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I legitimately don’t understand how companies get to this point, especially when the C-suite is full of founders (or maybe that’s worse?). I can understand how

I legitimately don’t understand how companies get to this point, especially when the C-suite is full of founders (or maybe that’s worse?). I can understand how people want to make their bosses happy, and that can cascade into constant bullshitting, but at some point why doesn’t the CTO / CEO / etc. say “I’m going to go have conversations with the workers to get their perspective?” The U.S. Nuclear Navy, for all of its many flaws, gets this right. Generally at least once a year, the head of Naval Reactors - a four-star Admiral - tours every vessel, which may include a brief underway period. During this tour, the Admiral will talk to the engine room watchstanders, with all senior leadership removed. They’ll ask how daily life is, what they find challenging or annoying, what they like, etc. There’s obviously a lot of self-filtering (though sometimes not - Navy Nukes are not known for their social graces) that occurs, and also what a junior watchstander finds annoying may just be a required part of the job, but some useful signal is gathered. Even outside of the nuclear program, one standout example was Admiral Zumwalt, who as Chief of Naval Operations implemented 70 different changes over his tenure as a direct result of talking to sailors, all of which were designed to improve quality of life, efficiency, or communication.

cbg0 7mo ago
> at some point why doesn’t the CTO / CEO / etc. say “I’m going to go have conversations with the workers to get their perspective?” Why would you when all of the reports you're getting from your managers are 5/5 stars and "everything's great". Once an organization gets large enough, the information that reaches C-suite has been filtered through so many layers that it barely resembles reality anymore, even when you remove malice from the equation.
- sgarland 7mo ago
  Because if you’re in charge of an org, you should occasionally validate what you’re being told? Is this an uncommon belief or something?
  - Quarrelsome 7mo ago
    its extremely hard if you're being lied to when your org is so vast that trusting delegated responsible individuals is the realistic way of managing it. Also its probably not going to factor into your bonus.
  - anal_reactor 7mo ago
    Surprisingly, it is. If you find a problem then the value of your shares drops.
    - sdeframond 7mo ago
      Still, better than letting the problem find you.
apexalpha 7mo ago
At my org the CIO knows fuck all about computers. Great guy on a personal level but wouldn't be able to quit Vim even if the lives of his 3 kids depended on it. He was put there because he was with the company for years before and he led other departments fine. Since he can't evaluate anything IT related himself he relies on 'advice' from the people beneath him who try to get the most budget for their departments by overstating how important they are. This layer beneath him is mostly product managers, RTEs etc... (We are SAFE Agile! Developer Velocity, Woohoo!). They also don't know much about computer and if they do it's very domain specific, such as SAP or so. These people try to fight for budget by overstating their importance. They demonstrate this by having more apps and more people relying on them. "Look we handled 2000 support tickets, the company would grind to a halt without us!". Never mind that having 2000 support tickets is a bad thing. And also mostly caused by their shitty apps. This keeps going on and on. I have 10 years experience as engineer and wanted to see "the other side" but it's so exhausting. A few months back a 'privacy officer' asked why the first and last names of our employees were in the Active Directory and ordered them to reduce the privacy risks. They failed to specify what risks. Couldn't articulate them even when asked. They also didn't say when the risk would've been reduced 'enough'. The team was panicking as they were now 'non-compliant' with company policy. I had to intervene personally to make sure this single directive didn't derail our entire company.
