
Why is this idiot running my engineering org? - mbellotti
https://medium.com/@bellmar/why-is-this-idiot-running-my-engineering-org-c6e815790cdb
======
supernova87a
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?

(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?)

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.

Anyone else experience the same issue in reading it?

~~~
keenmaster
I think she's saying that it's odd to her, as someone who innately enjoys
doing highly consequential work, that other people don't share in her
enthusiasm. Similarly, coworkers must find it odd that she doesn't actively
dodge such work or deal with it in a robotic, CYA manner, devoid of
enthusiasm. Her realization about them and their realization about her are
asymmetric in consequence. Even if she judges them it won't affect them,
because they're more of the norm (a tribe of like-minded people). However, she
stands out, and that makes her life harder in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy. The
occasional "joke" or compliment about her enthusiasm might actually be
underhanded trivialization. Clearly she finds the fulfillment to be worth it
though.

I assume it takes working for the government to fully understand. Risk averse
people pile into cushy government jobs. After they shoehorn themselves into
that career, they become even more risk averse. Then every few years they see
people take risks and get fired for it. The aggregate effect of this is that
not only might they be dismissive towards those whom they perceive as risk-
takers, they might be actively hostile towards them. This is for two reasons.
One is that the "risks" might pay off in a visible way (more on that later),
making the other bureaucrats who are vying for a promotion look bad. The other
is that they fear the risk will affect them in some way, and they want no part
of it. They imagine either more work on their plate (God forbid) or adverse
consequences because of this "naive troublemaker who just doesn't get it." To
make it even worse, it’s way easier to just promote the people you like in
government. Guess who risk averse people will tend to promote? Guess what type
of work is made more visible to senior management? So hard work is not
rewarded as well as at corporations, unless it’s a very narrow kind of hard
work that adheres to the most literal interpretation of one’s job
responsibilities. Those are my 2 cents, I could be way off about the author’s
intent there.

~~~
38140585
Thank you, I had no clue what to get out of the story.

English is my second language and sometimes it feels like a lot of people go
out of their way to make their texts long and convoluted because it's cool.
Same in my native language but it's another barrier to get through when it's
your second or third language.

~~~
rkangel
A quote from Mark Twain - "I apologise for the long letter, I didn't have time
to write a short one".

Distilling an intertwined set of thoughts down into the single point you are
trying to make and then expressing that concisely and clearly is difficult and
takes effort. When text is convoluted it's _usually_ because the author didn't
know how to do anything different or didn't try because they didn't realise it
was necessary.

For those of us for whom English is a native language the problem is less, and
I enjoyed the colour provided by the FBI story. You're right though that it
muddied the waters of what was actually a coherent and interesting point being
made. It is a useful lesson to me that clarity is even _more_ important for
non-native speakers.

------
rdiddly
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.

~~~
dai3Ovei
Maybe that's because you were enveloped in it. It's equally hard to see how
weird your culture could look to others, until you actually visit some of
those others and watch them operate, think it's weird, and then realise the
feeling is probably reciprocal. For me a case in point was how a society could
function without being very proscriptive, because where I live (Australia)
where everything is that way. You will occasionally see people say Australia
is a nanny state because the way we are expected to behave is often written
down, and often policed.

One way that stands out is road rules. The French tourism operators have
cottoned onto this, and plonk us ozzies by the bus load in front of the Arc de
Triomphe for 1/2 an hour. And we just sit there memorised, unable to tear our
eyes away. The fact that any OECD country would operate like this defies our
preconceptions. The fact that such uncontrolled chaos actually works defies
belief, it's like we've visited a different Universe.

And so it is with workplaces. I worked in a series of companies where the
operating assumption was that if you weren't trying new things and failing
occasionally, you weren't trying hard enough. (Actually, a more reasonable
description of the expectation is you must be racking up successes at a
reasonable rate. But as everyone knows you can't rack up successes without
failing occasionally.) It's been that way for my entire working life.

