8 ms·

Revolutionaries at the Workplace

61 points by spuriousfox 5y ago

LaffertyDev 5y ago
I like this framing. My previous framing came from `Loonshots`, where Bahcall frames this as "Artists" (Revolutionaries) and "Soldiers" (Evolutionary). I felt that, in the context of engineering, Artist/Soldier felt dismissive against the soldier. Revolutionary/Evolutionary avoids that for the better. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39863447-loonshots https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39863447-loonshots
- tracerbulletx 5y ago
  One mitigating thing I remember from that book is that no person is inherently classified as an "artist" or a "soldier" it's more that people can be operating in that mode depending on their current role, or even dividing time between one mode or the other depending on the circumstances.
  - LaffertyDev 5y ago
    Agreed. I don't think switching the framework from Artist/Soldier to Revolutionary/Evolutionary detracts from the malleability.
gumby 5y ago
> What’s most infectious is how deeply they care. Their goal is to get to the right answer, not to look good. This is the difference between the revolutionary colleague and the jerk. Some people are self-described “truth tellers” (I.e. jerks). Or the annoying ones whose motivation is to look “good”. The ones who are genuine are hard to get upset with. I’ve pretty much only worked at “cause” companies. I would think someone like this might be annoying at a company “revolutionizing the corporate purchasing space”
smoe 5y ago
I'm not sure how useful of a description for revolutionaries this is. They are not necessarily lonely wolfs as I interpret the article, they might deeply care or not about things like diversity and they are certainly able to do a lot of politicking. Unless you want to completely redefine the term. For me the difference comes more down to, as with the conflicts within lots of political groups in history: reformists vs non-reformists. The former advocating the reform of an existing system or institution whereas the others believe the right approach is abolition and replacement. You could also add reactionaries, those that want to go back how things used to be. Neither of which is universally true I think, more often than not it is a mix. But I don't think you get very far trying to mix the extremes from either side.
zeckalpha 5y ago
A much better framing of this dichotomy: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/stables-and-volatiles/ https://randsinrepose.com/archives/stables-and-volatiles/
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  It's certainly "better" (and I do like it), but it needs an editor. Takes too long to say its thing.
n8cpdx 5y ago
It’s an interesting framing overall, but I’m not really convinced that the R/E distinction is as clear in real life. The key attribute that both R and E types here seem to share is _caring_ and a commitment to a larger team goal/outcome. The care/don’t care distinction seems clearer to me and much more recognizable. Within _cares_ people, there may be a further divide in styles, between progressive idealist and tactical/strategic (corresponding to R and E). But the thing about caring, is if you care, you’ll notice if your approach isn’t working or you need to change your style to suit the environment. The implication of this framing is that leaders really need to make sure there is a clear vision/goal/outcome/mission for the _cares_ people to organize around. They also may need to recognize that most people unfortunately don’t care about their work or their contribution to society beyond raising their children and consuming, and that’s fine/not likely to change. For people who care, then, the task is to recruit/organize the people in the organization to help avoid counterproductive work, and nudge things in the right direction. (And of course, like nearly all categorizations of complex human systems into binary, my categorization is just a concept to organize thought, not an assertion of truth; people are fluid and drift between and sit on a spectrum between those categories)
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  I find it hard to care too much at work. The mission is normally the same: to make the founders very rich. Everything feeds into that with a layer of “we better be reasonably good to staff because its hard to attract and retain talent”. When there isn’t supply/demand on your side then as a worker you end up like the factory workers who have to work through a tornado. My caring comes from pride in my work and intrinsic motivation mostly, not from the mission of the company. The mission after all is to make people rich. Thats why i find bonuses weird. A bonus is based on a metric, and that metric is probably gameable. Share of revenue is probably best if you want to pay a bonus. Or just increase salaries.
pkdpic 5y ago
Seems like a good article but I was kind of hoping it was going to be about hippie anarchist hackers in the workplace. They're always my favorite coworkers.
