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A potentially interesting contrast: Why our generals were more successful in WWII than in Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq/Afghanistan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

A potentially interesting contrast: Why our generals were more successful in WWII than in Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq/Afghanistan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxZWxxZ2JGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxZWxxZ2JGE Briefly, minimize the application process and aggressively review work. Any mistake or failure and you're fired, two weeks to prove competence or you're fired, six weeks until a significant accomplishment or you're fired. And no stigma against being fired, just keep trying until you find a fit.

gyulai 4y ago
That sounds like the "internesia" of the original article. The problem is that, in most countries, employment law will make it pretty difficult to do this. Also, with deliberate high turnover like that, you'll find it difficult to keep trade secrets and there will be a huge drain on resources for onboarding those people who are quickly come and gone.
- Asooka 4y ago
  In Europe you usually have a 1-3 month probationary period that works more or less like "at-will" employment does in the USA. Either party can cancel the contract on the spot for any reason or no reason at all. There are also some limits on how much time off you can take at once and in total in that time.
  - iainmerrick 4y ago
    That’s standard, but as far as I know it’s very uncommon to actually make use of that and drop somebody during probation. And employers definitely do not interview less carefully because of it. (This is for software engineering jobs, at least. In other industries it might work differently.)
  - gyulai 4y ago
    Employment law is more like a grenade than a sharp-shooter rifle. It just deals out damage in all directions regardless of how it's used and where it's supposedly targeted. In a country like Germany, if you fire an employee and they walk away with a hurt ego and start talking to a lawyer, you will end up hurting in some way or another, so the game is to manage egos and make sure that, when a company parts ways with an employee, the employee feels that it was mutual. Actually, I think it would be a step in the right direction for both bosses and employees, if bosses could just say: Hey, I'm firing you because I just no longer want you here. You didn't do anything wrong. I just have other people who do the job better. The perverse incentive is that it's probably better for companies to single out individuals they want to get rid of and treat them badly until they leave of their own account, rather than do that.
    - jfengel 4y ago
      That's how it used to be, and a lot of other bad things happened. If bosses could be trusted not to discriminate, we wouldn't have such a law in the first place. Regulations are written in blood. They are always Chesterton's fence. That doesn't mean it's still a good idea, or even that it ever was. But there's a reason it was put there, and it's wise to at least know why before removing it.
      - t0suj4 4y ago
        Safety manuals and instructions are written in blood, regulations come later. If you don't like your boss you can pack your things and go elsewhere. Your boss doesn't have that luxury.
      - gyulai 4y ago
        ...the question is whether the historical context from which it grew is still in place today. Today we have at least three "layers" of social security in most European countries: The first layer is that government makes sure everyone has employment and makes it difficult for employers to get rid of employees, even those ones that cost the company more than they're worth. Family law extends the coverage to everyone else, e.g. for non-bread-winning spouses (even ex-spouses), it's the bread-winner that's on the hook (so, transitively, the bread-winner's employer) and for children the parents (again: ultimately the parents' employers). The second layer is mandatory social insurance. The third layer is usually some kind of outright government handout that kicks in for people who, for some reason, fall through both the first AND the second layer of social security. (e.g. [1] in Austria) My guess would be that each layer was brought in at a time when the layers below were not yet in place, though, maybe, someone can provide the necessary facts to the contrary here. I just wish they'd do away with all that crap, and instead just implement universal basic income, paid for by the tax payer. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarfsorientierte_Mindestsicherung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarfsorientierte_Mindestsich...
    - pjc50 4y ago
      > Hey, I'm firing you because I just no longer want you here. This requires a really comprehensive social security net to not be abusive.
trymas 4y ago
I guess it makes sense on the short term. Instead of application - you work for (as quoted) 6 weeks to prove yourself and you either get fired or not. But on the long term? Senior-level employee makes an error? Bam - fired! With all the institutional knowledge gathered over the years, experience, etc. If it was a major screw-up - you'll be firing an employee who will not do that mistake again, but you will risk it with a new hire.
- t0suj4 4y ago
  It's on the employer's tab when he does such a foolish mistake.
mellavora 4y ago
This also assumes that a decent candidate can quickly find a new job. That is not always true. I take a risk to accept your job offer. I turn down other offers. Maybe I quit my current job to work with you. if EVERYONE in the economy played by your rules, it might work. Might. As long as labor is in strong demand.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Well, that worked at wartime, when any pair of hands was welcome, and speed was essential. At peacetime, people may not like to put up with the strain which such arrangement puts on them. It does improve efficiency, but had a cost, and works better at times of very high demand.
nonameiguess 4y ago
