[HN Gopher] The Flying Wedge
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       The Flying Wedge
        
       Author : imartin2k
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2022-11-14 06:22 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (lethain.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (lethain.com)
        
       | avmich wrote:
       | "Sluga Narodu", a series where current Ukrainian president,
       | Volodymyr Zelenskyy, plays the main character, is about a man who
       | became a president, and wants to do things right. One of his
       | problems is where to find a good team in the country not known
       | for established working procedures to find government
       | professionals. After some attempts he settles on bringing his
       | former colleagues - in fact, high school mates - who might be not
       | the best professionally suited, but have other useful
       | characteristics.
       | 
       | It's a movie, sure, but the problem of creating a good team
       | doesn't look particularly obvious.
        
       | GartzenDeHaes wrote:
       | Managers are often hired with the expectation that they will
       | bring in a team with them, or that they have an extended network
       | to pull people from. A lot of people in tech like to believe in
       | meritocracy, but that's not how humans and their organizations
       | really work much of the time.
        
       | nigerian1981 wrote:
       | Worked at a company where a new manager who also happened to be a
       | partner at a recruitment agency joined. Wasn't long before we had
       | a whole bunch of contractors joining from this agency.
        
       | buran77 wrote:
       | There are many reasons to do this, some more legitimate than
       | others. This is the standard practice in many public
       | institutions. The process looks like the standard recruitment
       | process but the result is predetermined. Waste and inefficiency
       | aren't really concerns so I've seen it more times than I can
       | count.
       | 
       | Entire departments created for family and friends of the manager.
       | Or where they slowly infiltrate and displace the legitimate
       | employees until there's a small core (maybe 20-25%) of people
       | delivering on the work, and the rest are moochers who just hang
       | around, go through motions, and collect a paycheck. And no, I am
       | not exaggerating even a little bit.
        
       | rexreed wrote:
       | This approach only works when there's a lot of fat and churn in
       | hiring where projects get spun up and hiring processes are
       | blocks. This doesn't work well in environments of hiring freezes,
       | project cancellations, and divisional spin-down. The Flying Wedge
       | in artifact of excess and a symptom of organizational hiring and
       | project management dysfunction.
        
       | OkayPhysicist wrote:
       | A lot of hiring process is less about finding the best candidate,
       | and more about finding a "good enough" candidate with as high a
       | success rate as possible. Hiring is expensive, so minimizing risk
       | is pretty highly valued. People you already know are at least
       | perceived as the lowest risk hires there are. So you hire people
       | you already know, if you can.
       | 
       | One man's cronyism is another's CYA.
        
       | hitekker wrote:
       | Another management article, another comfortable metaphor that
       | doesn't say much more than uncomfortable terms like
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism.
       | 
       | The image of "a formation of enemies smashing through your lines"
       | is fun but doesn't offer more than a sensation of gradually being
       | overwhelmed. It implies more coordination and competency than
       | exists, doesn't convey strategies against the maneuver, and also
       | doesn't describe the consequences. Like the article said, it only
       | applies to big companies and not really to smaller ones.
       | 
       | I think the more fitting metaphor for nepotism is cancer. Friends
       | hiring friends who hire friends often cannot manage their
       | friends; let alone fire their friends. It's unconscious, easy to
       | spread, easy to grow, all natural with bad long-term prospects
       | for the host. Like the author implies, it's not a strategy for
       | the "long game". Too bad management articles can't speak
       | straightly for fear of losing readers who can't handle ethical
       | quandaries.
        
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       (page generated 2022-11-15 23:01 UTC)