Comment by Swenrekcah
9 days ago
> In private organisations you get competent shouty people at the top insisting on a job done right. In government you get incompetent shouty people insisting that the job gets done wrong.
Great post and story but this conclusion is questionable. These kinds of incompetences or misaligned incentives absolutely happen in private organisations as well.
Much more rarely in my experience, having been at both kinds of organisations.
There’s a sort-of “gradient descent” optimisation in private organisations, established by the profit motive and the competitors nipping at their heels. There’s no such gradient in government, it’s just “flat”. Promotions hence have a much weaker correlation with competence and a stronger correlation with nepotism, political skill, and willingness to participate in corruption.
I’ve worked with may senior leaders in all kinds of organisations, but only in government will you find someone who is functionally illiterate and innumerate in a position of significant power.
Obviously this is just a statistical bias, so there’s overlap and outliers. Large, established monopoly corporations can be nigh indistinguishable from a government agency.