4 ms·

Ironically I felt reassured reading this. "[...] I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way afte

Ironically I felt reassured reading this. "[...] I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after [...] evidence piles up" especially resonates with me. While I rationally understand it's just corporate bureaucracy / politics, sometimes I still wonder if I were just a bit more capable I'd be more persuasive. If John fucking Carmack cannot move the bureaucracy this way, then it's folly for me to try the same. I should accept that we're playing checkers not chess.

Buttons840 4y ago
Yeah. I feel like this a lot. I don't know if it's a bias of some kind but it feels right. I suppose it's selection bias. I don't know how to market, but apparently the marketing people do because we have customers. I do know about my corner of the system though, and when my advice is ignored it usually turns out I was right in the end.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  At MegaCompanies, being right, having evidence, and trying to persuade just isn’t enough, as John Fucking Carmack figured out. It’s more like High School. You need to be in the right clique or have the ear of the right Very Important Person. When you send that E-mail and say “We should do X because Y and Z…” people stop reading at “because” and just go look in the company directory for your name. If you’re high enough on the totem pole, they’ll respond to you. If you’re even higher, they might suggest a meeting to discuss X! And if you are really high up, they will stop what they are doing and do X right away. What’s surprising to me is how someone like Carmack didn’t have enough totem-pole clout just from who he is! He’s practically a celebrity, and I’d have thought that would go a long way in the High School Drama Club but I guess not.
  - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
    Modern capitalism has ushered in a new age of modern fuedalism, at first just inside big companies, but it’s spreading to society in general now.
    - mach1ne 4y ago
      The distance between now & the world of Cyberpunk is becoming visibly smaller every day.
      - turtleyacht 4y ago
        In what ways? Will we have wearables, bespoke cyberdecks, and side hustles? :)
  - Mockapapella 4y ago
    “High school never ends” hits differently when it’s a little closer to home
  - varjag 4y ago
    > What’s surprising to me is how someone like Carmack didn’t have enough totem-pole clout just from who he is! He is a game developer. Some people now at Facebook have breakthroughs in Computer Science on their resumes.
m463 4y ago
It's hard to walk this line. I think some people are forthright and outspoken, but a long game persuasion might be the best strategy sometimes. I remember Linus Torvalds commenting on systemd, and accepting the work with upstanding neutrality (I wished he had rejected the binary log files) "I don't actually have any particularly strong opinions on systemd itself. I've had issues with some of the core developers that I think are much too cavalier about bugs and compatibility, and I think some of the design details are insane (I dislike the binary logs, for example), but those are details, not big issues."
- urthor 4y ago
  With those big companies, commonly there simply isn't a productive way to walk the line. Saving face and preserving "decision making credibility" means that taking advice is simply not on the cards for a large portion of the middle management class.
  - lukemercado 4y ago
    > Saving face and preserving "decision making credibility" means that taking advice is simply not on the cards for a large portion of the middle management class. While I'm happy to admit that this construct may be true in practice; it is _deeply_ infuriating that so many people's calculus nets out in this manner. It's infuriating to me, primarily, because I simply don't understand. By my understanding, "decision making credibility" comes _exclusively_ from *being right*. If you're optimizing for this metric, then how you get there should be an almost irrelevant footnote. Yet here we are; with a non-trivial percentage of managers coming to the conclusion that the correct answer is to not take advice.
    - urthor 4y ago
      Decision making credibility is simply not anchored in "being logically correct." It's anchored in the ability to consider the needs of the tribe appropriately. Leadership credibility in human society is mostly anchored via your track record of emphasizing with the needs of a Dunbar's number sized tribe. Empathy, not logic, is the KPI our brains are tuned to. Empathetic leaders emphasize data collection, logical ones make decisions using that data. Evolution has optimized for empathy. The core problem with large companies is the middle management buffer grows large enough that it forms a subculture which drives decision making. Plus, institutions of 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, all have their "local" rules of detailed management know-how. Add it all up, and you have a problem that's just as thorny & knotty as any engineering problem. Requiring just as much detailed expertise.
jldugger 4y ago
> If John fucking Carmack cannot move the bureaucracy this way My read is its not so much the bureaucracy of project managers or paperwork as it is junior executives trying to 'leave their mark', defend their turf, etc.
oreally 4y ago
I'd suggest you get off the carmack idol worshipping horse. Just because he failed doesn't invalidate your thoughts and opinions.
- mkmk3 4y ago
  That didn't seem to be the implication. Carmacks name carries weight, and we're talking about navigating beurocracy and politics. My own thoughts and opinions tell me that they don't matter in those two domains
  - oreally 4y ago
    Oh they do. Leaders/execs will take note of enough people voicing something in common, assuming those opinions have passed counter-arguments/tests/discussions of sorts. Carmack is only one guy. Maybe his voice might be worth a little more, but your voice also matters, so don't be so quick to despair.
UncleMeat 4y ago
Carmack is famous externally, especially among a generation that grew up with Doom/Quake. But it isn't like Facebook employs a bunch of ordinary engineers and then Carmack. There are a lot of people with extraordinarily impressive resumes and a long history of massive technical success there. It is not a surprise to me that it didn't just become the "do what Carmack says" show when he joined. Consensus-building becomes even harder at larger institutions.
- someperson 4y ago
  He joined Facebook with the Oculus acquisition and he's the position was Chief Technology Officer of Oculus.
patrick451 4y ago
What makes you think Carmack is especially persuasive? Often, those with the best technical chops are the least persuasive and it seems misguided to think that the reason you can't persuade is because you are lacking technically.

