5 ms·

> All of us are replaceable That's a management illusion. Try to replace e.g. someone like Fabrice Bellard, Mike Pall or Claude Shannon. Of course such things

by Rochus 6y ago

> All of us are replaceable That's a management illusion. Try to replace e.g. someone like Fabrice Bellard, Mike Pall or Claude Shannon. Of course such things happen in big companies, but mostly because management is too limited to properly assess the true value of certain individuals. But the article is actually about a different topic.

sdevonoes 6y ago
Alright. 99.999% of us are replaceable.
- Rochus 6y ago
  Also this is a management illusion. There is no evidence for this assumption. You don't even know the probability distribution. There is no reason to assume that the percentage is equally distributed across all firms or countries. And anyway, the article is about something else.
  - karmasimida 6y ago
    Then what is your distribution then? Those exceptional individuals are incredibly rare, like one or two in a generation. So you need to be Shannon-likes to be not replaced by some middle manager in a big corporate? Emm, if someone were this accomplished, why would they care about one employment? That is the wrong question to ask. Truth is, if Google thought they were not replaceable, it would not fire them this easily.
    - Rochus 6y ago
      Much more people than you expect have at least one exceptional skill; from my observations I would say at least 20 to 30%; the more extraordinary skills per person, the rarer of course. And if indeed the human workforce were really such a generic, easily replaceable commodity, why do most companies, including Google, go to such great lengths in recruiting, with assessment centers and so on? And why are there so many unemployed IT specialists, for example in Germany, when at the same time the industry associations claim that jobs cannot be filled?
  - Applejinx 6y ago
    No, it's an axiom. It defines a way to make collective/collaborative entities hopefully bigger than the sum of their parts. I think of these things (corporations, groups, movements) as aggregate people, and that's very much what Google is about. Google deals almost entirely with aggregate people: statistics, algorithms, collective behaviors, machine learning, implementation that's never about individuals but is about larger population trends. Aggregates, not special unique snowflakes. As such this is not an illusion but an axiom. Google and entities like it (themselves humongous aggregate 'people') MAKE individuals replaceable, the better to be dealing with other entities like themselves. This is only going to accelerate the more they get to bring AI and machine learning into the mix… which by now is long established, nowhere more than at Google.
    - Rochus 6y ago
      > it's an axiom An axiom which only applies to a certain percentage of cases?
      - haakonhr 6y ago
        Maybe an axiom as in being something we assume (because we can't/won't figure out whether it is actually true) this and base our decisions on this axiom.
avereveard 6y ago
Shannon built on Hartley, as much as Einstein built on Lorentz. That's not to say these weren't great minds, but the concepts where in the air and the race to formalize them was on; most of the "second places" are today forgotten or their contribution diminished from the modern "winner takes all" mentality, but none of them existed in a vacuum. The history of science is fraught with independent discoveries, from calculus to the the telephone, up and including mass energy relation and the basis that later became quantum mechanics.
- jessriedel 6y ago
  If A and B made the same discovery independently, that is evidence that A was replaceable, but that C built on D is not evidence that C was replaceable.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
That's an ego illusion. It hurts to admit that we're not replaceable, but we are. The job might not get done as well, or done in a different way than we'd do it, but it'll still get done.
- auggierose 6y ago
  That's maybe true for YOUR job. The more a job has a well-defined description, the truer your statement is.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    My job title is "technical chap". I have no job description apart from "make all the things work". I could be replaced very easily ;)
- ramblerman 6y ago
  It's certainly true for most of us but not the names the op mentioned. I would argue the real ego resistance is in not accepting such people exist.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    Both are true: there are supernaturally talented people and also an incredibly wide world. If you take an intellect so impressive that they are one in ten million, there will be still be almost eight hundred of those people in the world. We are also reasoning from the POV of our own reality. We see the people we did get, but it could be the case that we missed some brilliant minds that do exist in some alternative universe, but came ahead anyway. There are so many factors in play.
    - MontyCarloHall 6y ago
      > If you take an intellect so impressive that they are one in ten million, there will be still be almost eight hundred of those people in the world. Intellects aren’t fungible. Even if there are 800 Fabrice Ballard-level minds out there, I doubt most of them have honed their brain on the exact problems he’s worked on. You can’t just find another one-in-ten-million mind and put them to work on the problems of another 1/1e7 mind and expect comparable results.
belval 6y ago
It's not, at least not in ML for a lab as prestigious as Google AI. They probably have several hundred researchers with excellent publications that would be willing to drop everything and get a FANG salary.
ctrlp 6y ago
Brings to mind De Gaulle saying "the graveyards are filled with indispensable men."
- Rochus 6y ago
  And yet so many people consider themselves important enough e.g. to post comments here. It just seems that it is always the others who are dispensable. For people who make it into management, this tendency even seems to intensify (or it was the prerequisite why they wanted to be in management).
fractionalhare 6y ago
Okay, approximately all of us are replaceable. We can agree there is an epsilon of people who are clearly beyond others. However for almost all the work that has to get done, the actual bar is "can you write decent Python?", not "can you design and implement a novel algorithm for computing Pi?"
- Rochus 6y ago
  > approximately all of us are replaceable I guess it depends on the purpose for which we are all supposed to be replaceable. Nature probably doesn't care which individuals reproduce or are eaten, as long as the numbers are right. Human society with its elaborate specializations and long training periods has added a few more dimensions.

by Rochus 6y ago

sdevonoes 6y ago

Alright. 99.999% of us are replaceable.

