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“ 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 academica
by 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]