Hokusai 5y ago
This is just pseudoscience. No studies, no test, just a guy opinion. Stop clarifying people this way. It's not useful, it's not insightfully. I have seen coworkers fighting for one thing but not another. One fights against bad work ethics, another for good tech and another one for their own right too be with his family. People is complex, everything comes in gradients and that changes as people grows and they learn and their lives change. If you are interested look for some real course in psychology and learn from there.
- mohanmcgeek 5y ago
  What is even an "Evolutionary"? Author seems to be just written some intelligent sounding thing seemingly inspired by *Capital in the 21st Century*
- dominotw 5y ago
  > is just pseudoscience. No studies, no test > look for some real course in psychology and learn from there. Isn't psychology famously pseudoscience as well, given almost all of their studies are irreproducible.
- Kranar 5y ago
  You can't just call something you disagree with pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is when an argument is presented in a way that directly suggests it's a scientific finding, or suggests that it follows the scientific method, but does so only superficially. No part of this article is intended to mislead you into thinking it's scientific or technical in nature. It is one person's opinion and they are sharing it and there's nothing wrong with that. You can disagree, agree, share your own insights, but calling it pseudoscience is uncalled for. >If you are interested look for some real course in psychology and learn from there. There is very little that one can learn from psychology (with respect to this topic) as psychology lacks a great deal of consensus on this and most other subjects, as well as an inability to reproduce a substantial portion of research. Take two different psychology courses related to what the author is discussing and you'll come away with two very different understandings. Finally I would like to distinguish psychology from psychiatry, as the two are often lumped together, unfairly so.
mohanmcgeek 5y ago
> Their goal is to get to the right answer, not to look good I've noticed that there's a group that wouldn't have a question but would phrase their monologue to seem like a question.
jancsika 5y ago
Quick digression-- Was Baudrillard's point essentially that capitalism is always the "main" function (hee hee) in the outer scope with everything else becoming subroutines/subprocesses/etc. of it? E.g., "Revolutionary" here is merely a local variable to a function do_capitalism_more_efficiently, rather than itself being a global variable in its own right. I mean, I get that Baudrillard was essentially focusing on certain edge cases: e.g., where function challenge_capitalism was in fact running in a VM that was spun up by function do_capitalism_more_efficiently. But with that caveat, is there anything important I'm missing from his writing with my analogies to scope here?
nineplay 5y ago
> Consider the ratio of R to E on the team when hiring Even accepting his premise of Rs vs Es, this seems absurdly short-sighed. Engineers come and go, engineers can change their R/E approach over time or based on project. If you feel like you can't manage a team full of Rs - and decide to hire a less talented E for balance - then the problem is the way you manage. Take ownership of your employees and find ways to use their talents, don't throw your hands up and hire for some personality type that you imagine you've sussed out over a set of one hour interviews.
hcarvalhoalves 5y ago
I’ve adopted one or another approach in different projects and teams, it depends. Sometimes the team lacks someone to “push” the project in the bold, but ultimately right direction, and the only thing stopping is inertia/fear/politics. Other times it’s not clear what the “right” direction is and you need to discover together. I guess it takes some calibration to know when it’s the time to be the jerk, but there are times it’s definitely necessary.
travisgriggs 5y ago
Mixed feelings; maybe just feeling a bit defensive as I fear I’ve been playing the role of revolutionary in my current work and don’t care for some of the negative descriptions which unnervingly ring pretty true. Mid article though, it says > That’s because organizations tend to become more bureaucratic, political and consensus-driven as they grow. Is this somehow ever a good thing? Largely, all of those things just seem bad. Luxuries of inefficiency a product can enjoy only once it works itself into dominant/monopoly position where it’s bankrolling becomes secure. The groups I’ve moved away from over the years (often with other revolutionaries moving on as well), became more evolutionary. And all of them have basically devolved into product lines on life support, the “evolutionary” employees left behind don’t understand why management won’t invest in them and would rather buy up competitive offerings to remain relevant.
