Besides “N”, another indicator you alluded to is the degree to which the aggrieved person is willing to take any responsibility for the outcome.
Sometimes gifted people can negotiate problems with a nervous college dean or engineering manager, so that their solution gets adopted. These problems exist in the world, and successful engineers will hopefully learn to cope with them.
But then there are some big sites which truly suck: massive load time and basic UI issues. Like outdated government/university sites, job application sites, Kroger’s online store (https://joshstrange.com/2024/02/11/krogers-digital-struggle/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39345309). And I know some of these organizations suffer from inadequate funding, legacy systems, and/or compliance rules which make their sites’ issues legitimate, and I’m certain no developer could recreate them in a weekend. But I’m also convinced many of them have issues because of carelessness and/or inefficiency, and a few may be actively trying to emulate bad UX (probably to deter people from using them).
That's the job of management, that's why they get rewarded for that, and I have a feeling we have a lot of bad management.
Complaining about “bad management” is a symptom of a lack of awareness. There’s a lot of bad management, but there’s about as many technical people that just ignore all of those non-technical factors and then constantly complain that their solutions never make it anywhere.
I'm specifically pushing against the stance of
> That's the job of management, that's why they get rewarded for that, and I have a feeling we have a lot of bad management.
It's just not. And with that stance, you won't get things moving forward because it displays a major disregard for other peoples motivations, priorities and constraints. It displays the assumption that technical solutions can be judged on purely technical merits while real-world tradeoffs are so much more complex. If you want to be able to move things forward, you need to work with the organizational structure, not shunt off work to them.
"Streak" and "series" are overstating 2 by a lot.
It's an "unspoken understanding" that a big chunk of the students shall graduate even if most know shit, else there will be trouble from parents, the state, management, and so on.
>> And I’ve learned this the hard way.
I would like to hear more to learn from your experience.
For the said physicist, I understand the situation well already.
"Your actions are making it unusually difficult for us to continue rent seeking!"
I bet the Mafia considers that young police officer that actually wants to stop crime "unusually difficult" as well.
Generally when everyone is corrupt, non-corruption is seen as bad and evil.
And then when things don't work out they think it is about the facts (and granted: often it is) and not about the communications.
Institutional politics means it matters what you propose in front of whom in which order and in which way. This is especially true if you are not surrounded by idealists but by oportunists.
The mistake I made when I was younger was thinking that good communication was about being able to clearly and concisely convey the information in your head into another head.
I eventually learned that this was necessary but not sufficient, because "the right way" to communicate varies significantly based on social / political / cultural / emotional / institutional dynamics.
As a young man I simply didn't understand enough of those dynamics to be able to model the when and the why of communication (meta-communication?), even if I was good at the idea transmission part.
Life experience helps immensely here.
This is why I think startups or small groups of people are still able to outcompete bigger incumbents. So many people worry “if I share my great idea, someone will steal it and implement it!”
Far more often I’ve found it to be the case that I catch myself wondering if it would be less work to start a competitor to my current company based on my idea rather than continue attempting to translate it, broadcast it, and massage it into some form that convinces a critical mass of coworkers of its value such that it eventually turns into action.
At least by starting my own company, I’ll know pretty quickly whether it was actually a good idea or not.
For sure. The overhead for communication is much lower. It’s possible to emulate this to some extent at a large company (I worked at AWS previously) by keeping teams small (6-10 people) while keeping team scope large (full lifecycle of an entire product family or vertical). For this to be successful I believe you need to give the team autonomy to decide what product and features to build, and room to fail without repercussions to allow for experimentation and calculated risk taking.
This is more about how communication works. Communicating ideas and intentions is always about shaping the words that leave your mouth in such a way the other side understands the thing you intended them to understand.
Inexperienced communicators will say what makes sense to them and be surprised when someone else in a completely different frame of mind doesn't pull the same meaning from those words. Wanting people to understand you and shaping what you say in such a way they get it is not a bad thing. You would also talk differently to your kid, than say to your co-worker. This requires to a certain degree that you can see things from their perspective. Now surely you could use this for manipulative reasons if you are a soul-less bastard, but that doesn't say anything about about the practise.
And the way I like to look at it is that we should try to have a good grip on ourselves first, because this is what we can affect ourselves — how you start into a communication will greatly affect the reaction of the others anyways.
Especially in IT it is not rare that the answer to clarifying questions muddies the water even more, because explaining a thing often requires knowledge of other technical concepts.
I work in an educational context nowadays and the people entering my door might be anything between totally clueless and domain experts, and just by looking you won't necessarily notice who is which, so indeed you need to figure this out in a small exchange. Bad communicators would skip that step and talk the same to both beginners and domain experts until they maybe get the clue, but if you're unlucky by that point the communication has already ended.
consider this conversation actually happened, this video is just a recreation of it.
