11 ms·

A lot of good information. But my cynical worker viewpoint is that the problem is really that upper management doesn't do the actual work and that is by design

by ilaksh 3y ago

A lot of good information. But my cynical worker viewpoint is that the problem is really that upper management doesn't do the actual work and that is by design. It's a class separation. They are there to crack the whip and collect the spoils. The only way for upper management to really understand what's going on and give useful input would be for them to be directly involved on a day-to-day basis. In other words, they would have to do actual work. That's not going to happen. So the best they can do is to stay out of the way of people who are actually working, avoid making decrees, and maybe try to keep the other managers from interfering with the work also. Maybe another approach would be for the workers to share more equally in the spoils so that they would be naturally inclined to integrate business improvements and goals. But that's never going to happen. The structure is much more directly related to a caste system than people may acknowledge.

mwerd 3y ago
That's a point of view that would change quickly if you were in one of those management positions. You get to a point where it's impossible to do the work anymore. There's too much of it. You have to develop teams, processes, structure, etc. that delivers the outcomes you're accountable for with full knowledge that you cannot do them yourself. It's very different than doing the work and experience shows that fewer people are capable of doing it, especially with any repeatability. The working world yearns for effective managers. I encourage you to compare the productivity of the modern multinational corporation to any commune in history. The people working in collectives are not stupid or lazy. It's not an effective structure.
- chrisdbanks 3y ago
  Agree. In fact one problem many have when new to management is actually doing the work themselves rather than coaching others to achieve it.
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  > I encourage you to compare the productivity of the modern multinational corporation to any commune in history. The people working in collectives are not stupid or lazy. It's not an effective structure. It’s a hard comparison to make when the goals of those two systems are vastly different. I worked for a multinational software company and the amount of waste I saw was just staggering. If outside shareholders knew how little we actually produced on a day to day basis, they would probably be appalled. But because the company knew how to engage with market analysts, we looked good on paper. So much of the money made today involves just being the biggest player in a given market, regardless of how effective the product is (i.e. “nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft”)
  - phs318u 3y ago
    But maximum efficiency does not scale linearly with organisational size/product complexity. So yes, lots of wastage, but still possibly the least wastage of other tried-and-tested organisational models. Also, effectiveness of software relates to the attributes that align to the dimensions of "goodness" as defined by each user not the developer. The software does not have to be the best (among its peers) to be the most effective for me. The same software may be completely ineffective for you, if what you want out of it is different to what I want.
- femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  Productivity is not a universal good. Productivity on its own does not lead to better business outcomes. The problem with management that doesn’t do or know how to do the work is that they get detached from what should be done — they can be neither visionary nor maintainer. This can be overcome when management loses their ego and listens to those doing the work, merging their high level view with the data gotten from perspectives on the shop floor. I can count the number of people in management I’ve observed capable of doing that on one hand in a decade.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
>They are there to crack the whip and collect the spoils This is historically correct Here's a recent unambiguous proof from Tesla's own words: "Tesla argued that stock options were used to ensure Director's incentives were aligned with investor goals." [1] Said another way, "we massively over-paid directors in order to give them an incentive to prioritize investor goals over all other goals" In the parlance of finance this is the only goal and the ultimate decision that cannot be questioned. I have seen this made explicit in multiple organizations as a Director or Senior Manager. As a manager, if you are explicit in supporting employee benefits over increase in stock price or C-Suite direction (when given the choice) then you should expect no further growth or promotions (unless you can manipulate the org or have some damaging information on the company). >Maybe another approach would be for the workers to share more equally in the spoils so that they would be naturally inclined to integrate business improvements and goals The strong form of this is a worker-owned-cooperative but second to that are labor unions. So if you want to change it, then start/join a union and stop creating corporations with separate ownership rules for investors. [1]https://www.engadget.com/tesla-directors-agree-to-return-735-million-following-claims-they-were-massively-overpaid-105506056.html https://www.engadget.com/tesla-directors-agree-to-return-735...
- chrisdbanks 3y ago
  Workers vs investors shouldn't be seen as a zero sum game. If it is then that's short-term thinking. Simon Sinek explains this all very well in The Infinite Game.
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    Why should they care about long term health of the company when their stake can change [almost] on a whim? The whole system seems to exist for short term profits.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Simon is wrong. It is absolutely zero sum for any measure that matters over periods that are impactful to individual and familial human flourishing This capitalist rationalization of greed-based markets, loves to pick whatever timeline for measurement which fits their criteria. It is unambiguous that wealth and power accumulation will persistently concentrate into the smallest number of hands in absence of collective structural countermeasures. So the default state of large scale capatalist systems follows power law in both wealth and power distribution. It’s a mathematical reality that is shown over and over and over to repeat itself
TheCowboy 3y ago
I've often encountered software that feels like it was designed by people who don't have to use it to do work, and not necessarily because they're engaging in class conflict (though it can certainly appear that way based on the painfully flawed software people can be forced to tolerate). The worst system was a DOS-based point-of-sale system in a restaurant---kept around way beyond the 'age of DOS'. The main gimmick is that it had a wired light touch pen (I think it worked like a classic Nintendo gun) for selection. It gave the illusion of innovation/ease of use, but was extremely cumbersome and required a good amount of experience to avoid mistakes. I also think trying to pin down things as strictly class warfare every time can muddy problem areas. Institutions realistically do gain some functional productivity by having people specialize and having defined roles, but having them too separated and specialized can also create problems. You can also have a lazy human problem, where people don't want to do the work that isn't directly associated with their role, and so on. There is also a lot in the bschool lit about how different business structures contribute to these problems too.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Ironic since my experience during the transition away from ASCII displays and shortcut inputs is that the touch screens and deep menus were slow. Touch won because it was more approachable, at least for the shallowest options
  - TheCowboy 3y ago
    Touch is fine when done right with responsive hardware. I'm not making a blanket statement about if touch is good or bad. This was just a poorly designed UI and software. Additionally, the light pens could be prone to error due to dirt and grime.
spacephysics 3y ago
To be frank, this has an anti-capitalist smell and I don’t feel is written in good faith. Sure there are managers that crack the whip, but most the places I’ve worked for, my manager was a former IC and cared deeply about the health of the product, while protecting the IC team I was on from the business side. Learning more about the business portion and product manager viewpoints, gives me a more sympathetic tone to the whole situation. We shouldn’t expect someone whose career they’ve focused on the business side to understand the software in depth. Sure there’s space to learn anything, but people have lives outside of career. Instead, a healthy company delegates these tasks out. It’s the responsibility of my manager to have one foot in the software, and one in the business, to help best translate and champion towards a common goal. It’s the responsibility of her managers to respect the decisions she makes, and when hard lines are drawn for the sake of the health of the product to adhere to them. Within reason, of course. This to me makes me feel excited to go to work (not every day, I’m not a psycho :) ), and makes me want to climb the ladder. I get paid well, produce value for the company, and get opportunities to work on challenges and with data/systems that I otherwise would not be able to. With that knowledge, I can then take that to my side business and more effectively grow it. Don’t think there’s any “they’re taking the spoils” going on…
- ilaksh 3y ago
  Most of those are good points. I am technically anti-capitalist, but also anti-socialist. I think both philosophies are extreme and oversimplified. We need a worldview that integrates the insights of both with technological developments and is truly a step forward. It must value the application of science to solving society's problems by creating and using tools in core structures. It must value diversity and evolution but also holism and harmony.