Until a year ago that is, when I the company worked for was purchased. And
then it was like I was in France, watching the Arc de Triomphe. The decisions
seemed inexplicable, the words used to justify them like "enterprise grade"
were literally meaningless to me. I went through denial, thinking a much
bigger and clear successful company couldn't operate in ways much different to
what I learned worked over the course of decades. Then confusion, after
acknowledging it clearly did operate on different rules, and those rules must
somehow be understandable to all the players, except me, apparently. And then,
finally, a month or two ago the oh shit moment, "this isn't about the best
decision for the corporation, it's about minimising personal responsibility
and risk". Just like the article says. How unoriginal that thought turned out
to be. Unlike you I was oil watching water make its way into my world. It
wasn't my unchallenged normal. It was in my face, sudden, and painful. In that
situation I could not be a slow boiled frog; this thing demanded an
explanation.

After that moment of clarity, understanding the games being played was much
easier. Approaching a problem with "I'll see what I can do without bothering
too many people. Experiment a little, try 3, and ask the users I inflicted in
what worked out best" is utterly untenable. Firstly, I've actually chosen
something without consulting _all_ the stakeholders first (or wasting their
time in f __k 'ing endless meetings). Heaven forbid - that would mean I'm
clearly responsible for the outcome. I can't palm it off as "the committee"
made the decision, or cast the decision as a shared responsibility. This
choice to spend the time, effort and expense is all on me. Then there's the
little matter of 2 out of the 3 experiments could be painted as failures by
enemies. And finally, by actually letting others way in on which experiment
was best, how on earth could I justify my "the decider man who gets paid the
big bucks" position. In this process I'm little more than the bunny doing the
leg work. Project must be my idea, with all the decisions for the good
outcomes owned by me.

No, the way this must work is hours of meetings speaking in tongues. Hidden
criticisms, white anting the existing setup, but nothing overtly back stabby
like "this is shit - it's costing us money". The initial task is to create the
politics for change while minimising the risk to me by keeping a small
profile, then once the winds for change are strong I can sail in with the
magic bullet and vanquish the remaining naysayers.

But this magic bullet can't be created by me - that would make me
unquestionably responsible for the outcome. No, there must be wriggle room. It
must be something purchased from outside, someone to share the burden of
responsibility. That has several advantages.

Firstly, I don't have to sell it. The vendor has a well oiled sales team that
gives me all the materials I need. Brochures, slick rehearsed demos where
nothing goes wrong, written guarantees with SLA's no less (that offer to
refund the $10 you have paid for the service was down for the day and stopped
50 people working). As I have recently discovered that well oiled sales team
will be happy to be my mercenaries, using their connections (they are sales
after all) to have quiet words here and there. (Strangely, it hadn't occurred
to me that this would happen in the corporate world.)

To add to the air of enterprise grade it can't be cheap either - I don't want
to be responsible for risking a few bucks for years by using a fly by nighter.
No, if this company fails, no one could have seen it coming, certainly not me.
It's irrelevant that it's a commodity like an internet link I could get from
anywhere if my el-cheapo failed, as it's the failure in my choice of vendor
(because it was undeniably solely my choice!) that reflects on me.

The second advantage is if it has hairs, that's the clients fault for not
seeing through the demo's. We showed them what they were getting after all.
And better yet, I can't fix the hairs, so I can't accumulate responsibility
for fixes that don't work. The specification for those fixes must come from
the client, and of course they bear full responsibility. I just sign the
cheques. In fact I can probably avoid paying for the fixes out of my budget.

The third advantage is it came with a big legal document, so if all turns to
shit we have recourse, and perusing that isn't my job - it's legals. Never
mind the cost or perusing it is prohibitive. Never mind the vendor's legal
team had years of time to fill it with more holes than swiss cheese, whereas I
demanded an answer from our legal team in a week. The failure to obtain
recourse can't be mine - I did a perfectly good job in getting the paperwork
signed. Legal said so, and now it’s their job to see it through.

