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two key grafs: "Professionals today would never self-identify as bureaucrats. Product managers at Google might have sleeve tattoos or purple hair. They might d
by skmurphy 6y ago
two key grafs:
"Professionals today would never self-identify as bureaucrats. Product managers at Google might have sleeve tattoos or purple hair. They might describe themselves as “creators” or “creatives.” They might characterize their hobbies as entrepreneurial “side hustles.” But their actual day-in, day-out work involves the coordination of various teams and resources across a large organization based on established administrative procedures. That’s a bureaucrat. The entire professional culture is almost an attempt to invert the connotations and expectations of the word—which is what underlies this class’s tension with storytelling. Conformity is draped in the dead symbols of a prior generation’s counterculture."
Conclusion:
"Absolute pessimism is almost always a sign of a lazy narcissist, and narratives of inevitable decline are used by those who want to absolve themselves of the obligation to act. Possibility has opened up before us in a manner that is rare in history. We need stories which encourage action. Our leaders must rise to defeat a global plague and in the process test whether or not there still exists, in this underused husk of a nation, the capacity for vigorous action—the capacity to produce the types of heroes who will inspire future generations. Now, more than ever, we need a story."
- watwut 6y agoIsnt the first paragraph basically bullshit? It made up attitudes out of thin air. I have yet to meet product manager or manager or business person that would call himself creative - including those with tatoos and other visible "crazy" visual style. And the people I knew with tatoos did not necessary interpreted themselves as non conforming either. There were aware of raising acceptance of tatoos. And guy explicitely explained his tatoos as "just result of being in environment where many people have it and talk about it, you kinda shift there".
- neonate 6y agoI don't think it's bullshit. "Professionals today would never self-identify as bureaucrats" seems exactly right.
- foolmeonce 6y agoAn internal censuses during the first dotcom times asked all employees to identify themselves as either individual contributors or a manager and the CEO reported there were far more individual contributors than was possible. Most managers considered their primary work to be as an individual contributor.. Few self identified as bureaucrats..
- watwut 6y agoMost managers in these companies don't manage people. It is title slapped on roles to make them sound glorious for future cv purpose. They don't have team they would directed. I was manager for project of exactly one person, me, that took 4 months and most time I spent coding some with analysis. I mean, we have office manager and she is mostly making sure we have enough print paper and such. In old times, she would be administration.
- mc32 6y agoProbably not publicly, but introspectively what other conclusion can one reach? It’s not flashy but it’s the essence of the job.
- skmurphy 6y agoThis strikes me as a good definition of a bureaucrat (or middle manager for that matter) "But their actual day-in, day-out work involves the coordination of various teams and resources across a large organization based on established administrative procedures. That’s a bureaucrat." I meet a lot of product managers and business people who call themselves creative--and some are. The test is whether they are wedded to "established administrative procedures" or they are able to take risks and run experiments that depart from past practice in an effort to explore for possible improvements and better outcomes.
- Animats 6y agoClassic bureaucracy was a system for constructing a business application using people. That's dead. Nobody has a direct labor clerical plant any more except some inept government agencies. There used to be things like this: [1] That's the FBI's fingerprint lookup center in the 1940s, a server farm made out of people. Except in marketing. Call centers are still bureaucracies. [1] https://www.fbi.gov/image-repository/fingerprint-work-armory.jpeg https://www.fbi.gov/image-repository/fingerprint-work-armory...
- skmurphy 6y agoI am not sure I agree. Many factories involve organizing skilled labor in a repeatable well defined process, where there may be experiments but they are managed top down. Also, inept government agencies employee more than you might imagine.