!RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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Jobs are indistinguishable from degree programs. On 03/14/2017 03:39 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > One thing I'm struck by is how willing some people are to be tasked by relatively ignorant or ineffectual people. My guess is that filtering on GPA optimizes for this. As far as I can tell, the tasked individuals don't perceive that the tasking is getting in the way of their ability to pursue their idea of the Right Thing or finding the Interesting Question. They might even _want_ the tasking. I find it very strange. I always found education to be that obligatory activity that interrupted the thing I wanted to do or the thing that I thought needed to be done. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Boy was I lucky. In the three primary jobs I had (Xerox, Apple, Sun) - I was always hired to solve a problem without a current solution. - I never had your basic manager, only enablers and I was "boss" of my job, responsible for it. - I was always given great new opportunities to do yet more "advanced development" or "research" .. stuff nobody had a set solution for. - I was seldom (if ever! :) the smartest person I mentored/led. It was considered boorish to try to be so. - All I had to do was be honest about the work, and *had* to fail sometimes or get docked for not taking enough risk. (Boy was THAT a shock!) - I had to be self educated about all new tech and be willing to do things that I was afraid of. - I had to integrate with the whole company and be aware of what each engineering/technology team was doing and how to synergize with them. This all sounds to me like the current established tech is where the narrow hiring practices come from. I'm following several folks in the current world that are having exactly my experience tho, so who knows. -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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Oh, and this includes my current work with RedFish, although I'm not quite as caught up with the advanced linear algebra (Fundamental matrix, Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm, Jacobian optimization, ...) as I'd like to be. On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 5:05 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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In reply to this post by gepr
In a big enough organization where there are many layers of management, those stuck in the middle may not really be grounded in any meaningful performance metrics. They may divide labor even if there is nothing to divide, because that is _their_ job. They build control systems -- what else would they do? They acquire resources so they can allocate them. Obviously!! As Peter Thiel remarked, they become so preoccupied by the `quality' of what they put in to their control system, they fail to think (or care?) about the value of what comes out.
-----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ? Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2017 4:54 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled Jobs are indistinguishable from degree programs. On 03/14/2017 03:39 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > One thing I'm struck by is how willing some people are to be tasked by relatively ignorant or ineffectual people. My guess is that filtering on GPA optimizes for this. As far as I can tell, the tasked individuals don't perceive that the tasking is getting in the way of their ability to pursue their idea of the Right Thing or finding the Interesting Question. They might even _want_ the tasking. I find it very strange. I always found education to be that obligatory activity that interrupted the thing I wanted to do or the thing that I thought needed to be done. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
Where are they working? The question is whether there are trends in organizations or are we (still) relying on the constituents of organizations to maintain these sweet spot environments. My question is in the same vein as questions about [non]living systems, general AI, individualist vs. statist politics, etc. To what extent _can_ negentropic processes be codified? On 03/14/2017 04:05 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > I'm following several folks in the current world that are having exactly my experience tho, so who knows. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Ugh, don't make me agee with the vampire! 8^) It reminds me of one of my pet peeves: "Safety is job #1." No... the job is job #1. Safety should be sacrificed in order to achieve the objective. [sigh] On 03/14/2017 04:10 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > In a big enough organization where there are many layers of management, those stuck in the middle may not really be grounded in any meaningful performance metrics. They may divide labor even if there is nothing to divide, because that is _their_ job. They build control systems -- what else would they do? They acquire resources so they can allocate them. Obviously!! As Peter Thiel remarked, they become so preoccupied by the `quality' of what they put in to their control system, they fail to think (or care?) about the value of what comes out. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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In reply to this post by gepr
