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Feel like in America the game has become "how can I make the organization work for me" rather the other way around; we're a long way off from Kennedy's speech.

by imbnwa 6y ago

Feel like in America the game has become "how can I make the organization work for me" rather the other way around; we're a long way off from Kennedy's speech. Just fundamental misalignment of interests everywhere: PMs gaming JIRA, so-called "senior engineers" squashing anything that exposes their mediocrity and the fact that they're just punching JIRA tickets one paycheck to the next instead of modeling the problem, even engineers and consultants padding their resume in one org building keyword architectures as a launchpad for working somewhere else with a better salary. Everyone knows it, but its impolite/immature to point out the bullshit explicitly. Shut up, shit down, and listen to yet another round of empty hand wringing about values and culture at the all-hands meeting when the truth is there aren't any; delude ourselves we're doing something at all. These infrastructure 'managers' don't strike me as any different. It's a blight on American culture and its only getting worse the bigger the inequality gap. Everyone's trying to find the parachute to jump out of the burning plane that's in freefall diving to the ground. The (ultimately false) class antagonism narrative of /r/WSB that the game really is rigged is a fitting end to a decade that at the outset told everyone they could be a unicorn (or enjoy part of the spoils) if they could deliver a cash cow to elite investors if they only pulled up their sleeves and grinded through. The Governor of Texas just got on Hannity to bad mouth a New Green Deal as people died in Texas cause no one cared enough to make sure the wind turbines worked in the cold.