I reckon I could play the game now, if I could bring myself to do it. The
problem is unlike the Arc de Triomphe, I see how it would work in anyone's
favour, except mine. But I guess if I can't see that's what matters most, I'm
missing the point entirely.

Right now I’m not playing it, and as the article says those who don’t play by
those rules are treated as a threat. That’s a new development. To see it
written on hacker news as truism when I’ve just learnt it after being in the
workforce for decades is more than a little unsettling. I even didn’t notice
it was happening a few weeks ago. I was probably just too wet behind the ears
to notice, but in addition now we’ve outright rejected their “enterprise
grade” solutions for something that is cheaper and clearly gives better
service, and worse we have done it twice, in quick succession.

Now reputations are on the line and the game is on. My supreme confidence they
are indeed a bunch of idiots naturally makes me believe if this is allowed to
continue there is only one possible outcome - the accumulated successes will
be noticed and the failed experiments eventually forgotten as that has always
panned out. That is surely my hubris speaking; hardly something that could be
taken seriously. But still too many successes could undermine authority, and
risk personal reputations. Risks can’t be tolerated.

I’ll concede the outcome of this type of stoush would usually be a foregone
conclusion, the big company culture will always squash the new acquisition.
But in this particular case the big company wasn’t doing so well, the newish
CEO recognised he had a bureaucracy problem and bought us to shake things up.
So there’s hope. Maybe.

~~~
rdiddly
In a way you're better off than I am -- I'm already accustomed to being
surrounded by these assholes. (Didn't say I accept it though.) Keep the faith
buddy, seems like simply doing things right ought to give the doer a huge
advantage, right? Well we can debate whether that's true in the real world, or
we can just refuse to believe it's otherwise and see what happens. You seem to
be in a go-for-broke situation. You probably need to reach past several layers
of shitty middle managers to reach the CEO who agrees with you that things
ought to simply be done right. Get some support from the top. Or if you don't
succeed at that, maybe you have to get the hell out of there. Obviously
getting used to the "new normal" isn't an attractive option - life's too
short. But that's coming from the middle. Those people don't like reformers,
but they do respond well to having their asses kicked by their supposed
superiors!

------
ganafagol
The article starts with "This is one of my favorite USDS stories:"

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.

~~~
KineticLensman
> Such a hassle when authors just assume everybody is also in their bubble and
> know all thr acronyms

Yes, totally agree.

And for those who say 'well you got Google don't you?' or similar, my searches
found United States Department of State and United States Digital Service.
Both of these seem plausible but who knows.

------
RustyRussell
This hit home: I worked over a decade at IBM.

> 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?

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.

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? :)

~~~
jacobsenscott
About 20 years ago I was a newly minted CS grad and a new software engineer. I
told someone a lot older than me what I do and she said "Oh, that's a great
start!". Which threw me because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do next.
That's what I wanted to do. Today I am a "programmer", because I realized
software isn't really engineering. That's still what I want to be doing today,
and I still don't know what she thinks I'm supposed to do next.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
> because I realized software isn't really engineering

Competently writing software will involve applying engineering principles and
a project management methodology: things like TDD, design-patterns, your
system's architecture - they're all part of software-engineering.

Writing software is "programming" in the same way that writing a bestseller
novel is "typing" or doing mathematics is putting fancy symbols on paper.

~~~
folkhack
Couldn't agree more... and to add my own thoughts, why the heck are we so
hellbent on dropping the engineering part from software engineering?

I get that it is a discipline that allows one to self-learn up the ladder to
the title but why the hate? I do just as much highly-complex/critical work as
my other engineering friends, so why is what I do not engineering all of a
sudden?

------
jcheng
Aww, after all that, we don't get to hear how the episode with the website and
the white supremacists ends??

~~~
patja
And who is the idiot? It was really interesting until it became extremely
general and vague. It almost makes it sound like Matt Cutts is the idiot since
he's the only specific manager mentioned.