Well, one invented CoffeeScript then got entranced with reporting/info-viz, and is currently at NYTimes as both a developer and reporter. Another invented jQuery, fell in love with both Japanese prints and education and now is in charge of Khan Academy's education framework. A third worked with us on the postscript based NeWS window system/ui toolkit and now is CTO of Jaunt/Oculus VR. Possibly less fabulous but with the same work experiences: Bill Budge Andy Hertzfeld Dave Stewart Greg McLaughlin Dave Gedye Dave Lavallee Tim O'Reilly Seth Tissue Rafael Bracho Larry Tesler Randy Smith Rick Levine Gabriele Provinciali .. this is getting silly so I'll stop .. but also Venice Project Center team RedFish team & partners The Friam/WedTech attendees (as far as I know) On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 5:14 PM, glen ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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That you listed more names than organizations, it seems like the answer is: No. We still depend on constituents to find/build their own sweet spot environments. On 03/14/2017 04:41 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > Well, one invented CoffeeScript then got entranced with reporting/info-viz, > and is currently at NYTimes as both a developer and reporter. > > Another invented jQuery, fell in love with both Japanese prints and > education and now is in charge of Khan Academy's education framework. > > A third worked with us on the postscript based NeWS window system/ui > toolkit and now is CTO of Jaunt/Oculus VR. > > Possibly less fabulous but with the same work experiences: > > Bill Budge > Andy Hertzfeld > Dave Stewart > Greg McLaughlin > Dave Gedye > Dave Lavallee > Tim O'Reilly > Seth Tissue > Rafael Bracho > Larry Tesler > Randy Smith > Rick Levine > Gabriele Provinciali > .. this is getting silly so I'll stop .. but also > Venice Project Center team > RedFish team & partners > The Friam/WedTech attendees (as far as I know) -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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Ooops read to quickly .. "where" is much harder. Sorry! Well I admitted to not being all that bright! As for organizations, I can only think of sub-organizations, i.e. Sun's IT department, believe it or not, was pretty close. Apple? Well the Print Shop was cool, as well as the entire Lisa project. And, oddly enough, all the tech marketing teams within the Lisa project. Mac unfortunately had some problems. Xerox research had/has several good departments .. not all tho. I get your point, though. -- Owen On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 5:49 PM, glen ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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In reply to this post by gepr
Why would a mindless organization be better than a set of minds that know and care about the domain? I don't have a problem with another constituent that knows about organizational psychology, but that sort of person is not sufficient.
-----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ? Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2017 5:49 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled That you listed more names than organizations, it seems like the answer is: No. We still depend on constituents to find/build their own sweet spot environments. On 03/14/2017 04:41 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > Well, one invented CoffeeScript then got entranced with > reporting/info-viz, and is currently at NYTimes as both a developer and reporter. > > Another invented jQuery, fell in love with both Japanese prints and > education and now is in charge of Khan Academy's education framework. > > A third worked with us on the postscript based NeWS window system/ui > toolkit and now is CTO of Jaunt/Oculus VR. > > Possibly less fabulous but with the same work experiences: > > Bill Budge > Andy Hertzfeld > Dave Stewart > Greg McLaughlin > Dave Gedye > Dave Lavallee > Tim O'Reilly > Seth Tissue > Rafael Bracho > Larry Tesler > Randy Smith > Rick Levine > Gabriele Provinciali > .. this is getting silly so I'll stop .. but also Venice Project > Center team RedFish team & partners The Friam/WedTech attendees (as > far as I know) -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Well, it wouldn't, necessarily ... any more than a computer would ever be artificially intelligent. But the same argument for AI (namely that computers are better at some things than humans are) applies to organizations. In the context of this discussion, it strikes me that it might be possible to build a company that is better at bureaucracy than individual humans. All the _work_ it takes to create a sweet spot environment for humans to "follow their nose" is currently done by competent bureaucrats. Each person Owen has listed owes debts to whatever set of bureaucrats worked hard on creating an environment for that person to excel (though many of those people may not recognize their debt).
