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Re:Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ... by austincheney on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @12:28PM (#23405286)
As a part time military officer (extreme authoritarian culture) and a corporate software guy (no interpersonal structures to be heard of) I find that this is a common assumption but it’s actually quite wrong.

First a little background:

The military is a highly confrontational culture, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In that kind of culture you tell people the disagreement immediately without tripping over pleasantries. It also means people are not easily offended until you try to waste their time or bullshit them with cleverness.

In the military people have to certify to do anything (super bureaucratic) so you generally know who your actual experts are without guessing and without a bunch of lying Dunning-Kruger insanity. It also means people are generally better about knowing their limitations and staying in their lane.

That being said, in the military I have no trouble or reservations about telling a superior they are wrong and why when it comes to an area I am well qualified. Knowing that the superior can immediately reconsider before making the authoritarian decisions of an iron fisted dictator. Superiors are generally better about considering the advise of their experts because the decision maker owns all risks and consequences.

In the corporate world you have to employ tact and really be careful how you deliver the message if the topic is not something already extremely objective. There is a lot of noise in the corporate world and far less interpersonal structure leaving everything open to interpretation. I find when I am at the day job communicating anything comprising more than two steps I go far beyond normal to be precise in my wording just to be clear.

There also exists a common phrase being thrown under the bus or more commonly known as a scapegoat. This does exist in the military but there are many conventions in place to catch those kinds of failures. Once that is identified it is a major reputation destroyer, which results in a huge occupational risk. It seems to more commonly apply in the corporate world when people are pushed into a corner and risks associated with that behavior are minor.

In most of my corporate employers there generally isn’t a central authority that owns any significant business risk or job terminating consequence when things go sideways (except maybe some senior management), which is certainly different from an authoritarian culture. In the corporate world there is plenty of room to blame external factors when things fall apart.

Re:Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ... by RcouF1uZ4gsC on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @12:54PM (#23405633)
> Superiors are generally better about considering the advise of their experts because the decision maker owns all risks and consequences.

Even though it still does not literally happen anymore, there is still the tradition of the captain going down with the ship. The captain's authority was unchallenged on board the ship. But, if the ship sank, the captain paid for it with his life. This would inherently cut a lot of the bullshit. If you are the captain, your life depends on your people telling you the facts, not just what you want to hear.

Re:Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ... by frank2 on Thursday June 04, 2020 @05:21PM (#23421968)
What does literally happen still in the US Navy, I heard, is that if a warship sinks, the ship's commanding officer's Naval career is over even if everyone involved knows that the sinking was not actually the officer's fault.