I dont see how it is fair from USA to demand others dont have nukes. Ukraine made mistake of trusting ISA and giving them away and now USA basically support Russia in their invasion.
Iran is a bad guy state ... but the "fair" atgunent hwre dont apply.
IMO that's not the case, because if a legislation looses its intended focus, it gains a lot of arbitrariness in return. The more interpretations you consider valid, the more options you can choose from when applying it.
So, obviously, the legislation had to be returned to a single interpretation, the one Congress intended (or the one the court thinks is the best if you believe courts should hold legislative power).
Which leads directly to the second issue: Which was the interpretation Congress intended?
> From dissent of disagreeing SCOTUS justice: "absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love."
The majority opinion analyses this issue with 6 different approaches, including a textual one, arriving at similar conclusions from each.
The dissenting opinion on the other hand argues, that all other approaches but the textual one should be rejected.
The dissenting opinion's textual interpretation strongly asserts, that Congress intended with "accepts or agrees to accept, anything of value
from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded" to address both bribes (intending to be influenced) and gratitudes (intending to be rewarded).
The majority opinion argues that if you were to divorce the concept of a reward from the prior intent during the influenced/rewarded actions in a statute that criminalizes accepting something of value rather than the intent itself (because how would that even be possible?), you end up with a situation in which being promised something of value, but only receiving it after the influenced actions have been completed, would no longer fulfill the requirements to be considered a bribe.
Basically the majority argues that if they are correct (666 being a bribery rather than a combined bribery + gratitudes statute), Congress still would have had to use language at least equivalent to the one at hand and therefore additional tests to deduce the intent of the 99th Congress can not be disregarded.
> Everyone predicted twitter would crash and burn within months of the layoffs.
I remember people celebrating and praising Musk, predicting new era of free speech twitter that earns tons of money and is massively effective.
Meanwhile, it lost on value, lost on income, became nazi echo chamber and overall much worst version of itself. It did not "crash and burned" simply because Musk was willing to pay huge amount of money for all of that. What it shows is that original engineering was good and reliable, actually.
That is kind of weird take, because whole my life, people WANTED to be part of initiatives like this and were jealous of people selected for initiatives like that.
Some people sit in front of the classroom because they want, others because they must. Many more choose elsewhere. Reasoning is their own.
I don't find it strange, having routinely tanked my own chances/social credit for initiatives... because, like the parent, I don't want a target on my back. Somebody above thinks I do, though, apparently. Experience isn't conditioned on... that experience, if that makes sense. Unpleasant to say the least.
Where you see jealousy, which is a strange thing to invite, I see fear of missing out/rat-racing. Pass. Plenty of motivators and opportunity without the charade. Or, to put it charitably, noise/competition/advertising.
All to say, the initiatives are usually loaded with expectations, reasonable and not. Tread carefully.
There is difference between "this is why I do not want to be part of that" and "this is why the institution as such did not found a way to do it". The some peoples unwillingness to do that is not that much relevant, unless the company is in the "all qualified people are avoiding that task" situation.
> Where you see jealousy, which is a strange thing to invite,
Any desirable position invites slight jealousy. It is no different then when you have low pressure project, project that uses cool language, project with the good manager. I used the word in that sense, in the the "horrible they are going to dislike me" sense.
> I see fear of missing out/rat-racing. Pass. Plenty of motivators and opportunity without the charade.
This seems oddly out of place to me? These initiatives usually give you more freedom and "customer wants it now" kind of pressure.
> There is difference between "this is why I do not want to be part of that" and "this is why the institution as such did not found a way to do it". The some peoples unwillingness to do that is not that much relevant, unless the company is in the "all qualified people are avoiding that task" situation.
Organizations are large, they gave us gifts like the Peter Principle. I'm sure that situation and plenty others exist. I provided my experience/anecdote, showing yours might not be encompassing. Apologies, meant no detraction. Point being, the initiatives are often overrated and rather easy to ignore. By no means am I saying everyone ignores them [or should].