Clarke and Dawe - The Front Fell Off https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
Not all of them are so extreme but the idea is the same.
https://www.afr.com/politics/disaster-from-oil-spill-averted...
The details may have not been exactly correct, but the point still stands and your nerd sniping is not useful here, especially with the haughtiness mixed in.
Go alpha somewhere else.
The reason I wrote what I wrote is because the need to consider more of the communicative context is something inherent to all communication, not just to (bad) workplaces. Most people would profit from recognizing this, even outside work, e.g. in a relationship.
For context, I’m someone who has big blind spots in this area and trying to figure out how to overcome them. Typically, I just develop a set of internal “rules” or principles and then run everything through those rules/decision tree. I’ve been able to overcome a LOT of previous blind spots in this way.
The challenge is that few people are willing and/or able to articulate the principles involved. When I find a book or person who can and will explain the principles and patterns, I’m golden. If not, I’m lost at sea.
Any resources you could recommend would be greatly appreciated!
I later studied philosophy and had a look on more formal preconditions of communications, e.g. foundational models of communication, for which a good starting point is probably this wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Models_of_communication
I found Niklas Luhmanns system theory extremely helpful as well, as it describes very well why we tend to fall back into different communicative modes once our social frame of reference changes (e.g. relationship vs friends vs family) and how we speak and act is tied to the function we voluntarily or involuntarily assumed within that relationship.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't go around overanalyzing everything, I just think human communication is extremely fascinating and complex and there is so many ways to look at it.
One of the first stories describes almost the exact situation from the top comment in this thread, where someone with a great idea in an organization needed to communicate the idea to the rest of the team.
I'm usually not a fan of self help type books, but I think stuff like this is good to listen to here and there:
https://www.amazon.com/Think-Faster-Talk-Smarter-Successfull...
Public health care seems to be a primary example (and my family has been in the sector for more than 40 years); HC was good for a long period of time then it got progressively worse and nowadays it's just an item in your tax bill. If you literally don't want to die you better know someone on the inside which can push the right buttons or go private.
The money spent on law enforcement had a reverse effect on crime rate, the police actually got less efficient the more money they manage to extract from public funds. They got really good at getting more money from ridiculous speed limits and automated systems though.
Looking in the private tech sector my experience has been similar: the larger the organisation the more it resemble a government and the more inefficiency is tolerated. Within layers and layers of middle management it's easy to waste plenty of investors' money - albeit not indefinitely, like a government would.
I've seen the same play out in several organizations, including the public sector. You don't even need to be cynical to know this is the case...
>when I hear a (first or second hand) account that takes the form “of course I was the reasonable one in every case and these N organizations were clearly behaving like idiots”, I’ve learned to consider the possibility that the speaker is just unusually difficult.
Probably based on different experiences, with different context.
Because in the context described (e.g. the educational example) this is par for the course - and any number of teachers and professors can attest that if you do your work too well and apply rigid standards, you're out of there in no time, or at least make enemies very fast.
>the speaker is just unusually difficult.
Of course, if the baseline is complacency, profiteering, and lack of standards, anybody who stirs those waters is "unusually difficult.".
This however is absolutely the case in my country, exam questions are set by the teachers, and are graded by them (well, often also by postgraduates given this task by the teacher so they can slack).
As for the US, I did a quick search now, and found this: "Unlike final exams, which are scheduled by the university’s Registrar, midterm exams are typically scheduled during class time by the professor. Some classes may have two midterm exams, in which case they are spread further throughout the semester. Professors outline these exams in the course syllabus, so they will not come as a surprise. The weight of each midterm exam on the final grade is also usually provided in the course syllabus. Many instructors are open to telling students about the format of the midterm exam, as well as the topics or themes that the exam will cover."
So looks like it's on the instructors, as the grandparent says there too.
But about 20 years ago, Australia decided to adopt the US model for education - educational institutions should compete for student dollars, just like your local coffee shops compete for customers. This boiled down to allowing educational institutions to charge students what they wish for educating them and the money the government used to give the educational institutions would go to instead low cost loans, and upfront payments for enrolling students so the they didn't pay full price. It sounds reasonable on the surface, well worth a try.
But it was insane to try it in Australia because it has already been tried in the USA where the result was the student debt fiasco. The end result in the lower levels was exactly the same as in the USA, with educational institutions preying on student naivety giving away laptops in return for signing up to very expensive long term courses. Very few completed the courses, so they didn't get that long term money, but they didn't incur the expense of educating anyone either. They got the bulk of their income by getting the government money for signing up the students. The cost was advertising and the giveaways like the laptop. To your point, when the government attempted to clamp down by paying only for graduating students, they simply graduated them regardless of their grades. The model has since been abandoned, of course.