whateveracct 6y ago
it's just way better to grift your employer. when salaried, the less you actually work, the higher your effective wage. shrink that denominator!
- laurentdc 6y ago
  Sure. Unless there's a generous bonus on quality of work or project completion, the only rational way to play the game as a random employee is to maximize the gain and minimize the effort.
  - yalta5 6y ago
    This is a consequence of society breaking down into a collection of selfish individuals, which I think is largely a result of economic theories turning into self-fulfilling prophecies. Nobody is going to take pride in their work when it's viewed as nothing more than a selfish and cynical bargain by society at large.
    - imbnwa 6y ago
      I would add the reflexive turn in consumer culture from the late 60s on (Bob Dylan, The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke, Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, etc) manufactured the emotional appeal of existential individualism and the absurdity of believing in instutitions and collectivity. We're basically in the "Beautiful Souls" phase of Hegel's Philosophy of History
    - confounded 6y ago
      But what if your company ultimately acts as a selfish individual, too? Perhaps it even has a fiduciary duty to do so? There's a good argument that most venture backed software companies are exactly "a selfish and cynical bargain". It's been a good few years since I've met a senior technical staffer at a 'successful' Bay company who genuinely thinks they're "making the world a better place". EDIT: Not that I disagree with your broader point that selfishness is an undesirable characteristic for an individual, society or ideology. But it seems inappropriate to attribute the problem to ICs or their managers.
      - yalta5 6y ago
        Yeah, the companies are what kicked this into overdrive, I think. I mean if you want to get at the historical and philosophical roots of this problem it's an enormous discussion that won't fit here, but a few broad strokes worth bringing up: 1. We're obviously materially better off than any point in history. 2. Much of modern economic theory is built on the idea of selfish individuals pursuing their own interest. It's clearly been effective in a material sense (see #1). 3. Modern companies are obviously better than some of the obscene abuses of early capitalism. All of that said, it seems like there was a time when a person's work was connected to and respected by the society around them. You could argue that was always a sucker's game, but I don't think so. Human beings are wired to operate in social communities, and we take a lot of our cues from the people around us respecting and admiring our work. Many companies at one point followed that model. You were "part of the team/family/whatever." What you contributed was valued. That made it possible to take pride in it. You might work your entire career at one company. That model is obviously totally dead, and I think the companies fired the first shot. Once workers became chips in a game instead of fellow human beings, they were bound to play the game right back. So here we are, trying to scrounge out some sort of structural meaning to the work we do, when it's obvious to most people that nobody around us really cares or respects what we do. It's just "let's churn this out so we can all get paid." That's a poor way to motivate human beings and I think contributed to a lot of our malaise.
pedro2 6y ago
To what worries me the most is of learned helplessness. I’ve come to accept most of what you mentioned just because no-one else seems to care, why should I? NOTE: AFAIK them problem wasn’t in wind turbines, someone said renewables actually overdelivered on what was budgeted for them.
- imbnwa 6y ago
  >To what worries me the most is of learned helplessness. I’ve come to accept most of what you mentioned just because no-one else seems to care, why should I? Yeah I'm definitely at this point right now five years into this and this would be the import of my comment really, just, why does no one care? Cause when no one cares about the whole, there's no hope of collective, rational engagement of problem-solving. The Hannity/Texas bit could be proabably be further fact-checked. But perhaps it all comes down to what Chépe said on _Narcos_, "being an adult means accepting things you wish weren't true" Edit: originally wrote "there's hope of rational engagement"
  - reader_x 6y ago
    I agree about the learned helplessness. I observe it, and then I feel it creeping up myself when I see too many people around me have been bit. But no, we’ve got to find a plausible explanation for mass learned helplessness or we're part of the problem.
  - peruvian 6y ago
    > why does no one care? Because most people just want a check every two weeks. No one wants to rock the boat. Office workers, even tech workers, are so removed from the result of their labor, it's hard to get motivated about anything except a nicer title and more money.
    - smogcutter 6y ago
      > Office workers, even tech workers, are so removed from the result of their labor, it's hard to get motivated about anything except a nicer title and more money. I think there were some Germans who called this feeling “alienation“.
jonathankoren 6y ago
> The Governor of Texas just got on Hannity to bad mouth a New Green Deal as people died in Texas cause no one cared enough to make sure the wind turbines worked in the cold. Of course even the wind turbine issue is a canard given that Texas installed a regime that ensured no reserve capacity. Point the finger at wind turbines is absurd since wind only account for 10% of the Texas grid, and Germany isn’t having blackouts even though they also have frozen turbines right now. This craven scapegoating and deflection when there’s a crisis going on that, which every economist agrees is a policy failure to properly incentive reserve capacity, really pisses me off. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/what-went-wrong-with-texass-main-electric-grid-and-could-it-have-been-prevented/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/what-went-wrong-with-texas...
- imbnwa 6y ago
  Yeah there's probably a wealth of people better informed than I on the matter, I merely wanted to point out an extreme case of the disavowed negligence running rampant from the top of our society on down
  - RangerScience 6y ago
    It's almost like people who don't believe government can be good are bad at making good government.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      People who belive in government are equally bad. New York has shorted maintenance on the subway for years with Democrats in power. (Democrats for years have been the government belivers, at least when the Republicans are incomptent they are proving their point )
      - pelliphant 6y ago
