[HN Gopher] When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)
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When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)
Author : kogir
Score : 136 points
Date : 2024-01-28 15:32 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (madned.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (madned.substack.com)
| jruohonen wrote:
| "And that was exactly what had happened here. It wasn't that
| people were deliberately trying to sabotage progress, they were
| showing up to work and doing their jobs as instructed. But
| nothing more."
|
| In labor market conflict situations it is called an Italian
| strike?
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Work to rule!
|
| Do work exactly as specified, not including all the little
| things needed to actually make work happen. All the glue work
| needed to make an organization function just doesn't sometimes!
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| So why would anyone do an actual strike? This sounds better
| and more convenient.
| lumost wrote:
| It's more likely to kill the parent organization than enact
| change. This may not be a problem for the individuals in an
| organization if they have reasoned that
|
| 1. Personal Growth is limited, or further upward movement
| is undesirable.
|
| 2. They intend to be with the organization a finite
| remaining time, or would welcome an early exit
|
| A proper strike can be differentiated from a lazy
| workforce, self-sabotaging work cannot be.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Work to rule can be differentiated from a lazy workforce
| if it's done well.
|
| Typically, work to rule is used to highlight specific bad
| rules, regulations, or enforcement practices at a
| company.
|
| Say a company expects employees to do non-rule "glue"
| work to keep the company functioning. But, randomly and
| capriciously the company punishes workers for doing this
| "non-rule" work. A union can then announce that they will
| only be sticking to the letter of the rules until either
| the rules are changed, or the arbitrary and capricious
| enforcement of the rule is changed.
| kuchenbecker wrote:
| I often advise teammates to follow destructive rules by
| management to force management to overrule or cancel
| rules. The employee has cover for following the rules vs
| breaking rules set by management to meet goals set by
| management.
| harimau777 wrote:
| It can also be a rational response to a company that
| follows "management to rule". For example, I was once on
| a team where almost all of my time was spent coordinating
| with other teams and helping other developers instead of
| developing myself. When performance reviews rolled around
| I was told that none of that stuff mattered; only the
| number of tickets that I completed matter.
|
| So I switched my focus to completing tickets. A few weeks
| later I overheard my manager complaining about a breaking
| change made by another team that I had previously been
| coordinating with: "Why is this happening so much? We
| didn't used to get surprised by these sorts of problems."
| bee_rider wrote:
| The point of a strike is often to make a big statement, say
| "fire me if you dare," and show that your unit has cohesion
| and resources. You want something dramatic and noticeable.
| For example, if you want to kick contract negotiation out
| of stagnation, you want to do something that the business
| can't ignore for a couple months.
|
| Work-to-rule doesn't really accomplish that.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I think they're typically targeting different changes and
| different outcomes in an organization.
|
| Work-to-rule is most effective when you're trying to
| highlight particularly bad individual rules, or arbitrary
| punishments, etc. The work to rule action serves to clearly
| highlight to management why the current status quo rules
| are broken. This is, naturally, the most effective when
| there are very specific problems that lead to pretty direct
| consequences.
|
| Work-to-rule would be much less effective when used for the
| kinds of things a strike might be used (increased pay,
| improved benefits, etc).
|
| Basically, they're just different tactics that highlight
| different things, and are each best used to achieve
| different kinds of goals.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Also Soviet civil disobedience. You can't break the rules or
| you'll get punished but you can do things literally and not get
| punished. You're not paid to think after all
| araes wrote:
| > You're not paid to think after all
|
| This is an unfortunate issue with most of modern society.
| It's often compared to communism, yet how many capitalist
| bosses really want you to do much other than implement their
| "vision?"
|
| > When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I
| ask why they are poor, they call me a communist. - Helder
| Camara
| Kamq wrote:
| > yet how many capitalist bosses really want you to do much
| other than implement their "vision?"
|
| Most of them? Or, more accurately to my knowledge, most of
| the ones I've had. I mean, hell, even when I delivered
| pizza, they didn't really get all bent out of shape when I
| tried to do things differently as long as it was something
| vaguely towards the goal they wanted.
|
| In my experience, unless someone is really hardwired for
| micro-management, people cool of and let you do things your
| way once you have a couple months at the place and have
| demonstrated some competence (this includes in some very
| traditionally corporate environments).
| chunkyks wrote:
| "malicious compliance". Do exactly what you're told!
| vasco wrote:
| The boss pretends to pay and you pretend to work, it all works
| well.
| ponector wrote:
| Many managers will be happy to have people who are showing to
| work and just do their job. Isn't it the reason why people are
| hired? To do their job.
|
| Of course everyone wants to get more for free, that is why do
| many complaints that people are lazy and don't do any extra
| work which can benefit their employer.
| bickeringyokel wrote:
| If you are subject to more corporate performance review
| shenanigans it feels like anything less than 10x performance
| is insufficient to upper management. Maybe you will even be
| subject to something as unhinged as being told not to rate
| all of your self assessment too highly because it's "not
| possible" to be high performer in all the meaningless
| "company values" they put into their performance rubric.
| perhaps you will even be given the example of "working
| overtime" as a good example of something to put in your self
| assessment.
| zck wrote:
| It's interesting thinking about this. In my career, I would not
| think nearly anything I've done resembles research. Just pumping
| out development tasks.
|
| The one thing I can think of that was like research was really
| enjoyable.
|
| I should think about how to get more of this in my career. Even
| making personal projects isn't exactly "research".