And as you point out, constituents specialize, just like computation can be categorized. So the type of computation computers are better at than humans is the "low hanging fruit" for AI. Analogously, the type of bureaucracy corporations might be better at than individual bureaucrats might be the "low hanging fruit" for an Artificial Bureaucrat. Of course, we already do this to some extent. Building a business is all about the executives codifying their individual skills into their organization. Some of those skills get "delegated" to good filing systems, databases, policies and procedures that can be adhered to and executed on by less skilled employees, etc. The part of that bureaucracy we're discussing here is human resources. So, the point of my question was to see if we could identify the organizations that lead to good work experiences like Owen's and perhaps see if we could identify _if_ they've made it mindless. And if they have, then how did they do it? My suspicion is that they did _not_ make it mindless. So I agree with you. At each place Owen mentions, there are sets of competent bureaucrats that structured the environment so that it facilitated the individuals. But I'd be happy to be wrong. On 03/14/2017 05:09 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Why would a mindless organization be better than a set of minds that know and care about the domain? I don't have a problem with another constituent that knows about organizational psychology, but that sort of person is not sufficient. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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Glen writes:
"In the context of this discussion, it strikes me that it might be possible to build a company that is better at bureaucracy than individual humans." If you accept the assumption that the other stuff (e.g. bureaucracy) mostly serves the organization's stated mission, then ok. Another hypothesis is that it doesn't, necessarily, and that these behaviors are a way for sub-organizations to emerge, and this becomes an end in itself. The sub-organizations are convenient alternative venues for individuals to become influential or at least protected, i.e. `alternative' relative to the mission. They'd be the ones saying "Safety is job #1" like your example. Now this could all lead to a sweet spot environment, or it could be more like a cage where cross-disciplinary communication is squelched because it tends to undermine the various local power hierarchies. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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I think you're oversimplifying organizations. First, an organization's "stated mission" isn't even, itself, a simple thing. If it's a corporation, it has a charter from the state. We mostly consider that meaningless. But it can be important as we've seen with Trump and New York. There's even a question about what it means to incorporate. There are different types of incorporation (C, LLC, etc.). Then there are add-ons like subchapter S or 501c3, etc. And that's all before we dig into the vagaries of "mission statements" and profits, publicly listed, private, etc. Then there are even things like the B certification or (as Robert mentioned) ESOPs and such. Maybe you see the above as digging my own rhetorical grave ... showing that any assumption the overhead of an org serves some identifiable purpose is convoluted, at best. But I think it turns your argument on its head. All organizations exist to serve their constitutents, even if those constituents are distal (like passive investors or only impacted by externalities, e.g. eating oysters after the Deepwater Horizon). So, the direct constituents of an org _should_ (moral imperative) construct sub-organizations designed to meet their organizers' objectives. This should all fit with concepts like group selection or sociological theories of groups or sub-cultures. The corporation is, just like the cell phone, a technological invention (techne, technique), part of the human phenotype. The question I'm asking is a specific sub-focus of "What's the next technological milestone in the exponential leap in sociological group formation?" How do/can we customize corporations to better suit our needs and abilities; even more particularly, how do we move away from buzzword matching and ham-handed HR departments? On 03/15/2017 11:08 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > If you accept the assumption that the other stuff (e.g. bureaucracy) mostly serves the organization's stated mission, then ok. Another hypothesis is that it doesn't, necessarily, and that these behaviors are a way for sub-organizations to emerge, and this becomes an end in itself. The sub-organizations are convenient alternative venues for individuals to become influential or at least protected, i.e. `alternative' relative to the mission. They'd be the ones saying "Safety is job #1" like your example. Now this could all lead to a sweet spot environment, or it could be more like a cage where cross-disciplinary communication is squelched because it tends to undermine the various local power hierarchies. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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I may have missed the gist of the thread. I thought the observation was that there were exceptional places to work that were able to maintain and grow a talented and productive staff. What makes them different? Perhaps it is that they are ideological and are not just concerned about the number of gold stars that come with each participant. In contrast, there's the possibility that this kind of technology grows without that deep motivation, and just for the sake of growing.
