<story><title>Why is this idiot running my engineering org?</title><url>https://medium.com/@bellmar/why-is-this-idiot-running-my-engineering-org-c6e815790cdb</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>Sorry, the story totally lost me after she was describing the interaction with the FBI.  I did not easily take away some conclusion about what she had done wrong or what deep pile of shit she had just created for herself, or what on 2 paths she had just chosen incorrectly, or daringly?&lt;p&gt;(The paragraph ending, &amp;quot;I trusted the FBI to be good at their jobs.&amp;quot;  The next paragraph jumps right to generalizations, and I didn&amp;#x27;t clearly understand from her writing what problem did she just cause without knowing it?)&lt;p&gt;Without that spelled out, I have a hard time really being on board with the rest of the essay. Actually, it&amp;#x27;s almost like they&amp;#x27;re 2 different essays broken at that point above.&lt;p&gt;Anyone else experience the same issue in reading it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>keenmaster</author><text>I think she&amp;#x27;s saying that it&amp;#x27;s odd to her, as someone who innately enjoys doing highly consequential work, that other people don&amp;#x27;t share in her enthusiasm. Similarly, coworkers must find it odd that she doesn&amp;#x27;t actively dodge such work or deal with it in a robotic, CYA manner, devoid of enthusiasm. Her realization about them and their realization about her are asymmetric in consequence. Even if she judges them it won&amp;#x27;t affect them, because they&amp;#x27;re more of the norm (a tribe of like-minded people). However, she stands out, and that makes her life harder in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy. The occasional &amp;quot;joke&amp;quot; or compliment about her enthusiasm might actually be underhanded trivialization. Clearly she finds the fulfillment to be worth it though.&lt;p&gt;I assume it takes working for the government to fully understand. Risk averse people pile into cushy government jobs. After they shoehorn themselves into that career, they become even more risk averse. Then every few years they see people take risks and get fired for it. The aggregate effect of this is that not only might they be dismissive towards those whom they perceive as risk-takers, they might be actively hostile towards them. This is for two reasons. One is that the &amp;quot;risks&amp;quot; might pay off in a visible way (more on that later), making the other bureaucrats who are vying for a promotion look bad. The other is that they fear the risk will affect them in some way, and they want no part of it. They imagine either more work on their plate (God forbid) or adverse consequences because of this &amp;quot;naive troublemaker who just doesn&amp;#x27;t get it.&amp;quot; To make it even worse, it’s way easier to just promote the people you like in government. Guess who risk averse people will tend to promote? Guess what type of work is made more visible to senior management? So hard work is not rewarded as well as at corporations, unless it’s a very narrow kind of hard work that adheres to the most literal interpretation of one’s job responsibilities. Those are my 2 cents, I could be way off about the author’s intent there.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why is this idiot running my engineering org?</title><url>https://medium.com/@bellmar/why-is-this-idiot-running-my-engineering-org-c6e815790cdb</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>Sorry, the story totally lost me after she was describing the interaction with the FBI.  I did not easily take away some conclusion about what she had done wrong or what deep pile of shit she had just created for herself, or what on 2 paths she had just chosen incorrectly, or daringly?&lt;p&gt;(The paragraph ending, &amp;quot;I trusted the FBI to be good at their jobs.&amp;quot;  The next paragraph jumps right to generalizations, and I didn&amp;#x27;t clearly understand from her writing what problem did she just cause without knowing it?)&lt;p&gt;Without that spelled out, I have a hard time really being on board with the rest of the essay. Actually, it&amp;#x27;s almost like they&amp;#x27;re 2 different essays broken at that point above.&lt;p&gt;Anyone else experience the same issue in reading it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jmmcd</author><text>I know what you mean, but no. It wasn&amp;#x27;t that she had done something wrong, it was just amazing (to her manager) that she had done something so (apparently) brave as reaching out to the FBI. The point of the essay is -- some people are brave in this way, and some aren&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure if it&amp;#x27;s a good essay, but what I loved was the way she described connecting people as &amp;quot;just&amp;quot; doing her job. She didn&amp;#x27;t see it as brave. I&amp;#x27;m not sure what degree I would need to take, or what job title I would have to have, to see &amp;quot;making connections&amp;quot; as my job.</text></comment>