Big Corps Are Stupid

[Jccarlton]

A look from the inside. With some comment from me
https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com ... 2/16/ouch/

[GIThruster]

"The problem is that we creatives want to rock the boat. We don’t like the nonsense, the social games that are so important to the people in the C suite. Creatives are disruptive. We want to change the order of things, to make things more efficient. We care about things like customers and making better product. Creatives want to do what the company or organization is supposed to do and don’t really understand, that to the people in charge, that’s not the goal that the people in charge are pursuing."

I think you're projecting an issue caused by poor leadership onto "Big Corps" in ways that do't fit. Apple and Google don't have these problems, because they have good leadership. Anyone who fails to leverage the creativity of their paid talent, is failing to lead. Your complaints here are not against "Big Corps" so much as poor leadership.

[Jccarlton]

I haven't written about Apple, yet. I'm sure that I will see something about Apple's issues. Google on the other hand has definite signs of corporate sclerosis.
https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com ... ation-pay/
The thing is that once you live through the symptoms from the inside, it's pretty obvious to know what to look for.

[GIThruster]

I have no doubt that once a corp gets to be sufficient size, there is a geometrically progressing problem with staying in touch with the engineers doing the real work. This is the real genius Kelly Johnson had, to remove middle management in order to keep abreast of what the engineers were doing, without requiring them to move off task and write reports. Engineers need to do engineering, not spend their time writing reports merely to make mid-level management look good and justify their existence. Admittedly, this gets harder the larger the working group is, but consider how small the groups were that built the F-80, U2 and SR-71. They were able to bring these projects in on time and on budget, specifically because they did not waste the efforts of their engineers and made a way for them to each individually act as creative resources that then made the magic happen.

And this is what we need to bring things in on budget! Back to the early models and all done with the nonsense we see everywhere today, except in lean startups. While Apple and Google are struggling now because of their size, they still have some magic!

[mvanwink5]

I learned my 'manager' was not the person to tell what I was really doing. His view was each change had to pay for itself and did not understand enough to think strategically. Of course the reason he did not understand enough was because he had no clue what the process was, after all his job was to manage 'people.' What the 'H' does it mean to manage people? Business is integrated people and systems. Don't understand the systems? Then there is no such thing as managing people. If you have never made improvements over several generations of change to see how 'one thing leads to another,' and then suddenly evolution turns into revolution, then you can't manage change. Once you get 'change' then you are in a class by yourself. Corps don't get it.

It is like sudoku, where placing numbers is laborious and not easy, and you can't see where the next number will go until you place the one you are working on. Then at some point the numbers rapidly cascade, easily. Like a Persian wheel where you do one thing and something else happens entirely.

Harvard's are taught by professors who haven't done anything like what I talked about above, they don't even know what they don't know.

[mvanwink5]

And that is the problem with progressives, they think they can manage people. Living is too complicated, markets are too complicated and 'sudoku' like. You have to get on the front side of the wave, then ride it. Regulations and regulators interfere and disrupt wave riding. Until you do it, until you get it, you won't understand, and will think like a Prog. Linearly.

[GIThruster]

I learned my 'manager' was not the person to tell what I was really doing. His view was each change had to pay for itself and did not understand enough to think strategically. Of course the reason he did not understand enough was because he had no clue what the process was, after all his job was to manage 'people.

I have heard this complaint many times before, and it applies not just to engineering. Any waiter or bellhop has complaints like this for their managers, and any manager who is needed to get people to work, will have these kinds of complaints made about them. Managers are not on the job to be liked, and most people will have complaints about them, at least when they're not there to hear the complaints.

That said, there are serious problems when the manager is either unable to provide the technical skill necessary to understand the work, or unable to provide the people skills necessary to good management. The current solution is typically to turn engineers into managers, but the best engineers often lack the people skills and temperament necessary to good management. You can teach only so much.

If you look at the engineering field and especially at the best engineers coming out of school, what you find is very often they go into private work, where they are designing a product and working with a single MBA, who runs their "company". These two compose an entire "startup" and can mange quite well, until they want a second product. The trouble is, a technical PhD most often does not have the people skills to be a skilled manager, and even if he had them, it would be a horrid waste of his skills to have him manage others. So you don't actually want the best engineers managing. You want them doing. This then necessitates the situation you're complaining about, that those doing the work will understand more than those managing those doing the work. There is literally no way around this with very advanced projects.

The solution is to work very hard at communication. This is not easy. You want your engineers and managers eating at the same table every day. You want to provide every engineer the opportunity to be heard on every subject, and heard many times if that's what it takes for the manager to get savvy. And it's a hard situation that only gets harder with more complex subjects but there is no easier way than what I'm describing and this is what Kelly Johnson was so skilled at. If you read Ben Rich's book Skunkworks, you'll see the engineers were all scared shitless of Johnson, but they respected him and worked as hard as they could for him, and this is why Skunk was the success that it was. These guys all worked at the same table at times! And if that's what it takes, then that's what you do. Everyone is either a valuable part of that process, or they're fired. It's that simple, and terrifying.

[hanelyp]

As far as Google, they build a search engine business around a solid model of letting the Web rate sites by who gets the links. Recent reports are they're moving away from that proven model towards rating sites by "accuracy" sounds like the business going senile to me. Given the politics exhibited by management I wouldn't trust their rating in the least on some topics. As long as they kept politics out of their product I could tolerate it.

[GIThruster]

As long as they kept politics out of their product I could tolerate it.

It's not about accuracy or politics. It's about power. They have maneuvered themselves into a position where they can manipulate the masses by how they filter searches on the web.

Google has been unscrupulous in several ways of late and I would expect more of the same.

[Diogenes]

As long as they kept politics out of their product I could tolerate it.

It's not about accuracy or politics. It's about power. They have maneuvered themselves into a position where they can manipulate the masses by how they filter searches on the web.

Google has been unscrupulous in several ways of late and I would expect more of the same.

I agree. Google is probably the most dangerous and most evil corporation of which I am currently aware. They are a God-send to anyone who wants a stasi like control over the populace, and I see signs that they are already filtering speech to confirm to their biases.


Google is the precursor to "Big Brother" and Skynet all rolled into one.

[williatw]

I agree. Google is probably the most dangerous and most evil corporation of which I am currently aware. They are a God-send to anyone who wants a stasi like control over the populace, and I see signs that they are already filtering speech to confirm to their biases.

And the entertainment industry in general. Don't know how much influence the "Entertainment Industries Council" actually has but:

Depiction Suggestions
The following points for consideration were created as a resource for entertainment development and production. They are not intended to limit the creative process.
•Attempt to highlight alternative resolutions to conflict rather than relying on gunplay as the only or automatic means of settling confrontations. Clashes can be resolved by other less lethal means, perhaps by characters using their wits and cunning to overcome opponents.
•Consider highlighting the emotional consequences for the shooter, such as feelings of guilt, remorse, personal angst, and so on.
•Consider incorporating such real-life scenarios as: •The shooter or possessor of a gun being accidently injured by it.
•A gun accidentally misfiring while being loaded or unloaded by a criminal or other user.
•A gun misfiring and injuring someone after being accidentally dropped.

•Consider the story potential that may exist in a family filing suit against a gun manufacturer for injuries or death sustained by a defective firearm that misfired.
•Try emphasizing the fact that introducing a gun into an argument lethalizes anger: What could have been resolved with just harsh words, or even cuts and bruises, may end up with a death. Guns don’t allow for cooling off or reconciling once the momentary or situational anger subsides.
•Consider reflecting the reality that homeowners often freeze up or tremble so badly when trying to use a gun in self-defense that they are unable to deploy it. Or show them as being too frozen in fear to even get the gun.
•Where appropriate to the story, consider portraying a teenage girl threatening to break up with her boyfriend unless he gets rid of his gun – or a boy doing the same with a gun-owning girlfriend.
•Explore depiction of legal prosecution or civil action taken against parents for negligently leaving a gun available to a child who then uses it to either intentionally or unintentionally harm themselves or others.
•Attempt to provide a positive role model by showing parents making gun safety inquiries of other households where children visit, asking about storage, accessibility, and so on.
•Consider depicting the reality that women are far more likely to be shot by husbands or lovers than by an intruder. Odds are that a gun in her home will be used against her rather than in her defense.
•Consider showing bartenders or bar owners being prosecuted or held civilly liable for gun injuries caused by a drunken patron who is known by them to carry a weapon (akin to the prosecution of bar owners for traffic deaths caused by drunk drivers).
•When appropriate, incorporate parents having heart-to-heart talks with their children, especially teenagers, about guns not being an acceptable resolution to the problems they face with schoolyard bullies or anything else.
•Emphasize, where possible, the legal penalties invoked against “straw purchasers” who act as intermediaries between gun dealers and persons who are legally restricted from buying guns themselves.
•Consider showing someone who is attempting to use a gun in self-defense being overpowered by the attacker who then uses the gun against him or her.
•Attempt to show safe ways school kids can tip off the police or school authorities that a fellow student has a gun, and show that this action can bring about a positive outcome.
•Consider showing that even so-called “toy” guns, like pellet or BB guns or prop guns, can cause real injuries and even death.
•Give thought to starting the story after any gun violence has already occurred, and confine the plot line to the aftermath – detection, prosecution, coping of survivors, and so on.
•Consider occasionally having “junk” guns misfiring or jamming at critical times, as these guns are prone to do so after a period of use.
•Consider depicting people as feeling less safe, rather than more safe, when they find their neighbors becoming increasingly armed.
•Try incorporating statistics on gun usage into scripts by having appropriate characters, like law enforcement personnel, DA’s and teachers cite them. For instance most people don’t know that guns are more often used for suicide than homicide. (54% of gun deaths were suicides, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1999)<.li>
•Consider highlighting the fact that teenagers often act impulsively and the presense of guns may increase the likelihood that a transient emotion may turn into a fatal event.
•Consider having characters criminally charged for simply brandishing a firearm.
•Try to emphasize that offenders get stiffer sentences if they use a gun in the commission of their crimes.
•Consider pointing out the inadvertant injuries caused by bullets shot into the air by holiday celebrants. What goes up must come down, sometimes with lethal force.
•If appropriate to the story, consider exploring a gun dealer’s or a gun supplier’s remorse about the harm done by someone to whom he or she furnished a firearm.
•Consider having a character use a gun in what he/she believes is self-defense only to be charged with murder or manslaughter because it’s determined that excessive or unjustified lethal force was deployed.
•Consider having characters successfully use alternatives to guns for self-defense, such as pepper spray or mace.
•When appropriate, try to depict parents, teachers, counselors, and even peers giving advice to young people about alternate forms of conflict resolution.
•Try to provide role modeling behavior by showing friends trying to dissuade a character from arming him/herself after the gun death of a friend or family member.
•Consider portraying a gun manufacturer making the right decisions in choosing to design a safer firearm.
•Try making the point that having guns in the house may actually increase the possibility of home invasion robbery since firearms are an attractive target for theft.
•Consider having characters successfully use alternatives to guns for self-defense, such as pepper spray or mace.
•Consider showing a parent chastising his or her spouse for leaving a gun where their children can find it.

http://www.eiconline.org/topic-areas/gu ... ggestions/