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Possibly a better alternative than, say, Bridgewater when Ray Dalio was in charge. Adherence to principles was part of a high percentage of decision making conv

Possibly a better alternative than, say, Bridgewater when Ray Dalio was in charge. Adherence to principles was part of a high percentage of decision making conversations, but since is book is so big, they might be best compared to theological arguments in the middle ages, with different specialists arguing with different quotes from different parts of the book. All in all, once an organization gets big enough, power does what power wants, and power wants what is good for them in the short term, regardless of what is good for the organization. That's how most large companies end up spending very large amounts of money on things that wouldn't actually pass muster to anyone aiming for the organization's best interest and with actual knowledge of what is being accomplished. You see new, wide eyed PMs approaching budgeting processes as if the goal really was profitability, or customer satisfaction, or something reasonable. But if they are going to stay as PMs for long, they better realize quick that the vast majority of project proposals have only a passing interest in what will be accomplished, and are mainly about making sure every sub-organization gets fed sufficient money to not lose people, or possibly even grow if the manager is well liked. All the efforts in documentation and justification are just theater.

Aurornis 1y ago
The organizational function you describe where departments become self-serving, empire building, and forget that they need to produce something with ROI for the company, felt rampant during the 2010s. Then the easy money stopped and those companies were forced to look at the ROI of different departments. Entire initiatives or departments were getting cut as soon as budgets stopped growing and executives had to check the reality of what was working for the company and what had become a jobs program. It’s really frustrating that layoffs are the corrective action. I know a lot of people who were good employees doing arguable good work, but who got hired into departments doing dumb things. As for junior PMs: I’d be ecstatic if they arrived with a pure profit motive. Lately they arrive full of ideas from Reddit, Twitter, podcasts, and books where they think the only product that matters is building their resume to get the next job. Half of them are min-maxing their effort to resume appeal ratio with every decision. Possibly anecdotally but the junior PMs I’ve had to work with lately are also very obviously doing variations of overemployment where they’re either working on their friends’ startup or just blatantly taking multiple remote jobs and being unavailable half the time. I don’t know why PM roles attract the worst of this, but’s it seems to be the target role for people who want to abuse our remote openings. I should note that great PMs are a massive boost to a team, it’s just getting harder to find them.
- lazide 1y ago
  Like a good soldier being conscripted into a shit army, life ain’t fair. Always brutal to see, though.
- Muromec 1y ago
  > Half of them are min-maxing their effort to resume appeal ratio with every decision. If it’s good for the company to operate like that, it can’t be bad for an employee, right? Moral corruption started from the top and once it reaches bottom, it’s all about proverbal catalytic converters off the company truck. Then the whole thing collapses of course
neilv 1y ago
> All in all, once an organization gets big enough, power does what power wants, and power wants what is good for them in the short term, regardless of what is good for the organization. This has the ring of truth. Has anyone solved this problem? Is anyone trying to solve this problem? (Or is everyone in a position to work on the problem just playing the game?)
- marcus_holmes 1y ago
  Valve? Though I have no idea how they're going now with the anarchy-as-an-organisational-structure thing these days.
  - bluesroo 1y ago
    I remember in the 2010s reading about them and also reading that there are de facto hierarchies within Valve for given projects, even if they aren’t explicitly laid out.
    - neilv 1y ago
      It would be interesting if the de facto hierarchies arose entirely by bottom-up merit (not, say, approval from above), and were flexible and ephemeral, not self-perpetuating. People could self-organize, on-demand, for a task, and structure whatever hierarchy was appropriate, based on somewhat optimal resource allocations for that task. (Example: Person A might normally be the most experienced at facilitating the group's coordination, but A is providing key technical expertise for this task. Person B isn't critical path on this task, and has facilitating skills and interest in that role, so B volunteers for that role for the duration of the task.)
- AnotherGoodName 1y ago
  If i’m honest I feel the issue is all the humans with human motivations. An AI run organisation may solve it?
  - neilv 1y ago
PaulHoule 1y ago
I loved what Dalio wrote before Principles (like his white paper for All Weather) but Principles seemed to be mad self-aggrandizement done on such a scale to get a "Emperor's Clothes" kind of reaction from people. My sources were telling me about how Dalio was driving David Ferrucci crazy [1] trying to make an AI that could enforce Principles before I read about it in Bloomberg. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ferrucci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ferrucci
seanhunter 1y ago
> All in all, once an organization gets big enough, power does what power wants, There is an interesting hypothesis for this in the book "The Evolution of Civilizations" by Carroll Quigley[1]. Basically his idea in the book is that as organizations (or civilizations) get beyond a certain critical mass, people start to lose connection with the collective goals that originally united them and start to coalesce around internal goals related to their smaller unit. So this in a company is when you go from everyone devoting all their efforts to the shared mission and instead working on team goals or (worse) internal politics that may or may not be aligned with the bigger goal. It's a very interesting book. He's a controversial figure because some of his (other) writings are popular among conspiracy theorists. I haven't read that stuff, but this certainly made sense to me at the time that I read it. [1] https://ia801601.us.archive.org/4/items/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionTo/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionToHistoricalAnalysis1979.pdf https://ia801601.us.archive.org/4/items/CarrollQuigley-TheEv...
jollyllama 1y ago
> they might be best compared to theological arguments in the middle ages, with different specialists arguing with different quotes from different parts of the book. > power does what power wants It would be nice if, in more cases, we could dispense with fictions such as the former and simply acknowledge the latter, in a transparent way, and move on.

