Comment by keenmaster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by keenmaster | Hacker News Reader

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I think she's saying that it's odd to her, as someone who innately enjoys doing highly consequential work, that other people don't share in her enthusiasm. Similarly, coworkers must find it odd that she doesn'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't affect them, because they'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 "joke" or compliment about her enthusiasm might actually be underhanded trivialization. Clearly she finds the fulfillment to be worth it though.

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 "risks" 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 "naive troublemaker who just doesn't get it." 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.

Thank you, I had no clue what to get out of the story.

English is my second language and sometimes it feels like a lot of people go out of their way to make their texts long and convoluted because it's cool. Same in my native language but it's another barrier to get through when it's your second or third language.

A quote from Mark Twain - "I apologise for the long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one".

Distilling an intertwined set of thoughts down into the single point you are trying to make and then expressing that concisely and clearly is difficult and takes effort. When text is convoluted it's usually because the author didn't know how to do anything different or didn't try because they didn't realise it was necessary.

For those of us for whom English is a native language the problem is less, and I enjoyed the colour provided by the FBI story. You're right though that it muddied the waters of what was actually a coherent and interesting point being made. It is a useful lesson to me that clarity is even more important for non-native speakers.

> Those are my 2 cents, I could be way off about the author’s intent there.

You have, however, correctly summarized some aspects of my experiences working for the government, more succinctly and dispassionately than I could have. Thank you.

I don't find anything unique here that I don't see at big companies, it's just handled more deftly.

Difference is big corps sometimes get reorganized or their cash cow falls on hard times and they need to optimise or perish. They don't succeed often but the incentives are usually profit driven - politics are a luxury that big corps can afford to absorb because they are usually entrenched in some position and can afford to accumulate inefficiency.

Government on the other hand is always political as their output isn't valued in market terms but in political points.

So yeah - from my experience - big corps (especially those working with government) can be political, bureaucratic, etc. But it's standard operating procedure in government work.

It's definitely a continuum depending on industry.

In more monopolistic areas (insurance, banking), my experience has been closer to government. In more cutthroat areas (tech, retail), it's been on the other end of spectrum.

There's a finite budget in any company, even those flush with cash. Tech companies still have all the same politics as the size increases.

I've seen this happens in big companies as well. The bigger the company, the closer it resembles a small government. Bureaucracy is a function of size.

This is why we should focus on increasing economy decentralisation if we want less bureaucracy and less waste of resources.

The main problem is that, once you grow to a certain level, you're big enough too lobby the government into maintaining your market position and be bailed out by the government if you fail.

You write really well.

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain this from your interpretation. It helped me understand more about jobs is large organizations I never though of before.

Can confirm, this is a vivid picture of the US government contracting landscape.

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