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| In your average job instead of "research" it's really
| "discovery". which is trying to decipher what some business guy
| at your company or a customer really wants
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| If people are asking you to do something that doesn't make
| sense, there's still nothing to discover. There are only a
| finite number of holistic social needs, simply do all of
| them.
| appplication wrote:
| I was on a moonshot team in a previous role. Research is a lot
| of fun to get paid for certainly doesn't necessarily imply
| academic (being a DS lends to a bit more of this than typical
| SWE). In my experience it's big open problems that no one
| really expects you to solve, and rarely would there be any top
| down direction on how to do so. And those problems aren't
| always e.g. mathematical. It could be figuring out how a new
| product could enter a market, quantifying demand for some
| product, testing out a new algorithm, or doing a greenfield
| rebuild of something that exists but could only be meaningfully
| improved by starting over.
|
| I think what is satisfying about this is the fact that your day
| to day is largely self directed and open ended. It's not the
| type of thing that lends itself to backlogs and well defined
| tickets, and typical productivity methodologies like
| whole/scrum tend to fall flat in teams like this for this
| reason. You just sort of dive deep on a problem, put together
| prototypes, figure out how to quantify their utility, and keep
| trying new things. There also tends to be less pressure on
| deadlines because of the lack of top down.
| lobsterthief wrote:
| This sounds right up my alley. Any suggestion on
| roles/titles/companies to keep an eye out for? I've been a
| SWE for 20+ years and have a background in mechanical
| engineering
| appplication wrote:
| Research scientist is one common role I've seen, but there
| are often supplemental engineering roles for these as well.
| Another way to find these is look for moonshot projects at
| any major company. Basically divisions that are outside of
| the core product and business operations. Some risk in
| these though, since they can be the first cut in a bad
| economy.
| harimau777 wrote:
| What does the acronym DS mean? Digital Systems?
| appplication wrote:
| Oh, my mistake for assuming familiarity! Data Science in
| this case.
| mildchalupa wrote:
| I have a new one. PM had determined that their work load is
| diminished if a project is killed. So they deliberately recommend
| that projects be terminated and or do things that would cause the
| likelihood of termination to increase.
| daveguy wrote:
| Sounds like that could good PM taking into account their team's
| capacity and prioritizing.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Unless mildchalupa was talking about the PM's personal
| workload!
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Our situation at work isn't quite analogous to this, but boy oh
| boy did this part stand out to me:
|
| > _But a larger part of it was that people in the development
| team were just showing up to work, and not much else. I had a
| friend once at Digital who gave me this unforgettable advice,
| right after we were bought by Compaq:_
|
| > _"When captured by the enemy, it is best to display model
| prisoner behavior."_
|
| > _And that was exactly what had happened here. It wasn't that
| people were deliberately trying to sabotage progress, they were
| showing up to work and doing their jobs as instructed. But
| nothing more._
| avg_dev wrote:
| i enjoyed the read and was quite surprised that there was a happy
| ending. i didn't think that would be possible. probably that
| speaks to my own personal experience more than anything.
|
| not really relevant, but anyone know where mad ned is at these
| days? haven't seen any new posts of his in a while, and i enjoyed
| a bunch of them.
| mad_ned wrote:
| I'm still alive. But I've retired or at least taken an extended
| hiatus from my writing hobby, which in retrospect was probably
| a pandemic coping mechanism more than a lot of things lol.
|
| I only came here because my in box is blowing up due to the
| traffic hacker news is driving to my site, and so then I see
| that this article is like #3 today. Not bad considering I don't
| really remember writing it!
| karmakaze wrote:
| I know this story is about company scale RnD. It can also be
| applied at any level. Research lives on a gray scale. At its core
| is growing understanding of your area so that you can do things
| you didn't know how to do before. I've always gravitated to the
| hardest problems to be solved so that I can learn something and
| make something that no one else had the vision or perseverance to
| make. So almost all my jobs have been RnD though only a few
| formally.
|
| The most fun I'd say I've had was recognizing something
| ineffective and making (software) tools for it. Now that I think
| about it one of the first programs I made on my Atari 400 as a
| kid was Room, which let me move/rotate my to-scale bedroom
| furniture outlines around to see what layouts were possible and
| may be good to actually move the furniture.
| jfim wrote:
| Alternatively one can just use grid paper and some scissors. I
| bet you learned a lot writing that program as a kid though!
| dartos wrote:
| Sometimes a computer is just more accessible than paper.
| williamcotton wrote:
| How so?
| calamari4065 wrote:
| The entire industry of CAD
| williamcotton wrote:
| What does that have to do with implementing a 2D model of
| a room with movable furniture?
|
| How is paper not accessible? Do people not have note
| paper? What about junk mail? The last few pages of a
| book? You can make a scale ruler with any uniform
| markings.