-----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ? Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2017 2:30 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled I think you're oversimplifying organizations. First, an organization's "stated mission" isn't even, itself, a simple thing. If it's a corporation, it has a charter from the state. We mostly consider that meaningless. But it can be important as we've seen with Trump and New York. There's even a question about what it means to incorporate. There are different types of incorporation (C, LLC, etc.). Then there are add-ons like subchapter S or 501c3, etc. And that's all before we dig into the vagaries of "mission statements" and profits, publicly listed, private, etc. Then there are even things like the B certification or (as Robert mentioned) ESOPs and such. Maybe you see the above as digging my own rhetorical grave ... showing that any assumption the overhead of an org serves some identifiable purpose is convoluted, at best. But I think it turns your argument on its head. All organizations exist to serve their constitutents, even if those constituents are distal (like passive investors or only impacted by externalities, e.g. eating oysters after the Deepwater Horizon). So, the direct constituents of an org _should_ (moral imperative) construct sub-organizations designed to meet their organizers' objectives. This should all fit with concepts like group selection or sociological theories of groups or sub-cultures. The corporation is, just like the cell phone, a technological invention (techne, technique), part of the human phenotype. The question I'm asking is a specific sub-focus of "What's the next technological milestone in the exponential leap in sociological group formation?" How do/can we customize corporations to better suit our needs and abilities; even more particularly, how do we move away from buzzword matching and ham-handed HR departments? On 03/15/2017 11:08 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > If you accept the assumption that the other stuff (e.g. bureaucracy) mostly serves the organization's stated mission, then ok. Another hypothesis is that it doesn't, necessarily, and that these behaviors are a way for sub-organizations to emerge, and this becomes an end in itself. The sub-organizations are convenient alternative venues for individuals to become influential or at least protected, i.e. `alternative' relative to the mission. They'd be the ones saying "Safety is job #1" like your example. Now this could all lead to a sweet spot environment, or it could be more like a cage where cross-disciplinary communication is squelched because it tends to undermine the various local power hierarchies. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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I'm sure I'm dragging the topic (yet) further astray here...
It seems like the underlying pattern is sort of a dynamic balance in an abstract system space. Firstly, I appreciate Glen's acute description of corporations... it IS worth noting that they always exist within the charter of a government, though it is curious what it means to be an "international" corporation. It seems that many take advantage of the seams between different governments, and as we know anecdotally, there are entire nations which exist somewhat significantly for the purpose of providing a base for these type of wily? corporations? I'm curious if there is a "taxonomy of organizations" out there somewhere... and by "organization" I limit that to organizations of human beings and their artifacts, not herds of animals, groves of trees, colonies of symbiotic creatures, or ice floes, etc. Where does a church fit in? Seems like the Holy Roman Catholic church, while located within the boundaries of Italy and supported (how?) by the Swiss guard, represents a fully extra-governmental organization. Multinational corporations may also fit that model in some sense? Multinational NGOs? Red Cross, Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders? What about street gangs or motorcycle gangs (are they that different?). Drug Cartels? Large cooperatives? In the case of he workplace and the concept of an HR department. The general principle of adding an extra degree of freedom in a system to make problems more tractable would seem to show one of it's downsides here. That extra level of indirection can yield the kinds of problems we have been citing here... mostly of disconnection between the goals of the sub-organization (individual, team, project, division, etc.) and the policies and practices in head hunting, interviewing, hiring. I do believe that complex human organizations do take on a bit of a proto-organism status and do begin to do things like grow and organize themselves entirely around the principle of self-coherence, perpetuation, growth, even sometimes propagation. - Steve On 3/15/17 4:05 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > I may have missed the gist of the thread. I thought the observation was that there were exceptional places to work that were able to maintain and grow a talented and productive staff. What makes them different? Perhaps it is that they are ideological and are not just concerned about the number of gold stars that come with each participant. In contrast, there's the possibility that this kind of technology grows without that deep motivation, and just for the sake of growing. