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The job of a leader is to define the problem to solve. Meetings are a tool, not an outcome.


A leader does not necessarily define the problem to solve. That is the job of an owner. Leaders coordinate people, and objectives are decided by owners. The same person might do both jobs, but they are distinct functions. They are very frequently different people, where a leader is assigned a job and a team with which to do it.

The role of a leader is to be a force multiplier on the rest of the team, regardless of who decides the objective.

It is often the case in contract work that the project owner is the client, and the leader is the head of the contracting team. The leader depends on the project owner to provide clear objectives, so that they may use them to effectively direct their team in accomplishing them. However, it applies within organizations as well, where the owner of a project may be on the business side, whereas the team leader is on the infrastructure side.


I'm not sure that ranking them makes sense.

Like, there are absolutely places I as a manager recognized a win/win/win (company/team/myself) by doing something other than what the company said to do, or to message differently than the company wanted me to.

Putting "the company's interests as #1" is a bit ambiguous. It could mean you are willing to do the things needed to save the company from itself, or it could mean that you'd uncritically do what you were told. Without context, it sounds like the latter.

Similarly, putting your own well being behind both of those sounds like a recipe for burnout. What I expect you probably mean is that you look to take on the unpleasant tasks for the team, the things that need doing but won't grow the individuals on the team, or are morale killers, or are just bitchwork to make leadership happy. But, again, ambiguous.


Well, I did it for 25 years, so I guess it lasted.

The ranking was really something I only used, when there seemed to be conflicts between the priorities. In my experience, that seldom happened.


Hopefully people know not to ask others for factual information (unless it's an area they're actually well educated/knowledgeable in), but for opinions and subjective viewpoints. "How's your day going", "How are you feeling", "What did you think of X", etc, not "So what was the deal with the Hundred Year's War?" or whatever.

If people are treating LLMs like a random stranger and only making small talk, fair enough, but more often they're treating it like an inerrable font of knowledge, and that's concerning.


> If people are treating LLMs like a random stranger and only making small talk, fair enough, but more often they're treating it like an inerrable font of knowledge, and that's concerning.

That's on them. I mean, people need to figure out that LLMs aren't random strangers, they're unfiltered inner voices of random strangers, spouting the first reaction they have to what you say to them.

Anyway, there is a middle ground. I like to ask GPT-4 questions within my area of expertise, because I'm able to instantly and instinctively - read: effortlessly - judge how much to trust any given reply. It's very useful this way, because rating an answer in your own field takes much less work than coming up with it on your own.


Also a missed opportunity for an obvious pun, 'plane educational failure'


> 'or be extraordinarily talented and hardworking'

Maybe you meant "and possibly", since otherwise the 'or' there detracts from the point I think you're trying to make (that ludicrous amounts of wealth requires luck regardless of what talent, skill, or determination you bring).


Or more succinctly - a quorum agreeing to a leader to serialize writes through is both less work than trying to get a quorum to agree on every individual write, and equally as consistent.


Unless, of course, someone has already monopolized the pretty rock collection market with robots.

That's really the threat; that all 'useful' labor will be conducted and collected upon by a very few, and how do we as a society handle that? I haven't seen an economic model situated in capitalism to explain how that can work.


And, of course, if you -do- agree to just let the money go, they won't actually charge you.

So the people who can afford to lose the money (criminals) get to avoid a charge just by bribing the cops, and the people who did nothing wrong have to pay the cops.

Crooked all around.


If you read the article you'd see just the opposite. People without any actual charge, or any actual evidence, who have had the state supreme court in Nebraska still side with 'law enforcement'. Because that is modern day policing. Hell, there was a Supreme Court case that sided with law enforcement that they have -no obligation- to protect citizens. It's why you get stuff like Uvalde. The police exist solely to enforce state authority, not to serve and protect.


I was living in Georgia when CNN's building in downtown was hit by a tornado. They're not nearly as bad as in the midwest, but they certainly happen. Mind you, it's a perfectly reasonable place to build up, but the likelihood of getting killed in a tornado over the past 100 years looks to be worse than the likelihood of dying in an earthquake in California over the past 100 years (slightly lower numbers from what I could gather, but dramatically lower population).

Phoenix (and Albuquerque but I'm less familiar with the specifics) is in the desert; both the water it gets and the ambient temperature are getting worse due to climate change. There are already legal fights over water rights in the greater Phoenix area, and it's just going to get worse. That is not a place to be building up.


> There are already legal fights over water rights in the greater Phoenix area, and it's just going to get worse.

One recent example: https://kjzz.org/content/1847190/scottsdale-wants-governor-v...

> Scottsdale cut off Rio Verde Foothills from water sales in January due to worsening drought conditions. That left hundreds of homes in the unincorporated community without a reliable water source.

> Arizona lawmakers earlier this week sent a bill to the governor’s desk that would force Scottsdale to resume sales, for at least a few years while the community works out a long-term solution. But in a letter to the governor, Scottsdale’s mayor and City Council say the bill penalizes their city for sensible water management.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands...

> The bill requires the city to deliver at least 150 acre-feet to its standpipe each year, through 2025, unless outside circumstances reduce whatever source they use for it. And Scottsdale can’t charge Rio Verde Foothills residents more than $20 per 1,000 gallons for that water.

And the letter from the City of Scottsdale to the governor: https://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/Assets/ScottsdaleAZ/News/News+I...


> I was living in Georgia when CNN's building in downtown was hit by a tornado.

How many people died? How many billions of damage occurred?

Of course stuff happens, there are also minor earthquakes. But I think the point upstream is to avoid massive events. A tornado downtown every decade that does a few million in damage is very different than a 1% chance the city is destroyed.


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