I wonder if somebody has ever formalized this in some kind of theory because it's something I feel like you see pretty much everywhere: the more it grows the more the daily operations of a...
At LinkedIn, and possibly (but not surely) at the rest of big tech, there is little to no focus on a product true north even in the product focused eng orgs – rather, what plays out is a shell game between departments and teams warring to elevate whatever metric their manager has decided is important at the time.
The political games that can be played are on the level of 5 dimensional chess. I won't go into too many specific details, but I've seen everything – from senior managers trying to word game their ways out of patching vulnerabilities, to departments lying about root causes to shift blame, to having work stolen, it goes on. Trust in an organization erodes quickly the more of these sorts of games go on, and engineering orgs rapidly optimize to play the political game and not focus on true north. I'll be looking to weed this out better in interviews in the future.
I wonder if somebody has ever formalized this in some kind of theory because it's something I feel like you see pretty much everywhere: the more it grows the more the daily operations of a corporation move away from delivering a product or service, and more towards corporate shenanigans seemingly for their own sake, which tends to attract and promote a very specific kind of person.
I would go as far as to say this isn't even exclusive to the corporate world, but is something you see with almost any kind of assembly of people: NGOs, neighborhood associations, political parties, online communities. Eventually the effort required just to organize the social and hierarchical aspects starts to increase exponentially.
I have a theory, partly based on Dunbars Number. As an organization grows, you need people to help manage people. At some point the people who act as social anchors and drive culture (assuming the...
the more it grows the more the daily operations of a corporation move away from delivering a product or service, and more towards corporate shenanigans seemingly for their own sake,
I have a theory, partly based on Dunbars Number. As an organization grows, you need people to help manage people. At some point the people who act as social anchors and drive culture (assuming the group started with a healthy culture) reach their capacity to interact with everyone in a meaningful way. Once those social leaders (who are not necessarily formal leaders) begin to lose frequent contact with portions of the overall group, they either implicitly or explicitly delegate to others. If the people to whom the tasks of maintaining culture are delegated are A) trustworthy B) effective and C) consistent, then the overall group continues to expand in a healthy way.
As the group continues to grow however, you need more and more members of the group to be both trustworthy and effective and consistent at maintaining culture. And it becomes exponentially more likely that one of those cultural influencers will either fail to stop (or be directly involved in) some form of internally toxic behavior with their sub-group.
From that point on, other sub-groups will react in a natural fashion, beginning to act defensively, altering communication patterns, retaliating, etc. From there on you get a domino effect, and soon the culture of the entire group (company) is one of fear, defensiveness, and internal infighting. Which leads to the political games, infighting, and gamesmanship at the expense of being effective and having a healthy workplace.
This is just my theory based on observations and an armchair degree in psychology, so I may be taking completely out of my ass.
The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory, first developed by the German sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties. It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an "iron law" within any democratic organization as part of the "tactical and technical necessities" of organization.
I mean, yeah, LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, well known for their stack-ranking where you're pitting against your coworkers in reviews rather than being judged on what you actually did. That's a...
I've seen everything – from senior managers trying to word game their ways out of patching vulnerabilities, to departments lying about root causes to shift blame, to having work stolen, it goes on.
I mean, yeah, LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, well known for their stack-ranking where you're pitting against your coworkers in reviews rather than being judged on what you actually did. That's a fast track to destroying your org in my experience.
How old is this blog post? The author has been at LinkedIn twice, and most recently left after 4 months (!). Given this blog post, it seems doubtful that it's written during their first LinkedIn...
How old is this blog post? The author has been at LinkedIn twice, and most recently left after 4 months (!). Given this blog post, it seems doubtful that it's written during their first LinkedIn stint (because why would they go back?)
But if it was written after their second LinkedIn, the next company is Salesforce, another huge company with presumably the exact same undesirable qualities.
I wonder if somebody has ever formalized this in some kind of theory because it's something I feel like you see pretty much everywhere: the more it grows the more the daily operations of a corporation move away from delivering a product or service, and more towards corporate shenanigans seemingly for their own sake, which tends to attract and promote a very specific kind of person.
I would go as far as to say this isn't even exclusive to the corporate world, but is something you see with almost any kind of assembly of people: NGOs, neighborhood associations, political parties, online communities. Eventually the effort required just to organize the social and hierarchical aspects starts to increase exponentially.
I have a theory, partly based on Dunbars Number. As an organization grows, you need people to help manage people. At some point the people who act as social anchors and drive culture (assuming the group started with a healthy culture) reach their capacity to interact with everyone in a meaningful way. Once those social leaders (who are not necessarily formal leaders) begin to lose frequent contact with portions of the overall group, they either implicitly or explicitly delegate to others. If the people to whom the tasks of maintaining culture are delegated are A) trustworthy B) effective and C) consistent, then the overall group continues to expand in a healthy way.
As the group continues to grow however, you need more and more members of the group to be both trustworthy and effective and consistent at maintaining culture. And it becomes exponentially more likely that one of those cultural influencers will either fail to stop (or be directly involved in) some form of internally toxic behavior with their sub-group.
From that point on, other sub-groups will react in a natural fashion, beginning to act defensively, altering communication patterns, retaliating, etc. From there on you get a domino effect, and soon the culture of the entire group (company) is one of fear, defensiveness, and internal infighting. Which leads to the political games, infighting, and gamesmanship at the expense of being effective and having a healthy workplace.
This is just my theory based on observations and an armchair degree in psychology, so I may be taking completely out of my ass.
It's been tossed around before as the Iron Law of Oligarchy:
It's an interesting concept but it seems more related to the eventual reaction to bureaucratic bloat rather than how it comes about.
I mean, yeah, LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, well known for their stack-ranking where you're pitting against your coworkers in reviews rather than being judged on what you actually did. That's a fast track to destroying your org in my experience.
How old is this blog post? The author has been at LinkedIn twice, and most recently left after 4 months (!). Given this blog post, it seems doubtful that it's written during their first LinkedIn stint (because why would they go back?)
But if it was written after their second LinkedIn, the next company is Salesforce, another huge company with presumably the exact same undesirable qualities.
Confusing.
???