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Related to some of the high-stakes scenarios discussed in the post. If you advance in large organizations you’re likely going to encounter a strategy cell or un

Related to some of the high-stakes scenarios discussed in the post. If you advance in large organizations you’re likely going to encounter a strategy cell or unit. Get into a mutually beneficial relationship with these people. If they’re effective, they’re expert communicators and are the primary filter through which information from the operating units passes to senior corporate leadership. They can help you prepare for these kinds of situations and interpret the needs/political landscapes of meetings accurately. A friendly strategy leader is also a 99th percentile slide wizard and can offer vast optimization. edit, numeracy

honeybadger1 4y ago
Completely agree with this, I am at the point in my own career where I am a part of one of these units in an organization valued at around $16B. It involves stake holders from product, c-suite, etc. People in these groups are socially sterile in my viewpoint while working an active goal or problem and it has been a big eye-opener for me to realize that the plans within plans are actually not engineered from a position of malice, just strategic thinking. It's business warfare.
le-mark 4y ago
I really lived this once. I was an engineering manager of a team that maintained an app that was used extensively by a particular business unit. My understanding was the app was a money maker because customers contracted to have people use this (it was a BPO unit). I was tasked with providing a demo to the new CTO and a few other execs. We had worked hard for a couple of years and really improved the app a lot. I got through the demo and.. silence, nothing. They moved on to other things. I found this to be very very odd. I found out months later that all the revenue from the app was booked to another group, and my team was a huge drag on the org we were in. As such, our hard work was not rewarded, raises were pitiful. Most the team quit, lay offs, then I quit. So yeah it’s good to know what’s going on.
- Joker_vD 4y ago
  > I found out months later that all the revenue from the app was booked to another group, and my team was a huge drag on the org we were in. We need large firms to be organized in more market-like ways, otherwise you get those ridiculous command-economy warts.
lupire 4y ago
> .99th percentile That's lower than 1 percentile. You meant 99th percentile or .99th quantile Percentages are not the same as fractions. This confusion causes outages, because computers know the difference.
- sklargh 4y ago
  Fixed. Thanks.

honeybadger1 4y ago

Completely agree with this, I am at the point in my own career where I am a part of one of these units in an organization valued at around $16B. It involves stake holders from product, c-suite, etc. People in these groups are socially sterile in my viewpoint while working an active goal or problem and it has been a big eye-opener for me to realize that the plans within plans are actually not engineered from a position of malice, just strategic thinking. It's business warfare.

le-mark 4y ago

I really lived this once. I was an engineering manager of a team that maintained an app that was used extensively by a particular business unit. My understanding was the app was a money maker because customers contracted to have people use this (it was a BPO unit). I was tasked with providing a demo to the new CTO and a few other execs. We had worked hard for a couple of years and really improved the app a lot. I got through the demo and.. silence, nothing. They moved on to other things. I found this to be very very odd. I found out months later that all the revenue from the app was booked to another group, and my team was a huge drag on the org we were in. As such, our hard work was not rewarded, raises were pitiful. Most the team quit, lay offs, then I quit. So yeah it’s good to know what’s going on.

Joker_vD 4y ago
> I found out months later that all the revenue from the app was booked to another group, and my team was a huge drag on the org we were in. We need large firms to be organized in more market-like ways, otherwise you get those ridiculous command-economy warts.

lupire 4y ago

> .99th percentile That's lower than 1 percentile. You meant 99th percentile or .99th quantile Percentages are not the same as fractions. This confusion causes outages, because computers know the difference.

sklargh 4y ago
Fixed. Thanks.