- notpachet 5y ago
  > organizations tend to become more bureaucratic, political and consensus-driven as they grow Hot take: a big part of the utility of these "mature" companies in society is to serve as a kind of glorified daycare for adults. The people they employ can feel like they're contributing something to society, and legitimately earning the money they're bringing home, even if a bird's eye view would reveal that they're just treading water and not really producing any net benefit. This allows the employees to feel better about themselves than they would if the government just handed them a UBI paycheck and sent them back to playing videogames all day. I've seen a lot of turmoil between people who are legitimately trying to make the world a better place through their work (spoiler: it wasn't always me), and coworkers that prefer to just operate in daycare mode.
- LaffertyDev 5y ago
  If you're interested in more discussions along this road, then Bahcall's `Loonshots` is a good read. Lots of anecdotes, little science, great stories. Overall I found it fascinating. I found myself nodding along to most of the goodread's reviews, if you find yourself on the fence. On-topic, I think its a natural evolution for organizations to stagnate and calcify unless there is a fundamental recreation. Lots of things could be cherry-picked here for anecdata (Roman Republic, Roman Empire, General Electric, <insert fortune 100 company here>) I don't think that's bad. You wouldn't want an innovative person being your line cook at a restaurant -- you want the innovative person to be the chef. We also don't want the laws governing the countries we live in to violently change. Systemic, evolutionary, progress is good. The challenge is figuring out a balance and what to do to prevent the organization from calcifying (becoming product lines on life support), prevent it from throwing away what makes the organization good (chasing the next big thing), and continue to let the organization innovate and thrive (stay relevant) without being eaten.
AlbertCory 5y ago
I like this article, but there's another way of classifying that I also like: letter grades (remember those from school?) which uses hiring psychology a little more. In a successful startup, whom you hire makes or breaks you. 'A' players hire 'A' players. 'B' players hire 'C' players. Independent of Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary, we have pure intelligence, education, and animal cunning. An 'A' player has all those, and moreover knows when a Revolutionary strategy is required, and when it's not. A 'B' player tends to be Evolutionary, because it's safer, but occasionally he'll say "me, too!" to a Revolutionary if it seems to advance his career. An 'A' player can recognize another one. That's all he or she wants to hire. A 'B' player is bewildered and threatened by an 'A" player, and moreover, the 'A' player wants nothing to do with him. So he wants to hire someone who's safe and no threat to his tenuous position: the 'C' player. After the startup is successful, the 'B' managers flood it with their resumes. They like a safe bet. Once they get in and start hiring their own, it's all over.
- wrnr 5y ago
  You like putting people in boxes and therefor others must, just like you, put people in boxes. It must be hard to be autistic.
  - dang 5y ago
    Attacking other users like this will get you banned here. Please don't do that again. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting, we'd appreciate it.
    - wrnr 5y ago
      Substitute the variables A and B with jew and gentile, or black and white, and even white and black, and maybe you understand how hateful and retarded the original comment is.
      - dang 5y ago
vorpalhex 5y ago
This is too simplified such that it is incorrect. If we look at any personality type system, the revolutionary/reformers are going to be a quadrant of discrete personalities (and even those can be broken down or treated as a gradient). As an easy example, I'm one of the types in that quadrant. While I tend to be independent and self confident, I'm not "an inspiring leader". I also have a strong preference for consensus (or at least peaceful agreement), and prefer not being the center of attention. Please give this piece about as much attention as you would todays horoscope and instead read a few good papers on pubmed.
alim459 5y ago
An interesting read that has a lot of face value for me, but I wonder if the "R" and "E" typings are stable through life, and how amenable are they are to change? The article comes across like "R" and "E" are set characteristics--almost like a personality trait. I'd really like to longitudinal see data on R/E mobility, and how fluidity between R/E types might be related to team cohesion overall.
DnDGrognard 5y ago
Sounds like a very simplified version of the the Belbin team roles two vs nine.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