by ilaksh 3y ago

mwerd 3y ago

That's a point of view that would change quickly if you were in one of those management positions. You get to a point where it's impossible to do the work anymore. There's too much of it. You have to develop teams, processes, structure, etc. that delivers the outcomes you're accountable for with full knowledge that you cannot do them yourself. It's very different than doing the work and experience shows that fewer people are capable of doing it, especially with any repeatability. The working world yearns for effective managers. I encourage you to compare the productivity of the modern multinational corporation to any commune in history. The people working in collectives are not stupid or lazy. It's not an effective structure.

chrisdbanks 3y ago
Agree. In fact one problem many have when new to management is actually doing the work themselves rather than coaching others to achieve it.
LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
> I encourage you to compare the productivity of the modern multinational corporation to any commune in history. The people working in collectives are not stupid or lazy. It's not an effective structure. It’s a hard comparison to make when the goals of those two systems are vastly different. I worked for a multinational software company and the amount of waste I saw was just staggering. If outside shareholders knew how little we actually produced on a day to day basis, they would probably be appalled. But because the company knew how to engage with market analysts, we looked good on paper. So much of the money made today involves just being the biggest player in a given market, regardless of how effective the product is (i.e. “nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft”)
- phs318u 3y ago
  But maximum efficiency does not scale linearly with organisational size/product complexity. So yes, lots of wastage, but still possibly the least wastage of other tried-and-tested organisational models. Also, effectiveness of software relates to the attributes that align to the dimensions of "goodness" as defined by each user not the developer. The software does not have to be the best (among its peers) to be the most effective for me. The same software may be completely ineffective for you, if what you want out of it is different to what I want.
femiagbabiaka 3y ago
Productivity is not a universal good. Productivity on its own does not lead to better business outcomes. The problem with management that doesn’t do or know how to do the work is that they get detached from what should be done — they can be neither visionary nor maintainer. This can be overcome when management loses their ego and listens to those doing the work, merging their high level view with the data gotten from perspectives on the shop floor. I can count the number of people in management I’ve observed capable of doing that on one hand in a decade.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