I believe you're misrepresenting the speaker's position. Failed commanders were not "fired" in the way a private sector employee gets fired. They were relieved of command and given easier jobs with exactly the same pay and benefits. Also, the military command structure is intentionally redundant in order to be robust against mass casualty events. Every commander has a line of succession consisting of people who are trained and ready to take command themselves, and in fact, usually have taken command at least a few times already when the commander is intentionally absent to give them practice. Private industry could do this if they want, but it would require cutting executive pay in half, hiring twice as many executives, and creating intentionally redundant positions that serve little purpose other than preparing the next cohort for leadership. This works for the military due to a unique combination of the organization itself not having a profit motive and the personnel valuing non-monetary accomplishment more than personal wealth. And, of course, the military is a monopoly. This also works because there isn't a different military that can offer your generals triple the salary and poach them away. If they want to be generals at all, they have no choice but to buy into the unique culture of the only military they can serve in. Theoretically, a foreign military could try to buy them away, but countries mostly seem to not allow foreigners to command their military units for security reasons and the possibility of being executed for treason and/or desertion is a pretty strong incentive not to leave even if you got an offer.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  I guess I may as well add generals don't get there by being hired anyway. They're promoted from within. To get into the military officer corps in the first place, they absolutely do have to apply, many times, first to the academy, ROTC, or OTC, where they spend years being rigorously trained, tested, and evaluated before ranking the career field they want to be in, which they will only get based on where they rank compared to all other cadets in the same cohort year. An equivalent private sector practice would be not hiring leaders at all and only appointing them via internal promotion, but to get into the organization at all, you need to apply to a training academy first, then spend several years in that academy learning the organizational doctrine and culture and being evaluated and stack ranked before you're ever given a real job. Typically, the bottom 40% of so of cadets don't even get in at all and have to become reservists.
hef19898 4y ago
Well, Marcus Clarkus was left in charge for quite a while. And McArthur was only sacked after he wanted to nuke Korea. The allies were better in WW2 than the others, because they had a feasible grabd strategy and outperformed the Axis on operations. That, and the fact the Allies committed their full industrial might for years, while having public support for doing so.
- rnk 4y ago
  Yeah, we had way more stuff. We could design, iterate and build things fast. But we could build way more copies of things than the other people. The sophistication of the Japanese carrier forces and their strategies, the tanks, etc, the way the Germans waged war, etc were far ahead of the US in some ways. But we could build way more stuff, and we could ship a ton of it to Russia to keep Germany from wiping them out. We were willing to make changes in our military strategies over time, we learned (and made mistakes). We did stupid stuff too of course, plus don't forget endemic racism, resistance to black people having any role more important than moving supplies around (women too, other groups too, there's no end of our racism). Stealing and imprisoning Japanese people. Different subject, but I was just thinking what ww2 would have looked like if we had the slightly evolved social order, protections, liberties we have today. We still have racism and sexism and ... but it's different now (but still there). Most large organizations like the military still have an old boys club but they also did a lot of work to improve things. We have so far to go as a society. What if we didn't round up all the Japanese people and destroy or steal their possessions. How would the groups have dealt with the war? I think it would be like Russians living in Europe today, plenty are influenced by propaganda news orgs to think that Ukraine is somehow the bad guy, even though they are living in free, safe, and well off societies out of Russia.
constantcrying 4y ago
> Any mistake or failure and you're fired Seems like an awful idea. Especially if you are new to something failures happen and are a good way to learn. This just rewards the lucky and those who minimize their own work.
- cardanome 4y ago
  Officer were relieved from their positions not fired in the sense of being removed from the military. It was not a career ending event. In fact the video points out some of them would still have successful careers. You relieve someone from a position for not winning (and not just not failing). The theory proposed by the video is that relieve culture INCREASES (even if counterintuitively so) the willingness to take risks. If there is no reward for winning then people will minimize risks. If you make winning necessary for keeping the position, they will be more likely to take risks. (In military context, officers these days, according to the video, care more about minimizing losses and not messing up than actually winning the wars.) Translating it into civilians contexts might be a bit difficult but one thing that I believe can work well is allowing people to move to different positions to find one that they can be most effective in inside the company. Like sometimes people get promoted to managers and then it turns out they are actually ill fitted for that position. Firing them might be a waste but just keeping them around will be to the detriment of the people they need to manage. So the solution is that they need to removed. Maybe even take a lower position until a better position can be found. I think this is main take away: Just like you should not keep around badly performing general as that will cost literally lives you should also not keep around bad managers in a company to the detriment of the people they manage. It is better to pull the plug early, for both sides.
  - escapedmoose 4y ago
    Intriguing concept, but sounds like it doesn’t leave much room to learn from your failures. Often you might not “win” a project, but you learn a lot from it that can be used to win the next one. Maybe this concept only applies to more senior role?
    - 4y ago
BeFlatXIII 4y ago
> And no stigma against being fired, just keep trying until you find a fit. This honestly admits that it’s both competence AND luck instead of pure competence.
mjklin 4y ago
“You know what Pasteur said: Chance favors the prepared mind. Take one of the chanciest things in the world, like war. Both Kitchener and Frederick the Great, when they were considering a general's qualifications, would always ask, 'Is he considered lucky?' It was a perfectly legitimate question, because if he was considered lucky, it meant he was prepared to take advantage of chance.” - Eric Hoffer
janef0421 4y ago
That's not a bad idea, but it would only work if people were not dependent on income from employment to meet their basic needs. Also, the way you phrase it is a bit extreme. Failure is an opportunity for learning, and it's hard to make a major accomplishment if your work is mostly routine.