61 points by spuriousfox 5y ago

I like this framing. My previous framing came from `Loonshots`, where Bahcall frames this as "Artists" (Revolutionaries) and "Soldiers" (Evolutionary). I felt that, in the context of engineering, Artist/Soldier felt dismissive against the soldier. Revolutionary/Evolutionary avoids that for the better. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39863447-loonshots https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39863447-loonshots

tracerbulletx 5y ago
One mitigating thing I remember from that book is that no person is inherently classified as an "artist" or a "soldier" it's more that people can be operating in that mode depending on their current role, or even dividing time between one mode or the other depending on the circumstances.
- LaffertyDev 5y ago
  Agreed. I don't think switching the framework from Artist/Soldier to Revolutionary/Evolutionary detracts from the malleability.

gumby 5y ago

> What’s most infectious is how deeply they care. Their goal is to get to the right answer, not to look good. This is the difference between the revolutionary colleague and the jerk. Some people are self-described “truth tellers” (I.e. jerks). Or the annoying ones whose motivation is to look “good”. The ones who are genuine are hard to get upset with. I’ve pretty much only worked at “cause” companies. I would think someone like this might be annoying at a company “revolutionizing the corporate purchasing space”

smoe 5y ago

I'm not sure how useful of a description for revolutionaries this is. They are not necessarily lonely wolfs as I interpret the article, they might deeply care or not about things like diversity and they are certainly able to do a lot of politicking. Unless you want to completely redefine the term. For me the difference comes more down to, as with the conflicts within lots of political groups in history: reformists vs non-reformists. The former advocating the reform of an existing system or institution whereas the others believe the right approach is abolition and replacement. You could also add reactionaries, those that want to go back how things used to be. Neither of which is universally true I think, more often than not it is a mix. But I don't think you get very far trying to mix the extremes from either side.

zeckalpha 5y ago

A much better framing of this dichotomy: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/stables-and-volatiles/ https://randsinrepose.com/archives/stables-and-volatiles/

AlbertCory 5y ago
It's certainly "better" (and I do like it), but it needs an editor. Takes too long to say its thing.

n8cpdx 5y ago

It’s an interesting framing overall, but I’m not really convinced that the R/E distinction is as clear in real life. The key attribute that both R and E types here seem to share is _caring_ and a commitment to a larger team goal/outcome. The care/don’t care distinction seems clearer to me and much more recognizable. Within _cares_ people, there may be a further divide in styles, between progressive idealist and tactical/strategic (corresponding to R and E). But the thing about caring, is if you care, you’ll notice if your approach isn’t working or you need to change your style to suit the environment. The implication of this framing is that leaders really need to make sure there is a clear vision/goal/outcome/mission for the _cares_ people to organize around. They also may need to recognize that most people unfortunately don’t care about their work or their contribution to society beyond raising their children and consuming, and that’s fine/not likely to change. For people who care, then, the task is to recruit/organize the people in the organization to help avoid counterproductive work, and nudge things in the right direction. (And of course, like nearly all categorizations of complex human systems into binary, my categorization is just a concept to organize thought, not an assertion of truth; people are fluid and drift between and sit on a spectrum between those categories)

quickthrower2 5y ago
I find it hard to care too much at work. The mission is normally the same: to make the founders very rich. Everything feeds into that with a layer of “we better be reasonably good to staff because its hard to attract and retain talent”. When there isn’t supply/demand on your side then as a worker you end up like the factory workers who have to work through a tornado. My caring comes from pride in my work and intrinsic motivation mostly, not from the mission of the company. The mission after all is to make people rich. Thats why i find bonuses weird. A bonus is based on a metric, and that metric is probably gameable. Share of revenue is probably best if you want to pay a bonus. Or just increase salaries.

pkdpic 5y ago

Seems like a good article but I was kind of hoping it was going to be about hippie anarchist hackers in the workplace. They're always my favorite coworkers.

