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Large corporations are basically run like planned economies in communist states. 5 year plans, leadership detached from reality on the ground, tons of internal

Large corporations are basically run like planned economies in communist states. 5 year plans, leadership detached from reality on the ground, tons of internal propaganda, lots of pretending that things are great, empire building by the mid levels and so on. There may be pockets of "true" agile here and there but I believe a large corporation simply can't be run in "true" agile manner. They are way too controlling to really empower their workers.

santoshalper 3y ago
Communism is essentially corporatism for nation states.
- dwd 3y ago
  No, that's fascism; Read Mussolini's manifesto. Fascism is basically Communism (as practiced); corporations own the means of production rather than the government, and it uses religion/nationalism rather than humanism/atheism. They are the same in kind, but different in degree. You could even say China under Deng Xiaoping and later Xi blended the two. Agile is many ways does smack of Communism: - It proposes egalitarianism (skin in the game), but generally leads to micromanagement/totalitarian situations. - If it fails it's because you didn't do the "real" Agile. - If adherents often speak/act in cultist/religious ways.
  - santoshalper 3y ago
    That's fair, I think I was making the mistake that so many others have - mistaking Sovietism with Communism.
    - dwd 3y ago
      Which is similar to people confusing Agile with agile. There's a perverse Newspeak aspect to the way agile is implemented as Agile. Need to go back to core values like: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools."
__loam 3y ago
Does anyone else think it's weird that we have to submit ourselves to these little authoritarian fiefdoms or starve?
- xyzzy123 3y ago
  No because the desire to know and control what's going to happen is primarily driven by finance needs, and they're also the people who pay you.
  - piva00 3y ago
    They can only pay me because many others like me deliver value, generating money to pay us. Is a symbiotic relationship, the money only exists due to labour.
    - xboxnolifes 3y ago
      Your argument seems to be that these "fiefdoms" aren't providing you anything and just taking a portion of your generated value. The obvious follow up is then: why don't you quit and go solo then? Clearly if they're entirely parasitic leaving is strictly beneficial to you.
      - alexvoda 3y ago
        Not so, because of collective fitness. Being part of a large but parasitized (ill) group is more fit in the evolutionary sense than being healthy but alone.
      - piva00 3y ago
        I used the word "symbiotic" and not "parasitic", in a symbiosis there are mutual benefits: while labour is exploited and I only get a portion of the generated value I also get the benefit of not risking myself going solo, nor having all the stresses of having to cover sales, marketing, product development, and so on. It is still the same: the value extracted is only possible to exist because of many like me, doing labour to create added value which can be sold, without this there's no management class, there's no administrative tasks to perform around the work. My comment is a retort to this mindset: > and they're also the people who pay you. They are only able to pay me because of the work done by many like me, their power can only exist through this conduit so bending over to view the ones in control of capital as "above me" being the "who pay you" is absurd in my worldview. They have their reason to exist but need to respect that without us they are nothing, absolutely nothing. Just like me without people taking care of a business would be in a less comfortable place. Again, it's symbiotic and I'm just fighting the notion that someone should shut up or think of themselves as lesser because they are being paid by someone, that's only possible through a mutual relationship.
xyzzy123 3y ago
The tension is fundamental and comes from a perfectly reasonable desire to know how much things will cost, how long things will take and what they will get at the end. Adequately communicating, negotiating and managing the uncertainty is the core part of agile, "do what you want" isn't going to fly, that's why teams don't have complete agency on process. I agree the politics and "fog of war" in large companies is tiresome and wasteful but it seems to be almost unavoidable once you get to a certain size.
- opportune 3y ago
  Good take. Just want to add that the problem is “how long things will take” is always a guess when formulated as a single number or date and in reality something more like a probability distribution subject to many foreseen and unforeseen forces. That’s where the fundamental mismatch between corporate planning and Agile lies. Agile is supposed to be resilient to known and unknown unknowns, but corporate planning usually isn’t - as you mention due to very real constraints like cost and opportunity costs and so forth. It’s why you essentially can’t do “true-agile” in basically any corporate setting IMO.
  - tonyarkles 3y ago
    Back when I was solo consulting and not inside the sausage factory I would provide cost ranges to clients who wanted fixed price (vs hourly). If they wanted a firm price they got the +3-sigma estimate. After doing that for a few years and successfully coming in within budget but not always on the timeline people were expecting I split it into separate estimate ranges for both cost and schedule. It took some time to really nail down how many billable hours there would actually be in a week, which is why cost and calendar had to be decoupled. I do still laugh about the fact that I could take a complex problem and break it down with hour estimates well enough to not end up being significantly over or under at the project level but then struggled really hard at figuring out how many hours there actually were in a day to put the calendar together. There’s always things that pop up that rob calendar time and virtually never things that free up calendar time.
- mr_toad 3y ago
theteapot 3y ago
> ... I believe a large corporation simply can't be run in "true" agile manner. Who was suggesting they could or should be?
- wredue 3y ago
  “Every single mid level and up corporate manager on the planet” immediately comes to mind.
mangamadaiyan 3y ago
That is an accurate summary indeed. I'd posit that this is not necessarily a feature of large corporations; I've been in smaller places (startups, to boot) where I observed almost all of what you've described. It takes a certain combination of sociopathic, psychopathic, and apathetic individuals in the right places to make this happen -- and they're almost always present in the right (wrong?) places, regardless of size.

