idw

Really nicely done

I'd like to know how good people think this is from different disciplines

"The low waters of the [Danube] have resulted in several unexpected discoveries. ... And a resident of the northeastern Bulgarian city of Ruse found bones on the Danube river bed, which experts determined were the remains of a mammoth."

The saying goes: it takes ten years to become an overnight success.

As for the stick or twist question, if your only goal is to make money then twisting whenever it seems to make that more likely makes sense. Most people thrive on doing work they care about enough to stick with when it is hard, and my guess is that gets better results over time.

One bit of practical advice: celebrate the little successes on the way to whatever you may think a big success looks like. Wherever the journey ends up, it's important to enjoy it as much as possible.

TL;DR: Bureaucracy in public institutions is not principally a management pathology. It is the cumulative result of a largely logical process. It is generated by policy and rendered permanent by asymmetric incentives. Nobody decides to create it; nobody is readily positioned to undo it.

I assumed this was a new euphemism for layoffs

Done this. Good question but I don't think it's the most helpful way of thinking about it.

Every new recruit brings their own assumptions about how organizations / employment / etc. work and many of those assumptions won't be visible until after a while. This is especially true for managers.

I found Charles Handy's thinking about four types of organisational culture very helpful and I wish I'd found it earlier in the process.

AI summary: Charles Handy identified four types of organizational cultures: Power Culture, where decision-making is centralized among a few; Role Culture, which is based on defined roles and responsibilities; Task Culture, focused on teamwork to achieve specific goals; and Person Culture, where individual interests take precedence over the organization.

Basically, 15>50 is very likely to involve a shift from one of these to another one and making that open and explicit could help you a lot (including understanding how the role of senior managers needs to change).

The book is Understanding Organisations from 1976 but still valuable.

Good luck!

+1 on Mint, specifically with the Cinnamon desktop environment for people leaving Windows

Saw this mentioned in a comment recently, I just downloaded, installed and used it to find a file while Windows Search was still saying 'Working on it...'. So I thought others might like to know.

Previously on HN a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41337268 and probably other times

Thank you, whoever you were!

The Science Media Centre (UK) has a round up of expert reactions https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-announ...

The robing room chair of state

Simon Willison has helpful recent advice on this: Here’s how I use LLMs to help me write code (11th March 2025) https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/us.ing-llms-for-code/

Sometimes the BBC does make mistakes but this seems to fit their style guide:

"Treat collective nouns - companies, governments and other bodies - as singular. There are some exceptions: ... Sports teams - although they are singular in their role as business concerns (eg: Arsenal has declared an increase in profits) Rock/pop groups"

So treating a crew, like a team, as plural makes sense.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/grammar-spelling-punctu...

Both approaches are regularly used, so it is now more of a style choice, hence being in the style guide.

The Economist style guide says Brits are more likely to use plural and Americans singular but writers need to make a judgement in context: https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/09/20/style-guide-ent...

It might help to know that blindness takes many forms. Having no sight at all is what many people assume but is not what many blind people experience. So some blind people can use accessibility tools together with the sight they do have which may for example only be in a small part of the area most people can see, or may be blurry, or otherwise impaired.

If you're going to start something, you need to be running to it not running from something else.

Running your own thing can be great but will be hard. The culture may well not be what you hoped for, and you may well find it hard to stay motivated. The team may well feel disrespectful and demotivating. You may not even like the founder’s attitude towards you before too long.

Personal opinion, worth what you paid for it.

Ask a lawyer whether it is actually enforceable

One of my biggest lessons from running a growing organization was: always have one level better financial advice than you think you need.

So, get an accountant from the beginning and let them decide and set it up right.

FWIW, I preferred zero to QuickBooks after using both.

"Cosmological models are built on a simple, century-old idea – but new observations demand a radical rethink" (2023) < by David Wiltshire, one of the authors of this paper, aimed at non-physicists

https://theconversation.com/cosmological-models-are-built-on...

Remember that senior roles are about building teams around you to get the job done. I'm wondering if your current experience reflects what the job has to be, or whether you could shape your team so that your job gives you energy, and other people do jobs that give them energy, and together you get the job done.

Crash into a nuclear waste container, of course https://blog.railwaymuseum.org.uk/operation-smash-hit/

"A qualitative approach was employed, involving in-depth semi-structured interviews. Thematic and content analyses were applied. Out of a sample of 47 participants using Flow, 18 participants consented to be interviewed."

https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=12882...

Some thoughts, worth what you paid...

You can't share enough information here to get really good advice. If you do this you will need someone whose advice you trust, who understands your weaknesses as well as your strengths. Could be a friend, could be a coach.

As someone else said, if you can make this a win for everyone involved, that's the best and most likely to succeed approach. To do that starts with asking good open ended questions and listening to what those with the power to make this decision want for themselves, especially the CEO, and showing them respect.

People may express confidence in you now when you're not in charge. Inevitably if you do end up in charge you'll end up less popular. If part of what motivates you is what other people think of you, be careful.

Know your plan b, and c.

Good luck to you and everyone involved.