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ? > Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2017 2:30 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled > > > I think you're oversimplifying organizations. First, an organization's "stated mission" isn't even, itself, a simple thing. If it's a corporation, it has a charter from the state. We mostly consider that meaningless. But it can be important as we've seen with Trump and New York. There's even a question about what it means to incorporate. There are different types of incorporation (C, LLC, etc.). Then there are add-ons like subchapter S or 501c3, etc. And that's all before we dig into the vagaries of "mission statements" and profits, publicly listed, private, etc. Then there are even things like the B certification or (as Robert mentioned) ESOPs and such. > > Maybe you see the above as digging my own rhetorical grave ... showing that any assumption the overhead of an org serves some identifiable purpose is convoluted, at best. But I think it turns your argument on its head. All organizations exist to serve their constitutents, even if those constituents are distal (like passive investors or only impacted by externalities, e.g. eating oysters after the Deepwater Horizon). So, the direct constituents of an org _should_ (moral imperative) construct sub-organizations designed to meet their organizers' objectives. > > This should all fit with concepts like group selection or sociological theories of groups or sub-cultures. The corporation is, just like the cell phone, a technological invention (techne, technique), part of the human phenotype. The question I'm asking is a specific sub-focus of "What's the next technological milestone in the exponential leap in sociological group formation?" > > How do/can we customize corporations to better suit our needs and abilities; even more particularly, how do we move away from buzzword matching and ham-handed HR departments? > > > On 03/15/2017 11:08 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: >> If you accept the assumption that the other stuff (e.g. bureaucracy) mostly serves the organization's stated mission, then ok. Another hypothesis is that it doesn't, necessarily, and that these behaviors are a way for sub-organizations to emerge, and this becomes an end in itself. The sub-organizations are convenient alternative venues for individuals to become influential or at least protected, i.e. `alternative' relative to the mission. They'd be the ones saying "Safety is job #1" like your example. Now this could all lead to a sweet spot environment, or it could be more like a cage where cross-disciplinary communication is squelched because it tends to undermine the various local power hierarchies. > > -- > ☣ glen > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
No, you didn't miss the gist of the thread, which is:
there seem to be all these unfilled tech jobs, but that polymaths don't generally get placed/maintained in them unless there's something special about the organization. My claim is that individuals within those organizations _make_ the environments that facilitate polymaths, not the organizations, themselves. To run with your "ideology" idea, I would claim any putative org-layer ideology would reduce entirely to individual-layer ideology. I.e. in order for an organization to be (somehow) "ideological" distinguishable from a naive aggregation of the ideologies of its current constituents, we'd have to identify constituent-independent org structures that implement that org-layer ideology. To falsify my claim, we need only identify a common org structure through the orgs we choose to identify (some Xerox, Sun, Apple, Venice, Redfish, etc.) as facilitating the good experience Owen described. Then, perhaps provide a mechanistic explanation for why that org structure is capable of implementing org-layer ideology. One part of such an org structure might be "soft money" or "black budgets" ... a kind of free energy usable by motivated bureaucrats. Typical start ups don't really have that sort of money. But large organizations like Intel, Xerox, the CIA, or government general contractors probably do. Another one might be publicly traded companies with very high stock prices (like Apple), where they feel comfortable acquiring more debt or have liquid assets available to provide a robust response to failure. But in either of those cases, your criticism holds: motivated constituents can defect and abuse their freedom. So, to falsify my claim, some other org structures must be in place. What are they? On 03/15/2017 03:05 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > I may have missed the gist of the thread. I thought the observation was that there were exceptional places to work that were able to maintain and grow a talented and productive staff. What makes them different? Perhaps it is that they are ideological and are not just concerned about the number of gold stars that come with each participant. In contrast, there's the possibility that this kind of technology grows without that deep motivation, and just for the sake of growing. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
