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Seems like a normal day in a corporation? Bean counters who decide your salary use beyond-stupid metrics. For instance, fighting fires is often rewarded disprop
by klabb3 3y ago
Seems like a normal day in a corporation? Bean counters who decide your salary use beyond-stupid metrics. For instance, fighting fires is often rewarded disproportionately, so it’s good to be “visible” during many, recurring fires. Of course people game that, intentionally or unintentionally. You don’t get the behavior you say you want, you get what you incentivize.
Even at pure tech companies with somewhat technically competent leadership the incentives are whack, and often the people at the very top are still replicating some MBA doctrine that will be debunked as horse manure within a decade.
Just because our computers get exponentially better doesn’t mean people do, particularly groups of people.
- aardvark179 3y agoI think there’s a spectrum here, I doubt many people are deliberately hoarding huge, easy, and /certain/ cost or resource savings just to use later, but it is easy to end up with a long list of possible things that you haven’t had time to try, and won’t get prioritised until somebody else cares. Also, be careful what you wish for regarding cost savings. You may think you’re doing well saving 500k, but in a medium sized company there are likely a lot of easy ways to save a chunk more than that which you really aren’t going to like.
- arethuza 3y agoI have a book about the management consulting industry that suggest there is at least one large successful firm of management consultants where the answer is always "fire 23% - 33% of your staff" regardless of what the question was. Apparently this is the level that most organisations can stagger on long enough for senior management to bank the bonuses and move on and upwards and before long term effects kick in.
- aardvark179 3y agoYeah that’s always a bit depressing, but most companies only really seem to get the consultants in so they can be told the thing they were going to do anyway. I’ve seen good products and companies brought low by making the wrong bets and doing what was safe and sensible and cost reducing but not really thinking long term enough. They can stagger on for a long time still turning a reasonable profit until they suddenly don’t.
- arethuza 3y agoI suspect senior management who hire that consultancy know exactly what will happen but they need the cover to be able to say that they had "independent" management consultants come in and look at the business and give their "honest" recommendations.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoGP did mention that the whole project was actually a waste of money.
- aardvark179 3y agoYeah, but I’ve seen plenty of very smart engineers over the years who can’t see why a business values X which they think is worthless but not Y which they think is important. I was thinking of all the other ways businesses can “save money”, like travel bans, or getting rid of nice things, or closing offices, or getting rid of staff… They may not really save money, but they’ll look just as good on somebody’s spreadsheet.
- blitzar 3y ago> “visible” during many, recurring fires Always turn up second or third to the fire otherwise they might suspect you of being the arsonist - Firefighter Arson is a real thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighter_arson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighter_arson
- OrderlyTiamat 3y ago"Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." ― John Maynard Keynes