8 ms·

I don't have any idea how the makeup of the Disney+ executive team affects their programming. But at least as a phenomenon of executive behavior, this 100% alig

• babesh 6y ago
  Then this propagates and dissipates down the hierarchy. Disney is definitely corporate.
• anonunivgrad 6y ago
  Human beings really are disgusting, despicable creatures. The only thing to do is get on our knees and beg God for forgiveness. I’m not even kidding. As I get older, I am just more and more disgusted by our kind. Any redeeming aspect of a human being is inevitably outweighed by their cowardice, greed, gluttony, ignorance, cruelty. Get on your knees and beg God for forgiveness. Every human being is wretched just like the class of phony business leaders. You, me, every last one of us. Edit: to the concerned (thank you): I’ll live. I have found this realization to be liberating actually. We can and should hope and aspire to better the world around us, but it is ultimately doomed by its inhabitants and the only investment that ultimately makes sense is to recognize our fallen nature and hope that God exists so that someone may forgive us. And the flip side of this is that there is so much potential for joy and happiness in the world despite our fallen nature. Enjoy what you can find but remember that you will in the end be disappointed by both your fellow man and yourself.
  • fosk 6y ago
    This is not fair to those human beings that are outside of our bubble and indeed do a lot for others and create a net-positive for the world. By generalizing all human beings in your statement, you are severely disrespecting the ones that do deserve recognition.
    • anonunivgrad 6y ago
      They are probably vile in sum too. The human being is truly a wretched creature. A few, I imagine, might come out barely positive in a total accounting of deeds and intentions. But I am skeptical even of that. I do not mean that some cannot be better than others. The professional managerial class is certainly more disgusting than most. But maybe only in perception because their knowledge and cunning allow them to do evil more widely. The average man is relatively restrained in his misdeeds not primarily by his superior character but by his inferior ability and the humbler sphere in which he can exercise his wickedness.
      • Lucasoato 6y ago
        Man, you need some optimism in your life, some people are so nice they'll make up for all the bad ones... You just need to go out and meet them :)
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
        • krageon 6y ago
          There are definitely nice people (some of them are even very nice), but they'll never make up for all the bad ones. With people as with things, it's much easier to destroy than it is to build.
          • Lucasoato 6y ago
            Some years ago I used to feel the same way about the world. I was so broken inside that I couldn't see any light. But things can change! The only meaningful thing I can tell you is: don't lose hope! Go out, go running, do things you like to do, learn more everyday, get a job you like or work hard to get there one day... And if you're crippled by depression go to a psychologist and get cured, it's possible, just don't fucking lose hope!
• irjustin 6y ago
  I'll say the unpopular. From a business stand point - it makes sense. You need a team who you can trust to execute without looking over their shoulder. They're loyal, brilliant and quick. Startups that we celebrate on this forum exude this from all their pores. When you start from scratch it's "easy" to create such an environment. You don't have random people going off and doing random things. Everyone is pointed, focused and hungry to get to the same goal. If you don't, you run the risk of becoming lazy or hamstrung by politics and red-tape of people who want their rubber stamp to "show something for it". That's Intel vs ARM at the moment. It's a fine balance. Obviously you don't want "yes men" but you want people who are willing to move as a unit. I also agree it's terrible. Whole units are ousted because there's a new guy on top. People that gave sometimes decades to the company. All I'm trying to say is - it's not so clear cut.
  • krageon 6y ago
    It's unpopular because you're doing harm by perpetuating this behaviour. Lots of things make sense when viewed from the right context (f.e. genocide as a "solution" to world hunger), but that doesn't tell you anything about why it's seen as undesirable behaviour.
