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First they suggest that most computer programmers are bureaucrats: > Most “software engineers” dealing in protocols, technical debt, the JVM, operations …. are

First they suggest that most computer programmers are bureaucrats: > Most “software engineers” dealing in protocols, technical debt, the JVM, operations …. are also bureaucrats. Then they complain that Google is probably hiring bureaucrats, instead of real technical people: > Do you think the extra 100,000 people Google hired over the last 5 years are actual engineers, or any kind of innovator? I’m willing to bet they’re all bureaucrats, and any of them would say “I work at a tech company doing tech things” and be indignant at being described as what they are: bureaucrats. Well, if you re-define every job as "bureaucrat" then you automatically get the result that everyone you hire is a bureaucrat. The result is the consequence of how you've defined everything.

lkrubner 3y ago
Also, this is astonishingly ahistorical: "Bureaucrats are also almost universally reviled for their lack of accountability and the lack of pride in their work. While there certainly have been great men; leaders who were great bureaucrats (Napoleon), they’re mostly seen as mostly a caste of sniveling eunuchs who flee from taking responsibility or attempting to make things better or taking any risks, even when that is in their job description." This is very, very inaccurate. Criticism of bureaucrats starts with the 1960s. While you can find an occasional novel or story that critiqued some aspects of bureaucracy (arguably some of Kafka's work, also maybe Bartleby, the Scrivener, though that is mostly seen as a critique of alienation, rather than bureaucracy per se) the rise of the "bureaucracy sucks" as a genre can be dated to the 1960s. Others often make this point, but you can really judge the cultural transition by the careers of leading business commentators, such as Peter Drucker. In 1946 he published his study of General Motors, the book Concept of the Corporation. In it, he examined the large bureaucracy at General Motors and celebrated it as the pinnacle of human civilization, the absolute peak of what the last 6,000 years of civilization had all been building up to. Drucker was not alone. In 1958 John Kenneth Galbraith published "The Affluent Society." A part of the book emphasizes the idea that "If we want to accomplish big things then we need big organizations." Once again, the book implies that large bureaucracies represent our success as a civilization, and those bureaucracies are what enabled that success. Starting in the 1960s, there is a tremendous cultural backlash against bureaucracy. We are still living with that backlash today. It is noteworthy that the cultural backlash has not had a real world result nearly as significant as the cultural result: that is, bureaucracies have continued to grow, even as they have faced relentless criticism for 60 years now. In my own consulting work, I've seen multiple promising startups fail because the founders were afraid of "becoming bureaucratic." I've seen other companies survive but never live up to their full potential because the CEO never set out to build a beautiful bureaucracy. My own sense is that the backlash against bureaucracy must come to an end at some point soon, because too much potential is being wasted by the lack of bureaucracy. At some point, business leaders must again commit themselves to building big, ambitious, beautiful bureaucracies, so they can capture the full potential of the organizations they are running.
- pbronez 3y ago
  Concur. Once an org knows what it’s good at, you need to start optimizing to scale. That means doing things that would have been counterproductive during the early exploratory work.
- briantakita 3y ago
  The phenomenon you describe is not constrained to the 60s. It happens during a collapse of the imperial order...usually when "the common folk" no longer experience the benefits of maintaining an imperial buercracy. When the military rebels against the court Eunichs in late Han China...with the French Revolution & the disparity written by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables almost a century later. When Charles Dickens describes the conditions of the poor. When many Hebrews rebelled against Roman authority. Your work is about making companies more successful in this system & I'm sure you are quite effective at your job. However, many are left out with their wealth & agency transferred to these organizations. The innovator creates a tide that rises all boats. That improves the quality of life for society at large. The bureaucrat administers the existing order. Order is a service that saves many lives but can become very expensive to maintain...eventually costing more than it's benefits, or the cost/benefits of an alternate system. Some systems are more effective than others in maintaining an empire or civilization. The feedback of growing antagonistim toward counterproductive beucracies should be an indicator or the health of an empire or society. Sometimes it's better to cut the Gordian knot of complexity & let the innovators reform the system, through buecratic innovations, tech innovations, & social innovations.
  - lkrubner 3y ago
    "It happens during a collapse of the imperial order.....with the French Revolution" That is also ahistorical. In 1789 the court of King Louis XVI of France was struggling to find the money to pay for a bureaucracy of 500 people, but just 5 years later, in 1794, a revolutionary France had a bureaucracy of 5,000 people. The bureaucracy grew by a factor of 10 in just 5 years, thanks to the Revolution, which seized the property of the Church and sold it or taxed it, thus generating revenue that the King could never have dreamed of. The dramatic expansion of the bureaucracy almost allowed the French to catch up with the fast growing bureaucracy of Britain. Likewise, the Communist Revolution in Russia, after 1917, brought in a complex system of committees vastly more convoluted than anything the Tsar could have ever dreamed of. See here for some speculations on this theme: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/is-communism-inevitable https://demodexio.substack.com/p/is-communism-inevitable