- sgarland 7mo ago
  > Never mind that having 2000 support tickets is a bad thing. And also mostly caused by their shitty apps. I’m constantly having to fight people to not add new, inactionable alerts as knee-jerk reactions to incidents. I swear the thought process is “an incident happened, we added a new alert - look, we’re proactive!” instead of, you know, fixing the root causes.
  - apexalpha 7mo ago
    When WeTransfer suddenty changed it's policy for AI training last summer the entire CISO department panicked and had the entire website blocked. In traffic we could see that 12% of the company used the site daily, transferring gigabytes of data between our engineers and contractors. I asked why we didn't just start paying WeTransfer since it's so widely used and this would solve the problem, too. They said they should just use the internal SharePoint file sharing tool. I asked how this would work since most of WeTransfer use was us receiving docs, not sharing them. They said the contractors should just update their policy, and that was the end of the debate. Last time I spoke to a field engineer he said they mostly use private mailboxes now mostly since they "can't even copy something in Outlook anymore" on company laptops. I decided not to report this to CISO and these docs are workorders and pictures demonstrating workorders have been completed. They're irrelevant one day later.
arjie 7mo ago
The truth is you can't get anyone to do what you want. You can try to make them do what you want but they're someone else in the end. Sir Walter Raleigh's beloved friend and lieutenant was Lawrence Kemys. When Raleigh was pardoned and sent back to find El Dorado, the conditions set were that he should not attack the Spaniards. He goes out to South America, and puts a detachment ashore led by his close friend and confidant - as aligned a person as you can imagine. Kemys attacks a Spanish outpost against express orders, gets Raleigh's son killed, returns to Raleigh to inform him of this, and promptly commits suicide. None of this is going to help Raleigh, though, because the conditions of his pardon now having been violated he is executed as promised.
edent 7mo ago
> I legitimately don’t understand how companies get to this point The people who start a company care deeply about the problem they're trying to solve. The first N employees also care - they're willing to risk working for start-up because they can see the potential and want to help. But then you hire, say, an accountant. The accountant doesn't care about your mission. You are just another client to them. You need someone to staff the phone or sweep the floors or design the logo or whatever. Why should they care? You're not paying them to care, they're not invested in the company nor its success, and they believe nothing they do for the company will change their personal fortunes. Then, before you know it, you have a couple of floors filled with people who have no incentive to care. It is incredibly difficult to run an organisation where everyone is mission driven.
- drugstorecowboy 7mo ago
  I think you meant to say "It is incredibly less profitable to run an organization where everyone is mission driven."
interludead 7mo ago
I think a big part of it is that, at some scale, leaders stop lacking access to reality and start lacking incentive to engage with it
burnt-resistor 7mo ago
It can happen when a leader allows their subordinates to build a Truman Show reality distortion field around them because these leaders fail to ask questions of people on the front lines or in different levels of the organization, talk to actual customers, and try to use the product or service themselves. Trust but verify. Leaders can never allow themselves to be completely isolated from reality mediated entirely by their subordinates.
SenHeng 7mo ago
How about a Cybersecurity minister who has never used a computer before, in 2018? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46222026 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46222026
- adammarples 7mo ago
  The only man who has 100% cybersecurity, respect