gyulai 4y ago

That sounds like the "internesia" of the original article. The problem is that, in most countries, employment law will make it pretty difficult to do this. Also, with deliberate high turnover like that, you'll find it difficult to keep trade secrets and there will be a huge drain on resources for onboarding those people who are quickly come and gone.

Asooka 4y ago
In Europe you usually have a 1-3 month probationary period that works more or less like "at-will" employment does in the USA. Either party can cancel the contract on the spot for any reason or no reason at all. There are also some limits on how much time off you can take at once and in total in that time.
- iainmerrick 4y ago
  That’s standard, but as far as I know it’s very uncommon to actually make use of that and drop somebody during probation. And employers definitely do not interview less carefully because of it. (This is for software engineering jobs, at least. In other industries it might work differently.)
- gyulai 4y ago
  Employment law is more like a grenade than a sharp-shooter rifle. It just deals out damage in all directions regardless of how it's used and where it's supposedly targeted. In a country like Germany, if you fire an employee and they walk away with a hurt ego and start talking to a lawyer, you will end up hurting in some way or another, so the game is to manage egos and make sure that, when a company parts ways with an employee, the employee feels that it was mutual. Actually, I think it would be a step in the right direction for both bosses and employees, if bosses could just say: Hey, I'm firing you because I just no longer want you here. You didn't do anything wrong. I just have other people who do the job better. The perverse incentive is that it's probably better for companies to single out individuals they want to get rid of and treat them badly until they leave of their own account, rather than do that.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    That's how it used to be, and a lot of other bad things happened. If bosses could be trusted not to discriminate, we wouldn't have such a law in the first place. Regulations are written in blood. They are always Chesterton's fence. That doesn't mean it's still a good idea, or even that it ever was. But there's a reason it was put there, and it's wise to at least know why before removing it.
    - t0suj4 4y ago
      Safety manuals and instructions are written in blood, regulations come later. If you don't like your boss you can pack your things and go elsewhere. Your boss doesn't have that luxury.
    - gyulai 4y ago
      ...the question is whether the historical context from which it grew is still in place today. Today we have at least three "layers" of social security in most European countries: The first layer is that government makes sure everyone has employment and makes it difficult for employers to get rid of employees, even those ones that cost the company more than they're worth. Family law extends the coverage to everyone else, e.g. for non-bread-winning spouses (even ex-spouses), it's the bread-winner that's on the hook (so, transitively, the bread-winner's employer) and for children the parents (again: ultimately the parents' employers). The second layer is mandatory social insurance. The third layer is usually some kind of outright government handout that kicks in for people who, for some reason, fall through both the first AND the second layer of social security. (e.g. [1] in Austria) My guess would be that each layer was brought in at a time when the layers below were not yet in place, though, maybe, someone can provide the necessary facts to the contrary here. I just wish they'd do away with all that crap, and instead just implement universal basic income, paid for by the tax payer. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarfsorientierte_Mindestsicherung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarfsorientierte_Mindestsich...
  - pjc50 4y ago
    > Hey, I'm firing you because I just no longer want you here. This requires a really comprehensive social security net to not be abusive.

