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If you haven't seen it yet, you might appreciate this slide deck about how organizations are like slime mold. Slide 57 main image "0.60=0.95^10", text "And tha

by adolph 5y ago

If you haven't seen it yet, you might appreciate this slide deck about how organizations are like slime mold. Slide 57 main image "0.60=0.95^10", text "And thanks to that non-linearity, even a small decline in individual likelihood [of success] leads to a much lower overall decline in the likelihood of success." https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/ https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/

rastapasta42 5y ago
I disagree that slime-ball force is inescapable. I think our industry has a huge "boulder" - we often work on useless software that is far too removed from real world applications, which causes us to lose our passion. When you have 50 engineers maintaining a boring piece of crap software which can be maintained by 5 engineers, you will start noticing the productivity going down. Engineers who used to be very productive will slow down to meet the low expectations. Brainstorming a way to avoid this problem: - working on things we're passionate about with real-world impact - having a bunch of small organizations with small number of employees (maybe Mark should break down facebook into 50 smaller companies) - stop creating redundant jobs; if things are not going well, adding 100 people to a project isn't going to fix the delayed project
- adolph 5y ago
  > 50 engineers maintaining a boring piece of crap software which can be maintained by 5 engineers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA "If thats the Bradley, then what's this? [...] How did they get to that from this?" General: "This all well and good Col. Smith. But with this gorilla in production I don't supposed there's going to be anything left in the budget for my scouts. . . . This is a speedy vehicle, why can't it be both? . . . We'll just stick a turret on top with lots of opticals. . . . We aught to get the biggest bang we can up there [in the turret]." Other general: "Add on some firepower!"
- adolph 5y ago
  > I disagree that slime-ball force is inescapable. Please do go through the deck. At about 152 the author talks about a way through organizational headwinds. Also, the thesis is that an organization's ability to mutate and respond in a balance between collective and cellular methods is similar to a slime mold in a positive way (slide 149).

by adolph 5y ago

rastapasta42 5y ago

I disagree that slime-ball force is inescapable. I think our industry has a huge "boulder" - we often work on useless software that is far too removed from real world applications, which causes us to lose our passion. When you have 50 engineers maintaining a boring piece of crap software which can be maintained by 5 engineers, you will start noticing the productivity going down. Engineers who used to be very productive will slow down to meet the low expectations. Brainstorming a way to avoid this problem: - working on things we're passionate about with real-world impact - having a bunch of small organizations with small number of employees (maybe Mark should break down facebook into 50 smaller companies) - stop creating redundant jobs; if things are not going well, adding 100 people to a project isn't going to fix the delayed project

adolph 5y ago
> 50 engineers maintaining a boring piece of crap software which can be maintained by 5 engineers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA "If thats the Bradley, then what's this? [...] How did they get to that from this?" General: "This all well and good Col. Smith. But with this gorilla in production I don't supposed there's going to be anything left in the budget for my scouts. . . . This is a speedy vehicle, why can't it be both? . . . We'll just stick a turret on top with lots of opticals. . . . We aught to get the biggest bang we can up there [in the turret]." Other general: "Add on some firepower!"
adolph 5y ago
> I disagree that slime-ball force is inescapable. Please do go through the deck. At about 152 the author talks about a way through organizational headwinds. Also, the thesis is that an organization's ability to mutate and respond in a balance between collective and cellular methods is similar to a slime mold in a positive way (slide 149).