6 ms·

> If you happen to be the hapless person who is innocently trying to make the company successful and who is not paying attention to where the money "should" flo

> If you happen to be the hapless person who is innocently trying to make the company successful and who is not paying attention to where the money "should" flow, it can be quite painful for you. It can be a painful, frustrating, degrading, and ultimately extremely valuable lesson. It's especially difficult if you're naive because everyone around you is talking about metrics and OKRs, you agree on OKRs with people, and everyone seems to be working toward their OKRs. Everything seems so objective! It takes quite a bit of experience to internalize that (a) metrics have a lot of momentum and lag, (b) shit changes too fast anyway, (c) managers will move teams/groups way before the goals materialize, and (d) by the time they've moved nobody will remember what happened two quarters ago. So while everyone is talking about the OKRs, nobody who isn't hopelessly naive actually cares about them (beyond the top line stuff executives see). Your manager doesn't care at all if you meet your objectives. They just want to look good until they can move to bigger responsibilities. Sometimes that happens to align with meeting explicit objectives, but quite often there is no alignment at all. The people who understand the covert goals will do well very well for themselves (at least until the future eventually catches up to them). The people who naively work on their OKRs usually will not.

itronitron 8y ago
please write a book on this, or post a link to the book that you have written :)
- coffeemug 8y ago
  I'm unlikely to write a book, but here are a few more tidbits that come to mind. Re the above -- I don't mean to imply that any of this is malicious or even conscious on anyone's behalf. I suspect it is for a few people, but I bet most people could pass a lie detector test that they care about their OKRs and the OKRs of their reports. They really, really believe it. But they don't act it. Our brains are really good at fooling us! I used to think that corporate politics is a consequence of malevolent actors. That might be true to some degree, but mostly politics just arises. People overtly profess whatever they need to overtly profess, and then go on to covertly follow emergent incentives. Lots of misunderstandings happen that way -- if you confront them about a violation of an agreement (say, during performance reviews), they'll be genuinely surprised and will invent really good reasons for everything (other than the obvious one, of course). It's basically watching Elephant In The Brain[1] play out right in front of your eyes. Every manager wants to grow their team so they can split it into multiple teams so they can say they ran a group. When there is a lot of money involved, people self-select into your company who view their jobs as basically to extract as much money as possible. This is especially true at the higher rungs. VP of marketing? Nope, professional money extractor. VP of engineering? Nope, professional money extractor too. You might think -- don't hire them. You can't! It doesn't matter how good the founders are, these people have spent their entire lifetimes perfecting their veneer. At that level they're the best in the world at it. Doesn't matter how good the founders are, they'll self select some of these people who will slip past their psychology. You might think -- fire them. Not so easy! They're good at embedding themselves into the org, they're good at slipping past the founders's radars, and they're high up so half their job is recruiting. They'll have dozens of cronies running around your company within a month or two. From the founders's perspective the org is basically an overactive genie. It will do what you say, but not what you mean. Want to increase sales in two quarters? No problem, sales increased. Oh, and we also subtly destroyed our customers's trust. Once the steaks are high, founders basically have to treat their org as an adversarial agent. You might think -- but a good founder will notice! Doesn't matter how good you are -- you've selected world class politicians that are good at getting past your exact psychological makeup. Anthropic principle! There's lots of stuff like this that you'd never think of in a million years, but is super-obvious once you've experienced it. And amazingly, in spite of all of this (or maybe because of it?) everything still works! [1] https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyday/dp/0190495995 https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyda...
  - sharmi 8y ago
    Wow, that is so depressing on so many levels but thanks for calling it out and educating us clueless ones.
    - coffeemug 8y ago
      It's more helpful to look at it as a social scientist. This is what can be empirically observed about the behavior of a large group of humans under these very specific conditions. It's not good or bad in the same sense that chemistry isn't good or bad. It just is, and can actually be quite fascinating if you look at it from that light! It's also magical that given all this, everything still works! The products get shipped, the people get paid, the world benefits! Think of it this way -- human behavior is much weirded than one would naively expect, and we manage to self-organize to accomplish all this crazy stuff! Isn't that pretty cool?
      - ericd 8y ago
        I'd say that it's also a big part of the reason so much of what get shipped is incredibly mediocre, though, and why small teams of dedicated people that manage to ship generally seem to ship the highest quality products.
        ido 8y ago
        I've first hand experienced teams of 4 people achieve higher output (both in quality and velocity) than teams of a dozen+.
  - joshenders 8y ago
    nailed it
  - nodesocket 8y ago
    Thanks for the great insight, but I also have to admit it is incredibly disheartening and bleak. I truly think silicon valley is not a good place for the human psyche as a whole. Quite honestly it breeds negativity, envy, imposter syndrome, which all turn into depression. It's cliche, but some of the happiest people are farmers, construction workers, or people who physically work on tangible things. Also, I feel people in the bay area compared to the south where I now live are perpetually unhappy and outraged. There is more to life than work. Simple and a slower life is not such a terrible thing.
- nazgulnarsil 8y ago
  The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know
  - coffeemug 8y ago
    Is the book worth reading in your opinion? Which edition would you recommend (earlier editions are sometimes less pc than the latter ones, and therefore contain more/better information)?
- passiveincomelg 8y ago
  I believe this one should be relevant to your interests. Best non-fiction book I've ever read. https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony
  - laurentl 8y ago
    I was about to link to the Opportunist / Idealist / Pragmatic blog post but this is even better.
- tzmudzin 8y ago
  The Dictator's Handbook, by de Mesquita & Smith: https://www.amazon.de/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845 https://www.amazon.de/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Pol...
andruby 8y ago
This sounds true for startups and "established" organisation alike.
r3vo 8y ago
Your post reminds me of this excellent post on metagames. https://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/ The naive employee you mention who strives towards OKR completion wins the game, but loses the metagame of corporate ladder climbing.