trymas 4y ago

I guess it makes sense on the short term. Instead of application - you work for (as quoted) 6 weeks to prove yourself and you either get fired or not. But on the long term? Senior-level employee makes an error? Bam - fired! With all the institutional knowledge gathered over the years, experience, etc. If it was a major screw-up - you'll be firing an employee who will not do that mistake again, but you will risk it with a new hire.

t0suj4 4y ago
It's on the employer's tab when he does such a foolish mistake.

mellavora 4y ago

This also assumes that a decent candidate can quickly find a new job. That is not always true. I take a risk to accept your job offer. I turn down other offers. Maybe I quit my current job to work with you. if EVERYONE in the economy played by your rules, it might work. Might. As long as labor is in strong demand.

nine_k 4y ago
Well, that worked at wartime, when any pair of hands was welcome, and speed was essential. At peacetime, people may not like to put up with the strain which such arrangement puts on them. It does improve efficiency, but had a cost, and works better at times of very high demand.

nonameiguess 4y ago

I believe you're misrepresenting the speaker's position. Failed commanders were not "fired" in the way a private sector employee gets fired. They were relieved of command and given easier jobs with exactly the same pay and benefits. Also, the military command structure is intentionally redundant in order to be robust against mass casualty events. Every commander has a line of succession consisting of people who are trained and ready to take command themselves, and in fact, usually have taken command at least a few times already when the commander is intentionally absent to give them practice. Private industry could do this if they want, but it would require cutting executive pay in half, hiring twice as many executives, and creating intentionally redundant positions that serve little purpose other than preparing the next cohort for leadership. This works for the military due to a unique combination of the organization itself not having a profit motive and the personnel valuing non-monetary accomplishment more than personal wealth. And, of course, the military is a monopoly. This also works because there isn't a different military that can offer your generals triple the salary and poach them away. If they want to be generals at all, they have no choice but to buy into the unique culture of the only military they can serve in. Theoretically, a foreign military could try to buy them away, but countries mostly seem to not allow foreigners to command their military units for security reasons and the possibility of being executed for treason and/or desertion is a pretty strong incentive not to leave even if you got an offer.

nonameiguess 4y ago
I guess I may as well add generals don't get there by being hired anyway. They're promoted from within. To get into the military officer corps in the first place, they absolutely do have to apply, many times, first to the academy, ROTC, or OTC, where they spend years being rigorously trained, tested, and evaluated before ranking the career field they want to be in, which they will only get based on where they rank compared to all other cadets in the same cohort year. An equivalent private sector practice would be not hiring leaders at all and only appointing them via internal promotion, but to get into the organization at all, you need to apply to a training academy first, then spend several years in that academy learning the organizational doctrine and culture and being evaluated and stack ranked before you're ever given a real job. Typically, the bottom 40% of so of cadets don't even get in at all and have to become reservists.

