in the future because no one will have any loyalty to one organization.
Oh, and we can blame the Economy, the Internet, and Facebook for that.
There are interesting thoughts in this article but talent is something that money can buy, ask the banks.
The OP is about loyal talent, not talent alone, and banks do not acutely need loyalty in their employees to the degree that spy agencies do. For instance, they do not try to keep billion-dollar programs secret from the public.
Charlie's argument is that the vast majority of people growing up today will not have sufficient loyalty to "the state" to fill the ranks of the state's spy apparatus. While I find it persuasive that people's loyalty to institutions may be in decline, that population-wide generalization is not dispositive for the hiring ability of spy agencies. You don't need an entire generation of loyalists to fill out the NSA. You…
From what I've read it seems that both Manning and Snowden were gung-ho patriots when they signed up. When they signed up. It seems in this end game the HR departments are better off picking the cynical, venal and power-hungry. At least they don't have the "disillusioned idealist" failure mode. But you may end up with a kakistocracy.
Charlie's argument is that the vast majority of people growing up today will not have sufficient loyalty to "the state" to fill the ranks of the state's spy apparatus. While I find it persuasive that people's loyalty to institutions may be in decline, that population-wide generalization is not dispositive for the hiring ability of spy agencies. You don't need an entire generation of loyalists to fill out the NSA. You…
"A" hires "A"; "B" hires "C". And Generation Z's "A" players will not work for the NSA. You don't just need loyalists. You need loyalists who are good enough to operate your systems, who are also conscience-free enough to dissociatively split what they're doing from how they do it, day to day. And you have to have 100% accuracy to avoid the next Snowden. Speaking as an engineer hiring for software, we are desperate f…
Charlie's argument is that the vast majority of people growing up today will not have sufficient loyalty to "the state" to fill the ranks of the state's spy apparatus. While I find it persuasive that people's loyalty to institutions may be in decline, that population-wide generalization is not dispositive for the hiring ability of spy agencies. You don't need an entire generation of loyalists to fill out the NSA. You…
Not only might they be facing a less loyal generation as your pool to hire from, but they can also expect to hire much more than they did a generation or two ago:
These services have grown, and the average time people will stay employed there has nosedived, and the usage of short term contractors have skyrocketed
Given that, it is not unreasonable to believe that the odds of slipping up and hiring the wrong people is rapidly rising, and also that the number of events that are high risk to maintaining loyalty, such as people feeling they are passed over for promotions or raises, or firings or other personell issues will go through the roof simply due to the increased number of people involved.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The OP is about loyal talent, not talent alone, and banks do not acutely need loyalty in their employees to the degree that spy agencies do. For instance, they do not try to keep billion-dollar programs secret from the public.
Perhaps that's a matter of perspective: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
And I still maintain my larger point (implied in grandparent), that whether or not banks can find enough talent does not shed light on whether spy agencies can find enough loyal talent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps that's a matter of perspective: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
OK, but we're getting away from the subject of employee loyalty: the bank employees involved in the Libor scandal were probably motivated by personal enrichment, not by loyalty to their employer. It so happens that the employees' personal enrichment was aligned with the banks' corporate enrichment, which often happens (usually by design) in fields like finance or sales, but in a spy agency, it is not possible to alig…
I'm suggesting they are in fact trying to hide billion-dollar programs, and need a kind of loyalty to facilitate this.
Paying someone obscenely well seems like a nice way of buying a kind of loyalty. Certainly the upshot is behaviour equivalent to loyalty from the bank's perspective.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have HN whitelisted from the paywall, so if you click through from the link on this page you shouldn't see the paywall as long as you don't have any extensions that hide your referrer. If that's not the case, would you mind dropping me an email with your browser/version? tim.showers@foreignpolicy.com
My mistake, the large subscription popup that appears on page load appeared to be a paywall to me. It does allow you to exit from it, though it had me a bit confused.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, but we're getting away from the subject of employee loyalty: the bank employees involved in the Libor scandal were probably motivated by personal enrichment, not by loyalty to their employer. It so happens that the employees' personal enrichment was aligned with the banks' corporate enrichment, which often happens (usually by design) in fields like finance or sales, but in a spy agency, it is not possible to alig…
I was speaking narrowly to your point claiming that banks don't need loyalty like spy agencies do because they're not trying to hide billion-dollar programs. I'm suggesting they are in fact trying to hide billion-dollar programs, and need a kind of loyalty to facilitate this. Paying someone obscenely well seems like a nice way of buying a kind of loyalty. Certainly the upshot is behaviour equivalent to loyalty from t…
Also, you're ignoring my point that certain organizations have the option of intentionally causing (via e.g. paying commissions on sales) a broad alignment of personal and organizational interests, but spy agencies (and police departments and court systems) do not.
And just because paying someone obscenely well succeeds in getting them to increase whatever source of organizational profits was increased in the Libor scandal does not mean that paying Snowden obscenely well would have succeeded in getting him to ignore the broad public-policy implications of Prism and such (or paying a cop obscenely well would succeed in stopping him from brutalizing people under his power or stopping him from doing other things against the long-term interests of his department).
Finally, since Hacker News (measured in the scores of my previous comments of this nature) does not value long series of back-and-forths, this will probably be my last response in this thread.