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- Hacker News
- The purpose of a system is what the system does. -- Stafford Beerby haitchf1ve
- Brain dead thinking: a system does multiple things so you just pick one story which trolls.
Better reply: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...
by robocat - This quote is obviously not true though. There are tons of systems that continue to exist even though no one is happy with them.by HDThoreaun
- The most cogent reply I have seen here.
She and/or you have a false conception of what a big five corporation is, or how it works. Yous probably also have a false conception of how relations of production under capitalism work as well. The man higher up the hierarchy at the FAANG has a better grasp of how these things work. Often, people don't realize their conceptions were wrong until they get let go.
That she worked tirelessly, was well liked does not matter. That in this short life we have, that she skipped vacations to devote more time to the company does not matter.
You said the person above her is not smart but he clearly is - he is higher up and survived and she is lower down and was cut.
Insofar as it being healthy for these companies for him to be there - him being there is in the nature of the corporation and perhaps its intrinsic infirmities, just as it is intrinsic to relations of production under capitalism.
One would hope that something as dramatic as not only him being over her, but him staying and her going would disabuse you of these notions. Especially the idea that she had sone kind of relationship within the corporation where working tirelessly and skipping vacations would engender any loyalty on the part of the corporation's higher managers and owners.
- My humble view: at high level in large firms, everything is politics. Even assuming high-level managers with the common good in mind, someone will sponsor with millions of dollars 10 useless but good-looking and inoffensive projects, just so they have the political capital to start one that is useful but may ruffle feathers. Your direct subordinate's failure is _your_ failure, and that will set back your ambitions. Peers turning against peers is frowned upon, for the same reason. And besides, you know them, maybe you even like them, the lower-level people are just anonymous faces, it's emotionally much easier.
And assuming they have the common good in mind is of course ridiculous.
by lores - 1. Being too good in an organization makes you a threat to those above you.
2. When an organization must downsize, you want to make sure once the dust settles that no one under you is able to take your job.
3. These decisions are political, so you need political power to defend against them.
by kstenerud - Can't we keep politics out of software?by inigyou
- Corporate world is tribal, if not feudal. Reason why the Nobles can do nothing wrong by default, and the Villagers are always the villan. If I may have a suggestion, Buckminster Fuller - Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth is a short and great perspective over these dynamics.
- thank you for that, I'll try to find this and check it out.by mittermayr
- > Corporate world is tribal, if not feudal.
And, more importantly, the corporate world is a dependent variable.
by bigbadfeline - Just to add another item to the list others have brought up :
Goal displacement -> Goal displacement occurs when an organization or individual shifts focus from original objectives to secondary goals, often prioritizing procedures, metrics, or internal processes over intended outcomes.
In large corps, people who are good at staying in a company, and people who are good at serving the company's objectives are typically two different skillsets. And one of those skillset helps you stay inside the company more than the other.
by jlengrand - Those people who are responsible for the chaos? They're also the people who gets to decide who is punished for the chaos.by malfist
- This is a more general question, which is "Why don't people take accountability for their actions?"
Because it's hard work and it's easier to let someone else bear the costs.
by hnarayanan - > Why don't people take accountability for their actions?
This is not my experience. People who are in positions of power, e.g. managers, are the kind of people who are incapable of admitting fault. They can't lose face so the shit is rolled downhill. It's narcissism.
by MisterTea - That's a more noble aspect of framing the question, and I guess I could even see why someone may try to not kamikaze themselves out of a financially very juicy system even if it was their own actions causing the trouble. However, they all operate in some form of management mesh, so clearly, one level up or across the line must notice or know who caused the chaos?
Maybe it is the nature of how failure is expressed at that level, to know a team of 30 has been let go and is not available as your extended arm to execute anymore. So, where it manifests as a job loss at a level lower, it is merely a limitation of power for them.
by mittermayr - The question is actually how do people get away with avoiding accountability for their actions?by exolymph
- If an army general orders a disastrous assault that completely fails, they might get demoted or relieved of command. The infantry that were ordered to charge the machine guns pay a much higher price (as do the junior officers that lead the charge). Hell, perhaps nowerdays they'll have a 'blameless postmortem' to 'learn lessons' and there won't even be a demotion.
Us folks who work for a living aren't charging any machine guns, thankfully - but if my boss's boss's boss can't get our division to make a profit the entire division is at risk, no matter how good my area of the division may be.
Or hell, maybe nobody in my 'chain of command' made any mistakes at all. We could be the world's greatest manufacturer of airplane seats - but if the plane they're put into has a few crashes, and orders dry up, there's no money to pay my wages.