Hokusai 5y ago

This is just pseudoscience. No studies, no test, just a guy opinion. Stop clarifying people this way. It's not useful, it's not insightfully. I have seen coworkers fighting for one thing but not another. One fights against bad work ethics, another for good tech and another one for their own right too be with his family. People is complex, everything comes in gradients and that changes as people grows and they learn and their lives change. If you are interested look for some real course in psychology and learn from there.

mohanmcgeek 5y ago
What is even an "Evolutionary"? Author seems to be just written some intelligent sounding thing seemingly inspired by *Capital in the 21st Century*
dominotw 5y ago
> is just pseudoscience. No studies, no test > look for some real course in psychology and learn from there. Isn't psychology famously pseudoscience as well, given almost all of their studies are irreproducible.
Kranar 5y ago
You can't just call something you disagree with pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is when an argument is presented in a way that directly suggests it's a scientific finding, or suggests that it follows the scientific method, but does so only superficially. No part of this article is intended to mislead you into thinking it's scientific or technical in nature. It is one person's opinion and they are sharing it and there's nothing wrong with that. You can disagree, agree, share your own insights, but calling it pseudoscience is uncalled for. >If you are interested look for some real course in psychology and learn from there. There is very little that one can learn from psychology (with respect to this topic) as psychology lacks a great deal of consensus on this and most other subjects, as well as an inability to reproduce a substantial portion of research. Take two different psychology courses related to what the author is discussing and you'll come away with two very different understandings. Finally I would like to distinguish psychology from psychiatry, as the two are often lumped together, unfairly so.

mohanmcgeek 5y ago

> Their goal is to get to the right answer, not to look good I've noticed that there's a group that wouldn't have a question but would phrase their monologue to seem like a question.

jancsika 5y ago

Quick digression-- Was Baudrillard's point essentially that capitalism is always the "main" function (hee hee) in the outer scope with everything else becoming subroutines/subprocesses/etc. of it? E.g., "Revolutionary" here is merely a local variable to a function do_capitalism_more_efficiently, rather than itself being a global variable in its own right. I mean, I get that Baudrillard was essentially focusing on certain edge cases: e.g., where function challenge_capitalism was in fact running in a VM that was spun up by function do_capitalism_more_efficiently. But with that caveat, is there anything important I'm missing from his writing with my analogies to scope here?

nineplay 5y ago

> Consider the ratio of R to E on the team when hiring Even accepting his premise of Rs vs Es, this seems absurdly short-sighed. Engineers come and go, engineers can change their R/E approach over time or based on project. If you feel like you can't manage a team full of Rs - and decide to hire a less talented E for balance - then the problem is the way you manage. Take ownership of your employees and find ways to use their talents, don't throw your hands up and hire for some personality type that you imagine you've sussed out over a set of one hour interviews.

hcarvalhoalves 5y ago

I’ve adopted one or another approach in different projects and teams, it depends. Sometimes the team lacks someone to “push” the project in the bold, but ultimately right direction, and the only thing stopping is inertia/fear/politics. Other times it’s not clear what the “right” direction is and you need to discover together. I guess it takes some calibration to know when it’s the time to be the jerk, but there are times it’s definitely necessary.

travisgriggs 5y ago

Mixed feelings; maybe just feeling a bit defensive as I fear I’ve been playing the role of revolutionary in my current work and don’t care for some of the negative descriptions which unnervingly ring pretty true. Mid article though, it says > That’s because organizations tend to become more bureaucratic, political and consensus-driven as they grow. Is this somehow ever a good thing? Largely, all of those things just seem bad. Luxuries of inefficiency a product can enjoy only once it works itself into dominant/monopoly position where it’s bankrolling becomes secure. The groups I’ve moved away from over the years (often with other revolutionaries moving on as well), became more evolutionary. And all of them have basically devolved into product lines on life support, the “evolutionary” employees left behind don’t understand why management won’t invest in them and would rather buy up competitive offerings to remain relevant.