santoshalper 3y ago

Communism is essentially corporatism for nation states.

dwd 3y ago
No, that's fascism; Read Mussolini's manifesto. Fascism is basically Communism (as practiced); corporations own the means of production rather than the government, and it uses religion/nationalism rather than humanism/atheism. They are the same in kind, but different in degree. You could even say China under Deng Xiaoping and later Xi blended the two. Agile is many ways does smack of Communism: - It proposes egalitarianism (skin in the game), but generally leads to micromanagement/totalitarian situations. - If it fails it's because you didn't do the "real" Agile. - If adherents often speak/act in cultist/religious ways.
- santoshalper 3y ago
  That's fair, I think I was making the mistake that so many others have - mistaking Sovietism with Communism.
  - dwd 3y ago
    Which is similar to people confusing Agile with agile. There's a perverse Newspeak aspect to the way agile is implemented as Agile. Need to go back to core values like: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools."

__loam 3y ago

Does anyone else think it's weird that we have to submit ourselves to these little authoritarian fiefdoms or starve?

xyzzy123 3y ago
No because the desire to know and control what's going to happen is primarily driven by finance needs, and they're also the people who pay you.
- piva00 3y ago
  They can only pay me because many others like me deliver value, generating money to pay us. Is a symbiotic relationship, the money only exists due to labour.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    Your argument seems to be that these "fiefdoms" aren't providing you anything and just taking a portion of your generated value. The obvious follow up is then: why don't you quit and go solo then? Clearly if they're entirely parasitic leaving is strictly beneficial to you.
    - alexvoda 3y ago
      Not so, because of collective fitness. Being part of a large but parasitized (ill) group is more fit in the evolutionary sense than being healthy but alone.
    - piva00 3y ago
      I used the word "symbiotic" and not "parasitic", in a symbiosis there are mutual benefits: while labour is exploited and I only get a portion of the generated value I also get the benefit of not risking myself going solo, nor having all the stresses of having to cover sales, marketing, product development, and so on. It is still the same: the value extracted is only possible to exist because of many like me, doing labour to create added value which can be sold, without this there's no management class, there's no administrative tasks to perform around the work. My comment is a retort to this mindset: > and they're also the people who pay you. They are only able to pay me because of the work done by many like me, their power can only exist through this conduit so bending over to view the ones in control of capital as "above me" being the "who pay you" is absurd in my worldview. They have their reason to exist but need to respect that without us they are nothing, absolutely nothing. Just like me without people taking care of a business would be in a less comfortable place. Again, it's symbiotic and I'm just fighting the notion that someone should shut up or think of themselves as lesser because they are being paid by someone, that's only possible through a mutual relationship.

xyzzy123 3y ago

The tension is fundamental and comes from a perfectly reasonable desire to know how much things will cost, how long things will take and what they will get at the end. Adequately communicating, negotiating and managing the uncertainty is the core part of agile, "do what you want" isn't going to fly, that's why teams don't have complete agency on process. I agree the politics and "fog of war" in large companies is tiresome and wasteful but it seems to be almost unavoidable once you get to a certain size.

opportune 3y ago
Good take. Just want to add that the problem is “how long things will take” is always a guess when formulated as a single number or date and in reality something more like a probability distribution subject to many foreseen and unforeseen forces. That’s where the fundamental mismatch between corporate planning and Agile lies. Agile is supposed to be resilient to known and unknown unknowns, but corporate planning usually isn’t - as you mention due to very real constraints like cost and opportunity costs and so forth. It’s why you essentially can’t do “true-agile” in basically any corporate setting IMO.
- tonyarkles 3y ago
  Back when I was solo consulting and not inside the sausage factory I would provide cost ranges to clients who wanted fixed price (vs hourly). If they wanted a firm price they got the +3-sigma estimate. After doing that for a few years and successfully coming in within budget but not always on the timeline people were expecting I split it into separate estimate ranges for both cost and schedule. It took some time to really nail down how many billable hours there would actually be in a week, which is why cost and calendar had to be decoupled. I do still laugh about the fact that I could take a complex problem and break it down with hour estimates well enough to not end up being significantly over or under at the project level but then struggled really hard at figuring out how many hours there actually were in a day to put the calendar together. There’s always things that pop up that rob calendar time and virtually never things that free up calendar time.
mr_toad 3y ago

theteapot 3y ago

> ... I believe a large corporation simply can't be run in "true" agile manner. Who was suggesting they could or should be?

wredue 3y ago
“Every single mid level and up corporate manager on the planet” immediately comes to mind.

mangamadaiyan 3y ago

That is an accurate summary indeed. I'd posit that this is not necessarily a feature of large corporations; I've been in smaller places (startups, to boot) where I observed almost all of what you've described. It takes a certain combination of sociopathic, psychopathic, and apathetic individuals in the right places to make this happen -- and they're almost always present in the right (wrong?) places, regardless of size.