2) "They're doing it because they believe that it works" implies a certain deliberateness and design. Having spoken with a few USMC recruiters back when I was a teenager, I'm very inclined to believe that they've put a lot of thought into this and that there is a fair amount written about how they use these harsh methods to solve the problems like "How do we give people from a wide range of social backgrounds the mental toughness to be able to do trigonometry in their heads while mortars are going off near them?"
This is quite different from refusing to deal with one employee who has a habit of randomly screaming at people about accounts receivable issues.
2) Your point here is that it's ok to engage in yelling if the decision was made "deliberately" and "by design"? I don't think we as a society should be micromanaging the internal working of a private organisation to that extent. We should be regulating organizations by their behaviors and outcomes, not their thought processes.
Lest anyone misunderstands me, I certainly do not advocate for yelling and belittling behavior. I don't think it makes for a productive workplace, and I would never want to work in one. But I do think there's an inconsistency wrt the wide latitude we give the armed forces. To the extent that such inconsistency is acceptable, I'm curious as to why.
Edit: Another example that just came to my mind, was many athletic coaches in sports like soccer. Specifically, the "greatest football manager ever", Alex Ferguson.
https://www.givemesport.com/1251440-sir-alex-ferguson-used-t...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/01/29/how-cristian...
The armed forces are specifically looking to replace any creative or independent thinking with responsiveness to the chain of command and willingness to commit acts of violence. Those are exceptional requirements which are generally in direct conflict with the productive functioning of any other organization.
I do think it’s worth inquiring into why we’ve created a society which necessitates such broad-scale weaponization of human beings, however.
There is even a term for it: Followership. Something I had never even heard of until I looked into joining ROTC, and realized they weren't looking for future leaders, but robots they could program.
In this case yelling was used to belittle everyone and secure more power. If you break someone down but never build them back up you have crushed people.
If we still want to turn people into killing machines than yelling is a tool to help that process.
“a few months” would be more accurate
What if you don't it then a new startup comes, starts doing it and soon they run your business and become an enormous success. Soon, you end up selling your business and your employees are left jobless.
One problem with employees is that they think that the business is going to keep afloat no matter what.
It's a bit like measuring chattel slavery by its economic output. The vastly more important issue — whether people would be able to own other people — is entirely orthogonal.
With regard to the armed forces analogy, consider too the difference in situations one is likely to encounter as a member of the military as opposed to a SV non-profit.
I think what's good in market differs from what is good in general. Those two are a different thing, you might want the market to accept your "good behavior" as default but that won't make it more profitable by default.
Granted, the proprietors of said business may not see it that way… but no one commenting on this article is representing the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. As consumers (or, in this case, donors) we should hold businesses to a standard of absolute good. The market incentive to be ethical only exists if we create it.
I think "it works" is often indistinguishable from "we've always done it that way," especially for organizations like the US military that have the budget and entrenched status that it's hard to imagine the organization suddenly not working. Maybe the thing you're doing is irrelevant and you might as well stop. Maybe you'd do better if you stopped. But you have no way of knowing.
Also the screaming happens mainly in basic training, as far as I understand.
Not only that, the more they clue in that they are operating in a consequence-free environment, the more pronounced their flaws become. Not only are the disincentives for bad behavior removed, but it also may feed their ego: every time they get away with something others wouldn't, it is like the organization is confirming how exceptional they are in other ways.
This almost seems analogous to the armed forces, where recruits are subjected to all forms of screaming, yelling and demeaning comments. I would never want to be in such an environment, but clearly, they are doing it because they believe that it works. Do we think that the Marines should be pressured into not yelling at recruits? If not, shouldn't other organizations be given the same latitude if they genuinely think it works best?