Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

ludic.mataroa.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 482 posts

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#51

Post by jodrellblank »

addicted wrote: post #16

> My current organization has 8000 staff members, and I used to glance over the usage metrics of the dashboards my old team produced. I believe three dashboards were used, out of somewhere around 50 - 100. Of those being visited, it usually turned out they were being visited by members of our team checking to see if the data had refreshed for the day. I'd estimate the cost of maintaining our team was approximately $1…

Can anyone here look at "identify a change which improved employee efficiency by $125 annually" and think it isn't going to be complete bullshit? That's in the region of 50c/day. "I told employees to reuse paperclips which I predict will save the company $1M per year"[1] PR/marketing/self-promotion - surely nobody believes it?. And that saving 50 cents per day is supposed to come from a manager who can influence all 8000 employees, but who doesn't think to axe the useless reporting department to save $1M/year in one go? And then the company which keeps a $1M department just to sound good is going to identify $1M in piecemeal efficiency improvements year on year, every year?

Who believes this?

Although I don't completely disagree, see[2][3] "Another reason to have in-house expertise in various areas is that they easily pay for themselves, which is a special case of the generic argument that large companies should be larger than most people expect because tiny percentage gains are worth a large amount in absolute dollars. If, in the lifetime of the specialist team like the kernel team, a single person found something that persistently reduced TCO by 0.5%, that would pay for the team in perpetuity, and Twitter’s kernel team has found many such changes."

But then again, at the bottom of [4] "At multiple companies that I've worked for, if you tally up the claimed revenue or user growth wins [of people claiming they improved things X amount per year] and compare them to actual revenue or user growth, you can see that there's some funny business going on since the total claimed wins are much larger than the observed total." which is pretty much my criticism of your comment; people will embellish their claims, especially when nobody can easily prove or disprove a claimed 50cent/day efficiency improvement over 8000 employees.

> "usually a hyperfocus on really insignificant numbers as evidence of their point."

$1M is roughly an average UK household income, after tax, for a lifetime. This just reads like dismissive boasting rather than a useful part of your comment. If it's "really insignificant" why do you then argue that the company will be motivated to save it in a more difficult piecemeal fashion, year after year five times over, if they aren't motivated to save it once in a big lump?

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-442813/Dragons-Den-...

[2] https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/

[3] https://danluu.com/in-house/

[4] https://danluu.com/people-matter/

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#52

Post by jmcgough »

> It was sparked by reference to a concept called the honne-tatemae divide, which are Japanese concepts related to the true feelings of an individual and the front they present in public

Another related concept is in sociology, back stage vs front stage self: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramaturgy_(sociology)

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#53

Post by lazide »

zoomablemind wrote: post #45

It's obviously a rant-inspired introspection about a specific kind of organisations. These orgs are not truly functioning per market principles, yet for various reasons are stuck in a captive energy state that no one dares to disturb. It could be a niche product sold out to big orgs or other steady clients. It could be a subsidiary or some other steady org. Either way, there is no market pressure to really push such…

They’re still functioning per market principles, just like the Dodo bird was still functioning in an evolutionary environment!

It was just a particularly protected and ‘calm’ place. Which, unfortunately, made the Dodo bird very susceptible to an outside context problem/sudden upset. But it worked for a very long time!

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#54

Post by pault »

ludicity wrote: post #21
addicted wrote: post #16

> My current organization has 8000 staff members, and I used to glance over the usage metrics of the dashboards my old team produced. I believe three dashboards were used, out of somewhere around 50 - 100. Of those being visited, it usually turned out they were being visited by members of our team checking to see if the data had refreshed for the day. I'd estimate the cost of maintaining our team was approximately $1…

It's slightly more complicated, and the numbers are somewhat obfuscated to hide my actual employer. You're right that these numbers are not a huge deal - that much is obvious, or we wouldn't be wasting that money. What is more relevant to the average reader is that we have a large department in this space, and almost all (not all) the work is pointless because the numbers just don't matter at this scale. We have a co…

Are you hiring? I'm looking for a job that will allow me to explore my passions. My passions are: video games, anime, and watching youtube videos about video games and anime.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#56

Post by zoomablemind »

addicted wrote: post #16

> My current organization has 8000 staff members, and I used to glance over the usage metrics of the dashboards my old team produced. I believe three dashboards were used, out of somewhere around 50 - 100. Of those being visited, it usually turned out they were being visited by members of our team checking to see if the data had refreshed for the day. I'd estimate the cost of maintaining our team was approximately $1…

It only takes someone in management to realize that you increase the revenue by selling more of an existing product or raising its price. You reduce your costs by firing people or renegotiating the prices with suppliers.

"Increasing efficiency" is mostly a theater meant to demonstrate effort during low/no growth periods and without viable products in development to validate such dynamic.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#57

Post by [deleted] »

hooverd wrote: post #34
campbel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem has to be that as an individual in an organization it seems like a better ROI for your effort to grow your share of the pie than the entire pie itself. Individual incentives are naturally going to be aligned by advancement and "being difficult" is something everyone wants to avoid. Easier to shed blame and avoid accountability than try to fix the social and political structure of your organization…

Your reward for growing the pie is one (1) pizza pie.

[deleted]

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#58

Post by [deleted] »

hooverd wrote: post #34
campbel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem has to be that as an individual in an organization it seems like a better ROI for your effort to grow your share of the pie than the entire pie itself. Individual incentives are naturally going to be aligned by advancement and "being difficult" is something everyone wants to avoid. Easier to shed blame and avoid accountability than try to fix the social and political structure of your organization…

Your reward for growing the pie is one (1) pizza pie.

[deleted]

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#59

Post by borroka »

campbel wrote: post #28
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…

Part of the problem has to be that as an individual in an organization it seems like a better ROI for your effort to grow your share of the pie than the entire pie itself. Individual incentives are naturally going to be aligned by advancement and "being difficult" is something everyone wants to avoid. Easier to shed blame and avoid accountability than try to fix the social and political structure of your organization…

I work for a company that employs 100k people.

The effects of my work strategy and behavior on the company's revenue, profit, vision, products are zero.

On the contrary, the effects of my work strategy and behavior on my salary and position can be quite pronounced.

My company can fire me tomorrow, they will forget my name in 5 days. To "fire" my company, I need to find another job, maybe in another city, working with colleagues I don't know who may eat food at lunch break I don't like the smell of.

It is not hard to guess where I spend most of my efforts and thinking.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#60

Post by binary132 »

campbel wrote: post #28
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…

Part of the problem has to be that as an individual in an organization it seems like a better ROI for your effort to grow your share of the pie than the entire pie itself. Individual incentives are naturally going to be aligned by advancement and "being difficult" is something everyone wants to avoid. Easier to shed blame and avoid accountability than try to fix the social and political structure of your organization…

Wisdom is realizing that fixing the social and political structure of the org is often against the interests of enough people, or at least troublesome enough, that ultimately a lot of people will fight to maintain a pathological status quo, and actively subvert reform, instead.
Post reply on HN