~~~
vezycash
>And who is the idiot?

Short summary: Woznaik vs Jobs. The technical guy vs. the smooth talker.

Longer summary:

Some people are perpetual resume builders. They want quick promotion, bigger
job titles, higher salary...

The ladder growth is their reward. And they'll avoid anything that jeopardizes
their career path. They'll grab the glory for good stuff and push the blame
for bad stuff.

The hacker, risk taker on the other hand does not optimize for career growth.
Does difficult, critical stuff often without knowing that what they've
accomplished is actually a big deal.

Even when know they've accomplished something big, they won't toot their own
horns. They do it for the 'love of the game.'

~~~
IOT_Apprentice
I don't get that at all. Woz vs Jobs is not an apt analogy at all. Jobs was
never risk averse. He saw what could be done and how to make money off of it.
Apple is a Trillion dollar company as a result and Woz is a billionaire.

~~~
wtracy
To build on that: Jobs was absolutely someone who did everything "for the love
of the game." It's just that the game that interested him was marketing and
design, not engineering.

I can't imagine Jobs as someone motivated put his head down and do busywork to
collect a brass nameplate with a fancy title after twenty years.

------
default-kramer
> 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.

Wow, I never considered there must exist some people who _know_ 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.

~~~
ImaCake
I would be in the same boat as you a year ago. But I since found myself in a
job I was definitely not good at. It sucked very badly. Amusingly enough, most
of the reason it sucked was because it was completely dominated by bad faith
actors busy keeping their jobs at any cost. Fortunately, I was let go from
that job before my probation period ended. Having been in a bad job, it truly
feels terrible. It causes stress and you feel like you are always running to
catch up but you will never actually make it. It is not difficult to see how
this could lead to very negative feelings about the politics of one's
workplace as well.

------
fouc
> "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?"

> The way you process risk and handle fear has more impact on what kind of
> career you have than any other single factor.

~~~
coderintherye
This actually plays out different than you may think.

The likely reason the author is the one who always ends up in these situations
is because they eschew fear and are willing to take on difficult issues. Most
other people, rationally, run from those issues.

From my personal experience, this actually works out well for everyone usually
because people like me who are happy to wander into difficult things are doing
it precisely because those things don't have other power players trying to
lord over them. Everyone is running from it, so you can get a good amount of
independent autonomy in dealing with it.

------
replyifuagree
>The end result of this is that it often feels like everyone at the top is
maliciously incompetent.

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.

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.

~~~
coderintherye
I share your opinion, but I think the digital change leads to more data-driven
decision-making which in turn tends to highlight where nothing is actually
getting done. In effect, digital change exposes the people who like big titles
but don't actually like doing anything. In my personal opinion, this is also
why those people prefer voice chats over written or recorded communication.
When proof of work is open and transparent, it becomes glaringly obvious when
your record is empty.

~~~
ImaCake
Someone downvoted you for this comment, but that was the wrong action. I am
personally skeptical you are right about digital change exposing bad
leadership. But I value your ideas here and think it is a shame to see them
obscured because they appear controversial to others.

------
cjbprime
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.

~~~
shadowgovt
Her "mistake" was assuming everyone in the federal government is on the same
side, including the FBI and whatever org USDS had oversight on in this story.

------
underwater
> The way we fought the bureaucracy was to build networks of people whose
> goals were aligned and whose skill sets or resources were compatible.

During my stint in a bureaucractic organisation I always considered this types
of people as a huge part of the problem.

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.

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.

~~~
a1371
These sort of networks are also either completely reactive, or show
proactivity based on how a new idea "sounds" from a high level perspective.

------
ezekiel68
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?"

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)

------
reincarnate0x14
This may seem obvious to older people that have navigated highly structured
organizations for a while, but it's a good insight.

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.

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.

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. ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11532185-confronting-
man...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11532185-confronting-
managerialism))

------
vezycash
>Leadership did not want to stop development work to fix security issues, but
they also could not be seen to be ignoring security issues.

