> People who want to study earthquakes need to go where there are fault lines. People who want to solve hard problems need to go where those problems live.
People who want to study earthquakes don't get paid by the earthquakes.
Author works for a defense contractor.
I'd need a ton of evidence that this particular defense contractor has the goal of doing something inherently safe with AI before I'd read the author's analogy as anything other than the written equivalent of getting drunk at the local bar to cope with a dysfunctional marriage.
Seismologists don't just sit there making models. They also like to do things like drill big holes into faultlines.
If you're studying faultlines, you want to have reasonable access to the subject of your study. Otherwise you may as well be a marine biologist living in Kansas.
> People who want to study earthquakes will keep a distance and model and measure remotely.
Hee hee, I completely missed that implication of the analogy.
There really should be an "earthquake chasers" reality show if there isn't already. Like, they get a signal from that early warning system in the U.S., the countdown starts and then reaches zero by the time they jump in their van.
The rest of the episode would be counting the seconds as they hurry toward their destination, only to arrive upset that yet again they missed it by only a few tens of thousands of seconds.
The author also has a long history of working at many places that aren't defense contractors, and a great book on working with large legacy systems (read: Cobol, mainframes, et al but relevant to all developers) https://www.amazon.ca/Kill-Fire-Manage-Computer-Systems/dp/1...
Seismically active regions (e.g. California) absolutely have more earthquake experts than other places... I am not sure why that metaphor is singled out when the rest of the article is pretty clear its about finding the difference between a burning building and a building-set-on-fire.
Firefighters don't just read about fires, they practice with actual flames, too.
You can’t conflate unsolved problems with unsolved organizational problems like that. If you are really into the politicking and people stuff, sure. But that’s why I love being an IC. I want to build stuff to solve our user’s problems. Sure, I have to navigate the org stuff to have big impact, but that’s the part where I want to spend the least focus. Which is a part of how I’d measure organizational dysfunction.
That said, I’m grateful for people who are really into the org stuff. I’ve worked for a savant at that stuff and it really did improve things. Thank you all who suffer the politics on behalf of the rest of us.
Agreed. Org stuff is important, but even the most well-managed org in the world won't make good progress without the right technical people.
I have a really hard time believing that Defense has a strong bench of IC engineers and scientists working on ML Safety. I've received job offers from these types of firms and they're always paying at least 300K less than the competition when they probably need to be paying 200K-300K more (requires a clearance, WFH is impossible, my executive is not technical, etc.)
There’s really no good reason to stick your neck out at a dysfunctional place. It’s like that for a reason. You might get grit from the experience, but more likely you’ll just become a bitter cynical husk. I know, I worked at Oracle.
> There’s really no good reason to stick your neck out at a dysfunctional place
I'm reading "The Pentagon Wars" [0], about how US Military used to develop weapon systems in the 70s and 80s; here's an anecdote from the book:
> General Gavin recounted how he had to bury fifty young men near the village of Gela, Sicily, in 1943.1 The men had pieces of their own bazookas ground into their bodies by the German tanks they had been trying to stop. Their new bazookas had failed to stop the tanks. General Gavin condemned the Ordnance Corps for not testing the bazookas against German tanks that had been captured in North Africa. There had been considerable controversy back in the States over the development of the bazookas. At least one prominent scientist on the project had resigned because of his conviction that the warhead was too small to stop a tank. Sadly, he was proved correct. General Gavin was angry that the Ordnance Corps bureaucracy had given his troops an untested weapon.
The book is great for a number of reasons one of which is describing how defense contractors were compensated on delivery not the quality. The bulk of the book deals with Bradley fighting vehicle development that was a death trap. James Burton, the author, ends up being pushed out of the military for raising a lot stink about the Bradley but not before making a huge difference in the design of the vehicle, that ends up saving a lot of lives.
I greatly enjoyed the movie. They actually played it for us when I was in the military attending a course on space operations and we got to the subject of acquisitions.
Almost until 1944, the torpedoes that US submarines were obliged to use on Japanese warships would not blow up when they hit.
Toward the end of that period, some submariners determined that if they shot the torpedo so it struck at a shallow angle, the shock would not so damage the fuse as to make it completely fail.
I worked at a similar place and to call it dysfunctional would be an understatement. It made me a stronger and more fearless person but I was already a bit obstinate and had a tendency to challenge authority so it was ultimately good for me. I can see where different personality types would be affected positively or negatively by such an environment. It's not for everyone.
YMMV, but if the immediate team that you're working with has good leadership, sane people with rapport and trust amongst each other that can go a long way towards a positive working environment, even if the organization as a whole is an ocean of shit-show. It just means you got to be ready to jump ship quickly if something poisons your team (eg, an acquisition, or org-change).
