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If you start a company, how do you avoid anyone trying to practice those 7 "rules" and BS-ify your company? When some individuals do try this BS, can you corre
by neilv 3y ago
If you start a company, how do you avoid anyone trying to practice those 7 "rules" and BS-ify your company?
When some individuals do try this BS, can you correct or eject them fast enough, or is it inevitable that they take over?
Does BS-ification always start bottom-up, top-down, or it varies?
Is there a point at which a company as an entity consciously chooses BS for its operations (such as because there's a superior net result, or non-BS is deemed intractable or is not understood)?
- weregiraffe 3y agoKeep the headcount under the Dunbar number and be the only boss.
- mlrtime 3y agoI think this is the only answer here. If you want to keep control you have to keep the number low enough to see all the pieces being played. This doesn't stop the game from playing, but if you are founder/CEO you have more ability to shape.
- esafak 3y agoUse tools to help workers estimate their contribution. Basically try to automate performance evaluation. You can't completely, but you can give bullshitters less opportunity to embellish. And like the other commenter said, keep the company as small as possible. That way, each person's contribution is more prominent.
- neilv 3y ago> [...] productivity measurement [...] analytics [...] workers estimate their contribution [...] automate evaluation [...] Won't this inevitably lead to the same familiar BS? We already know that current tech workers start focusing on corporate BS metrics (e.g., FAANG interviews) while still in school. Even getting into the college was its own gauntlet of BS of resource-intensive hoop-jumping, questionable metrics, artifice, and self-promotion. CS students have already been told how to strategically pick their first job, how to work promotions, when to job-hop, to have no loyalty to project and team, to network, to self-promote, etc. By the time tech workers hit their first job, they've practically been engineered and filtered to be corporate BS machines. Part of the trick might be to un-train that. And to filter for people who can be un-trained.
- esafak 3y agoDon't use BS metrics, then; try to estimate long-term value. Hire an organizational economist.
- neilv 3y agoCompanies have been trying to do aligned metrics for a long time. And economists have been pulling theories out of their posteriors for a long time. I think this is still barking up the same BS tree.
- yencabulator 3y ago> Use tools to help workers estimate their contribution. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
- esafak 3y agoIs that true if your target is estimated long-term revenue?
- yencabulator 3y agoHow do you measure that for an individual worker?
- esafak 3y agoYou don't measure it; you model and estimate it. That's why I said "hire an organizational economist". It's a complex problem. The estimate would be fuzzy, but that's a given.
- bdw5204 3y agoOne major way to keep this out of your company is to come up with an interview process that can't be gamed or BSed. I suspect that people who are good at gaming their way through interviews are also likely to BS-ify your company.