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0 pointsAurornis7mo ago0 comments

> it's only about getting higher ups to sing praises about things that I might not have even done.

If a company is so broken that promotions are decided based on factually incorrect information, there's nothing to do other than escape to a different company.

I'm talking about companies that are functioning okay, but they let the PMs drive what the team works on. A bad PM will send the entire team in the wrong direction and waste your time.

In the most extreme example, our PM would get distracted from the goals set by management and want us to do side quests all the time, so the entire team was constantly producing things that management didn't want while missing all of the things they wanted us to do. If your PM is the link between management and the team's directions, a bad PM will sink the team.

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latchup7mo ago

> If a company is so broken that promotions are decided based on factually incorrect information, there's nothing to do other than escape to a different company.

To me, this means that every traditionally run company (top-down) must be broken by construction. And indeed, I have never seen or heard of truly fact-based management.

The entire challenge with multi-level management is that you always play a long game of telephone with increasingly less technical people, which are unable (due to lack of time and understanding) to grasp the ground-truth facts without simplification. Thus, management based on hard facts is impossible in this setting, though it is a great theoretical ideal many aspire to.

In practice, doing so is very hard and people are lazy, so the "facts" can become so twisted as to be entirely unrecognizable.

awesome_dude7mo ago

I'm in Australia, and I've yet to find a company that isn't broken.

maccard7mo ago

If everywhere you look stinks, it's time to look under your own shoe.

No company is perfect, no team is perfect, no person magically knows what's right to do and has a perfect vision. Even if you get somewhere with the right team, right vision and right priorities, and you stick with them, the world will change and one of those will end up incorrect.

aianus7mo ago

Have you tried working at a company with less than ~30 people total? Those have been the best in my experience.

idiotsecant7mo ago

All companies are broken. Many companies are broken in ways that are tolerable or even decent.

awesome_dude7mo ago

Look, if everyone could just run their companies how I think that they should be run we'd all be happy :)

austhrow7437mo ago

So is OP. He appears to be looking for them the same way i am. Working for American companies remotely.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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latchup7mo ago

> If a company is so broken that promotions are decided based on factually incorrect information, there's nothing to do other than escape to a different company.

To me, this means that every traditionally run company (top-down) must be broken by construction. And indeed, I have never seen or heard of truly fact-based management.

In practice, doing so is very hard and people are lazy, so the "facts" can become so twisted as to be entirely unrecognizable.

awesome_dude7mo ago

I'm in Australia, and I've yet to find a company that isn't broken.

maccard7mo ago

If everywhere you look stinks, it's time to look under your own shoe.

aianus7mo ago

Have you tried working at a company with less than ~30 people total? Those have been the best in my experience.

idiotsecant7mo ago

All companies are broken. Many companies are broken in ways that are tolerable or even decent.

awesome_dude7mo ago

Look, if everyone could just run their companies how I think that they should be run we'd all be happy :)

austhrow7437mo ago

So is OP. He appears to be looking for them the same way i am. Working for American companies remotely.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse