

Management and mathematics - abhinav
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD966.html

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jlouis
I am delighted whenever I read a Dijkstra EWD. He might be rather "angry", but
he is often so damn right it hurts.

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alan-crowe
> The organizational love of mediocrity has severely hampered all sciences in
> their effort of contributing to the industrial effort,...

Dijkstra gets that we shouldn't anthropomorphise computers: they do what they
do. Deal with it via logic. Then he ventures into sociology and his insight
deserts him. Anthropomorphising organisations as persons who love unwisely
leads nowhere.

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joe_the_user
Wow,

This is powerful but somewhat perverse sounding piece.

I think that one can indeed ascribe mediocrity to the corporate world, one
could also say that what exists is "organizational intelligence" or narrow
thinking and a willingness to go along with prevailing approaches. Still, if
it is not stupidity, it is something so similar, it takes an expert to tell
the difference.

One further thing to think about is that tendencies toward mediocrity which
Djikstra could point to in the corporate world can now found much more in
academia as it is corporatized.

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msluyter
"perverse sounding" indeed... I'm no fan of mediocrity, but we can't all be
above average, and not every company can be staffed entirely by geniuses. Any
company that's a reasonable cross section of society will be naturally
"mediocre."

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xiaoma
I'm not sure if it's quite that bad. It's true that we can't all be above
average at _everything_ , but nearly all of us can far surpass the average at
_something_.

Someone with sub-par mathematical abilities could still be a stellar visual
artist or visa-versa.

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edw519
I am working on a classic case right now, the acquisition of one multi-billion
dollar organization by another. Each has opposite philosophies about the role
of the individual vs. automation.

One company uses an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system that does
massive computations based upon the contents of its data base and delivers
precise instructions to its users.

The other presents basically the same data on a fairly sophisticated workbench
and expects the user to combine that data with what is not on the data base to
make a decision.

Guess which company purchased the other?

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hs
if the erp nullifies the employees' initiatives by shifting responsibilities,
then the erp loses maybe because there's no mechanism to take risk.

in the spirit of tfa, erp encourages mediocre users. so, the company with
users who have to take responsibility wins.

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mooneater
Sounds like he had a recent bad experience with a manager =(