itronitron 8y ago

please write a book on this, or post a link to the book that you have written :)

coffeemug 8y ago
I'm unlikely to write a book, but here are a few more tidbits that come to mind. Re the above -- I don't mean to imply that any of this is malicious or even conscious on anyone's behalf. I suspect it is for a few people, but I bet most people could pass a lie detector test that they care about their OKRs and the OKRs of their reports. They really, really believe it. But they don't act it. Our brains are really good at fooling us! I used to think that corporate politics is a consequence of malevolent actors. That might be true to some degree, but mostly politics just arises. People overtly profess whatever they need to overtly profess, and then go on to covertly follow emergent incentives. Lots of misunderstandings happen that way -- if you confront them about a violation of an agreement (say, during performance reviews), they'll be genuinely surprised and will invent really good reasons for everything (other than the obvious one, of course). It's basically watching Elephant In The Brain[1] play out right in front of your eyes. Every manager wants to grow their team so they can split it into multiple teams so they can say they ran a group. When there is a lot of money involved, people self-select into your company who view their jobs as basically to extract as much money as possible. This is especially true at the higher rungs. VP of marketing? Nope, professional money extractor. VP of engineering? Nope, professional money extractor too. You might think -- don't hire them. You can't! It doesn't matter how good the founders are, these people have spent their entire lifetimes perfecting their veneer. At that level they're the best in the world at it. Doesn't matter how good the founders are, they'll self select some of these people who will slip past their psychology. You might think -- fire them. Not so easy! They're good at embedding themselves into the org, they're good at slipping past the founders's radars, and they're high up so half their job is recruiting. They'll have dozens of cronies running around your company within a month or two. From the founders's perspective the org is basically an overactive genie. It will do what you say, but not what you mean. Want to increase sales in two quarters? No problem, sales increased. Oh, and we also subtly destroyed our customers's trust. Once the steaks are high, founders basically have to treat their org as an adversarial agent. You might think -- but a good founder will notice! Doesn't matter how good you are -- you've selected world class politicians that are good at getting past your exact psychological makeup. Anthropic principle! There's lots of stuff like this that you'd never think of in a million years, but is super-obvious once you've experienced it. And amazingly, in spite of all of this (or maybe because of it?) everything still works! [1] https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyday/dp/0190495995 https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyda...
- sharmi 8y ago
  Wow, that is so depressing on so many levels but thanks for calling it out and educating us clueless ones.
  - coffeemug 8y ago
    It's more helpful to look at it as a social scientist. This is what can be empirically observed about the behavior of a large group of humans under these very specific conditions. It's not good or bad in the same sense that chemistry isn't good or bad. It just is, and can actually be quite fascinating if you look at it from that light! It's also magical that given all this, everything still works! The products get shipped, the people get paid, the world benefits! Think of it this way -- human behavior is much weirded than one would naively expect, and we manage to self-organize to accomplish all this crazy stuff! Isn't that pretty cool?
    - ericd 8y ago
      I'd say that it's also a big part of the reason so much of what get shipped is incredibly mediocre, though, and why small teams of dedicated people that manage to ship generally seem to ship the highest quality products.
      - ido 8y ago
        I've first hand experienced teams of 4 people achieve higher output (both in quality and velocity) than teams of a dozen+.
- joshenders 8y ago
  nailed it
- nodesocket 8y ago
  Thanks for the great insight, but I also have to admit it is incredibly disheartening and bleak. I truly think silicon valley is not a good place for the human psyche as a whole. Quite honestly it breeds negativity, envy, imposter syndrome, which all turn into depression. It's cliche, but some of the happiest people are farmers, construction workers, or people who physically work on tangible things. Also, I feel people in the bay area compared to the south where I now live are perpetually unhappy and outraged. There is more to life than work. Simple and a slower life is not such a terrible thing.
nazgulnarsil 8y ago
The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know
- coffeemug 8y ago
  Is the book worth reading in your opinion? Which edition would you recommend (earlier editions are sometimes less pc than the latter ones, and therefore contain more/better information)?
passiveincomelg 8y ago
I believe this one should be relevant to your interests. Best non-fiction book I've ever read. https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony
- laurentl 8y ago
  I was about to link to the Opportunist / Idealist / Pragmatic blog post but this is even better.
tzmudzin 8y ago
The Dictator's Handbook, by de Mesquita & Smith: https://www.amazon.de/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845 https://www.amazon.de/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Pol...

andruby 8y ago

This sounds true for startups and "established" organisation alike.

r3vo 8y ago

Your post reminds me of this excellent post on metagames. https://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/ The naive employee you mention who strives towards OKR completion wins the game, but loses the metagame of corporate ladder climbing.