This predatory approach didn't work in the Uni's. I think Uni students and their parents are in general too smart to fall in a long term debt trap, and rendering Uni Bachelor certificate meaningless scared too many people - business and governments alike. But they could and did, and do play the same game with overseas students. Professors are under immense pressure to graduate them, so they get the degree they paid for. There I've seen first hand Professors (Professors in Education no less), sit down with an international student and re-write their assignments for them so they could pass them. They despised it. But the government had reduced funding of local students to force them to become "lean and mean", so to survive they had no choice.
You don't hear about this a lot because everyone involved on the education side is literally trying to keep their job. Broadcasting the educational institution they work for hands out worthless grades undermines that, so it's a conspiracy of silence.
What on Earth are you talking about?
Yes, sometimes this genuinely indicates a problem with the professor in question, but often times this leads to a long chain of responsibility passing, where if say a Calculus professor was afraid to have big failure rates, the Fluid Mechanics professor will be in a tough spot where they can either push back and have high failure rates or be more lenient, after that the Aerodynamics professor will inherit the same issue and so on.
… what? I’ve been in (US) academia for most of my adult life and I’ve never once heard of an exam that wasn’t written and graded by the person who taught the class (and/or their teaching assistants).
Also... is it really that hard to believe that a manager would defend their headcount and a community college would let standards slide in their hardest courses? You also have to consider the plausibility of the stories at hand before writing off the person who's complaining.
I don't think your skepticism is at all warranted.
Why is that worse? In scenario A, you have an institution that fights to prevent a problem from being solved. If you ignore them and their politics, you'll have the problem that they protect.
In scenario B, you have an institution that fights to convince you that you have a problem. If you ignore them and their politics, you won't have the problem.
But scenario A is better?
In the scenario A, knowingly or unknowingly, they would tend to solve the problem partially. The others around would see their contributions so far and foresee their value for the future. If others discover or perceive that the institution is not holding any promise for the future, the institution could struggle to survive.
In the scenario B, the institution existing is entirely a lost opportunity for the society.
Hence the scenario A is typically better (for making progress with given amount of resources).
Surely that is not better than lying about an imaginary problem?
In my understanding, that's one way.
Another may be to keep making slow progress to solving so that those around see the contributions and the relevance of the institution but not fully solve.
Another way may be to show their relevance even if the problem is not getting solved by convincing that the situation would be worse without them.
And so on.
I joined a major crypto project which was under-delivering on their promises to investors. In my own time, I built a prototype which would have allowed them to meet their promises and would have appeased regulators whom I presumed were breathing down their necks.
Win-win right? Perfect plan! What a genius move it was to use my skills in the most optimal way possible to wedge myself between this very cash-rich company and a large group of dissatisfied investors... with the backing of regulators of one of the wealthiest, most trusted nations on earth to add even more pressure! Surely, the company would be overjoyed, adopt my project, offer me a salary increase and a bonus package...
WRONG. They tried to cancel the project. I had to quit my job in order to pursue the project outside of the company... Then they spent years gaslighting their own employees and community to keep everyone away from my project to ruin my prospects... The tech worked perfectly; that was several years ago and it's still running. Never encountered any bug or hack which is very unusual for this kind of tech. That company I used to work for essentially ended up abandoning their own project (after spending many years wasting millions of dollars on like 30 engineers). With 15x the engineering capacity, they couldn't deliver in 3 years what I and a friend built in 1 year.
Now I'm demoralized from the entire tech industry and basically gave up on my career (until there is a complete political system change?). If this epic plan which was executed almost perfectly didn't work and there is no legal recourse for me due to institutional corruption, then what chance do I have in the future in such system? I will never get such opportunity again... And even if I do and it's executed perfectly, it's not going to work out in my favor because bad actors can essentially get away with everything.
I do not have the facts around this, however knowing him, I would guess that it was a real problem.
>> ... and the company ignored his solution, then take the solution to market and become a competitor.
As you know, this is not so straightforward in practice:
* Not everyone is a entrepreneur, for whatever reason that is.
* Not everyone has a brand to be able to raise money.
* It may not be wise for investors to fund a project completing with an established/powerful mid-size company that owns a wide range in that space.
* Some projects may require large investments and teams especially when the other side is a big company.
* The big companies deploy all kind of schemes if they see a threat.
* One of the threats is the existing intellectual property rights in that space that the company would already have.
* As the invention was already made when the person was employed at the company, the invention as such likely already belongs to the company (as per typical employment agreements that most do not care to read), and this already forms a threat falling in the above bullet point.
