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I think you both are on to something. It does seem that there is a lack of focus and direction which I think makes and organization spread in any and all direc
by 2close4comfort 11y ago
I think you both are on to something. It does seem that there is a lack of focus and direction which I think makes and organization spread in any and all directions that they perceive profit. With focus in any one direction the org with have path on which they can build off of instead of running in all directions at once with no one ever making a real breakthrough. Being metric based just means that you are more focused on building shareholder value than making long-term decisions. That works well in some businesses, in others and I think this is more true in Technology this is not a valid long-term strategy.
- ethbro 11y agoI think the gradient descent / machine learning metaphor is a good one, because it illustrate blind local optimization given a set of value functions. In other words: exactly the behavior that organizations over a certain size tend to exhibit (or put another way, the middle-managers-revert-to-the-consensus-value-approximation decision metric). As you note, the problem with tech is that for truly profitable endeavors, there is always a technical barrier that first much be overcome. And from first-glance, that seems like an impossible / overly-expensive burden (especially given the unknown reward behind it).