Ribbonfarm

Luke Smith's article on the 4 causes is great and captures an important idea about what modernism lacks. if you like melting asphalt (probably the best blog I've ever read) you'll probably also like: - Venkatesh Rao's https://ribbonfarm.com (it's very much a diamonds-in-the-rough type blog imo) - the farnam street blog https://fs.blog/ consistently puts out good content - /sometimes/ lesswrong puts out good ideas when they're not busy modelling spherical cows in a vacuum - https://www.lesswrong.com/ - if you're really into systems theory and don't mind reading strongly management-consultant oriented prose (can't abide it myself but the content is good), https://thesystemsthinker.com/

I'd also add to this list the following for some great writing and analysis now and then (not consistently, but good enough to make the list). https://www.epsilontheory.com/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/ https://slatestarcodex.com/

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/ Truly great posts and book recommendations.

Yeah. Other LessWrong posts are usually great. I recommend almost everything at http://slatestarcodex.com, http://ribbonfarm.com, http://meaningness.com and other insight sinks.

For me, it's definitely Ribbonfarm:http://www.ribbonfarm.com/ I stumbled into Venkat's blog about two and half years ago and I'm still trying to find my way out. The rabbit hole gets even deeper when you look at his list of recommended reading. The material on John Boyd and OODA loops in particular has been bouncing around my head for about a year. Ribbonfarm quickly turns into a choose-your-own-adventure type of experience as it's very easy to bounce between articles and start looking everything that you don't know. If you're interested in getting below the surface level of how organizations, teams, and business cultures work Ribbonfarm is the best place I know of that really digs into the details. If you're expecting the typical "be a leader, not a manager" platitudes, then you'll be disappointed.

EXCELLENT thread. Here's my addition: http://tempobook.com/ It's by the most excellent Venkatesh Rao: http://www.ribbonfarm.com

Read http://www.ribbonfarm.com/, http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/, and anything else you get your hands on about strategy. Seriously, the things that are holding you back are corporate, office and national politics. These aren't insurmountable obstacles, just impressions of them. It's a bank for goodness sake, it's not meant to be interesting. Suits and a sterile office are not the problem. They are the symptom; and more than that, they are the signal and the filter for the type of people that work there (so I can see you having just as much problem getting your comrades-in-arms to agree to "collaboration, idea generation and non-corporatism" as your managers.) (I've written this assuming you're not a manager. If you are, great, it'll be easier to do either of these options and you can probably shave a couple of years of the timeline!) The best advice I can think of (other than give up, obviously) is to first prove technical competence, in the form a high-level executive understands (I saved us X million dollars on Y different occasions) and then get them to support you in setting up a team (which you will lead and will almost certainly need to recruit from outside to fill — quick, who's the first person you phone?) that will do the projects you want to do (quick, what can you do that might add a billion the bank's bottom line?) and provide the political cover to do what you want. It'll take 5-10 years, it's risky and it requires political skill. An alternative tactic…

Read “The Gervais Principle” https://ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-… I think it explains everything, most companies are optimizing for “confused” - a class within the framework of people who work hard for no reason. Not saying it’s the best but it’s certainly a way to do it, and probably becomes inevitable once the company is big enough. I also think it closely parallels the practice of companies being actively hostile to their customers (or Pareto optimal as they might see it). Big companies would rather provide an offering that suits them, actively mistreating their customers, and just target customers that will go along with it rather than wasting time on customers that want some less profitable version of the offering.

If you like ribbonfarm, the comment section in his follow up is worth reading: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/12/13/random-promotions-and-the-gervai… I wouldn’t be surprised if research like Cornell’s was inspired there.

For a somewhat cynical explanation of why that happens, I recommend https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off… As with all forms of cynicism, it has a grain of truth. And a much larger grain of truth than is comfortable.

This here is a single comment that explains everything. Firefox is kept clueless. Sorry to all the devs grinding inside the machine - you are doing great work, and while it is not your fault the ship is going in the wrong direction, you are providing the fuel for it to keep going there by keeping your heads down and not revolting. VGR's "Gervais principle" is a great series about recognizing the psychopaths at the helm and their power games. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off…

If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend reading The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”. It's not that it maps to reality perfectly, but it's an interesting lens through which to look at work and your relation to it. It helped me soften my view on some of my coworkers by understanding their motivations better, and also helped me to accept a point of view much more similar to yours about the work I do. Also, if you're a fan of The Office, it's fun to revisit it and examine it in a new way. 1: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off…

"The horse was the best worker in the kolkhoz, but never became its chairman". Heck, there is an entirely too depressing to read (but probably mostly correct) theory about how the office politics work [0] and I imagine it roughly translates to the other fields as well. Putting lots of efforts into some random thing most likely won't make you rich and/or powerful. It's putting the effort into becoming rich and powerful that gets you there — but that takes a rather particular personality and skill set. [0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off…

You only need managers to the extent their actions can have an effect down the line. Otherwise they don't "manage" anything, hence they become communication brokers, potentially unnecessary. The reality is that in most cases that's the reality, but that doesn't make the reality the goal and, in fact, motivates these decisions. I think Gervais captures these dynamics the best https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

Aha! Finally, a perfect spiritual complement to the Gervais principle: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off… According to Rao, every company survives by blending some combination of the following populations, varying by stage of lifecycle: - Sociopath = people who know the game and play it to win - Clueless = people who buy and spread the story the company is selling - Loser = people who accept the wage bargain, generally exchanging low devotion for minimal advancement This maps nicely to OP's quadrants: - Sociopath = grinder-grifter - Clueless = grinder-believer - Loser = coaster-grifter - (Coaster-believers get fired.)

