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This is one thing that's always fascinated me in corporate and government: why is bureaucracy easy to create and hard to destroy? Or to put it another way, bur

by ethbr0 4y ago

This is one thing that's always fascinated me in corporate and government: why is bureaucracy easy to create and hard to destroy? Or to put it another way, bureaucracy increases as a result of systems. E.g. 'We want to do a new thing, let's set up a new team to do it' But there rarely seems to be continuous, automatic counter-system in place. I.e. a generic, regularly re-run reaping process that exists solely to decrease the number of teams/orgs/rules You have periodic, CFO-org-led centralization / re-orgs, but those are default: status quo. Someone explicitly has to decide to decommission a thing, and that turns into a political struggle. Is there a reason more companies don't have something like stack-ranking-by-utility for teams/orgs/rules? Where the default is "It's gone"?

zozbot234 4y ago
> Is there a reason more companies don't have something like stack-ranking-by-utility for teams/orgs/rules? Where the default is "It's gone"? Isn't that called an audit? They're rare because you can't force bureaucrats to always be making the argument for their usefulness without impacting their actual work. Impact assessment for policy is also gaining some ground, at least wrt. government. So that when a policy fails to achieve its goals, that failure is a matter of shared knowledge.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  That's why, in my experience, it usually comes out of the CFO org. At the end of the day, they have the actual opex/capex numbers. And I am sympathetic to the other side of the equation: continually asking people to justify their work ends up with a lot of useless-but-visible or sub-optimal work being prioritized (e.g. Google's lack of strategic attention to bugs/maintenance). Self-destructing, temporary policies and teams seems like a nice balance. And maybe a cultural expectation that most teams will be disbanded and reformed after X years. It'd also be curious to have an org where manager-back-to-IC was more normalized. IOW, manager is a role everyone is expected to serve a stint in, but then relinquish without salary/title penalty.
coldtea 4y ago
>This is one thing that's always fascinated me in corporate and government: why is bureaucracy easy to create and hard to destroy? Because bureaucracy is people (management, employees) reaching for more power. Why would they ever reach for less power? And if some management unit implemented such "stack ranking" and discarded other units, they'd make enemies quickly, and be undermined, as other (not yet discard people and units) would be fearing for their position. Not to mention that management being about personal power, their "stack ranking" would basically be based on "does this unit/product/team/etc furthers my power"?
KingLancelot 4y ago
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by ethbr0 4y ago

zozbot234 4y ago

> Is there a reason more companies don't have something like stack-ranking-by-utility for teams/orgs/rules? Where the default is "It's gone"? Isn't that called an audit? They're rare because you can't force bureaucrats to always be making the argument for their usefulness without impacting their actual work. Impact assessment for policy is also gaining some ground, at least wrt. government. So that when a policy fails to achieve its goals, that failure is a matter of shared knowledge.

ethbr0 4y ago
That's why, in my experience, it usually comes out of the CFO org. At the end of the day, they have the actual opex/capex numbers. And I am sympathetic to the other side of the equation: continually asking people to justify their work ends up with a lot of useless-but-visible or sub-optimal work being prioritized (e.g. Google's lack of strategic attention to bugs/maintenance). Self-destructing, temporary policies and teams seems like a nice balance. And maybe a cultural expectation that most teams will be disbanded and reformed after X years. It'd also be curious to have an org where manager-back-to-IC was more normalized. IOW, manager is a role everyone is expected to serve a stint in, but then relinquish without salary/title penalty.

coldtea 4y ago

>This is one thing that's always fascinated me in corporate and government: why is bureaucracy easy to create and hard to destroy? Because bureaucracy is people (management, employees) reaching for more power. Why would they ever reach for less power? And if some management unit implemented such "stack ranking" and discarded other units, they'd make enemies quickly, and be undermined, as other (not yet discard people and units) would be fearing for their position. Not to mention that management being about personal power, their "stack ranking" would basically be based on "does this unit/product/team/etc furthers my power"?

KingLancelot 4y ago

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