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I think the article is arguing that if you build the relationship, you can involve yourself into these conversations early enough to direct them the way that yo

I think the article is arguing that if you build the relationship, you can involve yourself into these conversations early enough to direct them the way that your idea would go. In your cases, for example: 1. Recognizing early enough that this Hot New Thing incentive is here and figuring out how your Good New Thing can live with the Hot New Thing 2. Helping show the Old Bad Thing is unworkable for your Good New Thing 3. Understanding that the org cares about New Buzzword and framing your work under those pretenses.

some_guy_nobel 1y ago
What about RTO? New 'ai-first' genai initiatives?
- eawgewag 1y ago
  I mean sometimes you are outruled. That's part of recognizing politics, in my opinion. If your VCs want you to do GenAI and you think it's dumb, you are overruled. But you can still benefit from this in a lot of ways. You just need to recognize what you can benefit from.
  - some_guy_nobel 1y ago
    Sure,though this stands in contrast to the author's thesis: "It’s the loud person who’s wrong getting their way because the quiet person who’s right won’t speak up."
    - eawgewag 1y ago
      Politics involves understanding the hierarchy though. And understanding when you are overruled. If the hierarchy is saying "it's time for GenAI", you have the option to participate in a way that raises your profile and positively influences the company (involving politics), if you hate GenAI so much you can leave, or you can stay silently and opt out of the process. These are all choices. Personally I'm fine with my VCs making strategic decisions since they trust me to make technical decisions. So we can do GenAI, we'll just do it in a way that works and is sustainable for the codebase. You should realize that as a technical person your domain is not business strategy. Similarly I'd be shocked if any VC ever came in and told me "to use PostgreSQL" or some other nonsense. If you want to be the person deciding what we build, go into Product.
      - some_guy_nobel 1y ago
        I will repeat again, this is in direct opposition to the author's thesis: "It’s the loud person who’s wrong getting their way because the quiet person who’s right won’t speak up." Given that, I'm not sure what your message is in response to. I will say that 'learn to parcipate in the hierarchy' and 'everything is a choice, just quit!' are hardly solutions at all, and read more as truisms. I'll add that I'm not sure what VCs have to do with anything here, though as someone who formally took VC funding, I wouldn't want them making technical or strategic decisions on my behalf, and I suspect the majority of founders (and others on my cap table) would agree.
        eawgewag 1y ago
        I think if you're in the position of being a founder, this article isn't for you. And our conversation isn't really talking about the same thing, which explains the lack of common ground here.
garciasn 1y ago
I think the article is great, in theory; it just NEVER works this way in practice, unless you may be in a technical organization. There are ALWAYS business reasons that cause technical projects to fail. We regularly see the articles about the failure rate of technical projects all the time on the front page. Why is this? Because the number and weight of the business folk almost always outnumber the technical. You can be the best fucking political engineering wrangler in the world; building relationships, taking people along for the ride, helping others gain understanding and those projects still fail.
- circlefavshape 1y ago
  > There are ALWAYS business reasons that cause technical projects to fail So it's always business folks' fault, and never the nerds' fault? My experience has been different (full disclosure - professional nerd for 30 years)
  - garciasn 1y ago
    I appreciate you replying. My intent was never to place blame; instead, it was to point out that while the article's author suggests technical folks need to play the game better, I feel that it won't matter and getting the rest of a non-technical-first org along for the ride is more difficult than just being a solid political player.
    - dwohnitmok 1y ago
      The article's point is that "the rest of a non-technical-first org along for the ride" is indeed playing politics (or at least a subset thereof).
  - lmm 1y ago
    For the overwhelming majority of day-to-day, line-of-business software, the nerds are a commodity and the project succeeds or fails on how good or bad the business folks are. They should get the blame for the failures but also the credit for the successes. For the stuff that is genuinely pushing the technical envelope, it's possible for the nerds to make the difference. In those cases you do see the projects fail for technical reasons like "the code couldn't scale to the required number of users" or "the technical functionality never worked reliably", and those kind of failures are the nerds' fault. But that's the minority of failures IME.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

some_guy_nobel 1y ago

What about RTO? New 'ai-first' genai initiatives?

eawgewag 1y ago
I mean sometimes you are outruled. That's part of recognizing politics, in my opinion. If your VCs want you to do GenAI and you think it's dumb, you are overruled. But you can still benefit from this in a lot of ways. You just need to recognize what you can benefit from.
- some_guy_nobel 1y ago
  Sure,though this stands in contrast to the author's thesis: "It’s the loud person who’s wrong getting their way because the quiet person who’s right won’t speak up."
  - eawgewag 1y ago
    Politics involves understanding the hierarchy though. And understanding when you are overruled. If the hierarchy is saying "it's time for GenAI", you have the option to participate in a way that raises your profile and positively influences the company (involving politics), if you hate GenAI so much you can leave, or you can stay silently and opt out of the process. These are all choices. Personally I'm fine with my VCs making strategic decisions since they trust me to make technical decisions. So we can do GenAI, we'll just do it in a way that works and is sustainable for the codebase. You should realize that as a technical person your domain is not business strategy. Similarly I'd be shocked if any VC ever came in and told me "to use PostgreSQL" or some other nonsense. If you want to be the person deciding what we build, go into Product.
    - some_guy_nobel 1y ago
      I will repeat again, this is in direct opposition to the author's thesis: "It’s the loud person who’s wrong getting their way because the quiet person who’s right won’t speak up." Given that, I'm not sure what your message is in response to. I will say that 'learn to parcipate in the hierarchy' and 'everything is a choice, just quit!' are hardly solutions at all, and read more as truisms. I'll add that I'm not sure what VCs have to do with anything here, though as someone who formally took VC funding, I wouldn't want them making technical or strategic decisions on my behalf, and I suspect the majority of founders (and others on my cap table) would agree.
      - eawgewag 1y ago
        I think if you're in the position of being a founder, this article isn't for you. And our conversation isn't really talking about the same thing, which explains the lack of common ground here.

garciasn 1y ago

I think the article is great, in theory; it just NEVER works this way in practice, unless you may be in a technical organization. There are ALWAYS business reasons that cause technical projects to fail. We regularly see the articles about the failure rate of technical projects all the time on the front page. Why is this? Because the number and weight of the business folk almost always outnumber the technical. You can be the best fucking political engineering wrangler in the world; building relationships, taking people along for the ride, helping others gain understanding and those projects still fail.

circlefavshape 1y ago
> There are ALWAYS business reasons that cause technical projects to fail So it's always business folks' fault, and never the nerds' fault? My experience has been different (full disclosure - professional nerd for 30 years)
- garciasn 1y ago
  I appreciate you replying. My intent was never to place blame; instead, it was to point out that while the article's author suggests technical folks need to play the game better, I feel that it won't matter and getting the rest of a non-technical-first org along for the ride is more difficult than just being a solid political player.
  - dwohnitmok 1y ago
    The article's point is that "the rest of a non-technical-first org along for the ride" is indeed playing politics (or at least a subset thereof).
- lmm 1y ago
  For the overwhelming majority of day-to-day, line-of-business software, the nerds are a commodity and the project succeeds or fails on how good or bad the business folks are. They should get the blame for the failures but also the credit for the successes. For the stuff that is genuinely pushing the technical envelope, it's possible for the nerds to make the difference. In those cases you do see the projects fail for technical reasons like "the code couldn't scale to the required number of users" or "the technical functionality never worked reliably", and those kind of failures are the nerds' fault. But that's the minority of failures IME.

deleted 1y ago

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