3 ms·

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

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.

prepend 4y ago
I like this and have unconsciously used this when designing governance processes. I try to design so that people who like governing and code review are avoided and people who hate it, are competent, and view it as a duty are favored. So always to avoid “professional governancers,” especially when people try to hire contractors to perform review as their incentive is to just burn time. I haven’t encountered a good simple metric. If I were designing a university (and I never would), I’d make admin a chore that professors are forced to do in addition to the real work. I’d make it some sort of only senior people can do it so there’s some prestige but is not fun. That way competent people are doing it, but they do it as busywork on top of their “real” work. There are some downsides to that and I think such a system is not stable as, naturally, smart people would get out of it [0] and eventually they would hire professional admins and everyone would avoid. [0] I read a story a few years ago how Feynman hated administration, https://www.quora.com/What-did-Richard-Feynman-think-of-academia https://www.quora.com/What-did-Richard-Feynman-think-of-acad..., so I got the idea to take on a very high profile admin task and ruin it so thoroughly and famously that my “brand” would be tagged with “never let prepend do administration and manage projects as ve will mess them up.” 30 more years until I know if it works. Fingers crossed.

prepend 4y ago

I like this and have unconsciously used this when designing governance processes. I try to design so that people who like governing and code review are avoided and people who hate it, are competent, and view it as a duty are favored. So always to avoid “professional governancers,” especially when people try to hire contractors to perform review as their incentive is to just burn time. I haven’t encountered a good simple metric. If I were designing a university (and I never would), I’d make admin a chore that professors are forced to do in addition to the real work. I’d make it some sort of only senior people can do it so there’s some prestige but is not fun. That way competent people are doing it, but they do it as busywork on top of their “real” work. There are some downsides to that and I think such a system is not stable as, naturally, smart people would get out of it [0] and eventually they would hire professional admins and everyone would avoid. [0] I read a story a few years ago how Feynman hated administration, https://www.quora.com/What-did-Richard-Feynman-think-of-academia https://www.quora.com/What-did-Richard-Feynman-think-of-acad..., so I got the idea to take on a very high profile admin task and ruin it so thoroughly and famously that my “brand” would be tagged with “never let prepend do administration and manage projects as ve will mess them up.” 30 more years until I know if it works. Fingers crossed.