Buttons840 4y ago

Yeah. I feel like this a lot. I don't know if it's a bias of some kind but it feels right. I suppose it's selection bias. I don't know how to market, but apparently the marketing people do because we have customers. I do know about my corner of the system though, and when my advice is ignored it usually turns out I was right in the end.

ryandrake 4y ago
At MegaCompanies, being right, having evidence, and trying to persuade just isn’t enough, as John Fucking Carmack figured out. It’s more like High School. You need to be in the right clique or have the ear of the right Very Important Person. When you send that E-mail and say “We should do X because Y and Z…” people stop reading at “because” and just go look in the company directory for your name. If you’re high enough on the totem pole, they’ll respond to you. If you’re even higher, they might suggest a meeting to discuss X! And if you are really high up, they will stop what they are doing and do X right away. What’s surprising to me is how someone like Carmack didn’t have enough totem-pole clout just from who he is! He’s practically a celebrity, and I’d have thought that would go a long way in the High School Drama Club but I guess not.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  Modern capitalism has ushered in a new age of modern fuedalism, at first just inside big companies, but it’s spreading to society in general now.
  - mach1ne 4y ago
    The distance between now & the world of Cyberpunk is becoming visibly smaller every day.
    - turtleyacht 4y ago
      In what ways? Will we have wearables, bespoke cyberdecks, and side hustles? :)
- Mockapapella 4y ago
  “High school never ends” hits differently when it’s a little closer to home
- varjag 4y ago
  > What’s surprising to me is how someone like Carmack didn’t have enough totem-pole clout just from who he is! He is a game developer. Some people now at Facebook have breakthroughs in Computer Science on their resumes.

m463 4y ago

It's hard to walk this line. I think some people are forthright and outspoken, but a long game persuasion might be the best strategy sometimes. I remember Linus Torvalds commenting on systemd, and accepting the work with upstanding neutrality (I wished he had rejected the binary log files) "I don't actually have any particularly strong opinions on systemd itself. I've had issues with some of the core developers that I think are much too cavalier about bugs and compatibility, and I think some of the design details are insane (I dislike the binary logs, for example), but those are details, not big issues."

urthor 4y ago
With those big companies, commonly there simply isn't a productive way to walk the line. Saving face and preserving "decision making credibility" means that taking advice is simply not on the cards for a large portion of the middle management class.
- lukemercado 4y ago
  > Saving face and preserving "decision making credibility" means that taking advice is simply not on the cards for a large portion of the middle management class. While I'm happy to admit that this construct may be true in practice; it is _deeply_ infuriating that so many people's calculus nets out in this manner. It's infuriating to me, primarily, because I simply don't understand. By my understanding, "decision making credibility" comes _exclusively_ from *being right*. If you're optimizing for this metric, then how you get there should be an almost irrelevant footnote. Yet here we are; with a non-trivial percentage of managers coming to the conclusion that the correct answer is to not take advice.
  - urthor 4y ago
    Decision making credibility is simply not anchored in "being logically correct." It's anchored in the ability to consider the needs of the tribe appropriately. Leadership credibility in human society is mostly anchored via your track record of emphasizing with the needs of a Dunbar's number sized tribe. Empathy, not logic, is the KPI our brains are tuned to. Empathetic leaders emphasize data collection, logical ones make decisions using that data. Evolution has optimized for empathy. The core problem with large companies is the middle management buffer grows large enough that it forms a subculture which drives decision making. Plus, institutions of 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, all have their "local" rules of detailed management know-how. Add it all up, and you have a problem that's just as thorny & knotty as any engineering problem. Requiring just as much detailed expertise.

jldugger 4y ago

> If John fucking Carmack cannot move the bureaucracy this way My read is its not so much the bureaucracy of project managers or paperwork as it is junior executives trying to 'leave their mark', defend their turf, etc.

oreally 4y ago

I'd suggest you get off the carmack idol worshipping horse. Just because he failed doesn't invalidate your thoughts and opinions.

mkmk3 4y ago
That didn't seem to be the implication. Carmacks name carries weight, and we're talking about navigating beurocracy and politics. My own thoughts and opinions tell me that they don't matter in those two domains
- oreally 4y ago
  Oh they do. Leaders/execs will take note of enough people voicing something in common, assuming those opinions have passed counter-arguments/tests/discussions of sorts. Carmack is only one guy. Maybe his voice might be worth a little more, but your voice also matters, so don't be so quick to despair.

UncleMeat 4y ago

Carmack is famous externally, especially among a generation that grew up with Doom/Quake. But it isn't like Facebook employs a bunch of ordinary engineers and then Carmack. There are a lot of people with extraordinarily impressive resumes and a long history of massive technical success there. It is not a surprise to me that it didn't just become the "do what Carmack says" show when he joined. Consensus-building becomes even harder at larger institutions.

someperson 4y ago
He joined Facebook with the Oculus acquisition and he's the position was Chief Technology Officer of Oculus.

patrick451 4y ago

What makes you think Carmack is especially persuasive? Often, those with the best technical chops are the least persuasive and it seems misguided to think that the reason you can't persuade is because you are lacking technically.