5 ms·

My eyes are bleeding from all the bureaucratic jargon. "Special Committee", "Oversight Committee", "Independent Committee" for the promotions process, checklist

My eyes are bleeding from all the bureaucratic jargon. "Special Committee", "Oversight Committee", "Independent Committee" for the promotions process, checklists for alcohol consumption, human resources training, etc. I dearly hope it doesn't take this many layers of control within a company to ensure a livable atmosphere for its employees.

blatherard 9y ago
According to Wikipedia, Uber has about 12,000 employees. Especially given how bad things apparently got, it seems reasonable to require a few layers of oversight to achieve lasting positive change.
vkou 9y ago
You can have controls, or you can work in a frathouse. So far, they've opted for option #2.
- djrogers 9y ago
  Or you can start from day 1 with a culture that doesn't need that level of oversight to keep people from acting indecently. I see all this oversight as something that a company like Uber needs to clean up it's toxic culture, but if the pool is kept clean from day one, you don't need nearly as much chlorine...
  - CamelCaseName 9y ago
    It's much easier to keep a group of 12 people clean. It's much harder to keep a group of 12,000 clean.
stupidcar 9y ago
You're just demonstrating the same facile mindset that plagues experts of every discipline, so convinced that the problems of every other field -- of which they are largely ignorant -- are obviously trivial, and could be solved with a bit of common sense. This XKCD cartoon, basically: https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/ Consider the difficulty most people on this site will have encountered just getting a handful of software components to cooperate successfully. Now imagine trying to do the same with an organisation of thousands of human beings. Left to their own devices, large groups of human beings easily fall into horrendous anti-patterns. Avoiding or fixing these anti-patterns is not just hard, it is probably the hardest problem human beings have ever faced, given that we have been working on it for the duration of our existence, and we're still mostly terrible at it. This is not trivial, it is mindbendingly difficult. The "bureaucratic jargon" you mention is just the specialist language that the field of management of human resources has created to talk about the problems they're trying to solve, and the structures they've designed to solve them. And really, it's hardly impenetrable in comparison with even a mildly technical blog post. When you dismiss problems like this as easily solvable, or the recommendations of experts as bureaucratic jargon, then you're the pointy-haired boss waving away technical arguments why something is infeasible. You're the politician saying ISPs need to put more filters on the tubes to censor the internet. You're the cable host smugly dismissing climatology as fake news.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- haberman 9y ago
  > This XKCD cartoon, basically: https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/ It's the software engineer version of Donald Trump's "Nobody knew health care could be so complicated."
- im3w1l 9y ago
  The very idea of startup culture and arguably hacker culture was that that beaurocracy was unneeded cargo cult, and parasites making up justifications for their power. Should your ideas prevail, then certainly we will see big, big changes in Silicon Valley over the coming years. Going out on more of a limb and making more specific, but less certain prediction: There will be a balooning managererial and adminisitrative class sucking up most of the surplus that tech is generating. The workers, i.e. software engineers and artists and sales, will see lowered wages, less perks, less autonomy. They will be commodified. But in a free market, wont small lean companies outcompete companies with inefficient management sprawl? No, because the manager class will use their political connections to crush anyone that wants to try such a feat. Those predictions are uncertain, but probable enough that I'd more cautious about going into the field if I still had my career choice ahead of me.
  - johan_larson 9y ago
    Should your ideas prevail, then certainly we will see big, big changes in Silicon Valley over the coming years. ... Going out on more of a limb and making more specific, but less certain prediction: There will be a balooning managererial and adminisitrative class sucking up most of the surplus that tech is generating. This has already happened. All those tiny fierce startups, they're not planning to stay tiny startups forever. They are trying to get a foothold and grow into big successful companies that can pursue big opportunities. And big companies inevitably have hierarchies of managers and directors and analysts and whatnot. Even great companies do this. Google has one VP for every 200 people. They're not needed in small firms, because coordinating the work of ten people who serve a couple of hundred customers isn't that hard. But coordinating the work of 10,000 people who serve millions, definitely is.

blatherard 9y ago

According to Wikipedia, Uber has about 12,000 employees. Especially given how bad things apparently got, it seems reasonable to require a few layers of oversight to achieve lasting positive change.

vkou 9y ago

You can have controls, or you can work in a frathouse. So far, they've opted for option #2.

djrogers 9y ago
Or you can start from day 1 with a culture that doesn't need that level of oversight to keep people from acting indecently. I see all this oversight as something that a company like Uber needs to clean up it's toxic culture, but if the pool is kept clean from day one, you don't need nearly as much chlorine...
- CamelCaseName 9y ago
  It's much easier to keep a group of 12 people clean. It's much harder to keep a group of 12,000 clean.

stupidcar 9y ago

You're just demonstrating the same facile mindset that plagues experts of every discipline, so convinced that the problems of every other field -- of which they are largely ignorant -- are obviously trivial, and could be solved with a bit of common sense. This XKCD cartoon, basically: https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/ Consider the difficulty most people on this site will have encountered just getting a handful of software components to cooperate successfully. Now imagine trying to do the same with an organisation of thousands of human beings. Left to their own devices, large groups of human beings easily fall into horrendous anti-patterns. Avoiding or fixing these anti-patterns is not just hard, it is probably the hardest problem human beings have ever faced, given that we have been working on it for the duration of our existence, and we're still mostly terrible at it. This is not trivial, it is mindbendingly difficult. The "bureaucratic jargon" you mention is just the specialist language that the field of management of human resources has created to talk about the problems they're trying to solve, and the structures they've designed to solve them. And really, it's hardly impenetrable in comparison with even a mildly technical blog post. When you dismiss problems like this as easily solvable, or the recommendations of experts as bureaucratic jargon, then you're the pointy-haired boss waving away technical arguments why something is infeasible. You're the politician saying ISPs need to put more filters on the tubes to censor the internet. You're the cable host smugly dismissing climatology as fake news.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
haberman 9y ago
> This XKCD cartoon, basically: https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/ It's the software engineer version of Donald Trump's "Nobody knew health care could be so complicated."
im3w1l 9y ago
The very idea of startup culture and arguably hacker culture was that that beaurocracy was unneeded cargo cult, and parasites making up justifications for their power. Should your ideas prevail, then certainly we will see big, big changes in Silicon Valley over the coming years. Going out on more of a limb and making more specific, but less certain prediction: There will be a balooning managererial and adminisitrative class sucking up most of the surplus that tech is generating. The workers, i.e. software engineers and artists and sales, will see lowered wages, less perks, less autonomy. They will be commodified. But in a free market, wont small lean companies outcompete companies with inefficient management sprawl? No, because the manager class will use their political connections to crush anyone that wants to try such a feat. Those predictions are uncertain, but probable enough that I'd more cautious about going into the field if I still had my career choice ahead of me.
- johan_larson 9y ago
  Should your ideas prevail, then certainly we will see big, big changes in Silicon Valley over the coming years. ... Going out on more of a limb and making more specific, but less certain prediction: There will be a balooning managererial and adminisitrative class sucking up most of the surplus that tech is generating. This has already happened. All those tiny fierce startups, they're not planning to stay tiny startups forever. They are trying to get a foothold and grow into big successful companies that can pursue big opportunities. And big companies inevitably have hierarchies of managers and directors and analysts and whatnot. Even great companies do this. Google has one VP for every 200 people. They're not needed in small firms, because coordinating the work of ten people who serve a couple of hundred customers isn't that hard. But coordinating the work of 10,000 people who serve millions, definitely is.