3 ms·

It never bodes well when an essay opens with a strawman. In the opening paragraph, the author describes one work style that’s on the verge of seizing up, and s

It never bodes well when an essay opens with a strawman. In the opening paragraph, the author describes one work style that’s on the verge of seizing up, and sets it against a work style that apparently produces nothing of business value at all? They then work to criticize the latter as impractical, even though it’s just an imaginary business archetype that couldn’t possibly exist. The reality is that most operating workplaces are already situated somewhere in the middle, navigating some version of the compromise the author spends the rest of the essay trying to lay out. If the author is earnest and really worked at places that appeared as paralyzed as their strawman archetype, then either the business was already evaporating as they were hired into it or (more likely) they didn’t really understand what was going on and probably don’t have the insight to be writing about it.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chefandy 3y ago
I think the author was using hyperbole to illustrate two problematic organizational tendencies. I could say something like "I see two kinds of drivers in the northeast: ones that drive like they're fleeing a bank robbery in a stolen police car and others driving like they're piloting a parade float carrying a human pyramid." I think it's obvious I'm not saying literally all drivers in the northeast fit into one of those two categories, rather, I'm setting up the scene to talk about two extremes in a common premise.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  I’m sure that’s what they were trying to do, but their argument only carries weight in the context of those hyperboles. In your example, it’d be like continuing the essay to argue that people should really try driving like they were just in a plain old consumer car. The thing is: that’s essentially what everybody is already doing in the real world, and so you’ve not contributed anything with your argument.
  - dasil003 3y ago
    > I’m sure that’s what they were trying to do, but their argument only carries weight in the context of those hyperboles. I think this is a bit uncharitable. Yes, nominally everyone is trying to do this, but in practice this comes down to a lot of tradeoffs in terms of timeframes, team sizes, and maintainability/scalability. Even if you have balanced perspectives, what usually ends up happening in larger corporations is some group has a louder voice and more power, and ends up influencing decisions in a way that is globally suboptimal because executives are too busy, and local managers are too focused on their own silos/perf evaluation. For example, complexity is often built into the product and systems according to the resourcing allocated to a particular problem at a certain point without a full understanding of the implications over time. However, when that complexity is found to have a poor ROI there is then a natural aversion to removing it because at that point it's hard to quantify how exactly the business depends on it. This creates a tax on the entire org, which many can observe, but structuring incentives to fix is fiendishly difficult, especially in comparison to new growth opportunities that get executives, board members and investors excited.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    People aren't that self-aware though. Many people assume they're being normal and rational when in reality they're behavior is more towards a problematic extreme. Explicity showing which behaviors are extreme and why that's problematic— versus saying "drive safely," which everybody thinks they're already doing— is the purpose of this sort of rhetoric.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    > I’m sure that’s what they were trying to do, but their argument only carries weight in the context of those hyperboles. That's only true if you struggle to understand ideas vs expression.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

chefandy 3y ago

I think the author was using hyperbole to illustrate two problematic organizational tendencies. I could say something like "I see two kinds of drivers in the northeast: ones that drive like they're fleeing a bank robbery in a stolen police car and others driving like they're piloting a parade float carrying a human pyramid." I think it's obvious I'm not saying literally all drivers in the northeast fit into one of those two categories, rather, I'm setting up the scene to talk about two extremes in a common premise.

swatcoder 3y ago
I’m sure that’s what they were trying to do, but their argument only carries weight in the context of those hyperboles. In your example, it’d be like continuing the essay to argue that people should really try driving like they were just in a plain old consumer car. The thing is: that’s essentially what everybody is already doing in the real world, and so you’ve not contributed anything with your argument.
- dasil003 3y ago
  > I’m sure that’s what they were trying to do, but their argument only carries weight in the context of those hyperboles. I think this is a bit uncharitable. Yes, nominally everyone is trying to do this, but in practice this comes down to a lot of tradeoffs in terms of timeframes, team sizes, and maintainability/scalability. Even if you have balanced perspectives, what usually ends up happening in larger corporations is some group has a louder voice and more power, and ends up influencing decisions in a way that is globally suboptimal because executives are too busy, and local managers are too focused on their own silos/perf evaluation. For example, complexity is often built into the product and systems according to the resourcing allocated to a particular problem at a certain point without a full understanding of the implications over time. However, when that complexity is found to have a poor ROI there is then a natural aversion to removing it because at that point it's hard to quantify how exactly the business depends on it. This creates a tax on the entire org, which many can observe, but structuring incentives to fix is fiendishly difficult, especially in comparison to new growth opportunities that get executives, board members and investors excited.
- chefandy 3y ago
  People aren't that self-aware though. Many people assume they're being normal and rational when in reality they're behavior is more towards a problematic extreme. Explicity showing which behaviors are extreme and why that's problematic— versus saying "drive safely," which everybody thinks they're already doing— is the purpose of this sort of rhetoric.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  > I’m sure that’s what they were trying to do, but their argument only carries weight in the context of those hyperboles. That's only true if you struggle to understand ideas vs expression.