Working in truly dysfunctional and trying help the situation has taught me very valuable lessons that are very useful in less dysfunctional organisations.
In other words -- seeing very clearly bad things helps you recognise it when it is less clear. Fixing very bad makes fixing less bad almost effortless.
Eh, was semi rewarded myself for sticking my neck out at Oracle, rest of my team was let go, I was rewarded for my good attitude and small expertise just for showing up where previous coworkers couldn't. Reward was that I got to keep my job and watch my other coworkers told to take a hike... The challenge then became how to drop my cynicism more than how to work the dysfunctional org.
Part of what makes a place dysfunctional is that the rewards have no correlation with performance or impact.
Then there is stuff like this:
> People who want to study earthquakes need to go where there are fault lines. People who want to solve hard problems need to go where those problems live.
Sure, if you want to learn about dysfunctional places, go into them. Learning about them isn't a priority for most people, and if you have a technical profession (not administrative), it would be a hobby at most. So, do you enjoy it there?
>Sure, if you want to learn about dysfunctional places, go into them.
I'm not sure how much you can learn, the number of ways organisations can be dysfunctional has no bounds. It's like that quote from Tolstoy about families:
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Yeah, but learning about earthquakes is a high priority to them.
Learning about dysfunctional organization can be high priority to administrators, not to technical careers. It's basically useless knowledge for technical careers.
I read this as long-winded but ultimately good career advice.
In a truly dysfunctional company, you'll burn out and/or become a pariah if you try to tackle foundational, intractable problems. I've worked places with 'emporor's new clothes' level disconnections with reality. You seeing the problems others don't see is irrelevant.
Focus on things you can improve and small changes you can effect, and build up a library of answers to behavioral interview questions. Accept that your efforts will be undone and be focused on your long term goals, which do not include dying on this hill.
> On the other hand, people who have pragmatic and slightly selfish goals in addition to wanting the do good are more resilient. If the system change they envision doesn’t work out, they still have something to show for all their efforts. That keeps them grounded and calm for much longer in the same environment.
This is what I was thinking too. That and "That's the way we've always done things" organisations where the default answer to anything is "no" even after hard proof of a better way of achieving something. It's exhausting when you can just work somewhere with more autonomy and less bureaucracy.
> Unfortunately, places with hard problems that haven’t been solved are also — inevitably — kind of dysfunctional.
I disagree wholeheartedly. Many companies (from big tech to fast growing startups) have hard problems that need solving, and they needn't be dysfunctional. In fact some high performing organisations have plenty of hard problems, as solving hard problems usually yield even harder problems to solve.
Sadly disagreeing with the premise makes the entire article a weak claim.
There's having a problem like having a jigsaw puzzle. It sits in front of you and is there to solve. Your organization's problem could be making a faster database or improving education outcomes in a neighborhood. An organization can remain functional in the face of these problems.
There's another type of having a problem which is like having a cold. It's in you and affects you. You organization's problem could be the front line employees don't trust leadership or you don't have enough resources. It's much harder to remain functional in the face of these types of problems. I think the author is referring more to this second type.
Not if you have ever worked in a formerly successful org that got fixed by MBAs. People need to understand the nature of software before fixing organizations that make and maintain software. After being burned a few times, many engineers find it useful to at least wave off disasters waiting to be implemented and to reinforce the odd truly helpful suggestion from above. Best of all is creating technical solutions that enable the organization to function better, to increase lower level autonomy and decrease organizational coupling, to increase useful transparency so we can all see the ship and its vectors.
That's their nominal task, and nominally why they make big bucks.
But have you ever witnessed the MBAs solving it? I haven't. So I'd recommend to avoid the organizations with the second kinds of problems, so that you can focus on the first, and not even think about the MBAs.
Or, alternatively, if you manage to find a way to do it, get the task for yourself and make the big bucks.
Most dysfunctional places are also not producing much of value . I’ve been at many shitty companies and there was nothing to learn other than the leadership had some personality disorders
> The value of working for a dysfunctional organization, the place where people build the most skills, is in getting hands-on experience fixing problems. Even if you don’t in fact fix them… and you won’t have enough control to fix everything. Even in situations where you have the authority to execute, you can’t control the ripple effects of your changes. Maybe you’ll accomplish something, maybe you won’t.
I'd definitely agree that you'll build the most skills at a dysfunctional place. The type of skills you learn are typically the opposite of what makes an established organization work though. There's a common saying of "work the people, then the problem". The challenge here is that when majority of your work is to improve the culture, the actual skills you were hired for start to slowly take the back seat.
