A little blog of questionable wisdom written by a builder of little games. I do a lot of little things these days. I hope some of them do a little good.
These posts are old and new, serious and absurd, technical yet philosophical. I’ve kept even the questionable bits—partly for nostalgia, mostly as proof that wisdom arrives slowly, if at all.
If you’d like to reach me and don’t already know how, LinkedIn is probably your best bet. Students, I’ll likely reply; salespeople, probably not.
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A brilliant executive I worked with hired a team of PhDs to automate a critical process deep in his organization. After a year, they delivered plans that were as beautiful as they were unworkable.
So the manual decisions continued. At most, the team only glanced at the optimal plans. The leader would check in, demanding progress. The team kept saying “any day now, the model doesn’t work perfectly yet.” The leader grew more frustrated. The cycle continued, until finally, everyone just… pretended it all worked. When asked “are you using the new system?” they’d palter “yes”; technically it was true. They glanced at its output while making the decisions that made sense for the business.
Continue reading →hus·tle cul·ture ˈhə-səl ˈkəl-chər
noun
- the performance of results when actual results are missing; specif.: a workplace ethos where the appearance of extreme effort is rewarded more than the achievement of tangible outcomes.
- a management technique characterized by demanding longer work hours to compensate for a lack of strategic direction or a lack of management domain knowledge.
- archaic: the belief that professional success is directly and exclusively proportional to the time spent engaged in work-related activities.
See also: performative work, burnout culture, toxic productivity
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