> Any desirable position invites slight jealousy. It is no different then when you have low pressure project, project that uses cool language, project with the good manager. I used the word in that sense, in the the "horrible they are going to dislike me" sense.
Of course, that's why I call it a rat race. A group running towards the same things... to be disappointed, in my experience. The freedom is welcome, the 'customer [or peer] wants it now' pressure can be left behind. None of this requires going out of your way, however. Perhaps that is why organizations may struggle, regardless, I'm thankful for it.
I found things go much better for me when I can work on a project on my own, then if it works well, show it off and let it go up the chain. I can then focus on the work, pivot as needed, or scrap the idea if it didn’t pan out.
A co-worker of mine had an idea recently (not AI related). He told our manager and sr director about it. I think now it’s gone up to the VP level. The whole project hinges on a very specific thing working that some other team needs to do with a vendor tool and is having a lot of trouble actually getting right. Meanwhile, he’s now been asked to make multiple presentations to justify and defend it, and there are 2 or 3 separate project managers trying to track it, each with their own set of weekly meetings, tracking spreadsheet, and other such things. All those PMs are also asking for timelines and dates for a lot of unknown unknowns. All our time is being engulfed by ceremony and bureaucracy, and we don’t even know if it will work yet. If that one piece doesn’t pan out, it will be a very public failure and we’ll then be expected to come up with some other option. My part of it also involves a vendor tool. When I POC’d my part, it worked fine. When I went to set it up with some real data later, the tool isn’t working, despite the POC still running and updating fine. I can’t even replicate the POC again, but it might randomly work next week. There are bugs in systems I don’t control. It’s not a total deal breaker, but it’s a risk and may require a pivot that would fundamentally change how parts of it work that have already been presented.
Had he waited a bit to see if it will actually work, it would be no big deal and wouldn’t have cost us much time. Instead, if the vendor tool falls through, or we need to pivot to work around a bug, we now need to show that to all these people, explain why it didn’t work, and get beat up about it. We also need to pretend to be busy with this and make progress on it, when we’re in a holding pattern waiting for our dependency that may or may not work. We also found out this week that if someone on that other team makes a small mistake, it wipes out everything and the house of cards crumbles. I personally think it’s a big enough risk to scrap the whole idea and find something else, but it’s too late for that now.
Of course, I tend to like to work in the background. I want the organization to function better and more smoothly. I’m not just seeking glory. I’ve still ended up being the one our team tapped when the CIO came knocking for some big project he wanted to see done quickly, despite trying to stay out of it. I don’t think anyone was jealous of me, they were all happy that they didn’t have to deal with all the uncertainty. The only good thing about that was because it was the CIO asking, it was very easy to ignore everything else and I was able to knock it out pretty fast.
Maybe you’ve worked in companies with less bureaucracy or cultures that can handle these types of projects better. For us, it feels like no good deed goes unpunished, so it’s just easier to keep your mouth shut and focus on the work until there is something actually worth showing. That is especially true for these grass roots projects vs big corporate sponsored projects that are happening no matter what.
They do not dismiss soft skills. But, they do not know how to play the politics and were given bad advice. I would even say that their observations are entirely correct, they accurately described how teams function. What they do not know is how to influence people.
Bad advice given to them:
> The standard advice is always "communicate better, get buy-in, frame it differently." [...] The advice for this position is always the same: communicate better. Get buy-in. Frame it as their idea. Pick your battles. Show, don't tell.
That sort of naive kindergarten advice is how people want things to work, but how they rarely work. Literally the only functional part of it is the "pick your battles" part. That one is necessary, but not sufficient. The listed advice will make you be seen as nice cooperative person. It is not how you achieve the change.
So OP comes to the "the problem isn't communication. It's structural." conclusion.