        That isn't enough for me to accept the "equally bad" part. Also, as a european, I see both american parties as being on the government is bad side, even if one of them are obviously more so than the other.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> The (ultimately false) class antagonism narrative of /r/WSB that the game really is rigged is a fitting end to a decade that at the outset told everyone they could be a unicorn (or enjoy part of the spoils) if they could deliver a cash cow to elite investors if they only pulled up their sleeves and grinded through. WSB is a subset of Reddit's bigger issue: A mix of populist ideologies and misinformation. The GME pump was fueled by misunderstandings that people could get free money and hurt corporations by pumping up the price of a stock. Anyone with a basic understanding of investing could see that the stock price was coming back down, but instead Reddit went all-in on the "diamond hands" narrative that encouraged people to hold forever and blamed conspiracy theories for the inevitable fall of the stock price. The irony is that the barriers to entry for well-paying jobs are lower than ever before. Traditional trade jobs like plumbing or welding pay well these days, and safety standards have never been higher. Breaking into tech is as simple as loading up some free tutorials online and practicing away at any number of free websites. In 2021, you don't even need to live near these companies to get the job. Reading the front page of Reddit, you'd be convinced the world has never been worse and we're on the verge of societal collapse. Combine this with politicians eager to fan the flames of discontent and promise easy solutions (much like this article) and of course people will be angry and disillusioned. The social media effect works to amplify the negative and dismiss the positive.
- imbnwa 6y ago
  > The social media effect works to amplify the negative and dismiss the positive. You're not wrong here, I use to look at TikTok to fill the time and my god have my emotions become more balanced since deleting that app once I realized how it was making me feel. But this is another good example of how we're beset from all sides by forces attempting to extract value that will never be returned or re-distributed, just a bigger mess made left for the rest of us
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    To be fair, news outlets do the same thing. 20 years ago, televised news got people to watch by teasing outrage or fear stories. "You'll never believe what this politician said...". They did it because it worked. Social media has evolved into people replicating that same behavior. The more outrageous or rage-inducing the content, the more engaged the viewer. I don't put 100% of the blame on social media platforms, though. We all need to accept some responsibility for what we consume. As much as we like to blame "the algorithm", it's not very different than nicotine in cigarettes or the sugar in donuts. Placing all of the blame on social media companies almost enables the negative behavior more, by pretending that it's entirely out of our control.
cratermoon 6y ago
I worked with one guy who actually tried, on his yearly review, to pass of the number of Jira tickets he completed as one of his primary accomplishments. Anyone want to take a wild guess at the percentage of tickets he closed were tickets he created?
- mediaman 6y ago
  Did you know this because he was reporting to you? I find people who are constantly measuring some metric they're doing well on (and this metric always changes) and then making sure you know about it are covering for some sort of performance problem.
  - cratermoon 6y ago
    It's complicated, but you're getting the gist of it.
  - wernercd 6y ago
    Maybe... or they are using metrics from above as drivers. To create and monitor Jira ticket counts, there has the be Jira tickets for management to pay attention to and compare against other employees. Maybe the employee is gaming the numbers... but there has to be a game to play - and this no different than basing performance reviews on bugs solved or LOC numbers. management is probably looking at those numbers? Going to be people who change their focus to reflect that attention from above.
    - mediaman 6y ago
      Yes, I think that's an element of it. For me, it's when the metric they're proud of is always changing from quarter to quarter, and it's rarely the one we agree to focus on. Like they make a basket of six metrics and usually at least one of them is doing well, but never the same one consistently, so they're always talking about the great performance on whatever metric randomly turned up well this month. It's kind of like the inverse problem of management obsessing too much over particular metrics that don't properly capture the bigger picture, and can also be gamed.
nwellinghoff 6y ago
Preach
- maximente 6y ago
  i agree, that was superbly written; i wish i had more to add, but don't
machello13 6y ago
I know others have mentioned this but to make it explicit: the idea that the wind turbines are responsible for the outages is both false, and being widely spread intentionally to increase public distrust of renewable energy. I'm not suggesting you're doing that, but you should be aware.
- mjevans 6y ago
  There's also a pure falsehood story spreading on Facebook that the BBC tracked down and debunked: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-56085733 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-56085733 Text quoted as a public policy PSA, if you want to see the full story and picture the link is above. """ "In Texas today... a helicopter, using fossil fuels, spraying de-icer, made with fossil fuels, to de-ice a wind turbine, manufactured using fossil fuels, that is supposed to produce clean energy without using fossil fuels," one Facebook post says. But the picture actually shows ice being removed from a wind turbine in Sweden, using hot water. BBC News traced the image back to a 2016 report published by Swedish company Alpine Helicopter, demonstrating "airborne de-icing solutions" for wind turbines. """
  - xorcist 6y ago
    > a wind turbine, manufactured using fossil fuels This bit is true, though, and they are also erected and maintained using fossil fuels (among other things). That much should be obvious, and pretending that this insight is somehow a new or shocking idea is over the top pretentious. There are people full time doing lifetime analyses on these things, and have been for several decades. This is engineering people doing engineering work. Anyone can read these reports and find out exactly where the break even points are. This is taken into account when planning large infrastructure projects like wind power parks.
    - mjevans 6y ago
      The inflammatory wording of the source misinformation was designed to elicit exactly such a response. Probably some hydrocarbons are presently used as lubricants or plastics somewhere in the design, but those needn't be the long term portions of it, and the energy supplied to forge and shape the materials and components could be provided by anything feeding the grid.
jussij 6y ago