Is it just? No - it's just the nature of work.
by michaelt - The comparison to a war zone is, despite most of us sitting in front of screens and not having to live through such actual horror, quite on point, I think. A failed or misguided strategy hits those on the front first and hardest.by mittermayr
- Have you read the Gervais Principle?
=> https://ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-t...
by hypfer - nice share <3by podgorniy
- thank you for that, I actually enjoyed reading this. that's also sort of what I was hoping to find in response to my thoughts here; other people who've sorted through the mess to try and find some (even if comical) sense in it all.by mittermayr
- There's a fallacy that we all fall into: We think that our job is about turning the crank, and that the best crank turners will stay around the longest.
It's not: I've been involved in quite a few projects that get abandoned, (or otherwise miss their target) for one reason or another. There's a few things that you (or your partner) can do to protect yourself.
Most important: Make sure that your role (as an engineer) in your company is in the most critical part of the company as you can handle. When budgets get cut, it's not the best "crank turner" who keeps their job; its the people in the most critical roles for products (and projects and processes) that the company no longer can fund. (Note that this isn't foolproof, because foolish management can still goof and let you go.) (Note that in large companies, this is much harder because you can become critical in a niche that the company decides to divest from. To handle this, move into a subsidiary that would be sold as a unit.)
Secondly: Understand the business cycle. All products (and projects and processes) have a lifetime, and at a certain point they are "done." (As in, not worth investing in paying the best crank turner or the most critical person to keep working on it.) When you smell this happening, let it be known that you're open to severance when the budget gets cut. It's always easiest to let go of the person who's willing to take severance because they're ready for a change in scenery.
Next: Make sure you can get a feel for how the product (project, process, ect,) is actually used. You might have turned the crank really well, but if no one is using the result, it's time to be proactive and move on.
Finally: Learn to judge your management, and build relationships with your boss's boss. This will give you a lot more insight into the company so you can learn when to move on or how to position yourself in the most critical part of the company.
by gwbas1c - All good advice, I do disagree with one statement, however, mainly because I've seen this getting violated many times now:
> "Make sure that your role (as an engineer) in your company is in the most critical part of the company as you can handle."
The main problem here is how much the organization wants to think it can continue without those crucial parts, I've seen wild things go down in this regard, and I think we'll see a lot more in the near future with people hoping that AI will take care of it. And, on the flipside, and much to my surprise, how often the org can actually survive through such disaster cuts regardless, even though they'll end up at a worse place than they were at before, but the simple act of surviving it -- at that point -- is enough of a success to continue onwards.
by mittermayr - >how do these people consistently survive their self-inflicted disasters?
There's a lot of good answers here. One supplement I would make to a few of them is it is harder to fire or punish someone the more they resemble you. A lot easier to see the fault in a woman a couple of rungs down than a guy your age who looks a lot like you and you've had beers with for a decade. The (truly) wealthy aren't like me and you. And in a crisis you'll find out how they're different real quick.
by tclancy - Yeah. It ultimatly comes down to "we protect our own". And no about of number examples of "how much is a billion" can truly prepare someone for how utterly different a hundred-millionaire or above fundamentally thinks from even the "high-class worker".
No matter how big a wizard/rockstar, they can't truly compare to a dragon.
by johnnyanmac - Well that, and leverage/manipulation, and spending all their time figuring out how to scapegoat everyone else convincingly.
It’s definitely a set of skills.
by lazide - I've seen a fair share of personalities in middle/upper management. My hypothesis is that in large organizations, people that operate at that level often exhibit more survival skills that are ruthless than moral. A common characteristic I've seen is they manage "up" well and are often not good managers themselves. So if they control the narrative with their management, even when they screw up everything, its articulated as something else and not their fault, they may even believe that to be true.
I don't think it matters what industry it is, you get an organization large enough and some humans start exhibiting these behaviors, they often rise up in leadership ranks.
Have you ever read the Ribbonfarm series about organizational/management theory tied to The Office?[0] Its worth a read or a refresh. It might even be cathartic reading for your partner after an event like this.
- Really makes you want to audit ALL communications of the most sociopathic people in your organization and ask an AI to construct the true narrative based on activity and communication logs. Even on any personal devices.
Although those slippery people will just begin to perform for the AI as well.
- Also: DARVO.by dapperdrake
- This is just Pournelle’s iron law isn't it? https://executivecoachinglondon.com/career-development/pourn...by rstuart4133