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Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

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Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#51

Post by tonyedgecombe »

marcosdumay wrote: post #36

> The rewards are great if you can survive… Part of what makes a place dysfunctional is that the rewards have no correlation with performance or impact. Then there is stuff like this: > People who want to study earthquakes need to go where there are fault lines. People who want to solve hard problems need to go where those problems live. Sure, if you want to learn about dysfunctional places, go into them. Learning ab…

>Sure, if you want to learn about dysfunctional places, go into them.

I'm not sure how much you can learn, the number of ways organisations can be dysfunctional has no bounds. It's like that quote from Tolstoy about families:

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#52

Post by phillipcarter »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #50
jancsika wrote: post #15

> People who want to study earthquakes need to go where there are fault lines. People who want to solve hard problems need to go where those problems live. People who want to study earthquakes don't get paid by the earthquakes. Author works for a defense contractor. I'd need a ton of evidence that this particular defense contractor has the goal of doing something inherently safe with AI before I'd read the author's a…

People who want to study earthquakes will keep a distance and model and measure remotely. The idea that seismologists actually want to experience massive destruction personally is bizarre, and completely wrong.

Yeah, the post definitely has some serious "tell me you aren't a geologist without telling me you aren't a geologist" energy.

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#53

Post by throwawaygh »

Dear Author,

Software Safety and especially AI Safety are hard technical problems. You're not going to figure out how to add a few 9s to the reliability of a computer vision system by studying org theory.

Making progress on The Hardest Problems requires hiring the excellent ML engineers and scientists, and then having even half-decent management. Management does matter, but the strong IC talent is a precondition to progress.

If Defense had armies of competent ICs but was still failing, I guess focusing on non-compensation-related organization issues might be reasonable. That's not even remotely the case.

Just shy of 70% of CS PhDs from US institutions are foreign nationals, which means Defense is already talent-constrained. The 50% or so who are qualified to work on AI safety and qualify for relevant clearances would probably want a close to a 0 added to what Defense offers (and not even for moral reasons... security clearances and "must work at the office" are real drags on quality of life that require significant additional compensation).

I've seen first-hand that defense systems are insecure and unsafe because defense chooses not to purchase excellent IC talent. The biggest organizational challenge in Defense is the lack of adequate compensation for engineers and scientists.

The largest management problem in the Defense industry is figuring out how to get the org to pay for excellent engineering and scientific talent. Your competitors in the labor market are paying high six or low seven figures, don't require security clearances, don't require drug tests, and have much more hybrid/WFH flexibility. For me to take a job in defense to work on ML Safety, you'd probably have to pay north of $1M.

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#55

Post by [deleted] »

throwawaygh wrote: post #53

Dear Author, Software Safety and especially AI Safety are hard technical problems. You're not going to figure out how to add a few 9s to the reliability of a computer vision system by studying org theory. Making progress on The Hardest Problems requires hiring the excellent ML engineers and scientists, and then having even half-decent management. Management does matter, but the strong IC talent is a precondition to p…

[deleted]

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#56

Post by throwawaygh »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #17

You can’t conflate unsolved problems with unsolved organizational problems like that. If you are really into the politicking and people stuff, sure. But that’s why I love being an IC. I want to build stuff to solve our user’s problems. Sure, I have to navigate the org stuff to have big impact, but that’s the part where I want to spend the least focus. Which is a part of how I’d measure organizational dysfunction. Tha…

Agreed. Org stuff is important, but even the most well-managed org in the world won't make good progress without the right technical people.

I have a really hard time believing that Defense has a strong bench of IC engineers and scientists working on ML Safety. I've received job offers from these types of firms and they're always paying at least 300K less than the competition when they probably need to be paying 200K-300K more (requires a clearance, WFH is impossible, my executive is not technical, etc.)

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#58

Post by hikerrrr »

pram wrote: post #7

There’s really no good reason to stick your neck out at a dysfunctional place. It’s like that for a reason. You might get grit from the experience, but more likely you’ll just become a bitter cynical husk. I know, I worked at Oracle.

Eh, was semi rewarded myself for sticking my neck out at Oracle, rest of my team was let go, I was rewarded for my good attitude and small expertise just for showing up where previous coworkers couldn't. Reward was that I got to keep my job and watch my other coworkers told to take a hike... The challenge then became how to drop my cynicism more than how to work the dysfunctional org.

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#59

Post by masterj »

jancsika wrote: post #15

> People who want to study earthquakes need to go where there are fault lines. People who want to solve hard problems need to go where those problems live. People who want to study earthquakes don't get paid by the earthquakes. Author works for a defense contractor. I'd need a ton of evidence that this particular defense contractor has the goal of doing something inherently safe with AI before I'd read the author's a…

The author also has a long history of working at many places that aren't defense contractors, and a great book on working with large legacy systems (read: Cobol, mainframes, et al but relevant to all developers) https://www.amazon.ca/Kill-Fire-Manage-Computer-Systems/dp/1...

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#60

Post by jancsika »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #50
jancsika wrote: post #15

> People who want to study earthquakes need to go where there are fault lines. People who want to solve hard problems need to go where those problems live. People who want to study earthquakes don't get paid by the earthquakes. Author works for a defense contractor. I'd need a ton of evidence that this particular defense contractor has the goal of doing something inherently safe with AI before I'd read the author's a…

People who want to study earthquakes will keep a distance and model and measure remotely. The idea that seismologists actually want to experience massive destruction personally is bizarre, and completely wrong.

> People who want to study earthquakes will keep a distance and model and measure remotely.

Hee hee, I completely missed that implication of the analogy.

There really should be an "earthquake chasers" reality show if there isn't already. Like, they get a signal from that early warning system in the U.S., the countdown starts and then reaches zero by the time they jump in their van.

The rest of the episode would be counting the seconds as they hurry toward their destination, only to arrive upset that yet again they missed it by only a few tens of thousands of seconds.

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