> The Governor of Texas just got on Hannity to bad mouth a New Green Deal as people died in Texas cause no one cared enough to make sure the wind turbines worked in the cold. And there in lies the problem. From what I have read the gas turbines also failed as did the nuclear power plants, yet somehow the wind turbines are to blame. The first step to fixing any problem is to first identify the actual cause of the problem. The fact that all of these systems failed seems to indicate the whole system was not properly designed to work in cold weather. So Hannity spouting his propaganda won't fix anything. But just like Hannity, I too am just speculating. What should happen is for the problem to be investigated by someone or some body with the qualifications to do the investigation. They produce a written report outlining the problems and outlining solutions. If someone is found to be negligent then actions need to be taken and those responsible held to account. But good luck hoping to see that. Most governments try hard to hush up these sort of issues, rather fix them and I suspect the Texas government will be no different.
- irjustin 6y ago
  All of the power sources failed because in the de-regulation of the power grid[0] allowed looser operating temperature tolerances. The point is, as you allude to, is the wind turbine is absolutely an easy narrative to "blame someone else" instead of "us" being the problem. So, the current party in power, blames wind/green energy, which then effectively shrinks wind's scope overall, leaving the old infrastructure which is still inadequate. The thing that frustrates all of us is - the general public is blind that the root problem was never solved. A cold snap like this won't happen in 10-20 years and by then all the politicians will have "blamed green, successfully squashed/fixed it all" and moved on claiming they won. There needs to be a fight, investigations are the starting point for sure. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/17/how-the-texas-power-grid-failed-and-what-could-stop-it-from-happening-again.html#:~:text=Texas%20has%20the%20only%20deregulated,trades%20on%20supply%20and%20demand https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/17/how-the-texas-power-grid-fai....
  - refenestrator 6y ago
    It's all culture war. Wind turbines are sissy energy, diesel is manly energy. Both failed, unpreparedness all around, but focusing attention on culture war shibboleths is perfect for deflecting attention.
adolph 6y ago
My org has started work on psychological safety based on “The Fearless Organization.” I think it might be a route toward an antidote for the delusions you describe. https://fearlessorganization.com/ https://fearlessorganization.com/
- tchalla 6y ago
  Do you have a review of methods in the book? I’d love to connect and learn more.
  - adolph 6y ago
    Not yet. Just attended the first presentation two weeks ago. The org has been big on psychological safety for a while although I don't see it much since IT is ancillary, not the main biz line.
29athrowaway 6y ago
Some people see everything from the perspective of the "survival of the fittest". Seeing everything through the lenses of competition, domination, opportunism and a "winner takes all" mentality. However, when you see opportunism at scale, you understand it doesn't work. In a society based on opportunism, you will not feel safe, and you won't be able to trust others. You will not want to spend money making your property look better, because as soon as your property looks better than the rest, it will be robbed. You will not want to spend money on nice clothes, because as soon as you look too fancy you will be mugged. If you decide to be honest and have a job, some random guy will appear each month and ask you for a large portion of your salary. Nobody will care about others, so public spaces will be dirty and lack maintenance. And that will drive off investment and tourism, making everyone poor. Would you like to live in a place like that? No. How do societies arrive to the situation described above? By making everyone believe they're better than average, and that they're entitled to everything without ever giving back anything. A lack of humility. Collaboration is necessary, period. No matter how much people try to convince you that collaboration is for losers... it's not. If everyone does their part in our society, everyone can enjoy the rewards. Clean public spaces, a culture of respect, safety and prosperity. And that translates to the workplace as well. If everyone is nice, respectful, helpful and altruistic (while still making each other accountable), everyone will have a better time, everyone will be more productive and, unless your CEO is a jerk that takes all the rewards for themselves, everyone will be better off. And that translates to engineering as well. Work as a team, support each other, treat each other with respect, don't leave tech debt behind, don't try to game the system. Create a culture of merit.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pelliphant 6y ago
> as people died in Texas cause no one cared enough to make sure the wind turbines worked in the cold. That is not true, wind turbines failing is not the cause, that is a lie.
pjc50 6y ago
> The Governor of Texas just got on Hannity to bad mouth a New Green Deal as people died in Texas Everyone's out here bashing him for this, but how do we know that's not what his voters really want? I mean, the constant stream of culture war is what matters to Republican voters far more than any actual policy outcomes, so he's doing what his voters insist on him doing. I'm sure there are Republicans out there shivering in the dark listening to that and cheering him on for sticking it to the environmentalists who they believe are responsible for this.
- mtberatwork 6y ago
  Time to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Only if you hate free speech. Those of us who value freedom are still looking for a different answer.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      It would be nice if the "free speech" complainers bothered to defend something other than racism some time. Nobody on the right was talking about that when FOSTA/SESTA swept across the US internet. Seemingly every time someone pops up with the free speech defence, it's in favour of slurs of some kind. It's really eroded support for the abstract concept.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        The ACLU has long complained that they end up defending the worst people. That doesn't mean freedom isn't worth defending.
    - 8note 6y ago
      We already hate it enough to pair it with capitalism, where people are forced to work all hours of the day instead of getting to sit down, think, and discuss. Charging for education too, is hatred of free speech, since you gate the tools of expression behind wealth Ditto with not providing safe spaces for people to discuss without their oppressors present. If we can make some tradeoffs for freedom speech, we can make others I for one don't necessarily care about free speech itself, but the benefits it brings for ensuring that new ideas are proliferated and people at the bottom of society aren't forgotten about. Free speech is an implementation detail, rather than a requirement
refurb 6y ago
I disagree slightly - people aren’t trying to make the organization work for them (in the sense of changing it), but rather, “wow the system is messed up so I’ll do what it asks for even if it makes no sense”.
eplanit 6y ago
Off topic, but note that Kennedy's speech about asking what you can do for your country was about getting a generation of youth to go fight in Vietnam. People recast it as though he was Gandhi-like for saying it.