> The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware the marching order they were passing along were going to end badly, and had already lined up their internal transfers, which happened within days of my departure as well. If one has not read The Gervais Principle, it’s highly recommended. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off…

Good read! Reminds me of the Gervais Principle https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off… , which is also a fantastic (and much longer) read with a similar lifecycle of the “corporation”

pretty lazy article, the answer is both are necessary if you are talking about outlier success hard work will typically at least lead to a good outcome, but often not a great outcome, so it's still a good idea, but of course hard working people are often taken advantage of by sociopaths see: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off… as we in the west have burned through our cultural infrastructure of reciprocity and solidarity, appeals to "hard work" are going to ring increasingly hollow to young people priced out of the life their parents had, i don't blame my young students for their cynicism

'A Quick (Battle) Field Guide to the New Culture Wars' https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-guide-to-th… Less about the specifics of the battles being mentioned, but rather: 1. Battles can be real even if they don't involve actual physical fighting. If I, like the author of this post, am a pacifist, it's best if I try to stay disengaged or uninvolved. 2. Many people play a certain role in a battle, and it's helpful to understand what role a person is playing as you interact with them. That is, are they a soldier, a general, or a diplomat?

Books are going to be better than articles because you can dive deep into topics and you know it isn't written for SEO, clickbait, selling some silver bullet process or ad revenue. I'll recommend two to learn good practices from and then two that will help learn to recognize horrible practices. You're likely to run into horrible management at some point and its good to recognize dog shit before you step in it. * Peopleware, Demarco & Lister * Rands - anything/everything he has written. Start with Managing Humans. * The 5 dysfunctions of a team, Lencioni * Gervais Principle (broke my rule, its a set of articles about The Office) https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off…

Ha, this is actually a really good case in favor of not hiring the best people. Any metric you have for estimating "best" will be gameable. Now I'm reminded of https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2019/04/15/mediocratopia-4.

> people that "refuse low impact work" end up being terrible teammates a lot of the time. yes, but there's a high chance they'll climb the corporate ladder while not caring about being great teammates because this is not a requirement for advancement. Actually, dumping this on someone else's lap [0] should be on the list of things to do if you want to move up from loser to sociopath [1]. [0] https://hedgehoglibrarian.com/2023/08/14/executive-function-theft/ [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off…

Have you seen/what do you think of the following? https://isaacmorehouse.com/2020/04/08/sociopaths-clueless-losers/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off…

Seems similar to what Venkatesh Rao has written about "The Clueless" in his "The Gervais Principle" article. It is a really great read: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off…

By the way, it sounds like you are frustrated with how companies work in general. You should read this excellent essay: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off… Under this loser/clueless/sociopath framework, the skilled engineers at many organizations (including yours, it seems) simply are highly paid "losers" with cushy benefits (I do not mean this as a personal insult!). Your colleagues may have an experience-driven grasp of this and are acting rationally, in a way.

Great comment, I can fill in some of your references. The Essay you were referring to is the brilliant "The Gervais Principle" https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off… Reforge talks about your cycle - I can't find the exact artcile but you can see it with marketplaces a lot - i.e. Facebook creates APIs for events, 3rd parties build platforms on these APIs, Facebook kills the API access. This is the closest article I could find related to "tactics" https://www.reforge.com/blog/growth-loops

Of course we must reference Berlins fable the Fox and the Hedgehog here. A great essay in this area is Venk’s Cactus and the Weasel. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/02/20/the-cactus-and-the-weasel/

Very true, trends after all come and go. Specifically about this style though, I feel it fits right into the blog series about "domestic cozy"[1]. It aims to be exactly that, imply super casual/low effort tone, make it feel a bit more personal, and simultaneously about ignoring social traditions that feel redundant to them. Like all trends, it takes effort to follow, and part of this is encouraging friends to turn off auto-capitalization on your phone. So I would say it's a bit more than just trying to make something hard to read, and focusing on that bit might make you miss the rest of their storytelling process! [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/series/domestic-cozy/

See also Venkatesh Rao's blog post on The Locust Economy[1]: > "To take coffee shops as an example, an unending supply of idealistic wannabe cafe owners enters the sector every year, operates at a loss for a few years, and exits. The result is that even under normal business conditions, without swarming locust consumers, this is a loss-making business with an extinction rate of around 90% at the 5 year point in the US. Starbucks has the scale to be profitable and resilient. Locust coffee drinkers happily drink the excellent, loss-making coffee from small, local Jeffersonian coffee shops and callously retreat to Starbucks or DIY homebrew if the prices go up. Starbucks survives, coffee drinking grasshoppers survive, small coffee shops go in and out of business." ("Locust coffee drinkers" is analogy not insult). [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/04/03/the-locust-economy/

The idea that people who are incompetent at higher ranks were, in fact, competent at lower ranks seems to fall apart at first contact with reality. Combined with the notion that people arrive at a place where they are incompetent but otherwise well-intentioned or benign, it makes the peter principle look almost wishful/fantastical. In order to understand actually existing organisations, you are probably going to be much better served by the MacLeod Hierarchy/Gervais principle: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-off… Peter is basically describing the clueless in this setup.