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Sounds like a bank, a government agency, or any business over a certain size. I tell people you only call it politics when you are losing. More accurately, it'
by motohagiography 7y ago
Sounds like a bank, a government agency, or any business over a certain size.
I tell people you only call it politics when you are losing. More accurately, it's a layer of literal stupidity above the competent to shield the money side of the company from the leverage that operations people would have if they had any information about how the money side worked.
Instead of a hierarchy, rethink a company as a hub and spoke model with concentric rings. The main differences are the implication in a hierarchy that there is "gravity," keeping people down and that they need energy and leverage to climb "up," which further implies there is a place to "fall," and that there is only one way "up," instead of many possible paths to the centre from all directions. There is no gravity, only gates and barriers, and even these are just information. Politics is how a middle manager runs interference and creates distractions to make sure you can't see over, around, or through them, and that the people behind them closer to the money can't see you. Tech is usually outside the main perimeter, mediated by contracting companies or middle managers whose job is to compartmentalize the value people create, and be sure it is replaceable.
Viewed this way, of course this demented political farce is how Apple works, because it's how everything seems to work when you have internalized the precise and specific mental model someone uses to take advantage of you.
Sorry if you can't unsee it now, but hopefully it will be funny and we can get good, competent people who value tangible skills into positions of power.
- taneq 7y ago> More accurately, it's a layer of literal stupidity above the competent to shield the money side of the company from the leverage that operations people would have if they had any information about how the money side worked. This is a brilliant description of it. The money people aren't stupid, despite what the workers think. They just have more information and different motivations which, in most larger organisations, they actively avoid explaining to the operations people. Edit: Changed 'an incredible description' to 'a brilliant description' because it is entirely credible.
- coffeemug 7y agoCould you explain this more? Who are the operations people? (finance? HR?) Who is the money side? (product? sales?) How exactly would "operations people" have leverage if they knew how the "money side" worked? Like, what specifically would they do? Also leverage over whom? And ultimately, couldn't whoever all these groups eventually report to (the CEO but possibly lower) resolve all this by firing some people? I don't have a good model of how these things work. I encountered it first hand, but couldn't develop a good model after a long time of thinking about it. Tons of things happened that I didn't understand at all, and I couldn't understand why higher-level people wouldn't just resolve it. Help understand this better?
- debt 7y agoMoney side is like a mini-VC like ecosystem inside a large corp; people on the money side spend the money in whatever ways they need to maintain their little fiefdoms. Additionally, and with their new found power, they'll layer in a bunch of morons to prevent operations people - who's sole job is to eliminate inefficiencies everywhere - from understanding that the money side is basically a giant game. If the operations people ever fully understood how badly the money people are fucking things up, they'd have leverage to use against the players on the money side and it'd be game over.
- jorblumesea 7y agoIt's a way to establish power and extract value out of what would otherwise be a more efficient company or system, since those efficiencies don't benefit you directly. The company might do better but your incentives align in a way to extract value from it. If the customer gets burned, or poor quality products get launched, the feedback mechanism is broken. Consolidating power and crushing the competition is more tangible than anything the business actually does. Which is why stock compensation was expected to help this, at least in theory.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago> It's a way to establish power and extract value out of what would otherwise be a more efficient company or system, since those efficiencies don't benefit you directly. The company might do better but your incentives align in a way to extract value from it This is a fancy way of saying corruption. Twisting the system to be used for your own ends, be they strategic, or just straight-up cash-in-my-pocket, is corruption. Operations workers can see the daily inefficiencies and profit from them, or inject themselves into processes and decisions in ways that will benefit them. Adding a layer of moron/process/politics slows or halts this bad behavior, at the cost of increased overhead and inefficiency.
- seph-reed 7y agoThis is just your own personal model? It's beautiful! Is there a community where we could discuss something like this? "The spoke." I want to get obsessed with this.
- mettamage 7y agoI wouldn't know about it. I have seen more corporate political comments on HN, albeit far and few in between. But they are there. I think a simple thing to do is to spot them and favorite them if you're interested in this sort of thing.
- sabalaba 7y agohttps://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
- SuoDuanDao 7y agoReplying just so I can find this again. I'm going to have to think about it in the coming days.
- colejohnson66 7y agoYou /can/ favorite comments
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoYep. Click on the comments time stamp to find the 'favorite' link :)
- SuoDuanDao 7y agoHey, thanks! Didn't know that.
- fishingisfun 7y agoi dont understand this comment
- chubot 7y agoI think a summary of it is that some things are broken by design in a large org. If you've worked in a huge org like Apple or the government, you've seen incredible inefficiencies. How can all these smart and often well-paid people be doing something so wrong (i.e. wasting time with political battles, etc.)? But that's only true if you look at the "medium view" of the organization. If you look at the large view, how the money actually flows, then it might be beneficial for one part like IS&T to be kind of broken, as long as the rest of the company works. I have seen this dynamic at other companies. Internal tools can sometimes hold too much leverage over the organization. They can almost "blackmail" people into getting their way because they have a literal monopoly over what they do. It might be better to let multiple teams fight battles amongst themselves, which seems inefficient if you're working as a regular joe, but could be efficient from the CEO's perspective. ---- Edit: A related idea is the principal-agent problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble... e.g. if you've worked at any large org, you know that not everyone acts in the company's interest (nor should they strictly speaking). A trivial example of this is putting extravagant meals and vacations on the company's card. (Although the nontrivial instances of this go all the way up to fraud/embezzlement.) A less trivial example is making up fake engineering work that sounds good when review time comes, but doesn't actually advance the company's business. So some things that seems mystifying on the ground level are pretty much a defense against this inherent conflict of interest. In an adjacent domain, a lot of HR is a defense against employees acting in their own interest. (I see a lot of veterans on here saying: "remember HR doesn't exist for you", which is presumably a hard won experience.)
- blaser-waffle 7y ago> But that's only true if you look at the "medium view" of the organization. If you look at the large view, how the money actually flows, then it might be beneficial for one part like IS&T to be kind of broken, as long as the rest of the company works. To a degree that's true. However I'm reminded of the CEO of Sears, who embraced that concept entirely. He expected each team essentially to battle for funding -- with (unsurprising) result that it was a free-for-all and teams spent more time wrangling and fighting than actually getting stuff done. A little competition motives; bellum omnium contra omnes is just a waste of resources.
- bitcoinmoney 7y agoCan you explain this more?
- danharaj 7y agoIt's as if there's three classes of people involved in economic production, workers, managers, and owners. hmm i'll have to think about that some more. It really hits the marks.
- sudosysgen 7y agoSuch a novel and powerful idea, I think it might end up very revolutionary and disruptive. I recall don't think you could Carl it off the mark.
- jml7c5 7y agoThis sort of sarcasm does not foster quality discussion.
- extesy 7y agoThis deserves a larger blog post, perhaps with some more practical examples? I would love to understand this model better.
- dehrmann 7y ago> you only call it politics when you are losing Gonna remember that one.
- mattbillenstein 7y agoReminds me of the Gervais Principle - I think this has ruined me for working in larger companies: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
- twoquestions 7y agoI'm not good at seeing interpersonal relations, so it took me a couple years of working at a Fortune 50 to figure this out, and it's absolutely true. When I finally put it together, my political/economic beliefs shifted considerably. These organizations aren't there to create value, but to concentrate it, even at the expense of everyone else.