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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

#91

Post by chris_wot »

jiggawatts wrote: post #82

> “This is because Power BI tracks usage metrics and almost all dashboards are completely unused.” Ha-ha… haaa Yes, I know that feeling all to well: I set up some fancy DevOps thing and then see that the all-time logins are a big fat zero for 70% of the people that should checking the system daily. This is reality: the DevOps team lead, the entire sysops team, and all but one developer literally never even looking at…

I work at a school, and hop boy do the students damage their laptops a lot. When we hit the point where we refused to loan out laptops for stupid shit like the kid punched the laptop screen, we found that the year coordinators actually needed a very simple daily report with the name of the student and how long the laptop has been in for repair.

That’s it. And you know what? It was useful.

You can make as many fancy dashboards as you like. But if the data is truly useful operationally, it will likely be a boring list with no graphics.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#92

Post by ozim »

specialist wrote: post #75
reactordev wrote: post #39

While I don’t disagree, I think labeling and calling people “bad” is wrong. Derek is doing the best he can. He hired you to help make the company better, more profitable, etc etc. He’s trying anything to get you to understand that you need to deliver value, a product, a service, research output, something so the Bob’s have something to sell/offer/justify grant money. I’ve met a lot of engineers that think they were h…

> Derek is doing the best he can. Yup. Few people go to work every day to do a bad job. Like the OC's epiphany about Sturgeon's Law, I chilled (a little bit) once I realized that most people are already playing at their highest level. > ...start looking at it as an opportunity to provide solutions to help... Back when I was doing proper product development, eg burning CDs and printing manuals, this was a pretty good…

To add to that by Strugeon law organizations cannot hire “best of the best”.

Organization has option to hire crud and have stuff done where other option is not having done anything at all.

Other option of course is to work best employees to the ground.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#93

Post by repomies69 »

borroka wrote: post #59
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…

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…

> 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.

I don't think is very good comparison, generally. Some other company could offer you a job and you can leave any time. Depending on your tasks, the company might have very difficult time finding replacement personnel. This could be very significant (relative) cost for the company.

Personally I have always lived in countries where employee protection laws are very employee-friendly. Companies can't just fire people at will, they need good reasons. There might be significant fines for misfiring for wrong reasons.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#94

Post by uoaei »

jiggawatts wrote: post #84
js8 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I am a fan of democracy, even in economic sphere (aka socialism or cooperatives). Giving everybody the same single vote (same power) about the organization (and making it into an unchangeable fact) removes lots of these incentives that prevent improving the organization. But lot of people are blindly accepting capitalism, because.. well it's incidentally also explained in the article, why.

Corporations from the perspective of most employees are communists dictatorships. Think about it: you use a communal means of production, distribute profits centrally, and you don’t get to vote for who gets to be your manager.

I guess misconceptions like these are why theorists abandoned the term 'communism' in favor of 'communalism' to explain what they meant.

This isn't even a no-true-scotsman argument, but if all that comes to mind when communism comes up is Soviet dictatorship, the cold war propaganda worked.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#95

Post by uoaei »

reactordev wrote: post #39

While I don’t disagree, I think labeling and calling people “bad” is wrong. Derek is doing the best he can. He hired you to help make the company better, more profitable, etc etc. He’s trying anything to get you to understand that you need to deliver value, a product, a service, research output, something so the Bob’s have something to sell/offer/justify grant money. I’ve met a lot of engineers that think they were h…

So what do we call it when "the best they can" is not very good or is actively harmful? Do you mean to imply that intention factors into outcomes?

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#96

Post by uoaei »

alphazard wrote: post #63

I often think about the huge amount of economic displacement that would occur if organizations had a detector which could determine who was in the 80 vs the 20. I don't think the world knows what to do with all the imposters in tech alone, let alone white collar jobs broadly. We might wake up tomorrow to a startup marketing just such a detector. It certainly doesn't require AGI to determine who is adding value. Every…

Not all benefit is quantifiable. There's that anecdote about the guy who wasn't a superstar by metrics but sat with all the high performers at lunch and gave them useful info and asked the right questions to help them achieve great things. I think it was Nyquist at Bell Labs?

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#97

Post by lmm »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #71

Which companies do things "right"? How do I select for them when interviewing? Also, how do I know that _I'm_ not the one who's wrong?

> Which companies do things "right"?

Small ones, or ones that are very focused on making money.

> How do I select for them when interviewing?

Ask the people who interview you what they work on and why, then avoid the ones where the "why" doesn't connect back to something useful.

> Also, how do I know that _I'm_ not the one who's wrong?

You don't, not immediately. In the end you can only look at the results over the medium/long term.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#98

Post by MattGaiser »

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 prevent my boss from being unhappy with me and making my life miserable. A contract does not ensure promotion. As an employee, there is no upside for risk, making any risk unacceptable.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#99

Post by lmm »

patmcc wrote: post #90
pdimitar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Programmers don't have executive powers. You are very often told that this is not your job and you should be doing yours and leave the "experts" to theirs. Well, they are not experts. They are not even at the level of informed amateurs. But they have the power. What would you do? Sure, there are good companies and you can switch until you find one but let's recognize that statistically speaking this absolutely d…

>>>How? Programmers don't have executive powers. The secret is - and this is wielded a million times a day in a million small ways - of course we do. Lots of people do in lots of jobs, whether intended or not. You just do the thing . You don't ask about doing the thing, you don't put in a project planning proposal, you don't beg your manager to devote 20% of your time to the thing, you just go and do it because you p…

The best case, if you're lucky, no-one notices. More likely you're marked as a troublemaker and pushed out. You're literally better off slacking off for that 20%.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#100

Post by lmm »

MetalGuru wrote: post #67

I still don’t understand why things need to be this way? Like, people could not be worthless. It’s theoretically possible.

I think it's getting better, but slowly, like all social change. You read books about corporate culture from 50 years ago and it's all jock stuff and personal loyalty. Now there's at least some sense of the job being actually doing the job right, even if at the moment that mostly cashes out as saying the right buzzwords.
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