notpachet 5y ago
> organizations tend to become more bureaucratic, political and consensus-driven as they grow Hot take: a big part of the utility of these "mature" companies in society is to serve as a kind of glorified daycare for adults. The people they employ can feel like they're contributing something to society, and legitimately earning the money they're bringing home, even if a bird's eye view would reveal that they're just treading water and not really producing any net benefit. This allows the employees to feel better about themselves than they would if the government just handed them a UBI paycheck and sent them back to playing videogames all day. I've seen a lot of turmoil between people who are legitimately trying to make the world a better place through their work (spoiler: it wasn't always me), and coworkers that prefer to just operate in daycare mode.
LaffertyDev 5y ago
If you're interested in more discussions along this road, then Bahcall's `Loonshots` is a good read. Lots of anecdotes, little science, great stories. Overall I found it fascinating. I found myself nodding along to most of the goodread's reviews, if you find yourself on the fence. On-topic, I think its a natural evolution for organizations to stagnate and calcify unless there is a fundamental recreation. Lots of things could be cherry-picked here for anecdata (Roman Republic, Roman Empire, General Electric, <insert fortune 100 company here>) I don't think that's bad. You wouldn't want an innovative person being your line cook at a restaurant -- you want the innovative person to be the chef. We also don't want the laws governing the countries we live in to violently change. Systemic, evolutionary, progress is good. The challenge is figuring out a balance and what to do to prevent the organization from calcifying (becoming product lines on life support), prevent it from throwing away what makes the organization good (chasing the next big thing), and continue to let the organization innovate and thrive (stay relevant) without being eaten.

AlbertCory 5y ago

I like this article, but there's another way of classifying that I also like: letter grades (remember those from school?) which uses hiring psychology a little more. In a successful startup, whom you hire makes or breaks you. 'A' players hire 'A' players. 'B' players hire 'C' players. Independent of Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary, we have pure intelligence, education, and animal cunning. An 'A' player has all those, and moreover knows when a Revolutionary strategy is required, and when it's not. A 'B' player tends to be Evolutionary, because it's safer, but occasionally he'll say "me, too!" to a Revolutionary if it seems to advance his career. An 'A' player can recognize another one. That's all he or she wants to hire. A 'B' player is bewildered and threatened by an 'A" player, and moreover, the 'A' player wants nothing to do with him. So he wants to hire someone who's safe and no threat to his tenuous position: the 'C' player. After the startup is successful, the 'B' managers flood it with their resumes. They like a safe bet. Once they get in and start hiring their own, it's all over.

wrnr 5y ago
You like putting people in boxes and therefor others must, just like you, put people in boxes. It must be hard to be autistic.
- dang 5y ago
  Attacking other users like this will get you banned here. Please don't do that again. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting, we'd appreciate it.
  - wrnr 5y ago
    Substitute the variables A and B with jew and gentile, or black and white, and even white and black, and maybe you understand how hateful and retarded the original comment is.
    - dang 5y ago

vorpalhex 5y ago

This is too simplified such that it is incorrect. If we look at any personality type system, the revolutionary/reformers are going to be a quadrant of discrete personalities (and even those can be broken down or treated as a gradient). As an easy example, I'm one of the types in that quadrant. While I tend to be independent and self confident, I'm not "an inspiring leader". I also have a strong preference for consensus (or at least peaceful agreement), and prefer not being the center of attention. Please give this piece about as much attention as you would todays horoscope and instead read a few good papers on pubmed.

alim459 5y ago

An interesting read that has a lot of face value for me, but I wonder if the "R" and "E" typings are stable through life, and how amenable are they are to change? The article comes across like "R" and "E" are set characteristics--almost like a personality trait. I'd really like to longitudinal see data on R/E mobility, and how fluidity between R/E types might be related to team cohesion overall.

DnDGrognard 5y ago

Sounds like a very simplified version of the the Belbin team roles two vs nine.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]