Comment by ramon156
21 hours ago
First paragraph already assumes a lot. We're a team of 5, but no, I cannot tell anyone my concerns or problems.
I've read somewhere that company politics is necessary. Whether that's true, I'll probably never know.
21 hours ago
First paragraph already assumes a lot. We're a team of 5, but no, I cannot tell anyone my concerns or problems.
I've read somewhere that company politics is necessary. Whether that's true, I'll probably never know.
When I worked at Netflix many years ago, they loved to boast about how they didn't have any "processes". My experience was that process ALWAYS exists, but at Netflix you just had to figure it out and hopefully not step on the wrong toes along the way.
Ah, the tyranny of structurelessness.
Tyranny of structureless is an excellent essay, [1] for the lucky 1 in 10,000 who haven't read it!
[1] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
Or those "we have a flat hierarchy" companies
Which is really "We don't document our implicit hierarchy, screw with it at your own risk
Sounds like an opportunity to give yourself a promotion. Just start sitting with the CEO at lunch, then walk around telling people what to do. (Joke btw)
Some people are able to pull this off in such a setting.
What do you feel you cannot share concerns with your peers?
Not the original poster but:
This is a great example of why managers have to exist.
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> I can't cope with conflict in any shape or form
Why would you live this way?
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Ugh, your attitude really pisses me off, but I want to help you because my liberation is bound up in yours, so here goes.
> It's layers above me that need to hear it
Most workers socialized under capitalism feel this way, that the power rests at the top of the hierarchy and IF ONLY THEY KNEW, they could FIX THINGS. Well, guess what? Your job is to keep them from knowing. You, as a leaf-node of the hierarchy, operate "the sharp end of the system" where "all ambiguity is resolved."[0] You exist to DO the WORK, and that includes the "theory building"[1] from which the owners of the business pay you to be insulated.
However you interpret that on a moral level, practically speaking it means that YOU and your peer practicioners are actually the ones with the power and the (sometimes merely implicit) mandate to enact whichever policy you think the "layers above" ought to impose.
If you REALLY need something from the higher-ups, the only real way to get it is to march on the boss and, with sufficient leverage, demand it as a collective. You're going to have to talk to your peers to organize that, or we'll slide further into thisbdystopia in which "we fear our neighbor’s opinion more than we respect our own freedom of choice."[2]
To effect lasting change, one must act with consistent commitment alongside one's peers, rather than waiting for a moment of grace from the "layers above."
"Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it."[2]
0. How Complex Systems Fail
1. Programming as Theory Building, Naur
2. The Dispossessed, LeGuin
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