lkrubner 3y ago

Also, this is astonishingly ahistorical: "Bureaucrats are also almost universally reviled for their lack of accountability and the lack of pride in their work. While there certainly have been great men; leaders who were great bureaucrats (Napoleon), they’re mostly seen as mostly a caste of sniveling eunuchs who flee from taking responsibility or attempting to make things better or taking any risks, even when that is in their job description." This is very, very inaccurate. Criticism of bureaucrats starts with the 1960s. While you can find an occasional novel or story that critiqued some aspects of bureaucracy (arguably some of Kafka's work, also maybe Bartleby, the Scrivener, though that is mostly seen as a critique of alienation, rather than bureaucracy per se) the rise of the "bureaucracy sucks" as a genre can be dated to the 1960s. Others often make this point, but you can really judge the cultural transition by the careers of leading business commentators, such as Peter Drucker. In 1946 he published his study of General Motors, the book Concept of the Corporation. In it, he examined the large bureaucracy at General Motors and celebrated it as the pinnacle of human civilization, the absolute peak of what the last 6,000 years of civilization had all been building up to. Drucker was not alone. In 1958 John Kenneth Galbraith published "The Affluent Society." A part of the book emphasizes the idea that "If we want to accomplish big things then we need big organizations." Once again, the book implies that large bureaucracies represent our success as a civilization, and those bureaucracies are what enabled that success. Starting in the 1960s, there is a tremendous cultural backlash against bureaucracy. We are still living with that backlash today. It is noteworthy that the cultural backlash has not had a real world result nearly as significant as the cultural result: that is, bureaucracies have continued to grow, even as they have faced relentless criticism for 60 years now. In my own consulting work, I've seen multiple promising startups fail because the founders were afraid of "becoming bureaucratic." I've seen other companies survive but never live up to their full potential because the CEO never set out to build a beautiful bureaucracy. My own sense is that the backlash against bureaucracy must come to an end at some point soon, because too much potential is being wasted by the lack of bureaucracy. At some point, business leaders must again commit themselves to building big, ambitious, beautiful bureaucracies, so they can capture the full potential of the organizations they are running.

pbronez 3y ago
Concur. Once an org knows what it’s good at, you need to start optimizing to scale. That means doing things that would have been counterproductive during the early exploratory work.
briantakita 3y ago
The phenomenon you describe is not constrained to the 60s. It happens during a collapse of the imperial order...usually when "the common folk" no longer experience the benefits of maintaining an imperial buercracy. When the military rebels against the court Eunichs in late Han China...with the French Revolution & the disparity written by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables almost a century later. When Charles Dickens describes the conditions of the poor. When many Hebrews rebelled against Roman authority. Your work is about making companies more successful in this system & I'm sure you are quite effective at your job. However, many are left out with their wealth & agency transferred to these organizations. The innovator creates a tide that rises all boats. That improves the quality of life for society at large. The bureaucrat administers the existing order. Order is a service that saves many lives but can become very expensive to maintain...eventually costing more than it's benefits, or the cost/benefits of an alternate system. Some systems are more effective than others in maintaining an empire or civilization. The feedback of growing antagonistim toward counterproductive beucracies should be an indicator or the health of an empire or society. Sometimes it's better to cut the Gordian knot of complexity & let the innovators reform the system, through buecratic innovations, tech innovations, & social innovations.
- lkrubner 3y ago
  "It happens during a collapse of the imperial order.....with the French Revolution" That is also ahistorical. In 1789 the court of King Louis XVI of France was struggling to find the money to pay for a bureaucracy of 500 people, but just 5 years later, in 1794, a revolutionary France had a bureaucracy of 5,000 people. The bureaucracy grew by a factor of 10 in just 5 years, thanks to the Revolution, which seized the property of the Church and sold it or taxed it, thus generating revenue that the King could never have dreamed of. The dramatic expansion of the bureaucracy almost allowed the French to catch up with the fast growing bureaucracy of Britain. Likewise, the Communist Revolution in Russia, after 1917, brought in a complex system of committees vastly more convoluted than anything the Tsar could have ever dreamed of. See here for some speculations on this theme: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/is-communism-inevitable https://demodexio.substack.com/p/is-communism-inevitable