Aurornis 1y ago

The organizational function you describe where departments become self-serving, empire building, and forget that they need to produce something with ROI for the company, felt rampant during the 2010s. Then the easy money stopped and those companies were forced to look at the ROI of different departments. Entire initiatives or departments were getting cut as soon as budgets stopped growing and executives had to check the reality of what was working for the company and what had become a jobs program. It’s really frustrating that layoffs are the corrective action. I know a lot of people who were good employees doing arguable good work, but who got hired into departments doing dumb things. As for junior PMs: I’d be ecstatic if they arrived with a pure profit motive. Lately they arrive full of ideas from Reddit, Twitter, podcasts, and books where they think the only product that matters is building their resume to get the next job. Half of them are min-maxing their effort to resume appeal ratio with every decision. Possibly anecdotally but the junior PMs I’ve had to work with lately are also very obviously doing variations of overemployment where they’re either working on their friends’ startup or just blatantly taking multiple remote jobs and being unavailable half the time. I don’t know why PM roles attract the worst of this, but’s it seems to be the target role for people who want to abuse our remote openings. I should note that great PMs are a massive boost to a team, it’s just getting harder to find them.

lazide 1y ago
Like a good soldier being conscripted into a shit army, life ain’t fair. Always brutal to see, though.
Muromec 1y ago
> Half of them are min-maxing their effort to resume appeal ratio with every decision. If it’s good for the company to operate like that, it can’t be bad for an employee, right? Moral corruption started from the top and once it reaches bottom, it’s all about proverbal catalytic converters off the company truck. Then the whole thing collapses of course

neilv 1y ago

> All in all, once an organization gets big enough, power does what power wants, and power wants what is good for them in the short term, regardless of what is good for the organization. This has the ring of truth. Has anyone solved this problem? Is anyone trying to solve this problem? (Or is everyone in a position to work on the problem just playing the game?)

marcus_holmes 1y ago
Valve? Though I have no idea how they're going now with the anarchy-as-an-organisational-structure thing these days.
- bluesroo 1y ago
  I remember in the 2010s reading about them and also reading that there are de facto hierarchies within Valve for given projects, even if they aren’t explicitly laid out.
  - neilv 1y ago
    It would be interesting if the de facto hierarchies arose entirely by bottom-up merit (not, say, approval from above), and were flexible and ephemeral, not self-perpetuating. People could self-organize, on-demand, for a task, and structure whatever hierarchy was appropriate, based on somewhat optimal resource allocations for that task. (Example: Person A might normally be the most experienced at facilitating the group's coordination, but A is providing key technical expertise for this task. Person B isn't critical path on this task, and has facilitating skills and interest in that role, so B volunteers for that role for the duration of the task.)
AnotherGoodName 1y ago
If i’m honest I feel the issue is all the humans with human motivations. An AI run organisation may solve it?
- neilv 1y ago

PaulHoule 1y ago

I loved what Dalio wrote before Principles (like his white paper for All Weather) but Principles seemed to be mad self-aggrandizement done on such a scale to get a "Emperor's Clothes" kind of reaction from people. My sources were telling me about how Dalio was driving David Ferrucci crazy [1] trying to make an AI that could enforce Principles before I read about it in Bloomberg. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ferrucci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ferrucci

seanhunter 1y ago

> All in all, once an organization gets big enough, power does what power wants, There is an interesting hypothesis for this in the book "The Evolution of Civilizations" by Carroll Quigley[1]. Basically his idea in the book is that as organizations (or civilizations) get beyond a certain critical mass, people start to lose connection with the collective goals that originally united them and start to coalesce around internal goals related to their smaller unit. So this in a company is when you go from everyone devoting all their efforts to the shared mission and instead working on team goals or (worse) internal politics that may or may not be aligned with the bigger goal. It's a very interesting book. He's a controversial figure because some of his (other) writings are popular among conspiracy theorists. I haven't read that stuff, but this certainly made sense to me at the time that I read it. [1] https://ia801601.us.archive.org/4/items/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionTo/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionToHistoricalAnalysis1979.pdf https://ia801601.us.archive.org/4/items/CarrollQuigley-TheEv...

jollyllama 1y ago

> they might be best compared to theological arguments in the middle ages, with different specialists arguing with different quotes from different parts of the book. > power does what power wants It would be nice if, in more cases, we could dispense with fictions such as the former and simply acknowledge the latter, in a transparent way, and move on.