  • legerdemain 6y ago
    > You need a team who you can trust to execute without looking over their shoulder. They're loyal, brilliant and quick. Startups that we celebrate on this forum exude this from all their pores. During a planning meeting, you decide that Bob should build new feature X. Bob says yes, and then never does it. Secretly, Bob only takes requests from Bill, because Bill hired him into the company and was also his fraternity brother. You go on vacation and temporarily hand off your support responsibilities to your counterpart on another team. When you return, you find that your counterpart has jammed a half-finished feature into your code, making it unrecognizable. Your skip lead leaves for another company. Within weeks, half of your division leaves to follow him. Your support burden triples and no one is left to tell you how undocumented legacy functionality was supposed to work. If startups worked like corporate executives, there would never be a successful one. The entire MO of the executive class is zero attention span, zero focus, and zero memory.
• ryanmercer 6y ago
  I can nod to probably 90% of this just in my own experience working for a large corporation. We get a lot of mid-corporate turnover and it every time one takes over it seems that we quickly find things being changed for no reason, only for it to happen again in 6-24 months when the next passing of the baton occurs. IIRC we're on our fifth or sixth vice president in the 15 years I've been there and the tiers immediately below that have turned over similarly with people promoting in and out from other opcos, or even from competing companies. It has never made sense to me. One would think you'd want consistency for long-term plans, only replacing someone if they retire/are horribly ineffective.
  • flukus 6y ago
    > only for it to happen again in 6-24 months when the next passing of the baton occurs. And each one comes up with a revolutionary plan that has to be completed in that period and you end up with 6 layers of half finished 3 year plans. Each half finished plan makes the next plan harder to accomplish. Occasionally the plans are even good, just not achievable in the time frame required.
  • underwater 6y ago
    I saw one terrible VP be replaced by a smart and humble VP who made gradual change. The second guy came in, worked to understand the problems, made a considered plan, sold it to the team, and gradually started rolling it out. And he was totally defeated by red tape, bureaucracy and process. The first guy who'd come in and broken everything in one fell swoop had to convince his bosses that radical change was necessary just that one time, when he was new and there was no history. He got the green light easily. The winning strategy for the VPs in that company was to put all their eggs in that one basket. If it worked, they came out smelling of roses. If it doesn't they go find a new gig. But playing the long game didn't work.
    • codeisawesome 6y ago
      How do you observe these things at such detail?
  • ciceryadam 6y ago
• baq 6y ago
  isn't that precisely the point of changing most senior positions? to refresh the stale management structure of the whole organization?
• tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I've seen it several times with takeovers. There is usually a lot of talk about how the existing team is the greatest asset, that they didn't know how much they were getting. Then within six months they are all gone and replaced with the friends of the new CEO.
• snomad 6y ago
  works the same way at the president / provost / dean level at universities
• matt_s 6y ago
  What you have described sounds like the MacLeod principle which I read about in the Ribbonfarm posts about the Gervais Principle [0]. I thought it was analyzing satire, then the more I read, it was gospel. Then I found out the author worked where I was at one point (large enterprise) and it all made perfect sense. Internal re-orgs made sense, acquisitions made sense. I didn't agree with how they played out but they were understood. [0] https://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-...
  • curiousllama 6y ago
    That is a great 101 - the idea of stakes, rational trades at each level, middle management's self-preservation... it's all great. That said, that article should come with a disclaimer: "sociopaths" act unconsciously, not consciously. Purposefully trying to implement the lessons of that series is dangerous.
    • matt_s 6y ago
      I don't think the author of that intended the clinical definition of sociopath, at least when I read it I thought of it as "enterprise corporate person out for themselves."
      • curiousllama 6y ago
        Neither do I - I'm referring to the people the author refers to as sociopaths. Fair clarification
• curiousllama 6y ago
  I was once working with a sr exec who was told by his boss: "you're not picking enough fights." They weren't fighting hard enough, pushing for enough change, pissing off enough of the old guard by changing the company's way of doing business. Their boss could tell because people weren't screaming. The other reason you bring your own people in at very senior levels is because, when battle lines are drawn (do X or Y, where X is better but Y has a collective millenia of man-hours already sunk in), a sr exec has to know their reports have latched their careers to them, and not the rest of the company. Because if that's not the case, the sr exec has no chance at all. It's Hobbes' leviathan: you are your org, and vice verse. Gotta make sure everyone acts like it.