>They are there to crack the whip and collect the spoils This is historically correct Here's a recent unambiguous proof from Tesla's own words: "Tesla argued that stock options were used to ensure Director's incentives were aligned with investor goals." [1] Said another way, "we massively over-paid directors in order to give them an incentive to prioritize investor goals over all other goals" In the parlance of finance this is the only goal and the ultimate decision that cannot be questioned. I have seen this made explicit in multiple organizations as a Director or Senior Manager. As a manager, if you are explicit in supporting employee benefits over increase in stock price or C-Suite direction (when given the choice) then you should expect no further growth or promotions (unless you can manipulate the org or have some damaging information on the company). >Maybe another approach would be for the workers to share more equally in the spoils so that they would be naturally inclined to integrate business improvements and goals The strong form of this is a worker-owned-cooperative but second to that are labor unions. So if you want to change it, then start/join a union and stop creating corporations with separate ownership rules for investors. [1]https://www.engadget.com/tesla-directors-agree-to-return-735-million-following-claims-they-were-massively-overpaid-105506056.html https://www.engadget.com/tesla-directors-agree-to-return-735...

chrisdbanks 3y ago
Workers vs investors shouldn't be seen as a zero sum game. If it is then that's short-term thinking. Simon Sinek explains this all very well in The Infinite Game.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  Why should they care about long term health of the company when their stake can change [almost] on a whim? The whole system seems to exist for short term profits.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Simon is wrong. It is absolutely zero sum for any measure that matters over periods that are impactful to individual and familial human flourishing This capitalist rationalization of greed-based markets, loves to pick whatever timeline for measurement which fits their criteria. It is unambiguous that wealth and power accumulation will persistently concentrate into the smallest number of hands in absence of collective structural countermeasures. So the default state of large scale capatalist systems follows power law in both wealth and power distribution. It’s a mathematical reality that is shown over and over and over to repeat itself

TheCowboy 3y ago

I've often encountered software that feels like it was designed by people who don't have to use it to do work, and not necessarily because they're engaging in class conflict (though it can certainly appear that way based on the painfully flawed software people can be forced to tolerate). The worst system was a DOS-based point-of-sale system in a restaurant---kept around way beyond the 'age of DOS'. The main gimmick is that it had a wired light touch pen (I think it worked like a classic Nintendo gun) for selection. It gave the illusion of innovation/ease of use, but was extremely cumbersome and required a good amount of experience to avoid mistakes. I also think trying to pin down things as strictly class warfare every time can muddy problem areas. Institutions realistically do gain some functional productivity by having people specialize and having defined roles, but having them too separated and specialized can also create problems. You can also have a lazy human problem, where people don't want to do the work that isn't directly associated with their role, and so on. There is also a lot in the bschool lit about how different business structures contribute to these problems too.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
Ironic since my experience during the transition away from ASCII displays and shortcut inputs is that the touch screens and deep menus were slow. Touch won because it was more approachable, at least for the shallowest options
- TheCowboy 3y ago
  Touch is fine when done right with responsive hardware. I'm not making a blanket statement about if touch is good or bad. This was just a poorly designed UI and software. Additionally, the light pens could be prone to error due to dirt and grime.

spacephysics 3y ago

To be frank, this has an anti-capitalist smell and I don’t feel is written in good faith. Sure there are managers that crack the whip, but most the places I’ve worked for, my manager was a former IC and cared deeply about the health of the product, while protecting the IC team I was on from the business side. Learning more about the business portion and product manager viewpoints, gives me a more sympathetic tone to the whole situation. We shouldn’t expect someone whose career they’ve focused on the business side to understand the software in depth. Sure there’s space to learn anything, but people have lives outside of career. Instead, a healthy company delegates these tasks out. It’s the responsibility of my manager to have one foot in the software, and one in the business, to help best translate and champion towards a common goal. It’s the responsibility of her managers to respect the decisions she makes, and when hard lines are drawn for the sake of the health of the product to adhere to them. Within reason, of course. This to me makes me feel excited to go to work (not every day, I’m not a psycho :) ), and makes me want to climb the ladder. I get paid well, produce value for the company, and get opportunities to work on challenges and with data/systems that I otherwise would not be able to. With that knowledge, I can then take that to my side business and more effectively grow it. Don’t think there’s any “they’re taking the spoils” going on…

ilaksh 3y ago
Most of those are good points. I am technically anti-capitalist, but also anti-socialist. I think both philosophies are extreme and oversimplified. We need a worldview that integrates the insights of both with technological developments and is truly a step forward. It must value the application of science to solving society's problems by creating and using tools in core structures. It must value diversity and evolution but also holism and harmony.