Ironically I felt reassured reading this. "[...] I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after [...] evidence piles up" especially resonates with me. While I rationally understand it's just corporate bureaucracy / politics, sometimes I still wonder if I were just a bit more capable I'd be more persuasive.
If John fucking Carmack cannot move the bureaucracy this way, then it's folly for me to try the same. I should accept that we're playing checkers not chess.
Carmack is famous externally, especially among a generation that grew up with Doom/Quake. But it isn't like Facebook employs a bunch of ordinary engineers and then Carmack. There are a lot of people with extraordinarily impressive resumes and a long history of massive technical success there. It is not a surprise to me that it didn't just become the "do what Carmack says" show when he joined. Consensus-building becomes even harder at larger institutions.
I think some people are forthright and outspoken, but a long game persuasion might be the best strategy sometimes.
I remember Linus Torvalds commenting on systemd, and accepting the work with upstanding neutrality (I wished he had rejected the binary log files)
"I don't actually have any particularly strong opinions on systemd itself. I've had issues with some of the core developers that I think are much too cavalier about bugs and compatibility, and I think some of the design details are insane (I dislike the binary logs, for example), but those are details, not big issues."
Could he actually reject it though? The kernel has to interact with all kinds of other interfaces and I'm sure Linus doesn't like a lot of them - he's certainly commented as such. But if there's a binary logging system used by some distros and good code is submitted to the kernel to interact with it, it wouldn't be great if he rejected it on a philosophical basis. They make it work well, not dictate what you do with it.
How could Linus have rejected a systemd feature, even one he didn't like?
Linus runs the kernel. systemd is not the kernel. They're completely different projects.
Yes, systemd runs on Linux (exclusively so) but Linus doesn't magically get veto power over separate Linux-only projects just because they run on Linux.
Heck, even if Linux weren't Free Software, and was proprietary like the Windows kernel, he still wouldn't be able to tell other people what they could and could not build on top of Linux, just like Microsoft can't tell people what to put in their Windows apps. The fact that Linux is Free Software makes the idea even weirder.
With those big companies, commonly there simply isn't a productive way to walk the line.
Saving face and preserving "decision making credibility" means that taking advice is simply not on the cards for a large portion of the middle management class.
> commonly there simply isn't a productive way to walk the line
I think that sums up the problem of institutional dynamics and
individual talent rather well. For people with strong work ethics,
sense of duty and genuine creative optimism, it's very painful to sit
in a room of avoidant, grinning suits being superficially nice to one
another wasting time trying to find "clever" reasons not to do
anything. The whole show is a cloying deadlock. It's squandering human
intelligence and life opportunities. I can't be witness to that
tragedy and no remuneration, however many zeros you add, can make it
worthwhile.
> Saving face and preserving "decision making credibility" means that taking advice is simply not on the cards for a large portion of the middle management class.
While I'm happy to admit that this construct may be true in practice; it is _deeply_ infuriating that so many people's calculus nets out in this manner. It's infuriating to me, primarily, because I simply don't understand. By my understanding, "decision making credibility" comes _exclusively_ from *being right*. If you're optimizing for this metric, then how you get there should be an almost irrelevant footnote.
Yet here we are; with a non-trivial percentage of managers coming to the conclusion that the correct answer is to not take advice.
Decision making credibility is simply not anchored in "being logically correct."
It's anchored in the ability to consider the needs of the tribe appropriately.
Leadership credibility in human society is mostly anchored via your track record of emphasizing with the needs of a Dunbar's number sized tribe.
Empathy, not logic, is the KPI our brains are tuned to. Empathetic leaders emphasize data collection, logical ones make decisions using that data. Evolution has optimized for empathy.
The core problem with large companies is the middle management buffer grows large enough that it forms a subculture which drives decision making.
Plus, institutions of 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, all have their "local" rules of detailed management
know-how. Add it all up, and you have a problem that's just as thorny & knotty as any engineering problem. Requiring just as much detailed expertise.
In any large company, everything is so complex and connected with each other that it's close to impossible to hash out the actual output (positive or negative) of any big decision. So, decisions are not based on merit because it's impossible to reason what is good what is not. Instead, there's a leader who has some kind of vision and the company follows that vision, for better or worse.
> If John fucking Carmack cannot move the bureaucracy this way
My read is its not so much the bureaucracy of project managers or paperwork as it is junior executives trying to 'leave their mark', defend their turf, etc.
What makes you think Carmack is especially persuasive? Often, those with the best technical chops are the least persuasive and it seems misguided to think that the reason you can't persuade is because you are lacking technically.
Yeah. I feel like this a lot. I don't know if it's a bias of some kind but it feels right.
I suppose it's selection bias. I don't know how to market, but apparently the marketing people do because we have customers. I do know about my corner of the system though, and when my advice is ignored it usually turns out I was right in the end.
At MegaCompanies, being right, having evidence, and trying to persuade just isn’t enough, as John Fucking Carmack figured out. It’s more like High School. You need to be in the right clique or have the ear of the right Very Important Person.
When you send that E-mail and say “We should do X because Y and Z…” people stop reading at “because” and just go look in the company directory for your name. If you’re high enough on the totem pole, they’ll respond to you. If you’re even higher, they might suggest a meeting to discuss X! And if you are really high up, they will stop what they are doing and do X right away.
What’s surprising to me is how someone like Carmack didn’t have enough totem-pole clout just from who he is! He’s practically a celebrity, and I’d have thought that would go a long way in the High School Drama Club but I guess not.
That didn't seem to be the implication. Carmacks name carries weight, and we're talking about navigating beurocracy and politics. My own thoughts and opinions tell me that they don't matter in those two domains
Oh they do. Leaders/execs will take note of enough people voicing something in common, assuming those opinions have passed counter-arguments/tests/discussions of sorts.
Carmack is only one guy. Maybe his voice might be worth a little more, but your voice also matters, so don't be so quick to despair.
If John fucking Carmack cannot move the bureaucracy this way, then it's folly for me to try the same. I should accept that we're playing checkers not chess.