by imbnwa 6y ago

whateveracct 6y ago

it's just way better to grift your employer. when salaried, the less you actually work, the higher your effective wage. shrink that denominator!

laurentdc 6y ago
Sure. Unless there's a generous bonus on quality of work or project completion, the only rational way to play the game as a random employee is to maximize the gain and minimize the effort.
- yalta5 6y ago
  This is a consequence of society breaking down into a collection of selfish individuals, which I think is largely a result of economic theories turning into self-fulfilling prophecies. Nobody is going to take pride in their work when it's viewed as nothing more than a selfish and cynical bargain by society at large.
  - imbnwa 6y ago
    I would add the reflexive turn in consumer culture from the late 60s on (Bob Dylan, The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke, Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, etc) manufactured the emotional appeal of existential individualism and the absurdity of believing in instutitions and collectivity. We're basically in the "Beautiful Souls" phase of Hegel's Philosophy of History
  - confounded 6y ago
    But what if your company ultimately acts as a selfish individual, too? Perhaps it even has a fiduciary duty to do so? There's a good argument that most venture backed software companies are exactly "a selfish and cynical bargain". It's been a good few years since I've met a senior technical staffer at a 'successful' Bay company who genuinely thinks they're "making the world a better place". EDIT: Not that I disagree with your broader point that selfishness is an undesirable characteristic for an individual, society or ideology. But it seems inappropriate to attribute the problem to ICs or their managers.
    - yalta5 6y ago
      Yeah, the companies are what kicked this into overdrive, I think. I mean if you want to get at the historical and philosophical roots of this problem it's an enormous discussion that won't fit here, but a few broad strokes worth bringing up: 1. We're obviously materially better off than any point in history. 2. Much of modern economic theory is built on the idea of selfish individuals pursuing their own interest. It's clearly been effective in a material sense (see #1). 3. Modern companies are obviously better than some of the obscene abuses of early capitalism. All of that said, it seems like there was a time when a person's work was connected to and respected by the society around them. You could argue that was always a sucker's game, but I don't think so. Human beings are wired to operate in social communities, and we take a lot of our cues from the people around us respecting and admiring our work. Many companies at one point followed that model. You were "part of the team/family/whatever." What you contributed was valued. That made it possible to take pride in it. You might work your entire career at one company. That model is obviously totally dead, and I think the companies fired the first shot. Once workers became chips in a game instead of fellow human beings, they were bound to play the game right back. So here we are, trying to scrounge out some sort of structural meaning to the work we do, when it's obvious to most people that nobody around us really cares or respects what we do. It's just "let's churn this out so we can all get paid." That's a poor way to motivate human beings and I think contributed to a lot of our malaise.

pedro2 6y ago

To what worries me the most is of learned helplessness. I’ve come to accept most of what you mentioned just because no-one else seems to care, why should I? NOTE: AFAIK them problem wasn’t in wind turbines, someone said renewables actually overdelivered on what was budgeted for them.

imbnwa 6y ago
>To what worries me the most is of learned helplessness. I’ve come to accept most of what you mentioned just because no-one else seems to care, why should I? Yeah I'm definitely at this point right now five years into this and this would be the import of my comment really, just, why does no one care? Cause when no one cares about the whole, there's no hope of collective, rational engagement of problem-solving. The Hannity/Texas bit could be proabably be further fact-checked. But perhaps it all comes down to what Chépe said on _Narcos_, "being an adult means accepting things you wish weren't true" Edit: originally wrote "there's hope of rational engagement"
- reader_x 6y ago
  I agree about the learned helplessness. I observe it, and then I feel it creeping up myself when I see too many people around me have been bit. But no, we’ve got to find a plausible explanation for mass learned helplessness or we're part of the problem.
- peruvian 6y ago
  > why does no one care? Because most people just want a check every two weeks. No one wants to rock the boat. Office workers, even tech workers, are so removed from the result of their labor, it's hard to get motivated about anything except a nicer title and more money.
  - smogcutter 6y ago
    > Office workers, even tech workers, are so removed from the result of their labor, it's hard to get motivated about anything except a nicer title and more money. I think there were some Germans who called this feeling “alienation“.