The point is that if you unite authority and responsibility in the same individual, you can move fast and confidently because you don't drain people's time and energy by making them "influence people". In a healthy organization, responsible people act and are held to account by their results. Democracy is a choice, not an obligation.
You're right that organizations do often become consensus-driven. It's a failure mode, not something to which we should aspire. And we certainly shouldn't tell people to deal with a shortfall of authority in an organization by becoming social slime balls that get their way through manipulating emotions and not atoms. People who advise doing this ruin good technologists by turning them into middling politicians.
"Disagree and commit" is a good thing. Escalating disagreement to a "single threaded owner" for a quick decision is a good thing. It avoids endless argumentation and aligns incentives the right way. Committees (formal or not) diffuse responsibility. Maturity is understanding that hierarchy is normal and desirable.
Nailed it. I often cite Admiral Rickover (USN), who among many other things, said this:
"Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible."
He was seen as an asshole who was difficult to work with, and while that's true, it's also true that without his leadership, it's doubtful the Navy would have launched their nuclear power program, nor would it have been as successful. He ran a dictatorship, with an absurd amount of direct reports, very little middle management, and it was wildly successful.
> "Disagree and commit" is a good thing.
> In a healthy organization, responsible people act and are held to account by their results.
The first is only true if the second is also true, but I'm sure you know that.
If you unify authority and responsibility into a single person, that one person can both both move fast and super slow. They can prevent any change at all or cause unreasonable amount of change.
Literally everyone else who wants to change something or keep it the same has to play politics as they try to influence this one person. But also, practically speaking, this one person still have to do a lot of politics. A single team leads with great power still struggle to enact the change. They encounter both open and hidden opposition. Their opposition is even frequently right. They also encounter misunderstanding, passive aggression, seeming compliance, passivity. Or simply people fully agreeing, being onboard and still doing things the old way out of intertie or organization pressures.
> You're right that organizations do often become consensus-driven.
I did not said that at all. I did not even said that it is bad when it happens. I said that the usual advice OP was given makes people feel good, but it is a bad advice for achieving the change.
> In the first example, for example, they suggested a new metric to track added warnings in the build, and then there was a disagreement in the team, and then as a footnote someone went and fixed the warnings anyway? That sounds like the author might be missing something from their story.
I do not find anything missing here. This is how things often plays out in reality. Both your retelling of it and what was actually written in the article.
Your retelling: Some people agree and some disagree with new metric. That is completely normal. Then someone who agree or want to achieve the peace or just temporary does not feel like doing "real jira" tasks fixes warnings. Team moves on.
Actual article: the warnings get solved when it becomes apparent one of them caused production issue. That is when "this new process step matters" side wins.
I'm referencing the footnote where the author says that the discussion caused one team member to go and fix the issue. The warnings causing a production issue is, I think, a complete hypothetical.
What this story is missing is an explanation for why people were disagreeing. Like, why is someone not looking at warnings? Is it that the warnings are less important than the author understands? Is it that the warnings come from something that the team have little control over? And the solution the author suggests - would it really have changed anything if they already weren't looking at warnings? The author writes as if their proposal would have fixed things, but that's not really clear to me, because it's basically just a view into whether the problem is getting worse, which can be ignored just as easily as the problem itself.
Someone hacked his site or something, so I cant get back. But, I thought you mean situation in one of the first paragraphs where the team started take some issue seriously after actual problem.
And honestly, I have seen people disagree and fight literal standard changes like "lets have pipeline that runs tests before merge" or "database change must go through test environment before being sent over".
It is perfertly possible and normal for people to fight change and be wrong without there being grave smart missing reason. I have no problem to m trust the author that he was simply right in hindsight.
If you ever tried to improve processes or project with persistent issues, the problems author described are entirely believable. The author does not know what to do in that situation, but he described the usual dynamic pretty accurately.
Iran is a bad guy state ... but the "fair" atgunent hwre dont apply.
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