I don't agree that being selfish is going to help you at all. In fact, being selfish is the exact reason why most organizations are dysfunctional. Here's one that comes off the top of my head. Say you're a line engineering manager and you're incentivized to deliver a large feature that year by your manager who is largely clueless of what your group is doing. But, the whole team realizes that the feature you're incentivized to deliver is not in the best interests of the team right now. What do you do with your role power? Most people will selfishly get that feature implemented to get their max bonus & rewards that year. That type of behavior breeds more dysfunction.
Here's a whole list of dysfunction: output over outcomes, obsession with internal metrics, lack of customer research, optimizing everything for little gain, shipping features like an assembly line, over-dependence on data/spreadsheets, fast paced twist and turns of work, over-engineering, trying to keep everyone happy, flip-flop decision making from people with role power.
I think a better title is, "What to do if you find yourself working at a dysfunctional company."
You may have started at a wonderful company that is acquired or for some other reason becomes dysfunctional. The place isn't dangerous, and the pay covers the bills, but you are losing market value (skills are dated, less relevant). Changing jobs is a pain, it could be bad timing for some reason, and perhaps you lack the experience or training (certs) you want at the next place. You may be jumping out of one pot into another, or worse, into the fire itself. In this case, this approach makes sense to me.
However, I have to agree with the majority of the comments, avoid getting into one in the first place. Don't seek them out, and if you arrive and it's bad, get out quick.
Software Safety and especially AI Safety are hard technical problems. You're not going to figure out how to add a few 9s to the reliability of a computer vision system by studying org theory.
Making progress on The Hardest Problems requires hiring the excellent ML engineers and scientists, and then having even half-decent management. Management does matter, but the strong IC talent is a precondition to progress.
If Defense had armies of competent ICs but was still failing, I guess focusing on non-compensation-related organization issues might be reasonable. That's not even remotely the case.
Just shy of 70% of CS PhDs from US institutions are foreign nationals, which means Defense is already talent-constrained. The 50% or so who are qualified to work on AI safety and qualify for relevant clearances would probably want a close to a 0 added to what Defense offers (and not even for moral reasons... security clearances and "must work at the office" are real drags on quality of life that require significant additional compensation).
I've seen first-hand that defense systems are insecure and unsafe because defense chooses not to purchase excellent IC talent. The biggest organizational challenge in Defense is the lack of adequate compensation for engineers and scientists.
The largest management problem in the Defense industry is figuring out how to get the org to pay for excellent engineering and scientific talent. Your competitors in the labor market are paying high six or low seven figures, don't require security clearances, don't require drug tests, and have much more hybrid/WFH flexibility. For me to take a job in defense to work on ML Safety, you'd probably have to pay north of $1M.
I wonder how much of this article is survivorship bias.
The risk of a dysfunctional workplace is the negative feelings that start consuming you, crawling into your personal life, impacting you emotionally, and causing burn out.
I have a lot of personal emotional trauma from working at a dysfunctional start up where the 29 year old CEO idolized Steve Jobs and thought that yelling at people and manipulating people was cool.
One of my jobs had the dysfunction cranked to 11 with politics (government and inter-office). I can honestly say that screwed me up for a good long while. It took two job switches to be normal again. You don't realize how far down you are until an outside observer points out you haven't smiled in months.
Survivors bias much? Maybe you come out stronger or maybe you end up pessimistic and bitter for a long time or get burned out. As much of a good advice as "stay in prison, it will make you tougher".
Blocking cookies lets you read away without any problems. If you're using Chrome, go to the website, click the small padlock in the URL bar, select cookies, and then block all the ones for Medium.
It won't make any sense if you haven't watched the film.
Basically you're looking for charismatic/deeply delusional founder, money-grubbing lawyer, smartest-person-in-the-room theoretical person, old-fashioned person who complains about the new way of doing things (but who might be right), scientist who cares only about results and who has no ethics, annoying kids.
It's more a joke that I've seen play out in real life than a truely common method for analyzing dysfunction.
I have worked in some dysfunctional places, and had the good fortune to work in places that were not. While I learned useful things from both, I got way more out of the latter. In many cases, it was on a level that the dysfunctional places simply could not reach.
I worked at 2 dysfunctional companies and the most valuable thing I learned from it is never to work at dysfunctional company ever again.
I might have a different definition of a dysfunctional place though - for me it's a place that works against me and my productivity, a place where I have to go through a number of hoops in order to do the job I was hired to do. And let me tell you, by the time I made it through all these hoops I was so drained of energy I lost all the passion and will to continue
I've worked at many dysfunctional companies, and the most valuable things I learned is that all companies are dysfunctional and you need to find the one where you can thrive despite the dysfunction.