cbg0 7mo ago

> at some point why doesn’t the CTO / CEO / etc. say “I’m going to go have conversations with the workers to get their perspective?” Why would you when all of the reports you're getting from your managers are 5/5 stars and "everything's great". Once an organization gets large enough, the information that reaches C-suite has been filtered through so many layers that it barely resembles reality anymore, even when you remove malice from the equation.

sgarland 7mo ago
Because if you’re in charge of an org, you should occasionally validate what you’re being told? Is this an uncommon belief or something?
- Quarrelsome 7mo ago
  its extremely hard if you're being lied to when your org is so vast that trusting delegated responsible individuals is the realistic way of managing it. Also its probably not going to factor into your bonus.
- anal_reactor 7mo ago
  Surprisingly, it is. If you find a problem then the value of your shares drops.
  - sdeframond 7mo ago
    Still, better than letting the problem find you.

apexalpha 7mo ago

At my org the CIO knows fuck all about computers. Great guy on a personal level but wouldn't be able to quit Vim even if the lives of his 3 kids depended on it. He was put there because he was with the company for years before and he led other departments fine. Since he can't evaluate anything IT related himself he relies on 'advice' from the people beneath him who try to get the most budget for their departments by overstating how important they are. This layer beneath him is mostly product managers, RTEs etc... (We are SAFE Agile! Developer Velocity, Woohoo!). They also don't know much about computer and if they do it's very domain specific, such as SAP or so. These people try to fight for budget by overstating their importance. They demonstrate this by having more apps and more people relying on them. "Look we handled 2000 support tickets, the company would grind to a halt without us!". Never mind that having 2000 support tickets is a bad thing. And also mostly caused by their shitty apps. This keeps going on and on. I have 10 years experience as engineer and wanted to see "the other side" but it's so exhausting. A few months back a 'privacy officer' asked why the first and last names of our employees were in the Active Directory and ordered them to reduce the privacy risks. They failed to specify what risks. Couldn't articulate them even when asked. They also didn't say when the risk would've been reduced 'enough'. The team was panicking as they were now 'non-compliant' with company policy. I had to intervene personally to make sure this single directive didn't derail our entire company.

sgarland 7mo ago
> Never mind that having 2000 support tickets is a bad thing. And also mostly caused by their shitty apps. I’m constantly having to fight people to not add new, inactionable alerts as knee-jerk reactions to incidents. I swear the thought process is “an incident happened, we added a new alert - look, we’re proactive!” instead of, you know, fixing the root causes.
- apexalpha 7mo ago
  When WeTransfer suddenty changed it's policy for AI training last summer the entire CISO department panicked and had the entire website blocked. In traffic we could see that 12% of the company used the site daily, transferring gigabytes of data between our engineers and contractors. I asked why we didn't just start paying WeTransfer since it's so widely used and this would solve the problem, too. They said they should just use the internal SharePoint file sharing tool. I asked how this would work since most of WeTransfer use was us receiving docs, not sharing them. They said the contractors should just update their policy, and that was the end of the debate. Last time I spoke to a field engineer he said they mostly use private mailboxes now mostly since they "can't even copy something in Outlook anymore" on company laptops. I decided not to report this to CISO and these docs are workorders and pictures demonstrating workorders have been completed. They're irrelevant one day later.

arjie 7mo ago

The truth is you can't get anyone to do what you want. You can try to make them do what you want but they're someone else in the end. Sir Walter Raleigh's beloved friend and lieutenant was Lawrence Kemys. When Raleigh was pardoned and sent back to find El Dorado, the conditions set were that he should not attack the Spaniards. He goes out to South America, and puts a detachment ashore led by his close friend and confidant - as aligned a person as you can imagine. Kemys attacks a Spanish outpost against express orders, gets Raleigh's son killed, returns to Raleigh to inform him of this, and promptly commits suicide. None of this is going to help Raleigh, though, because the conditions of his pardon now having been violated he is executed as promised.

edent 7mo ago

> I legitimately don’t understand how companies get to this point The people who start a company care deeply about the problem they're trying to solve. The first N employees also care - they're willing to risk working for start-up because they can see the potential and want to help. But then you hire, say, an accountant. The accountant doesn't care about your mission. You are just another client to them. You need someone to staff the phone or sweep the floors or design the logo or whatever. Why should they care? You're not paying them to care, they're not invested in the company nor its success, and they believe nothing they do for the company will change their personal fortunes. Then, before you know it, you have a couple of floors filled with people who have no incentive to care. It is incredibly difficult to run an organisation where everyone is mission driven.

drugstorecowboy 7mo ago
I think you meant to say "It is incredibly less profitable to run an organization where everyone is mission driven."

interludead 7mo ago

I think a big part of it is that, at some scale, leaders stop lacking access to reality and start lacking incentive to engage with it

burnt-resistor 7mo ago

It can happen when a leader allows their subordinates to build a Truman Show reality distortion field around them because these leaders fail to ask questions of people on the front lines or in different levels of the organization, talk to actual customers, and try to use the product or service themselves. Trust but verify. Leaders can never allow themselves to be completely isolated from reality mediated entirely by their subordinates.

SenHeng 7mo ago

How about a Cybersecurity minister who has never used a computer before, in 2018? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46222026 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46222026

adammarples 7mo ago
The only man who has 100% cybersecurity, respect