Sorry, the story totally lost me after she was describing the interaction with the FBI. I did not easily take away some conclusion about what she had done wrong or what deep pile of shit she had just created for herself, or what on 2 paths she had just chosen incorrectly, or daringly?<p>(The paragraph ending, "I trusted the FBI to be good at their jobs." The next paragraph jumps right to generalizations, and I didn't clearly understand from her writing what problem did she just cause without knowing it?)<p>Without that spelled out, I have a hard time really being on board with the rest of the essay. Actually, it's almost like they're 2 different essays broken at that point above.<p>Anyone else experience the same issue in reading it?
Fucking amazing. This was sitting right under my nose my entire life and I sensed it but didn't understand it. Now somebody finally wrote it down. I consider myself pretty courageous or at least indifferent to consequences (which may or may not be the same thing), but yeah that always seems to be the missing or limiting ingredient in every situation. Not that I'm biased or anything! Anyway this is going to be one of those rare days when I read something that's going to be a life-changer. And those don't happen that often at my ripe old age.
The article starts with "This is one of my favorite USDS stories:"<p>Such a hassle when authors just assume everybody is also in their bubble and know all thr acronyms. I'm not in or from the U.S. I have no clue what USDS is. Bad start to introduce me to your article.
This hit home: I worked over a decade at IBM.<p>> When you are in a work situation where you are respected and admired, that is often its own reward. If you don’t have that, the components of your job that give you a sense of value and satisfaction are all connected directly to the career ladder. What is your title? What is the prestige value of your projects?<p>My current official job title is "Code Contributor". I was quite proud of coming up with something that would be evergreen even if as my projects changed, yet emphasized what I consider key.<p>But it seems to confuse people that it doesn't have "Senior", "Lead", "Chair", or "Manager" in it. Maybe I should just stick all those at the end? :)
> Fleeing death doesn’t just hurt the people they throw under the bus, it also hurts them. They want to be respected by their employees and often know they are not. They want to be admired and often know they are not. They also feel guilty screwing people over to survive.<p>Wow, I never considered there must exist some people who <i>know</i> they are bad at their job, feel bad about it, and yet have to continue doing it to keep paying the bills. This has to be true considering the sheer number of people employed by large organizations.
> "No one else gets into these situations. It’s always you. If someone had told me that one of my employees was hunting white supremacists with the FBI I wouldn’t have to ask who it was because, of course it’s you. It’s always you. Why is it always you?"<p>> The way you process risk and handle fear has more impact on what kind of career you have than any other single factor.
>The end result of this is that it often feels like everyone at the top is maliciously incompetent.<p>What's really going on is that a torrent of digital change is being unleashed on the world. That change is significantly changing the skills needed by leaders.<p>I'm not sure if the flood of wildly successful leaders having a technical background is correlation or causation, but I am looking forward to knowing someday.
It's really hard to take a positive story away from the FBI interaction. Accidentally ending up in an FBI interview without a lawyer present or briefing you on how to avoid perjury is the stuff of nightmares.
> The way we fought the bureaucracy was to build networks of people whose goals were aligned and whose skill sets or resources were compatible.<p>During my stint in a bureaucractic organisation I always considered this types of people as a huge part of the problem.<p>Instead of being candid about what they wanted, open to dialog, and making the whole system better, they forced through ideas that aligned with their own world view via back channels.<p>This meant that instead of getting the best outcomes, we got the ideas pushed by people who had longest tenure or were the most political.