Now, that being said, find a company where your role is valued because it is directly tied to revenue generating activities for the company. Don't be in a support role. (This isn't novel advice.)
The article is a bit long but the core lesson that "there are opportunities to be found in crises" is important. And spending a lot of time in a dysfunctional/crisis-plagued environment is a great way to hone that skill.
As a side note, the Chinese words for "crisis" (危机) and "opportunity" (机会) share a common character (机). A useful mnemonic (crisis can end in an opportunity, opportunity can begin in a crisis).
I like broken systems. Especially those that still manage to generate money. We all want to see clean code, written by sane people. But the reality is that it is rare. And when you meet clean code, there is a rigorous process that makes it nearly impossible to add new code/features.
I worked at such place that boasted security on the outside. From within, it was spit and duct tape. I couldn't believe it was a fortune 10. After couple of weeks working on one of the smaller projects, I created a new branch and called it rewrite.
When I had free time, I would rewrite the entire project from scratch. I really hated all the in line mysql connections in side_bar_bottom_new_v2.php. It took me a month to realize that I couldn't rewrite an application that was built over the course of 10 years, in my spare time. Only when I embraced it and took the time to understand how it was built, was I able to turn it into a secure app (messy, but still secure).
Now when I meet dysfunctional systems, I don't get mad. I challenge myself to figuring out what the heck it is doing.
This article kinda feels like an elaborate excuse for not leaving your current employer, partner etc.
I mean seriously - why take shit when there's a 90% chance you're working on another elaborate CMS/CRUD-looking system? There's millions of them out there, you don't need to subject yourself to terrible experiences. Just go someplace else.
I can attest that exposure to quite dysfunctional environments have hardened my technical skills to a level which currently opens one opportunity after another. What other people shy away from, I eat for breakfast and be done with it.
Many years ago, I found the character of the "The Wolf" in pulp fiction fascinating: a person who basically does normal, regular things in dysfunctional environments and charges a premium for that. I love when people call me, when the project is overdue, when nothing seems to work, when they ran out of options. Strangely, I seem to thrive in these settings.
Spent a decade in big tech surrounded by dysfunction, pushing truly innovative tech through the muck to release and expending significant effort to clean the muck as I went for myself and others. Now I'm just burnt out, jaded, and trying to exit tech altogether.
At the end of the day if a direct line cannot be drawn between a problem (or its solution) and revenue, then management doesn't care and are not capable of filling in that line in their minds. And if you fill it in for them, you'll get at most a pat on the back.
You won't learn anything from working in a dysfunctional organization that will come in handy in high-functioning organizations, except how to empathize with dysfunctional people. That one person who just won't share information, thinks every question is a trap, and won't do anything for someone outside their team without management signing in triplicate? You'll have a better shot at knowing what's in their head and maybe what to say to reassure them.
> People who want to study earthquakes need to go where there are fault lines. People who want to solve hard problems need to go where those problems live.
There is no need for those places to be dysfunctional though. You can go study earthquakes in California or Afghanistan. You aren't any better for it dodging the Taliban though.
OK fine, but "dysfunctional places" just automatically and glibly equals "the government?" Dysfunctional places, "i.e." the government? Assuming the best, probably she just means "the one dysfunctional government agency I worked in and have been blogging about forever." I have to actively & intentionally reach for that explanation because otherwise it just rubs me the wrong way I guess, because of its resemblance to, among other things, a sloppy extrapolation/generalization by a young person who should endeavor to vacate my domesticated blade-leafed-plant-dominated steppe-biome reserve; a boring old joke along the lines of "I learned all my bullshit-detection skills from working with dishonest people, i.e. lawyers." ("Oh thanks a lot!" says every honest lawyer); or a tired talking-point of the hypocritical and unhinged faux-libertarian radical "government bad! always!" right.
The secret to maintaining a vital mental landscape is to resist the temptation to think the whole world conforms to what you've seen so far in your short-ass life. Be content to "know" a lot less, and probably say less as a result. Ice Cube once rapped something about "shut my M.F. mouth if I don't know" and that seems like a pretty good policy, though if everyone did it, there would be a lot fewer blog posts in the world, unfortunately (or fortunately?)
Yeah, you could also work somewhere not as developed. It's dysfunctional alright, and the pay can be shit. But if the company seriously considers your ideas, you'll be seen as some sort of prophet. Many ideas and systems that you take for granted simply don't exist in developing countries. And they really need them.
People who want to study earthquakes don't get paid by the earthquakes.
Author works for a defense contractor.
I'd need a ton of evidence that this particular defense contractor has the goal of doing something inherently safe with AI before I'd read the author's analogy as anything other than the written equivalent of getting drunk at the local bar to cope with a dysfunctional marriage.