Rochus 6y ago
Also this is a management illusion. There is no evidence for this assumption. You don't even know the probability distribution. There is no reason to assume that the percentage is equally distributed across all firms or countries. And anyway, the article is about something else.
- karmasimida 6y ago
  Then what is your distribution then? Those exceptional individuals are incredibly rare, like one or two in a generation. So you need to be Shannon-likes to be not replaced by some middle manager in a big corporate? Emm, if someone were this accomplished, why would they care about one employment? That is the wrong question to ask. Truth is, if Google thought they were not replaceable, it would not fire them this easily.
  - Rochus 6y ago
    Much more people than you expect have at least one exceptional skill; from my observations I would say at least 20 to 30%; the more extraordinary skills per person, the rarer of course. And if indeed the human workforce were really such a generic, easily replaceable commodity, why do most companies, including Google, go to such great lengths in recruiting, with assessment centers and so on? And why are there so many unemployed IT specialists, for example in Germany, when at the same time the industry associations claim that jobs cannot be filled?
- Applejinx 6y ago
  No, it's an axiom. It defines a way to make collective/collaborative entities hopefully bigger than the sum of their parts. I think of these things (corporations, groups, movements) as aggregate people, and that's very much what Google is about. Google deals almost entirely with aggregate people: statistics, algorithms, collective behaviors, machine learning, implementation that's never about individuals but is about larger population trends. Aggregates, not special unique snowflakes. As such this is not an illusion but an axiom. Google and entities like it (themselves humongous aggregate 'people') MAKE individuals replaceable, the better to be dealing with other entities like themselves. This is only going to accelerate the more they get to bring AI and machine learning into the mix… which by now is long established, nowhere more than at Google.
  - Rochus 6y ago
    > it's an axiom An axiom which only applies to a certain percentage of cases?
    - haakonhr 6y ago
      Maybe an axiom as in being something we assume (because we can't/won't figure out whether it is actually true) this and base our decisions on this axiom.

avereveard 6y ago

Shannon built on Hartley, as much as Einstein built on Lorentz. That's not to say these weren't great minds, but the concepts where in the air and the race to formalize them was on; most of the "second places" are today forgotten or their contribution diminished from the modern "winner takes all" mentality, but none of them existed in a vacuum. The history of science is fraught with independent discoveries, from calculus to the the telephone, up and including mass energy relation and the basis that later became quantum mechanics.

jessriedel 6y ago
If A and B made the same discovery independently, that is evidence that A was replaceable, but that C built on D is not evidence that C was replaceable.

marcus_holmes 6y ago

That's an ego illusion. It hurts to admit that we're not replaceable, but we are. The job might not get done as well, or done in a different way than we'd do it, but it'll still get done.

auggierose 6y ago
That's maybe true for YOUR job. The more a job has a well-defined description, the truer your statement is.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  My job title is "technical chap". I have no job description apart from "make all the things work". I could be replaced very easily ;)
ramblerman 6y ago
It's certainly true for most of us but not the names the op mentioned. I would argue the real ego resistance is in not accepting such people exist.
- Bakary 6y ago
  Both are true: there are supernaturally talented people and also an incredibly wide world. If you take an intellect so impressive that they are one in ten million, there will be still be almost eight hundred of those people in the world. We are also reasoning from the POV of our own reality. We see the people we did get, but it could be the case that we missed some brilliant minds that do exist in some alternative universe, but came ahead anyway. There are so many factors in play.
  - MontyCarloHall 6y ago
    > If you take an intellect so impressive that they are one in ten million, there will be still be almost eight hundred of those people in the world. Intellects aren’t fungible. Even if there are 800 Fabrice Ballard-level minds out there, I doubt most of them have honed their brain on the exact problems he’s worked on. You can’t just find another one-in-ten-million mind and put them to work on the problems of another 1/1e7 mind and expect comparable results.

belval 6y ago

It's not, at least not in ML for a lab as prestigious as Google AI. They probably have several hundred researchers with excellent publications that would be willing to drop everything and get a FANG salary.

ctrlp 6y ago

Brings to mind De Gaulle saying "the graveyards are filled with indispensable men."

Rochus 6y ago
And yet so many people consider themselves important enough e.g. to post comments here. It just seems that it is always the others who are dispensable. For people who make it into management, this tendency even seems to intensify (or it was the prerequisite why they wanted to be in management).

fractionalhare 6y ago

Okay, approximately all of us are replaceable. We can agree there is an epsilon of people who are clearly beyond others. However for almost all the work that has to get done, the actual bar is "can you write decent Python?", not "can you design and implement a novel algorithm for computing Pi?"

Rochus 6y ago
> approximately all of us are replaceable I guess it depends on the purpose for which we are all supposed to be replaceable. Nature probably doesn't care which individuals reproduce or are eaten, as long as the numbers are right. Human society with its elaborate specializations and long training periods has added a few more dimensions.