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Most business in the United States is done despite of management, not because of it. The executives lie and BS through all of it, and the soldiers on the groun
by papito 7y ago
Most business in the United States is done despite of management, not because of it.
The executives lie and BS through all of it, and the soldiers on the ground kill themselves to get things done.
- georgeecollins 7y ago>> Most business in the United States is done despite of management, not because of it. You must be very unhappy in your cubicle.
- sudoaza 7y agohave you seen anyone ever happy in a cubicle?
- papito 7y agoIn contrast, it's impossible to spot someone miserable on a jet ski.
- FpUser 7y agoMaybe except someone who'd chosen jet ski as a way to commit suicide ;)
- johnnyletrois 7y agoWe had new jet skis on a boat I worked on. The owners were scheduled for a trip soon and we needed to break them in. We had a poor deckhand running up and down fjords for days breaking them in. In BC. In winter. Poor guy was a champ though.
- cardiffspaceman 7y agoBest job ever? /s
- anongraddebt 7y agoI realize you are probably saying that in jest, but I once worked in a cubicle for a Fortune 50 firm. Loved it. The firm itself had average management, but the people on my team were a lot fun to work with.
- sudoaza 7y agoYes, sometimes you get a cool team, half the times i would dare to day, but even if your peers are cool your superior could be an ass, or some day the board could decide that you ain't growing fast enough and fire half of you and bring some asshole that scares away all the team. Even less often you get to do something interesting or something that really matters. And almost always, unless you are a coop worker, you work till exhaustion to make someone else rich while you live month to month. But maybe i'm just pessimistic.
- heelix 7y agoI'd be happy to have a cubicle again. The 'cattle feeder' style 3' (if that) hoteling desks are hot trash. The previous layer of hell is looking pretty good right now.
- CamperBob2 7y agoOverton Window successfully moved; mission accomplished.
- Johnny555 7y agoI'd be a lot happier in a cubicle than this big open seating area where I'm elbow-to-elbow with my coworkers.
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoI have "meetings" happen, right next to me, because hey, we are hip and we are hearding that software-cattle together with the advertisement and sales.
- yellowapple 7y agoI'm moving from an open-office floor plan to a cubicle, and can attest myself as one example of someone who very soon will be happy in a cubicle.
- georgeecollins 7y agomy point: The only people who think business is done only in spite of managers, have never been managers.
- dang 7y agoPersonal attacks aren't allowed and will get you banned here, so please don't post them. Please don't post unsubstantive comments either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- coliveira 7y agoThat's exactly how it happens.
- pm90 7y agoUnfortunately this is much too true. Compliance controls are a sham. Auditing is garbage. Corporate America is made up of executives who unirononically fail to execute on anything. The few places that do execute are: startups (nobody trusts you or your product, you have to go the extra mile) and a few corporations with strong culture. It’s impossible for eg regulations to guarantee that corporations will follow the intent and not just check boxes. So most don’t and indeed just check boxes. The solution is pretty easy: bring back anti trust laws. Break up the old boys’ clubs; monopolies are driving the country to the ground.
- markus_zhang 7y agoAnd i heard that they are supposed to get a huge compensate because they "take larger risk" than the soldiers, while inn reality they put OTHER's life and money in risk while they themselves take fat compensate and even if SHTF they just resign to enjoy life in some islands.
- dnautics 7y agoSupply and demand. Do you know how rare it is to find such psychopaths? Those are valuable humans.
- markus_zhang 7y agoDamn man you are so right...
- dnautics 7y agoOk but don't despair. 1) on the individual level, maybe measuring other's (or one's own) worth by how much money you have or how much political power you have is the flaw. 2) on a collective level, if we do think that reward in the financial sense should go to the good people, we should think about what we consume; we have ultimate agency over all of that. As for politicians, I'm less optimistic; the popularity contest in high school never selected for good people and I see no evidence it's any better among adults.
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago> The executives lie and BS through all of it, and the soldiers on the ground kill themselves to get things done. Why isn't this taught in public school?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- GauntletWizard 7y agoBecause Public School is run managerially. Public School Principals have long been managers not educators, and quite frankly most teachers have the same mindset.
- beefield 7y ago> Most business in the United States is done despite of management, not because of it. I would not consider that so Geographically constrained. to me the most obvious textbook example [1] would be Nokia. I mean, there was no way the top management could have failed in the golden era of the dumb phones given the engineering talent (both for the electronics and the operations) within th ecompany. The single time when top management should/could have shown their value was the time when smartphones came. And they practically managed to destroy the company. I wonder if they themselves understand how literally clueless they were/are? [1] Admittably with zero actual inside information
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wpietri 7y agoI've lately been reading about the notion of "managerialism". The book Confronting Managerialism defines it as "What occurs when a special group, called management, ensconces itself systemically in an organization and deprives owners and employees of their decision-making power (including distribution of emoluments) and justifies that takeover on the grounds of the managing group's education and exclusive possession of the codified bodies of knowledge and know-how necessary to the efficient running of the organization." It's a really interesting concept to me, because it's been the dominant business culture my whole life in the US, so it's sort of like a fish discovering water. But once I started looking at business philosophy and history, I realized that there are a lot of other ways to do things. Toyota's example, of course: the managerialism of the big 3 let Toyota go from Japan's post-war decimation to the biggest carmaker on the planet. I still don't feel like I have a great grip on the alternatives, and especially how to practice those alternatives when managerialism is the norm. But I definitely aim to find out. At least once, I want work at a place that really has its shit together. That gets things done well on purpose.
- api 7y agoAn interesting thing about managetialism is that it's basically what made the USSR fail. The MBA is our exact equivalent of the Soviet "apparatchik." We postured ourselves as the opposite of the USSR but in reality US business culture aped a lot of its bureaucratic structure. I've called it Soviet capitalism for some time now.
- ibeckermayer 7y agoThe author of this article (friend of mine) noticed the same point. See footnote 1: https://reasonandliberty.com/articles/obamacare https://reasonandliberty.com/articles/obamacare
- LaserToy 7y agoSo, I’m not the only person who sees the similarity. I was born in USSR and later moved to USA. Some (many) approaches to management in some very famous and rich companies constantly remind me of Soviet’s approach to management. It does not mean it is bad, but USSR fell apart...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]