In summary, leaders of major slices of the effort run their own show, merely informing the HMFIC, who retains veto power, regarding status.

Remember: The powers that be forbid progress, as progress might disrupt the powers that be.

When you're at the point of literally situating "founder mode" as the opposite of the CIA's strategy for disrupting activist groups, you're probably a step past even "received wisdom".

There's an obvious failure mode for 3rd-hand analyses like these: for years hapless dingbat founders tried to cargo cult Jobs and Gates success by just deliberately being assholes. This isn't quite that, but you can see where the wind is blowing.

† The Graham post that kicked off "founder mode" was in part a report on a recent private talk about things Brian Chesky had done to improve AirBNB's performance.

Original link:

https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...

I don’t think the hacker/startup/founder persona is interested in going deeper. Because to their mind society should be very loosely coupled on all levels and that would just solve all such problems.

- OSS projects are small enough to have a “BDFL”

- Most things about companies are bad. But if they were small and not monopolistic they would be good

- Problems along the way are partially solved with disruption/geniuses of the gaps

The cooperation between all these very small entities would be fine. I don’t know. I don’t think it is often touched upon.

You shouldn’t hire a chess prodigy grand master to teach you chess. Probably. You probably want someone who is more in touch with what it feels like to be a beginner. Who at least has been there.

Similarly you don’t want sociological input from the hacker/startup/founder persona. They’ve already got it figured out. (Refer to Dilbert)

Because the status quo is that you’re a big successful entrenched organization.

I think many Americans believe that because the American government is slow, unresponsive and generally painful that all governments must be this way. As a counterexample I would like to suggest Singapore, which has an online visa process (traveler visa) which was a breeze to follow and was approved in under 2 days. Compare that to the US legal immigration system (USCIS) which if you ever have the misfortune of dealing with, is a nightmare to navigate.

The government needs a UX department to streamline all of the painful processes it has. Make it easy to follow the law.

The most charitable reading of this situation, I think, is that the tech people routinely underestimate the leverage of even mediocre social technology vs. high-end computer-touching skill.

Based on his Linkedin profile, Andrew Chen has never worked in companies that are large enough to have most of the qualities. I have. For 20+ years now.

And the reason that these companies do things like check legal, brand and compliance before decisions or have committees or create complex approval workflows is because they need to.

Often they work in highly regulated environments or are in situations where not having the right people in the loop costs more and can be an existential risk to the company. And they always learn this the hard way. Just like Elon Musk has been learning every day with Twitter.

> In Europe however… :)

It is fascinating how some people have the tendency to, when made very angry about something, find solace and comfort in writing missives about the superiority of their minds and ideals. It can sometimes result in a pleasant cross between evergreen internet quotes “don’t put in the paper that I was mad” and “in this moment I am euphoric… because I am enlightened by my own intelligence”

Bureaucracy is tool to manage large, complex, and heterogeneous systems. Ideally, efficient and effective bureaucracy goes unnoticed. Why can I plug my laptop into the power outlet anywhere in Miami or in Vancouver and it just works? Why can I drive on the right side of the road from Toronto to San Diego and be reasonably sure that everyone else will drive on the right side as well?

Because humans have self-organized into a multitude of governments, standards organizations, and corporations that all align to produce the same shape of power plug and teach compatible rules-of-the-road across vast geographical distances and unrelated communities. Without bureaucracy, we humans would not be capable of building a global society.

Pointing to broken, ineffective, and inefficient processes to scapegoat “the bureaucrat” reveals an ignorance of the underlying mechanisms that make human society function.

No. I've been there. It's absolutely awful.

Quite often those that "lead by conviction" are just narcissistic sociopaths. Their awful decisions are coated by a veneer of self-importance, and their conviction has no basis on reality.

When companies are founded, there must be people involved who can execute a large chunk of the value chain single handily (if not the entire thing). Like a restauranteer who can buy ingredients, cook them, put together an interesting menu, engage in entertaining chit-chat, knows how to advertise and is good with finances.

In a large company though accountability matters a lot more and comparative advantage becomes a factor. It is also hard to hire great generalists (50% chance someone has a specific skill, that combination above is already approaching 1:100, let alone being good at something). So you specialise - there is a procurement specialist, a chef, a menu designer, a hostess, etc, etc.

Shortly after that transition there are still old hands around in leadership positions who know the entire value chain, but they slowly leave the business. Eventually there is a group of subject matter experts who execute the known chain really efficiently but no longer have personal or even institutional knowledge of how to set up a valuable new process because they specialise (theory of comparative advantage style logic kicks in). At this point, the dictatorial centralised nature of the company becomes a problem. If change is required, it depends on a tiny pool of leaders who are personally unclear on how the thing they control works at the micro level because they don't have the skillset required to set up new businesses. The only safe option is to iterate on the existing process, the company simply isn't capable of radical change any more. Or if it is, success will be more of a fluke than a predictable thing.

The idea that there is no good reason or value in those big bureacratic machines is equally naive as idea that it just has to be that way. Everything is case-by-case and 'big corpo ALWAYS bad' mentality is just stupid