* The corporate politics would start at the newly started company itself becoming an internal threat.
* And so on.
Hopefully you do not see all above as unreal, a fake problem. :-) Not to say there aren't successes -- We hear about those so often.
[Edit:] Well, someone cited a story like that right here in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39500316
You said it yourself, the dean’s primary concern was keeping the school running, which in contrast to letting some loser kids pass a physics class seems very reasonable.
It’s also the reason why trusting straight-A students is using a flawed metric, there are A students and then there are students with A grades. We have more complex inspection processes to deal with this.
A better solution (full bike shed mode now), would be to help address the deficiencies in the class at an earlier level. Talk with previous teachers, get them feedback about what it is that kids are missing when they get to his class. Help them address the root cause of the problem.
“Dean, I’ve found X, fed it back to teachers Y and began to see a yoy improvement in the pass rate of class Z.”
Beautiful.
The dean should have talked about digging into the problem as needed (my friend also could have been doing something wrong; knowing him, I know he would have readily accepted his mistakes if that were the case) and help solve, instead of forcing him to pass the students.
I do recognize that this story is not a good example of the Shirky principle. An educational institute is likely genuinely trying to solve the problem, which is to educate the students. That problem continues because fresh students keep coming in, not because the institute itself is preventing the solution. An educational institution cannot be expected to pursue inventing a solution that disrupts the education sector altogether.
I have end-users that I think about every day when building my products, but then I have my customers that are ultimately prioritized.
Yup. For years, the big boss exalted us to find the next generation solution. Mr big boss was original programmer, founder, and majority owner.
We had an Illustrator/CAD style program (ScenicSoft's Preps) for designing print production plans. My office was right next to big boss, to facilitate my efforts. I kept him in the loop on my progress.
It took a while, but I did exactly that. Reduced the majority of the design (image positioning) work to a simple form. Two views; fields on left and live preview on the right. What could be easier?
(These kinds of things almost write themselves once you find the correct mental model, which is typically the really hard part.)
I started demoing my solution to my peers and SMEs. Wow, Bravo, Amazing. Then I demo'd for big boss.
Big boss said nothing. Walked out. Never spoke to or even acknowledged me again. Ghosted.
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I've been noodling on a novel SQL JDBC wrapper thing. For ages now. Input stock SQL and output typesafe wrappers. I use it for all my own work. It's stupid simple and easy.
Every single person whose seen a demo just doesn't "get it". They expect an ORM or a template or a fluent API.
The reactions have really unsettled me. From my prior innovations, I'm used to pushback, debate, rancor, battle lines.
I just don't know what to do with blank befuddlement.
(Yes, I'm slowly working towards a FOSS release, as able.)
Just wanted to say this seems like how I imagine using SQL. It’s well-known that ORMs are a bad abstraction. Although given that it’s well-known, there’s already a lot of alternate solutions, so I’m interested what yours is and why people may be “befuddled”.
No templates, maps, annotations, DSL. Just normal SQL.
Apologies, a few weeks ago, I started yak shaving while implementing the build stuff (eg maven plugin). I'll try to focus, ship something beta sooner than later.
This describes almost all government institutions.
I think lost companies that fail to find product/market fit go through this phase before they collapse. They try to live on pure willpower and reality-shifting.
Plenty of corporate and government institutions stand ready to "solve" those problems…
I was introduced to this term many years ago, so I think it's older than Shirky. Any idea what this might have been?
Rather frequently, and worst of all, I think, when this isn't done by an institution but by the symbiotic organism that arises between a media interest and a political party.
There was a director-level organization of about 50 people trying to solve a technical research-level problem. The physicist found an innovative solution that was too simple and just worked. When he demonstrated it to everyone, he thought everyone would be very happy. On the contrary, his manager started having unexplained issues with him and he was shortly let go.
He has ultimately given up on corporate politics and is currently a physics teacher at a usual local college.
As the physics teacher, he found that the students in his class barely knew basic stuff (vector addition, etc.) from the pre-requisite courses. He tried to teach to cover up. He diligently and fairly checked the answers/solutions from the students in the mid-term exams, and found that practically no one passed.
He was shortly called by the college dean and heard back. The dean's primary concern was that irrespective of whether students actually learn or not, if so many fail the exams, the college would get shut down.
He is now forced to pass the students even while he realizes that by passing them now, he's setting them up for failure in the future if they actually pursue physics.
I surmise that if the Shirky Principle were to stop acting, say 80% of projects/institutions may just go away and should.
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In some cases, it's even worse -- Institutions invent fake problems that they allege to be the solution for and then of course never solve them.