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Peter Thiel's New Man in the Defense Department
- yalogin 6y agoHow does a 33 yr old have that kind of connections? What did he do prior to this? He must have done something right.
- coderintherye 6y agoAn engineering degree does not a good CTO make. It really depends on the role and the organization and where Kratsios is a degree in Political Science is going to be valuable. The role of CTO is not to be the most technical person in the room, but rather to lead the most technical people in the organization. This requires technical acumen, but more so requires good communication and leadership skills.
- awinder 6y ago“ The person he’s replacing, Michael Griffin, holds a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and served as a NASA administrator. Indeed, Kratsios will be less academically credentialled than most of the program-managers he oversees. So how did he get here?” It’s a big problem when you take people who shouldn’t be in a position and put them in it. It’s an even bigger problem when you do it in a place with a long history of pedigree. If I’m a director who was hired into the culture when that mattered, and now I’m several steps under a boss who flouts that, that’s a huge upsetting culture change. Now luckily, he’s only going to be in this job for a few months so the damage will be largely mitigated, but still. This is an idiots game and it doesn’t make us smarter for trying to nit it to being acceptable. It’s not.
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago> It’s a big problem when you take people who shouldn’t be in a position and put them in it. It’s an even bigger problem when you do it in a place with a long history of pedigree. Apply this principle to elite-university admissions, big-tech hiring, or to developed-country citizenship and see how far you get with it.
- mmhsieh 6y agoAssuming Kratsios does not have experience already in doing so at Clarium: the problem will be -- when there is a dispute of opinion at the pentagon and two Ph.D.s with decades of experience come in with vast amounts of experience, but opposing and irreconcilable opinions -- how will Kratsios decide? If he does not know, he will need staffers; how will he judge the quality of the staff and their competence? Repeat this for the dozens of very big decisions he will be making, and the many dilemmas he will resolve.
- washicalendar 6y agoThis is the trump administration you’re talking about. The 33 year old will just pick whatever choice he thinks his boss, the idiot in the White House, will like. That’s it.
- ncmncm 6y agoBelieving he has responsibility or competence to decide would be his biggest mistake. It wouldn't matter if he actually did have credentials, it's not the role of an executive to decide technical disputes. Having independent knowledge and skills would enable him to discover when he is being lied to, and usually prevent the attempt. But he has been installed to direct budget to certain parties outside government, and can probably succeed at that. He might have been installed to commit the DoD to continue delivering budget to those parties long after he has been dismissed.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- enraged_camel 6y ago>>An engineering degree does not a good CTO make. I view it as necessary, but not sufficient by itself.
- birdyrooster 6y agoIt’s not necessary for IC, why would it be necessary for management?
- enraged_camel 6y agoManagement is only one part of a CTO's job. An effective CTO needs to have strong technical acumen, so that they know what to prioritize, who to empower, and how to effectively communicate with a wide variety of stakeholders and partners. In addition, they need to have credibility in the eyes of the technical teams they lead. This usually comes in the form of past technical accomplishments, but can also be fulfilled via strong credentials, depending on the organization. In the case of Pentagon, which is a very formal organization, credentials will be absolutely necessary, which is why I think this guy is going to be... not very effective at his job.
- mmhsieh 6y agoI have seen great tech leaders without a STEM degree. But they have a deep understanding of technology people, technology development as a process, and technology as a business. I have seen would-be tech leaders who tried to take shortcuts. They end disastrously. Usually the problem boils down to judgment. They cannot tell who is producing the core value of the enterprise. They create unnecessary work. They add useless process. They have bizarre and unworkable ideas for products. They don't understand how to correctly price talent, and to retain it. They don't have the humility to know what they don't know. They overestimate how much they add to the enterprise. The good people end up jumping ship and they are left with a rump of pure mediocrity, if anything at all.
- dccoolgai 6y agoHow many CFOs do you know that have a degree in Computer Science? Specialization is important in engineering for the same reason it is in finance (and not a lot of engineers are picked as CFO). Engineers _could_ be good at it, but it kind of shows a laughably shallow understanding of finance to think that would work as a rule rather than an exceedingly rare exception.
- quonn 6y agoThis reminds me of a point Joel Spolsky made a long time ago. But I can‘t find it (Can anyone else remember?) It was about how in principle he can reason about markets, but it takes forever and „it all becomes very sad“. Or something like that. edit: found it https://www.joelonsoftware.com/category/reading-lists/recruiter/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/category/reading-lists/recrui... „ These softball questions seem too easy, so when I first started asking them, I had to admit that I really expected everyone to sail right through them. What I discovered was that everybody solved the problem, but there was a lot of variation in how long it took them to solve. That reminded me of why I couldn’t trade bonds for a living. Jared is a bond trader. He is always telling me about interesting deals that he did. There’s this thing called an option, and there are puts, and calls, and the market steepens, so you put on steepeners, and it’s all very confusing, but the weird thing is that I know what all the words mean, I know exactly what a put is (the right, but not the responsibility, to sell something at a certain price) and in only three minutes I can figure out what should happen if you own a put and the market goes up, but I need the full three minutes to figure it out, and when he’s telling me a more complicated story, where the puts are just the first bit, there are lots of other bits to the story, I lose track very quickly, because I’m lost in thought (“let’s see, market goes up, that mean interest rates go down, and now, a put is the right to sell something…”) until he gets out the graph paper and starts walking me through it, and my eyes glazeth over and it’s very sad. Even though I understand all the little bits, I can’t understand them fast enough to get the big picture. And the same thing happens in programming. If the basic concepts aren’t so easy that you don’t even have to think about them, you’re not going to get the big concepts.“
- jonmc12 6y agoA possibly relevant example. Bill Taylor was a generalist, described by a more technical computer scientist colleague as a "concert pianist without fingers". Through his position at NASA, he had the vision to fund Doug Engelbart's mouse project around the age of 30, which directly enabled the mother of all demos in '68. https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/technologies/taylor_more.html https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/technologies/taylor_more.h...
