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Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

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Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#71

Post by protomyth »

tra3 wrote: post #43
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.

> There’s really no good reason to stick your neck out at a dysfunctional place I'm reading "The Pentagon Wars" [0], about how US Military used to develop weapon systems in the 70s and 80s; here's an anecdote from the book: > General Gavin recounted how he had to bury fifty young men near the village of Gela, Sicily, in 1943.1 The men had pieces of their own bazookas ground into their bodies by the German tanks they…

Study the development of American torpedoes for WWII as further reading. The Bureau of Ordnance has a lot of American blood on its hands.

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#72

Post by pphysch »

The article is a bit long but the core lesson that "there are opportunities to be found in crises" is important. And spending a lot of time in a dysfunctional/crisis-plagued environment is a great way to hone that skill.

As a side note, the Chinese words for "crisis" (危机) and "opportunity" (机会) share a common character (机). A useful mnemonic (crisis can end in an opportunity, opportunity can begin in a crisis).

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#73

Post by jjtheblunt »

pphysch wrote: post #72

The article is a bit long but the core lesson that "there are opportunities to be found in crises" is important. And spending a lot of time in a dysfunctional/crisis-plagued environment is a great way to hone that skill. As a side note, the Chinese words for "crisis" (危机) and "opportunity" (机会) share a common character (机). A useful mnemonic (crisis can end in an opportunity, opportunity can begin in a crisis).

Is there a meaning for that single character, in isolation?

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#74

Post by rizkeyz »

I can attest that exposure to quite dysfunctional environments have hardened my technical skills to a level which currently opens one opportunity after another. What other people shy away from, I eat for breakfast and be done with it.

Many years ago, I found the character of the "The Wolf" in pulp fiction fascinating: a person who basically does normal, regular things in dysfunctional environments and charges a premium for that. I love when people call me, when the project is overdue, when nothing seems to work, when they ran out of options. Strangely, I seem to thrive in these settings.

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#75

Post by depereo »

Dysfunctional organizations waste your time and teach you to spend all your effort on things that are irrelevant to your stated or desired goals.

Don't waste your life on shitty organizations. They're not worth participating in. You're not growing useful skills.

source: currently wasting my time in a shitty organization.

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#76

Post by idworks1 »

I like broken systems. Especially those that still manage to generate money. We all want to see clean code, written by sane people. But the reality is that it is rare. And when you meet clean code, there is a rigorous process that makes it nearly impossible to add new code/features.

I worked at such place that boasted security on the outside. From within, it was spit and duct tape. I couldn't believe it was a fortune 10. After couple of weeks working on one of the smaller projects, I created a new branch and called it rewrite.

When I had free time, I would rewrite the entire project from scratch. I really hated all the in line mysql connections in side_bar_bottom_new_v2.php. It took me a month to realize that I couldn't rewrite an application that was built over the course of 10 years, in my spare time. Only when I embraced it and took the time to understand how it was built, was I able to turn it into a secure app (messy, but still secure).

Now when I meet dysfunctional systems, I don't get mad. I challenge myself to figuring out what the heck it is doing.

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#77

Post by EdwardDiego »

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.

Seismologists don't just sit there making models. They also like to do things like drill big holes into faultlines.

If you're studying faultlines, you want to have reasonable access to the subject of your study. Otherwise you may as well be a marine biologist living in Kansas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9ZPq5FRmnE https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/News-and-Events/Media-Releases-a...

Physical measurement is used to make better models, you need both. This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH_PAGimWJM informs this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipS-7kGe9c

Likewise, if you want to study volcanoes, you'd want to have access to volcanoes.

https://youtu.be/eJGmkOFBDvg

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#78

Post by spc476 »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #73
pphysch wrote: post #72

The article is a bit long but the core lesson that "there are opportunities to be found in crises" is important. And spending a lot of time in a dysfunctional/crisis-plagued environment is a great way to hone that skill. As a side note, the Chinese words for "crisis" (危机) and "opportunity" (机会) share a common character (机). A useful mnemonic (crisis can end in an opportunity, opportunity can begin in a crisis).

Is there a meaning for that single character, in isolation?

You could try throwing the characters into translate.google.com and see what comes out.

Re: Work Somewhere Dysfunctional

#80

Post by ncmncm »

tra3 wrote: post #43
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.

> There’s really no good reason to stick your neck out at a dysfunctional place I'm reading "The Pentagon Wars" [0], about how US Military used to develop weapon systems in the 70s and 80s; here's an anecdote from the book: > General Gavin recounted how he had to bury fifty young men near the village of Gela, Sicily, in 1943.1 The men had pieces of their own bazookas ground into their bodies by the German tanks they…

Almost until 1944, the torpedoes that US submarines were obliged to use on Japanese warships would not blow up when they hit.

Toward the end of that period, some submariners determined that if they shot the torpedo so it struck at a shallow angle, the shock would not so damage the fuse as to make it completely fail.

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