>...So they would engage with the researchers, put on this big performance
with meetings and field trips and PowerPoint decks,

>...and then DO NOTHING.

------
justaguy88
Please post the full text, Medium asks for a sign up

~~~
ryneandal
[https://outline.com/38sRfa](https://outline.com/38sRfa)

~~~
vezycash
Serious question. How long before medium starts suing outline, archive.org and
others?

~~~
ryneandal
Not sure. I do know it no longer works for NYT, and I imagine it's only a
matter of time before it stops supporting other sites as well.

~~~
daseiner1
archive.is

------
mlthoughts2018
> “ 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.“

Yeah, “all that shit” like the way you can buy food or send your kid to
college...

~~~
austhrow743
I’d put money on this lady coming from a privileged background. Story was a
person who works recreationally being disgusted by having to interact with all
the filthy proles who need to put food on the table.

~~~
sukilot
Not necessarily. She was a talented, young, attractive, single person who was
in the adventure phase of her career, hopping from job to job around the world
with no expenses of note, working in government with older staid stable
people.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
> “ adventure phase of her career”

what are you talking about? I’ve had to prioritize money over meaningful work
since my early twenties due to complex and upsetting elder care issue.
Adventure phase? Get real. If your life contains an adventure phase please
stop and acknowledge you are in some overwhelmingly small group of extreme
privilege.

------
polynomial
She contacted the FBI to initiate an active investigation without informing
her boss?

Did I misread or misunderstand that?

~~~
icebraining
I think she contacted the FBI in the expectation that they would just do a
preliminary, informal assessment of whether an investigation should be
started, without realizing they would immediately start one upon her contact.

~~~
sukilot
It's like when you call the police over a noise complaint and don't expect
them to roll up guns blazing.

~~~
polynomial
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

------
mynegation
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.

~~~
toomuchtodo
US Digital Service (whom this person worked for) is under/within the Executive
Office if the President. USDS folks have latitude others do not (this is from
coffee with those who had a tour of duty and from interviews for a role
within).

~~~
markus_zhang
Sounds like dream job, close enough to authority to avoid beimg burned
frequently, and have access to enough interesting stuffs.

~~~
toomuchtodo
It is equal parts empowering and exhausting is what was communicated to me.
“Be The Change” as quickly as possible and then GTFO.

~~~
dkhenry
Some people ( like Marianne ) have the capability to stick around a bit longer
and effect much greater change. Its exhausting, but there is a strong
community that helps you make it though the really hard days.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I appreciate the service of everyone at USDS and 18F. Thank you.

------
hblanks
Cf. William Deresiewicz's address to the cadets of West Point in 2009
([https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-
leadership/](https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/)).

I think the most surprising insight is his commentary on _Heart of Darkness_
as a novel about bureaucracy -- it's worth a read.

------
Aeolun
> The way you process risk and handle fear has more impact on what kind of
> career you have than any other single factor.

Depends on how the organisations you are in value risk taking and fear.

If your manager is running from death, your appetite for risk is not a
positive.

~~~
dasil003
If your boss is a muppet then you are fucked either way. Rule #1 is you have
to trust your manager, if you don't then you need to make a change.

~~~
shadowgovt
I imagine this is something that can be quite exhausting for people in the
federal bureaucracy.

There's nothing to be done when the American public elects a muppet President.

------
alexashka
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.

~~~
shadowgovt
Unfortunately, I think the solutions are context specific. It depends on what
the larger organization's goals are.

------
jonnypotty
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.

------
ridaj
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

------
binbag
Strangely constructed narrative.

------
bane
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.

------
browsergap
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.

------
centimeter
> 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.

This is obviously heavily embellished by the sort of person who’s really into
Harry Potter as an adult.

~~~
sukilot
It surprised me that USDS, an org specifically created to disrupt government
IT, only had one "maverick".

------
motohagiography
How do we identify, support, and promote people with her understanding?

~~~
NateEag
Watch for the troublemakers.