It's a fresh take on "The Peter Principle" [1] and the author even references the formulaic expressions of it (if not by name). I found the article refreshing because it kind of backs into the topic by pondering an inquiry that might sloppily be expressed as, "I wonder why I have not yet succumbed to complacent fiefdom-ism?"<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle</a>
This may seem obvious to older people that have navigated highly structured organizations for a while, but it's a good insight.<p>I've used a similar "bushido vs bureaucracy" dichotomy in the past. Leadership necessitates accepting that failures will occur, planning on how to handle them, and learning from them. Sadly in the US at least, we've had decades of implicit training otherwise and it shows up as a paucity of adults in the room when problems that aren't bullshittable come around.<p>The "don't rock the boat" mentality that makes people accept all kinds of personal risk aversion and cognitive dissonance is rife in any organization that is putting money in people's wallet. Delaying the consequences of any decision or event until after your last paycheck works when enough people buy into it, sort of a meta-Ponzi scheme of responsibility that facilitates the real Ponzi scheme of getting paid today on tomorrow's bill.<p>Sort of tangential, but if you find this article whatever combination of interesting or eye-opening, you may want to read Locke's Confronting Managerialism. (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11532185-confronting-managerialism" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11532185-confronting-man...</a>)
>Leadership did not want to stop development work to fix security issues, but they also could not be seen to be ignoring security issues.<p>>...So they would engage with the researchers, put on this big performance with meetings and field trips and PowerPoint decks,<p>>...and then DO NOTHING.
> “ How much are you getting paid? How much equity do you have? All that shit becomes very important because it is often all you have.“<p>Yeah, “all that shit” like the way you can buy food or send your kid to college...
I am all for leaders taking risks but talking to law enforcement without a lawyer or without contacting HR first (for professional matters) would probably be outside my limits.
Cf. William Deresiewicz's address to the cadets of West Point in 2009 (<a href="https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/" rel="nofollow">https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/</a>).<p>I think the most surprising insight is his commentary on <i>Heart of Darkness</i> as a novel about bureaucracy -- it's worth a read.
> The way you process risk and handle fear has more impact on what kind of career you have than any other single factor.<p>Depends on how the organisations you are in value risk taking and fear.<p>If your manager is running from death, your appetite for risk is not a positive.
This was a good read. I'm a little disappointed that it doesn't offer any solutions, it just diagnoses the problem of cowards and the peter principle.
Awesome article. Every now and then someone introduces a concept that helps me understand the world a little more. Shitty out of control managers running from anxiety and death. The idea that being in charge of a team where you can't control it being like being in charge of your life but not in control of it...amazing. How you deal with that inherant anxiety is key. Thanks.
This is a good analysis of a very common issue in organizations that do not actively fight this. I wonder if there are tools to counter this effectively though, such as evaluating managers based on how they are perceived by well-calibrated reports, or collegial evaluation of manager performance
Her observations on risk are really right on. It helps explain why so many incompetent people with sociopathic risk taking psychologies end up in senior positions while incredibly capable people hit retirement in middle-org positions.
> If someone had told me that one of my employees was hunting white supremacists with the FBI I wouldn’t have to ask who it was because, of course it’s you. It’s always you.<p>This is obviously heavily embellished by the sort of person who’s really into Harry Potter as an adult.
Good post. Lots of realness here about the nature of employees and the employed... Also confirms some of my negative beliefs about the government so I love it for validating my biases!
hehehe. chuckle. it's like giant orgs make an art out of dysfunction, more sophisticated and sophisticated levels of dysfunction. as if refinement of dysfunction to its highest potential was the ultimate aim.
Because capitalism is broken. And the SV work ethos always has been, to a large extent, part collective hallucination, part massive con game. Whereby the vast majority of us are shoehorned into donating our souls, our creative potential and time away from our families -- for the benefit of the comparatively very few who actually call the shots.<p>In this context, the real question to ask is: why are you still working there?
Bureaucrats are drawn to startups? What?<p>I feel like the author is really clueless and has never worked in a startup.<p>You can't not get work done and survive in a startup. There's too much visibility into who is doing what to hide. That's not true in the US Government. I've met lots of losers in government who haven't done a bit of useful work in years.<p>The whole story seems like a concocted ... "oh look how badass and cool I am" scenario. The author is so full of herself.
Speaking of USDS, how come in August of 2020 we _still_ don't have a government COVID19 website that doesn't suck? One that's trustworthy, that has accurate data, and decent statistical analysis.<p>Maybe you guys should look into doing your jobs instead of "fighting white supremacists" on taxpayer dime?
Why do people still use the term white supremacists to imply some nefarious group? The term has lost all value and is now used in mainstream best selling books and media to describe every white person. It literally now has no meaning and whenever anyone uses it I just think they're hunting the boogey man.