• programmertote 6y ago
  I've been working at a multi-national corporation for the last 5 years (and a little more) and your description fits perfectly with what I observed. Also, sometimes the execs leave a couple of years after they start/initiate a new project (before it finishes) presumably using that as their achievement point (although the project they started isn't even finished and eventually fizzles out once they move to the new company) in their CV to their new employer. After seeing that for 2-3 times, I realized that some of these upper management people only start these overly-ambitious (impossible) initiatives just to gear up for their eventual move.
  • jasondigitized 6y ago
    This. At nearly every company I have worked at, some reasonably charismatic C-Level / VP spins up a ambitious initiative which is promised to be a game changer. It looks great on paper and usually contains words like 'change management program' and 'rolling thunder'. Underneath the fancy slide show is the formula for success, which usually looks like 'Magic + ? = Profit', with the ? being a bunch of tough sledding that inevitably turns into a death march. By the time the death march comes to a head, the executive have moved on or been replaced.
  • specialist 6y ago
    The trick is to move on before the inevitable consequences become clear.
• lumost 6y ago
  Seen that a few times. In software shops it usually seems to look like a few process changes which change what "good" performance looks like, derailing promotions and other career advancement for people not in the know for the new normal. Coupled with asymmetric expectations e.g. loud criticism of other teams forcing them to move to the new normal while vocally defending their own team. Usually people who were on their way up just choose to leave at this point rather than slog it out. The best move I've seen in a senior reshuffle is to setup a 1:1 with the new leaders, I've done this with leaders up to 3 managers up. They like the initiative, and it gives you a chance to find out which projects they like, and which they want to end, and what they want to see come talent review time.
• Ericson2314 6y ago
  Some cyberpunk stuff abuses the word "feudalism", but within companies rather than on the tramped ground under them, I do think it makes more sense? We have lords, retainers, a CEO who's monarchy is somewhat conditional, etc.
• welearnednothng 6y ago
  I was at Disney for almost a decade (possibly at the division ultimately responsible for Disney+, but I’m not positive - it’s hard to keep up with all of the changes and renaming) and this is 100% what I observed there. Over and over. The ineptitude of the decisions that resulted from this were often hard to believe. And getting ahead was really a matter of getting in good with a new exec long enough to put you in a good position to move upwards to a different part of the company (or elsewhere).
  • wedidlearn 6y ago
    Unsurprisingly, building strong relationships in the workplace and having a positive attitude are ways to advance your career.
    • welearnednothng 6y ago
      This is sound advice that I can definitely get behind. However anecdotally it's not what I've observed to be true. In my above mentioned example, the people with the most and strongest relationships throughout the org were not the most upwardly mobile, nor was there a correlation with positive attitude. Rather, aligning yourself with the correct (choose wisely) new executive and being a yes-person even to things that you know might have long-lasting negative impacts on the company (and thus your peers) was too often the winning strategy. Even then, it's navigating a political minefield, and one misstep could spell disaster. The approach tends to put personal gain ahead of the well being of the company. I've seen too many people get ahead by setting vast fires and then walking away. That's not something I can get behind.
• uncletaco 6y ago
  This was sort of true at the grunt level for me. When we would get new application managers at my last company we'd also get new team leads who's primary job was to remain loyal to the manager (rather than, say, lead the team).
• specialist 6y ago
  > drags behind them a retinue of trusted aides ... shitting on the remnants of whatever came before them My first exposure to that idea was the process of re-mything after a regime change, as described in The Chalice and the Blade (Riane Eisler). Yesterday's godhead, deity, creation myth, ledger of debts was obviously deeply wrong. Appropriate, subvert, coopt, as able, all the narratives and levers of power. Utterly obliterate the rest. Then there's The Prince, of course. Sage advice that usurpers should immediately behead any potential challengers, lest they organize and rebel, covertly or overtly, at some future date. Same as it ever was. I'm only ever surprised, nay disappointed, when someone doesn't clean the slate. They're either not very good, non-serious, or worse.