The ones who violate the bureaucratic rules but don't get the bad outcome the
rules are there to prevent.

Those are the people you're looking for.

------
saas_sam
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!

~~~
reidjs
I’m curious what those negative beliefs are? The article seemed pretty pro-
government orgs in the way I interpreted it.

------
vanusa
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.

In this context, the real question to ask is: why are you still working there?

------
romualdr
Sounds like whining to me. Why are so jealous ? Why don't you run the
engineering org ?

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TheMagicHorsey
Bureaucrats are drawn to startups? What?

I feel like the author is really clueless and has never worked in a startup.

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.

The whole story seems like a concocted ... "oh look how badass and cool I am"
scenario. The author is so full of herself.

~~~
solatic
Define "startup".

There's the startup that's 50-100 people or smaller. In that case, you're
completely right.

Then there's the "startup" that employs thousands of people and just closed a
Series D in anticipation of hiring more.

The second is still a completely different beast from old stalwarts of
industry like IBM, GM, big Wall Street banks, etc.

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m0zg
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.

Maybe you guys should look into doing your jobs instead of "fighting white
supremacists" on taxpayer dime?

~~~
JadeNB
> Maybe you guys should look into doing your jobs instead of "fighting white
> supremacists" on taxpayer dime?

Wait a moment, you can argue about whose purview exactly this is, but are you
saying that fighting white supremacists isn't a good use of taxpayer dollars?
It's certainly a cause to which I'd be happy to know my taxes were going.

~~~
m0zg
We already pay for law enforcement and the judicial branch. USDS should be
handling technology problems (which US government has a ton of), not be
political vigilantes on my dime.

~~~
JadeNB
> We already pay for law enforcement and the judicial branch. USDS should be
> handling technology problems (which US government has a ton of), not be
> political vigilantes on my dime.

Ah, yes, that was the argument that I hoped you were making—based on purview (
_these_ people aren't in the business of fighting white supremacists), not on
whether fighting white supremacists is itself a good idea. Note that,
initially, the white supremacism was irrelevant—the issue was just that a
government website (which definitely does fall under the purview of USDS) was
expected to come under attack—and that, to the extent that it was relevant,
this USDS employee immediately reached out to the FBI, whose job this
definitely should be. The article gives no indication that any more USDS
resources were spent on this than the author's being interviewed by the FBI.

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mesozoic
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.

~~~
JadeNB
> 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.

What is an example of mainstream best selling books or media that use it that
way? (I mean which specifically, not just in the sense of "it feels that it's
used so much that it might as well mean that.")

I'd argue, even if you are right about this useage, that "white supremacist"
_should_ still be used to describe white supremacist activities—responding to
the dilution of a word by refusing to use it at all does no-one any good—and
that activities properly so described _should_ be regarded as nefarious.

~~~
mesozoic
White fragility applies the term so broadly that it implies the author herself
is a white supremecist.

~~~
JadeNB
Based on a quick search through it, White Fragility mostly but not completely
avoids the term "white supremacist" (as applied to people), instead using
"white supremacy" or "white supremacist culture". In that context, she says:

> White supremacy in this context does not refer to individual white people
> and their individual intentions or actions but to an overarching political,
> economic, and social system of domination.

Note the specific disclaimer about not so referring to individuals. In this
context, it is true that much of the world _is_ part of a white supremacist
culture. As the author says:

> … within a white supremacist society, I am rewarded for not interrupting
> racism and punished in a range of ways—big and small—when I do.

Pointing this out does not, I think, dilute the term; it rather insists on
confronting the fact that "but _I 'm_ not racist" is not a sufficient response
to claims of systemic racism.

(The author _does_ use the phrases "explicit white supremacists" and "avowed
white supremacists", thus referring to individuals; but, as far as I can tell,
she does not define the term, and I think that it is clear that she means by
this to separate out people with overt white supremacist ideas from those of
us who are merely a part of the culture—a clarification, rather than a
dilution.)