jonathankoren 6y ago

> The Governor of Texas just got on Hannity to bad mouth a New Green Deal as people died in Texas cause no one cared enough to make sure the wind turbines worked in the cold. Of course even the wind turbine issue is a canard given that Texas installed a regime that ensured no reserve capacity. Point the finger at wind turbines is absurd since wind only account for 10% of the Texas grid, and Germany isn’t having blackouts even though they also have frozen turbines right now. This craven scapegoating and deflection when there’s a crisis going on that, which every economist agrees is a policy failure to properly incentive reserve capacity, really pisses me off. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/what-went-wrong-with-texass-main-electric-grid-and-could-it-have-been-prevented/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/what-went-wrong-with-texas...

imbnwa 6y ago
Yeah there's probably a wealth of people better informed than I on the matter, I merely wanted to point out an extreme case of the disavowed negligence running rampant from the top of our society on down
- RangerScience 6y ago
  It's almost like people who don't believe government can be good are bad at making good government.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    People who belive in government are equally bad. New York has shorted maintenance on the subway for years with Democrats in power. (Democrats for years have been the government belivers, at least when the Republicans are incomptent they are proving their point )
    - pelliphant 6y ago
      That isn't enough for me to accept the "equally bad" part. Also, as a european, I see both american parties as being on the government is bad side, even if one of them are obviously more so than the other.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> The (ultimately false) class antagonism narrative of /r/WSB that the game really is rigged is a fitting end to a decade that at the outset told everyone they could be a unicorn (or enjoy part of the spoils) if they could deliver a cash cow to elite investors if they only pulled up their sleeves and grinded through. WSB is a subset of Reddit's bigger issue: A mix of populist ideologies and misinformation. The GME pump was fueled by misunderstandings that people could get free money and hurt corporations by pumping up the price of a stock. Anyone with a basic understanding of investing could see that the stock price was coming back down, but instead Reddit went all-in on the "diamond hands" narrative that encouraged people to hold forever and blamed conspiracy theories for the inevitable fall of the stock price. The irony is that the barriers to entry for well-paying jobs are lower than ever before. Traditional trade jobs like plumbing or welding pay well these days, and safety standards have never been higher. Breaking into tech is as simple as loading up some free tutorials online and practicing away at any number of free websites. In 2021, you don't even need to live near these companies to get the job. Reading the front page of Reddit, you'd be convinced the world has never been worse and we're on the verge of societal collapse. Combine this with politicians eager to fan the flames of discontent and promise easy solutions (much like this article) and of course people will be angry and disillusioned. The social media effect works to amplify the negative and dismiss the positive.

imbnwa 6y ago
> The social media effect works to amplify the negative and dismiss the positive. You're not wrong here, I use to look at TikTok to fill the time and my god have my emotions become more balanced since deleting that app once I realized how it was making me feel. But this is another good example of how we're beset from all sides by forces attempting to extract value that will never be returned or re-distributed, just a bigger mess made left for the rest of us
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  To be fair, news outlets do the same thing. 20 years ago, televised news got people to watch by teasing outrage or fear stories. "You'll never believe what this politician said...". They did it because it worked. Social media has evolved into people replicating that same behavior. The more outrageous or rage-inducing the content, the more engaged the viewer. I don't put 100% of the blame on social media platforms, though. We all need to accept some responsibility for what we consume. As much as we like to blame "the algorithm", it's not very different than nicotine in cigarettes or the sugar in donuts. Placing all of the blame on social media companies almost enables the negative behavior more, by pretending that it's entirely out of our control.

cratermoon 6y ago

I worked with one guy who actually tried, on his yearly review, to pass of the number of Jira tickets he completed as one of his primary accomplishments. Anyone want to take a wild guess at the percentage of tickets he closed were tickets he created?