I don't think the indirectness causes the debilitation of polymaths, in these organizations. I think it's the opposite, indirection facilitates polymaths. But I do agree with the idea that it's a balance (sweet spot) in a reduced space (direct vs indirect). What the buzzwords do (like mathematics) is allow a purely syntactical rigor, absent the meaning of the symbols. So, while the polymath might deeply grok the meaning of, say, "Neo4j" as one example in a large space. The person who cites exactly the symbol "Neo4j" as a thing they know shows a better syntactic match, regardless of whether they know what it means. It's the ability to _directly_ misappropriate the overly rigorous syntax that causes the problem. If we disallowed the buzzwords and relied on standard English, the meanings would have to be maintained, be transitive across layers. Indirectness (many layers between the hiring manager and the candidate) in both syntax and semantics would (I think) heavily favor the polymath. On 03/15/2017 05:14 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > I'm sure I'm dragging the topic (yet) further astray here... > > It seems like the underlying pattern is sort of a dynamic balance in an abstract system space. > > Firstly, I appreciate Glen's acute description of corporations... it IS worth noting that they always exist within the charter of a government, though it is curious what it means to be an "international" corporation. It seems that many take advantage of the seams between different governments, and as we know anecdotally, there are entire nations which exist somewhat significantly for the purpose of providing a base for these type of wily? corporations? > > I'm curious if there is a "taxonomy of organizations" out there somewhere... and by "organization" I limit that to organizations of human beings and their artifacts, not herds of animals, groves of trees, colonies of symbiotic creatures, or ice floes, etc. Where does a church fit in? Seems like the Holy Roman Catholic church, while located within the boundaries of Italy and supported (how?) by the Swiss guard, represents a fully extra-governmental organization. Multinational corporations may also fit that model in some sense? Multinational NGOs? Red Cross, Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders? What about street gangs or motorcycle gangs (are they that different?). Drug Cartels? Large cooperatives? > > In the case of he workplace and the concept of an HR department. The general principle of adding an extra degree of freedom in a system to make problems more tractable would seem to show one of it's downsides here. That extra level of indirection can yield the kinds of problems we have been citing here... mostly of disconnection between the goals of the sub-organization (individual, team, project, division, etc.) and the policies and practices in head hunting, interviewing, hiring. > > I do believe that complex human organizations do take on a bit of a proto-organism status and do begin to do things like grow and organize themselves entirely around the principle of self-coherence, perpetuation, growth, even sometimes propagation. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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In reply to this post by gepr
It's beside the point, but Apple has a low stock price. PE < 17. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Mar 15, 2017 6:17 PM, "glen ☣" <[hidden email]> wrote: No, you didn't miss the gist of the thread, which is: ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: !RE: A million tech jobs unfilled
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen -
I hope I'm not just being argumentative, but I'm not sure of the value to of an organization of most polymaths? I think my (much) earlier point about *some of us* on this list being "unemployable" has a positive correlation with being (one type of?) polymath. Many of us are self-taught (at least in most of our areas of significant ability, if not actual expertise) because we are painfully curious and possibly unable to remain focused on a singular task (completing a full course of education, especially through an advanced degree (6-12 years of schooling beyond high school?). Following your own principle (if I understand you correctly) of diversity, every organization needs a few polymaths, but too many and it is likely to lose coherence? Since many here *identify* as polymaths I suspect, yet most seem to want a "conventional" (e.g. regular work for regular but significant pay with benefits, sick leave, vacation) job, there seems to be some tension. We assert that we are adaptable and clever enough to solve lots of obscure, abstract and complex problems but can't solve the problems of keeping steady work coming in (and billing up to date) and keeping healthy (or arranging for someone else to pay our bills or down time if we fail at that)? I think I *was* an