| harimau777 wrote:
| This doesn't necessarily apply to every situation, but
| drawing, cutting out, and positioning paper takes more
| manual dexterity (and potentially artistic ability) than
| moving things around on a computer.
|
| Pieces of paper are also likely to shift if you need to
| move things around frequently.
|
| In a small apartment, surface space could be limited.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Now, where is that pad of paper? Bah, the pencil is
| broken -- _who took the sharpener??_
|
| My computer goes with me _everywhere_ and is ready as
| soon as I open the lid. Unless I forgot to charge it.
| smokel wrote:
| The Atari 400 would be connected to a separate CRT
| monitor.
| eska wrote:
| I remember being laughed at when I cut out coffee filters
| with a certain angle in order to plan how I would position
| motion capturing cameras to cover the room optimally. My
| manager liked the pragmatism though
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Research is one of those things that feels like "work" for me. My
| least favourite part of grad school. I just want to dive in and
| touch stuff and prototype. I find myself often jumping to the
| prototype phase as a way to justify skipping research. Maybe I'll
| review a few related libraries and some blogs and such.
|
| It's definitely something I'd like to work on while not losing
| the practicality of not being caught in research hell like some
| peers have in the past. Their end products ended up late and no
| better than my third iteration of the same thing.
|
| There's a balance I'm still fighting to find.
| jdeaton wrote:
| This sounds like a classic case of someone (/whole team)
| mistaking their title for their role.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| 2021: When programmers still sourced images for their blog from
| Getty Images rather than just generating whatever they needed.
| dimask wrote:
| Generating = using generative models trained on Getty Images
| and the like.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Getty-rating?
| shermantanktop wrote:
| This team did it to themselves. "R" has little to do with it.
|
| They worked on the technical bits that they liked, created a
| terrible UX that sounds user-hostile, and then shocked-pikachu
| discovered that their jobs got cut in half.
|
| The decision to whisk UX duties to a team miles away was moronic,
| of course. But that was a reaction to the bad acts this team did
| - to their customers, to the business, and to themselves.
| dimask wrote:
| It seems that the appropriate design skillset was lacking in
| the R&D group. Also maybe it was a first attempt to make
| something, and they did not get through a second iteration to
| improve it.
|
| Why do we expect that skilled SEs are also skilled UX
| designers? As everything, design requires training. The problem
| seemed to be such people trained in design were missing from
| the R&D team, which sounds like management's fault rather than
| the engineers' in the first place. Then, the management, while
| correctly identified the lack of design skills, instead of
| strengthening their R&D team with that missing talent, they put
| designers in a different group, creating a different set of
| issues within the company. Seems a case for an overall bad
| management in my eyes.
| rm445 wrote:
| Nothing in this article pertains to actual research - development
| has always included elements of design. Interesting article
| otherwise though.
|
| I've been in an organisation that was actively winding down the
| research side of R&D. Lots of chemists and physicists let go, or
| at least not replaced. Projects that had gone nowhere for years
| canned; people with no output for years canned. More focus on
| product roadmaps. What's really weird is that every step seemed
| pretty reasonable, but the overall capability was much less in
| the end. It's really tricky.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > people with no output for years canned
|
| Often I see this happen, and the result is the company loses
| out somehow. I think maybe metrics for "output" are wrong in
| many cases, and you've just canned someone who had a useful or
| even critical role you didn't know about. A lot of people who
| are important to company operations are invisible!
| tester756 wrote:
| >Various attempts of mine to convince the UX team to meet with us
| were rebuffed.
|
| I don't know how things must be going wrong that you decide to
| sabotage / avoid collaboration like that
| bdcravens wrote:
| The missing letter in R&D is E (experimentation). You have to
| validate assumptions and ideas and bridge the gap.
| ablob wrote:
| I haven't seen any research be done with out experimentation so
| far.
| voakbasda wrote:
| You can do research without experimentation, but then you
| can't call it science.
| debacle wrote:
| In my experience, this was likely entirely driven by one person,
| my guess would be two levels above the author in the org chart.
| It's sometimes frighteningly easy to convince business leaders
| that the dev teams are wasting a ton of time, doing the wrong
| thing, etc. It's even easier when that direction is coming from a
| consultant (might not be in this case, but I've seen it happen a
| few times).
|
| Someone who was supposed to be advocating for their team (maybe
| the author's boss) wasn't, or was being out-advocated by others,
| and that led to breakdowns. As a manager, I keep a lot of KPIs
| and do a lot of postmortems (lean), because you need to be able
| to counter the gut feeling of "development should be faster."
| oaiey wrote:
| I think most bigger organizations have left and right to the RD
| product manager, architect, program managers and UX groups. The
| head of that is the real head of RD. The real question is whether
| you want interdisciplinary teams. And the answer to that is more
| often than not: no. Why: because the illusion of control by
| management.
| Prcmaker wrote:
| I've seen a surprisingly low rate of research conducted 'R&D'
| roles through my admittedly short career. The research segment of
| any work had been limited to testing of ideas that are highly
| likely to work, the bulk of the work is product or prototype
| development. The R&D technologists employed tend to act as rapid
| response personnel for tasks not predicted by project managers or
| systems engineers.
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