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https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html >Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states tha

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html >Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: >First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. >Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. >The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

GoblinSlayer 4y ago
Doesn't look like a healthy division. Presumably you'll need a healthy organization to achieve the goals. Technicians will do the job, but someone will need to keep the organization in shape, it won't happen by itself.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  This rule states that it will happen "by itself", in that if you look at any large organization, the dynamic described happens to be true. Of course, it happened because somebody thought that the organization had to be kept "in shape", in accordance with some "shape" he envisioned. But organizations that don't do this fizzle out and don't exist as such, so you never get to observe them.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
I have my own term that dominates large hierarchies: the Middle Management Machiavelli. These people don't care about the organization, and they don't care about producing things, or even doing their job. Their full time job is gaining power and climbing the ladder. Everyone is fighting for budget and headcount and appearances. And taking credit for things. I would say that there are three phases: 1) the creators/doers: the company aligns to being productive and successful with these people focused on whatever does that. 2) as it increases in size, upper management transitions from industry skills to managerial people. Thus Pournelle's second class comes to dominate. Here the company still may grow and managerial tricks like acquisitions and financial cookbooking will continue growth, but nothing revolutionary. The company begins to plateau. 3) with people settling into a more fixed reporting structure, now the machiavellis will begin to fight over internal territory, and since the top managers are just sociopaths themselves, they let it happen. The company becomes a cesspool of battlegrounds, and will begin to slowly rot. The only thing that saves companies these days is that the US economy is now structured around monopolies and cartels, so companies can obtain direct control and then establish barriers. But the net effect of all markets being cartel/monopoly dominated is that the lack of competition means companies fall into stage 3 more easily, but can't be displaced. So the entirety of the US is now all these cartel/monopolies weighing down the country as a whole, and it becomes overall more and more corrupt. What's the end state of this? Look at Russia.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Man, it sounds crazy, but that fits what we see with our eyes every day in the tech industry A handful of motivated startup entrepreneurs will cobble something together in months that would've taken Microsoft or Google dozens of people years to accomplish And in the current political climate, that startup will just get bought out or crushed by one of the megacorps instead of dethroning them

GoblinSlayer 4y ago

Doesn't look like a healthy division. Presumably you'll need a healthy organization to achieve the goals. Technicians will do the job, but someone will need to keep the organization in shape, it won't happen by itself.

TremendousJudge 4y ago
This rule states that it will happen "by itself", in that if you look at any large organization, the dynamic described happens to be true. Of course, it happened because somebody thought that the organization had to be kept "in shape", in accordance with some "shape" he envisioned. But organizations that don't do this fizzle out and don't exist as such, so you never get to observe them.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

I have my own term that dominates large hierarchies: the Middle Management Machiavelli. These people don't care about the organization, and they don't care about producing things, or even doing their job. Their full time job is gaining power and climbing the ladder. Everyone is fighting for budget and headcount and appearances. And taking credit for things. I would say that there are three phases: 1) the creators/doers: the company aligns to being productive and successful with these people focused on whatever does that. 2) as it increases in size, upper management transitions from industry skills to managerial people. Thus Pournelle's second class comes to dominate. Here the company still may grow and managerial tricks like acquisitions and financial cookbooking will continue growth, but nothing revolutionary. The company begins to plateau. 3) with people settling into a more fixed reporting structure, now the machiavellis will begin to fight over internal territory, and since the top managers are just sociopaths themselves, they let it happen. The company becomes a cesspool of battlegrounds, and will begin to slowly rot. The only thing that saves companies these days is that the US economy is now structured around monopolies and cartels, so companies can obtain direct control and then establish barriers. But the net effect of all markets being cartel/monopoly dominated is that the lack of competition means companies fall into stage 3 more easily, but can't be displaced. So the entirety of the US is now all these cartel/monopolies weighing down the country as a whole, and it becomes overall more and more corrupt. What's the end state of this? Look at Russia.

Firmwarrior 4y ago
Man, it sounds crazy, but that fits what we see with our eyes every day in the tech industry A handful of motivated startup entrepreneurs will cobble something together in months that would've taken Microsoft or Google dozens of people years to accomplish And in the current political climate, that startup will just get bought out or crushed by one of the megacorps instead of dethroning them