- Fluid_Mechanics 6y agoNepotism brings out the best in people
- echelon 6y ago> Nepotism brings out the best in people How is this nepotism? The article reports only that this is a well-connected individual that used to serve as Thiel's deputy.
- timsally 6y agoFor those curious, the full position name is Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering USD(R&E), a position in its first conception held by Vannevar Bush.
- ryder9 6y agopeter thiel is one of the worst
- quonn 6y agoI‘m sure many will rush to defend him, because after all there are also bootcamps. But no - we shouldn‘t. Sure there a people who obtain a PhD and haven‘t learned much. And there are those who are great engineers and have no formal education. But in those cases, they have shown beyond doubt that they can study by themselves and they have also put in the work which is needed for a deep understanding of anything complex. Now of course there are engineers who lack leadership or social skills. But there are also those who have that as well. And those should be picked. In a country of that size which easily produces them.
- contemporary343 6y agoHow far we have fallen from the era of Vannevar Bush to.. whatever this is.
- azinman2 6y agoThat’s exactly right. With zero track record of vision (especially compared to Bush), why would anyone expect this guy to be the right fit? The Russian collusion may or may not be true, but it certainly seems like they’d be getting what they’d have wanted by constantly putting lackluster candidates with in all these positions.
- aj7 6y agoSerious security risk. When he falls out of favor, likely in six months, what he knows becomes part of his “business portfolio.” If you think this has low probability, remember it’s probability * consequences that matters.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rubyn00bie 6y agoHoly shit. This is some absolutely astonishing levels of idiocy. Everyone want to know why a 33-year old was chosen? Because he can be controlled. Full stop. I know this because it was something that became apparent to me when I was a young CTO. Any fully-qualified person, with experience, in their 40s-50s will not take enormous amounts of shit without throwing it right back. Younger, less experienced folks, will not jeopardize their "opportunity" and instead will shovel the shit down the latter. Young people will not push back and instead will seek to make their "sponsor" happy. While it once hurt my ego to say it, I've come to terms with it, talent has shit all to do with opportunity, most of it is, if not all, is luck.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- LordFast 6y agoAs is the case with any job, be good enough, be amenable enough, and work hard enough. Nobody wants to pay an idiot who's hard to deal with and holds entitled beliefs. Not sure about this situation here with the DD, but I'm sure you can cut yourself some slack. Being good enough means exactly that: good enough. And then a dash of luck on top of that helps tremendously.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Everyone want to know why a 33-year old was chosen? Because he can be controlled. Full stop. That's probably a factor, though from every indication I've seen of the internal dynamics of this administration it's probably a bigger factor in the sales pitch of the policy entrepreneurs selling picks to the President than it is in the actual selection process. As I read it, the bigger reasons this administration chooses young allied ideologues for senior positions for which they lack the traditional credentials are twofold: (1) They want allied ideologues that don't need to be controlled. If they could find qualified people with the right ideological credentials they wouldn't shy away from them, but they usually can't and the ideological credentials are the key indicator that people will make the “right” decisions without explicit control, and (2) They want a long-term impact on shaping the nation, party, and broader conservative community and jumping members of their fairly narrow factions ahead in resume building this way means that in the next Republican administration, and in Republican/conservative think tanks, media networks, etc. in the meantime, their faction will be far ahead of where it was a few years ago in people with the the kind of resume that gets them positions.
- js2 6y agoThis kind of cronyism and disdain for expertise is going to destroy America.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- krm01 6y agoA degree doesn’t properly define the skills level of a person. Having some kind of a track record is a lot more helpful. Neither seem to be present (at the surface at least). The only thing that is present is a solid network. Then again. That does seem to be the single most important asset one can have to get where they want to be.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/7nDfr https://archive.is/7nDfr
- coliveira 6y agoThis is now a republic of oligarchs. They're dividing the government as they see please.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- PeterStuer 6y agoFrom decades of experience, his is what I came to believe: The best managers I met tended to be those that if the circumstance required it, could do the job of those two levels below. So they could actually do the job of the people that are managed by those they manage.
