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I've wondered about the connection between organizations at the human level, and entropy. Nothing can avoid the increase in entropy, not even teams and their wo
by proc0 3y ago
I've wondered about the connection between organizations at the human level, and entropy. Nothing can avoid the increase in entropy, not even teams and their work culture. The processes used get old and unwieldy, domain knowledge becomes fragmented, features take longer and have more bugs, etc.
Perhaps this is inevitable, but maybe organizations could become aware of the changes in entropy and try to do the equivalent of maintenance and refactoring at the organizational level. There is probably some of this already happening, but I wonder if information theory can be applied at the people level to optimize and prevent increases in entropy.
- vineyardmike 3y ago“Refactoring at the org level” sounds like re-orgs and layoffs. I think it’s unavoidable. You hire to grow, but growth changes you. You can’t layoff to un-grow and return to former self because they layoffs take a toll.
- twojobsoneboss 3y agoWe need UBI and less dependence on private enterprises for basic human needs like income to survive and healthcare Would give both companies and individuals more flexibility and dynamism
- deprecative 3y agoBut then lazy "people" would benefit and we don't like that.
- twojobsoneboss 3y agoThe amount of time and effort people spend looking at others instead of themselves is maddening
- astrange 3y agoThere have been a lot of trials of UBI now and the evidence is very strong that… it doesn't affect employment much either way. So it doesn't make people lazy, but it's probably a disappointment to people who don't believe in work. In the end, positional wealth matters about as much as absolute wealth, so people still want to work even if they can already pay for food.
- deprecative 3y agoI hope we'll get there. I see studies and reports of things like UBI and 4 day work weeks and even basic things folks in EU countries get and it's honestly difficult to ever envision any of it actually coming to the US for most of us regular folk.
- astrange 3y agoAmericans are significantly higher earning than Europeans, who are bad at running their economy and keep doing austerity. This is especially true for lower wage Americans who've seen great wage growth since 2019.
- deprecative 3y agoThey seem to be doing relatively fine. They spend less on stuff that we do and get more for it. Also, the world is bigger than the US and EU.
- proc0 3y agoThat's true, although if the analogy holds then it depends on the initial quality of the teams, but I have no idea if there is any solution around incentivizing companies to build long-lasting teams.