mediaman 6y ago
Did you know this because he was reporting to you? I find people who are constantly measuring some metric they're doing well on (and this metric always changes) and then making sure you know about it are covering for some sort of performance problem.
- cratermoon 6y ago
  It's complicated, but you're getting the gist of it.
- wernercd 6y ago
  Maybe... or they are using metrics from above as drivers. To create and monitor Jira ticket counts, there has the be Jira tickets for management to pay attention to and compare against other employees. Maybe the employee is gaming the numbers... but there has to be a game to play - and this no different than basing performance reviews on bugs solved or LOC numbers. management is probably looking at those numbers? Going to be people who change their focus to reflect that attention from above.
  - mediaman 6y ago
    Yes, I think that's an element of it. For me, it's when the metric they're proud of is always changing from quarter to quarter, and it's rarely the one we agree to focus on. Like they make a basket of six metrics and usually at least one of them is doing well, but never the same one consistently, so they're always talking about the great performance on whatever metric randomly turned up well this month. It's kind of like the inverse problem of management obsessing too much over particular metrics that don't properly capture the bigger picture, and can also be gamed.

nwellinghoff 6y ago

Preach

maximente 6y ago
i agree, that was superbly written; i wish i had more to add, but don't

machello13 6y ago

I know others have mentioned this but to make it explicit: the idea that the wind turbines are responsible for the outages is both false, and being widely spread intentionally to increase public distrust of renewable energy. I'm not suggesting you're doing that, but you should be aware.

mjevans 6y ago
There's also a pure falsehood story spreading on Facebook that the BBC tracked down and debunked: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-56085733 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-56085733 Text quoted as a public policy PSA, if you want to see the full story and picture the link is above. """ "In Texas today... a helicopter, using fossil fuels, spraying de-icer, made with fossil fuels, to de-ice a wind turbine, manufactured using fossil fuels, that is supposed to produce clean energy without using fossil fuels," one Facebook post says. But the picture actually shows ice being removed from a wind turbine in Sweden, using hot water. BBC News traced the image back to a 2016 report published by Swedish company Alpine Helicopter, demonstrating "airborne de-icing solutions" for wind turbines. """
- xorcist 6y ago
  > a wind turbine, manufactured using fossil fuels This bit is true, though, and they are also erected and maintained using fossil fuels (among other things). That much should be obvious, and pretending that this insight is somehow a new or shocking idea is over the top pretentious. There are people full time doing lifetime analyses on these things, and have been for several decades. This is engineering people doing engineering work. Anyone can read these reports and find out exactly where the break even points are. This is taken into account when planning large infrastructure projects like wind power parks.
  - mjevans 6y ago
    The inflammatory wording of the source misinformation was designed to elicit exactly such a response. Probably some hydrocarbons are presently used as lubricants or plastics somewhere in the design, but those needn't be the long term portions of it, and the energy supplied to forge and shape the materials and components could be provided by anything feeding the grid.

jussij 6y ago

> The Governor of Texas just got on Hannity to bad mouth a New Green Deal as people died in Texas cause no one cared enough to make sure the wind turbines worked in the cold. And there in lies the problem. From what I have read the gas turbines also failed as did the nuclear power plants, yet somehow the wind turbines are to blame. The first step to fixing any problem is to first identify the actual cause of the problem. The fact that all of these systems failed seems to indicate the whole system was not properly designed to work in cold weather. So Hannity spouting his propaganda won't fix anything. But just like Hannity, I too am just speculating. What should happen is for the problem to be investigated by someone or some body with the qualifications to do the investigation. They produce a written report outlining the problems and outlining solutions. If someone is found to be negligent then actions need to be taken and those responsible held to account. But good luck hoping to see that. Most governments try hard to hush up these sort of issues, rather fix them and I suspect the Texas government will be no different.

irjustin 6y ago
All of the power sources failed because in the de-regulation of the power grid[0] allowed looser operating temperature tolerances. The point is, as you allude to, is the wind turbine is absolutely an easy narrative to "blame someone else" instead of "us" being the problem. So, the current party in power, blames wind/green energy, which then effectively shrinks wind's scope overall, leaving the old infrastructure which is still inadequate. The thing that frustrates all of us is - the general public is blind that the root problem was never solved. A cold snap like this won't happen in 10-20 years and by then all the politicians will have "blamed green, successfully squashed/fixed it all" and moved on claiming they won. There needs to be a fight, investigations are the starting point for sure. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/17/how-the-texas-power-grid-failed-and-what-could-stop-it-from-happening-again.html#:~:text=Texas%20has%20the%20only%20deregulated,trades%20on%20supply%20and%20demand https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/17/how-the-texas-power-grid-fai....
- refenestrator 6y ago
  It's all culture war. Wind turbines are sissy energy, diesel is manly energy. Both failed, unpreparedness all around, but focusing attention on culture war shibboleths is perfect for deflecting attention.