asset to LANL for some part of my career, or at least my next couple of levels of management or my co-workers, or the teams I lead, but I suspect that as I developed a larger and larger view of the organization (group, division, laboratory, NNSA, DOE, Big Science, USA, First World) I became more of a liability. I probably could/should have left even earlier... but I can be hard-headed and stubborn (or stupid) sometimes. I guess my bottom line is that for the first half of my career at LANL it would have been like *pulling teeth* to hire someone with my credentials and toward the second half, I *shouldn't* have hired someone like me! Just sayin' - Steve On 3/15/17 6:38 PM, glen ☣ wrote: > I don't think the indirectness causes the debilitation of polymaths, in these organizations. I think it's the opposite, indirection facilitates polymaths. But I do agree with the idea that it's a balance (sweet spot) in a reduced space (direct vs indirect). What the buzzwords do (like mathematics) is allow a purely syntactical rigor, absent the meaning of the symbols. So, while the polymath might deeply grok the meaning of, say, "Neo4j" as one example in a large space. The person who cites exactly the symbol "Neo4j" as a thing they know shows a better syntactic match, regardless of whether they know what it means. It's the ability to _directly_ misappropriate the overly rigorous syntax that causes the problem. If we disallowed the buzzwords and relied on standard English, the meanings would have to be maintained, be transitive across layers. > > Indirectness (many layers between the hiring manager and the candidate) in both syntax and semantics would (I think) heavily favor the polymath. > > > > On 03/15/2017 05:14 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: >> I'm sure I'm dragging the topic (yet) further astray here... >> >> It seems like the underlying pattern is sort of a dynamic balance in an abstract system space. >> >> Firstly, I appreciate Glen's acute description of corporations... it IS worth noting that they always exist within the charter of a government, though it is curious what it means to be an "international" corporation. It seems that many take advantage of the seams between different governments, and as we know anecdotally, there are entire nations which exist somewhat significantly for the purpose of providing a base for these type of wily? corporations? >> >> I'm curious if there is a "taxonomy of organizations" out there somewhere... and by "organization" I limit that to organizations of human beings and their artifacts, not herds of animals, groves of trees, colonies of symbiotic creatures, or ice floes, etc. Where does a church fit in? Seems like the Holy Roman Catholic church, while located within the boundaries of Italy and supported (how?) by the Swiss guard, represents a fully extra-governmental organization. Multinational corporations may also fit that model in some sense? Multinational NGOs? Red Cross, Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders? What about street gangs or motorcycle gangs (are they that different?). Drug Cartels? Large cooperatives? >> >> In the case of he workplace and the concept of an HR department. The general principle of adding an extra degree of freedom in a system to make problems more tractable would seem to show one of it's downsides here. That extra level of indirection can yield the kinds of problems we have been citing here... mostly of disconnection between the goals of the sub-organization (individual, team, project, division, etc.) and the policies and practices in head hunting, interviewing, hiring. >> >> I do believe that complex human organizations do take on a bit of a proto-organism status and do begin to do things like grow and organize themselves entirely around the principle of self-coherence, perpetuation, growth, even sometimes propagation. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by gepr
I know this is pretty general or vague, and a redux of something I
already asked, but is there any collective wisdom in this crowd about the soaring stock-market as *apparently* boosted by Trump's ascendancy? It looks (naively) to me as if the portion of the market that is climbing fastest is that which is most benefited by rolling back all regulations and lighting up the extractive/exploitative industries domestic as well as foreign. On the other hand, the Tech sector is soaring too, and it isn't as *conventionally* extractive or exploitative, though I suppose it is even worse about offshoring than heavier industry? My utopian fantasy is that the Trumpian ascendency will lead to a terrible crash of the "Titans", leaving a very few astute high tech companies continuing to rise like an untethered balloon? Seems like disruptive/transformative industries might do well whether Trump and his cronies hit a wall or not? TSLA and their vision? I can't tell if AAPL has run it's course, it has done pretty well in spite of Jobs' passing.. I'm not looking for stock tips here, just trying to read the writing on the wall of this particular sector/subject? - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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