hef19898 4y ago

Well, Marcus Clarkus was left in charge for quite a while. And McArthur was only sacked after he wanted to nuke Korea. The allies were better in WW2 than the others, because they had a feasible grabd strategy and outperformed the Axis on operations. That, and the fact the Allies committed their full industrial might for years, while having public support for doing so.

rnk 4y ago
Yeah, we had way more stuff. We could design, iterate and build things fast. But we could build way more copies of things than the other people. The sophistication of the Japanese carrier forces and their strategies, the tanks, etc, the way the Germans waged war, etc were far ahead of the US in some ways. But we could build way more stuff, and we could ship a ton of it to Russia to keep Germany from wiping them out. We were willing to make changes in our military strategies over time, we learned (and made mistakes). We did stupid stuff too of course, plus don't forget endemic racism, resistance to black people having any role more important than moving supplies around (women too, other groups too, there's no end of our racism). Stealing and imprisoning Japanese people. Different subject, but I was just thinking what ww2 would have looked like if we had the slightly evolved social order, protections, liberties we have today. We still have racism and sexism and ... but it's different now (but still there). Most large organizations like the military still have an old boys club but they also did a lot of work to improve things. We have so far to go as a society. What if we didn't round up all the Japanese people and destroy or steal their possessions. How would the groups have dealt with the war? I think it would be like Russians living in Europe today, plenty are influenced by propaganda news orgs to think that Ukraine is somehow the bad guy, even though they are living in free, safe, and well off societies out of Russia.

constantcrying 4y ago

> Any mistake or failure and you're fired Seems like an awful idea. Especially if you are new to something failures happen and are a good way to learn. This just rewards the lucky and those who minimize their own work.

cardanome 4y ago
Officer were relieved from their positions not fired in the sense of being removed from the military. It was not a career ending event. In fact the video points out some of them would still have successful careers. You relieve someone from a position for not winning (and not just not failing). The theory proposed by the video is that relieve culture INCREASES (even if counterintuitively so) the willingness to take risks. If there is no reward for winning then people will minimize risks. If you make winning necessary for keeping the position, they will be more likely to take risks. (In military context, officers these days, according to the video, care more about minimizing losses and not messing up than actually winning the wars.) Translating it into civilians contexts might be a bit difficult but one thing that I believe can work well is allowing people to move to different positions to find one that they can be most effective in inside the company. Like sometimes people get promoted to managers and then it turns out they are actually ill fitted for that position. Firing them might be a waste but just keeping them around will be to the detriment of the people they need to manage. So the solution is that they need to removed. Maybe even take a lower position until a better position can be found. I think this is main take away: Just like you should not keep around badly performing general as that will cost literally lives you should also not keep around bad managers in a company to the detriment of the people they manage. It is better to pull the plug early, for both sides.
- escapedmoose 4y ago
  Intriguing concept, but sounds like it doesn’t leave much room to learn from your failures. Often you might not “win” a project, but you learn a lot from it that can be used to win the next one. Maybe this concept only applies to more senior role?
  - 4y ago

BeFlatXIII 4y ago

> And no stigma against being fired, just keep trying until you find a fit. This honestly admits that it’s both competence AND luck instead of pure competence.

mjklin 4y ago

“You know what Pasteur said: Chance favors the prepared mind. Take one of the chanciest things in the world, like war. Both Kitchener and Frederick the Great, when they were considering a general's qualifications, would always ask, 'Is he considered lucky?' It was a perfectly legitimate question, because if he was considered lucky, it meant he was prepared to take advantage of chance.” - Eric Hoffer

janef0421 4y ago

That's not a bad idea, but it would only work if people were not dependent on income from employment to meet their basic needs. Also, the way you phrase it is a bit extreme. Failure is an opportunity for learning, and it's hard to make a major accomplishment if your work is mostly routine.