adolph 6y ago

My org has started work on psychological safety based on “The Fearless Organization.” I think it might be a route toward an antidote for the delusions you describe. https://fearlessorganization.com/ https://fearlessorganization.com/

tchalla 6y ago
Do you have a review of methods in the book? I’d love to connect and learn more.
- adolph 6y ago
  Not yet. Just attended the first presentation two weeks ago. The org has been big on psychological safety for a while although I don't see it much since IT is ancillary, not the main biz line.

29athrowaway 6y ago

Some people see everything from the perspective of the "survival of the fittest". Seeing everything through the lenses of competition, domination, opportunism and a "winner takes all" mentality. However, when you see opportunism at scale, you understand it doesn't work. In a society based on opportunism, you will not feel safe, and you won't be able to trust others. You will not want to spend money making your property look better, because as soon as your property looks better than the rest, it will be robbed. You will not want to spend money on nice clothes, because as soon as you look too fancy you will be mugged. If you decide to be honest and have a job, some random guy will appear each month and ask you for a large portion of your salary. Nobody will care about others, so public spaces will be dirty and lack maintenance. And that will drive off investment and tourism, making everyone poor. Would you like to live in a place like that? No. How do societies arrive to the situation described above? By making everyone believe they're better than average, and that they're entitled to everything without ever giving back anything. A lack of humility. Collaboration is necessary, period. No matter how much people try to convince you that collaboration is for losers... it's not. If everyone does their part in our society, everyone can enjoy the rewards. Clean public spaces, a culture of respect, safety and prosperity. And that translates to the workplace as well. If everyone is nice, respectful, helpful and altruistic (while still making each other accountable), everyone will have a better time, everyone will be more productive and, unless your CEO is a jerk that takes all the rewards for themselves, everyone will be better off. And that translates to engineering as well. Work as a team, support each other, treat each other with respect, don't leave tech debt behind, don't try to game the system. Create a culture of merit.

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pelliphant 6y ago

> as people died in Texas cause no one cared enough to make sure the wind turbines worked in the cold. That is not true, wind turbines failing is not the cause, that is a lie.

pjc50 6y ago

> The Governor of Texas just got on Hannity to bad mouth a New Green Deal as people died in Texas Everyone's out here bashing him for this, but how do we know that's not what his voters really want? I mean, the constant stream of culture war is what matters to Republican voters far more than any actual policy outcomes, so he's doing what his voters insist on him doing. I'm sure there are Republicans out there shivering in the dark listening to that and cheering him on for sticking it to the environmentalists who they believe are responsible for this.

mtberatwork 6y ago
Time to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Only if you hate free speech. Those of us who value freedom are still looking for a different answer.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    It would be nice if the "free speech" complainers bothered to defend something other than racism some time. Nobody on the right was talking about that when FOSTA/SESTA swept across the US internet. Seemingly every time someone pops up with the free speech defence, it's in favour of slurs of some kind. It's really eroded support for the abstract concept.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      The ACLU has long complained that they end up defending the worst people. That doesn't mean freedom isn't worth defending.
  - 8note 6y ago
    We already hate it enough to pair it with capitalism, where people are forced to work all hours of the day instead of getting to sit down, think, and discuss. Charging for education too, is hatred of free speech, since you gate the tools of expression behind wealth Ditto with not providing safe spaces for people to discuss without their oppressors present. If we can make some tradeoffs for freedom speech, we can make others I for one don't necessarily care about free speech itself, but the benefits it brings for ensuring that new ideas are proliferated and people at the bottom of society aren't forgotten about. Free speech is an implementation detail, rather than a requirement

refurb 6y ago

I disagree slightly - people aren’t trying to make the organization work for them (in the sense of changing it), but rather, “wow the system is messed up so I’ll do what it asks for even if it makes no sense”.

eplanit 6y ago

Off topic, but note that Kennedy's speech about asking what you can do for your country was about getting a generation of youth to go fight in Vietnam. People recast it as though he was Gandhi-like for saying it.