Comment by saghm
14 hours ago
> Somewhere around 100 people, the ground shifts underneath you, as you realize you don’t know everyone anymore. You just can't. There aren't enough hours in the day, and honestly, there aren't enough slots in your brain
This is definitely a rare exception, but at my first job, my boss's boss's boss (basically the #2 in the engineering organization, although probably only like 2/3 of it was under his purview) somehow seemed to have an unfathomable ability for knowing not only everyone under him the org tree, but details about what they were working on. I think it must have been at least 150, maybe even 200 people, and as far as I could tell he could recall every single person's name, project, and the general status of their work without needing anyone to remind him before talking with them. Maybe he did just really studiously review notes or something before any meeting or even chance of an ad hoc conversation in the halls, but I never really saw him typing at meetings or writing stuff down to keep track of later, so at the very least he'd need to have been able to retain a lot of information long enough to accurately record it later. Witnessing this firsthand for a few years was easily one of the most impressive mental feats I've ever observed.
I recall in the first lecture of some Comp Sci class back at uni, our lecturer had learnt what felt like every student's name and face from their digital profile, some 100 people. Whenever a random student raised their hand to participate he would say say "yes, <first name>". I'm still to this day in awe of that.
I had a math prof who did that in a class of 200 and still remembered our names 2 years later. Incredible.
Did having such a person in charge make a qualitative difference in the atmosphere of how work proceeded among people there?
If so, do you think it would have played out similarly if the organization had had an equally effective "glue person" who wasn't in charge (therefore didn't have any authority to delegate or divide most tasks) and was required to manage upward [sic] to coordinate things for people?
LOVE this question! Thanks for asking.
I also like toying with variants of where "essential elements" can live, sometimes in odd places :)
https://x.com/patcon_/status/1963648801962369358
> I have an idea for a quirky event experimenting with the "minimum viable feeling of community", but need to explain some context first. Bear with me...
> [...]
> So here's the event idea: what if someone ran an event where the 2nd rule was "NO INTRODUCTIONS", but only because the 1st rule was "you must arrive having fully memorized ONLY everyone's name and face". Beyond the strange entry requirement, what would such an event feel like?
> And what strange sorts of intimacy might be created by this minimal scaffold of "knowing everyone"... & being in community together? I suspect it might feel like a warm event full of friends, but where everyone had mysteriously forgotten everything they knew about one another :)
counterpoint
My last CTO was hired after me, the org was hyperscaling. When i was interviewed I was told that the company is banking on JS and that's what we were doing on both ends [1]
When CTO was hired he made a walk through the office, greeting every team, he stopped at our cubicle and asked what we were doing - I told him basics - and he said "you should be doing that in Java".
Few weeks later he had a townhall presentation. He came to a room full of people, plug in his computer and the screen started playing a pornhub flix.
He didn't got fired. I was.
I’m not sure it’s really a counterpoint, but still an interesting story (interesting, because it’s not really funny, is it?)
Why did you get fired?
Maybe the p-hub Java player was buggy and shouldn't have auto-played?
Not the OP you asked but.
I think it is sour grapes that new CTO didn’t know shit and even did full embarrassment on display - yet tech guy who knew his job was let go most likely with his team just because CTO thought whatever they were doing should be in Java.
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Was he a good leader? And is that capability related to him being a good leader, would you say?
Is this that impressive? In my high-school there were roughly 200 people in the year group and I'm pretty sure most of them could list off practically everyones names and something about them?
On day 1 of your first year?