- dragonwriter 6y agoIf you can't do the job of the people up to about three levels down the org chart at least at a basic level, you probably can't effectively manage the organization they are part of, either. Now, it's true that there are lots of managers that have that problem even at one level down, but incompetent management is a widespread problem (especially because managers are often chosen by incompetent managers that believe that management is an independent and sufficient skill set without domain knowledge, either because they think you don't ever need domain knowledge because you can get by with generic management skills or because they think domain knowledge is easy to pick up by osmosis. The latter is true for a small minority of people—basically, the same people that, if they started with domain knowledge, management skills would be trivial to pick up—but neither is generally true.)
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago> Thiel has made a variety of enemies in the tech world and beyond; for example, he has slammed Google as being too accommodating to China. You can tell the smart guys from the smart-sounding ones by looking closely at how good of an understanding of the real world they have, measured by how many true non-obvious predictions they make. Paul Graham, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Peter Thiel score high. To grow ones understanding of the world one must be open, look closely, read those interviews and books, form your own opinion, without prejudice or partisan filters.
- random314 6y ago> Paul Graham, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Peter Thiel score high One of them in this list is not like the others.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoAll of them are risk takers and public intellectuals. They are independently wealthy, none of them need the exposure or income from peddling certain ideas or catering to a certain audience. I can't even tell which you one you mean, let alone for what reason.
- random314 6y agoOne of them is a crazy raging racist. You missed that. EDIT: I can't believe I have to justify what is public knowledge https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/03/500569299/major-trump-backers-positive-comments-about-apartheid-stir-anger https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/03/50... https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/campaign/461193-ann-coulter-peter-thiel-slated-to-host-fundraiser-for-kobachs-senate-bid%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4...
- fooker 6y agoDoes that invalidate their opinions about other matters?
- Threeve303 6y ago> The development, however, is good news for “the Peter Thiel portion of Silicon Valley,” the former official said. Just out of curiosity, what else comprises the Peter Thiel portion of Silicon Valley?
- BurningFrog 6y agoDidn't I hear that Thiel has left Silicon Valley for LA?
- agustif 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia
- JungleGymSam 6y ago> The Pentagon’s new 33-year-old head of research and engineering lacks a basic science degree ... This is funny because the left simultaneously hates meritocracy but slam it when it's problematic. Such intellectually dishonest people they are.
- mwfunk 6y agoAbsolutely nobody hates meritocracies, and it's intellectually dishonest to claim they do. If you're referring to things like encouraging diversity or CoC's or the other usual things that some personality types REALLY enjoy getting worked up over, the people that advocate them advocate them because they want to establish better meritocracies in the face of implicit biases. Biases that stand in the way of meritocracies (similar to things like nepotism, etc.). You can disagree with them that those biases exist, or that that is a way to accomplish a more perfect meritocracy, but you can't claim that they are motivated by a desire to make anything less of a meritocracy. You can only claim that they're going about it the wrong way and give really thoughtful and coherent reasons why you think that's the case.
- iliekcomputers 6y ago>Absolutely nobody hates meritocracies, and it's intellectually dishonest to claim they do. I'm not agreeing with the grandfather comment, but there are "post-meritocracy" movements[0] in the world that fall more in line with the opinion that meritocracy as a concept is flawed. [0]: https://postmeritocracy.org/ https://postmeritocracy.org/ (sidenote: I agree with a lot of things in this link)
- shkkmo 6y agoThat link doesn't really dismiss meritocracy as a concept or ideal, it tries to call attention to flaws in the way that meritocracy is practiced (especially in open source projects.)
- SamReidHughes 6y agoNo, they literally do hate meritocracy. UCSF medical school didn't get more meritocratic by reducing Asian admissions from 60% to 20%.
- snowmanak 6y agoHow can one judge the competency of this guy based on age, degree, current employer, or past employer? That’s never worked for me. Give him a chance.
- mark_l_watson 6y agoAs a liberal democrat, my first feeling was outrage. Then I saw how quickly he rose in Peter Thiel's organization which is impressive. I started my career working in the defense industry (an early employee at SAIC, which much later changed its name to Leidos). I saw this scenario at least twice working in that industry: someone young and without the "right kind of degree" would get hired. They had great people and organizational skills and ended up being very valuable just because they got stuff organized, then done. Kratsios may be a lacky, or a skilled organization-person. Or both.
- washicalendar 6y agoI’m sure he’s just another trump dick sucker
- dang 6y agoPlease don't do this here.
- washicalendar 6y agoNah
- m0zg 6y agoThiel himself is a lawyer. Seems to be doing OK innovation-wise.
- alkibiades 6y agowho cares if he has advanced degrees. most phds are losers. if he was cfo of clarium capital that more than qualifies him over these bureaucrats
- dang 6y agoWe've banned this account for trolling. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
- wow_no 6y agoWhat did Thiel do that everyone here despised him so? Is it because he’s a gay conservative?
- hansthehorse 6y agoIf this was done 3.5 years ago it could really mess a lot of things up. He has 6 months to do as he's told and it's over.
- Animats 6y ago3.5 months.
- washicalendar 6y agoThat’s until the election. The current administration remains until January 20.
- Animats 6y agoIf Trump loses the election, he will be likely be ignored during his lame-duck period.
- walleeee 6y agoWhat's "quantum science"?