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Try reading the article, it might give you something else to write a banal rant about. Or should I say rants, each sentence seems to be about a different subject.

Your final exhortation about pies is just baffling, "don't compromise the size of the pie" is something I might just put on a T shirt.

Well, I thought "expanding the pie" versus "taking a larger portion of the pie" are particularly common metaphor for growing economy versus taking advantage of the economy.

Around here, the somewhat more technical terms "production" and "rent seeking" will probably serve you better. Folks on news.yc have already passed Randian Thought 101.

> With the billion dollars in hand, the future of you, and everyone else is worse off, because you focused too much on marketing rather than on groundbreaking research.

I don't think so. More likely, we're playing a massively multiplayer Prisoner's Dilemma, where too few of us collaborate. Sure, if a sufficient proportion of humanity worked at making the world a better place instead of trying to get richer, even they would be better off. I doubt however that we're even close to that critical mass.

Also, don't forget that grounbreaking discoveries are science fiction until they're not. No one plans for science fiction. Heck, even the eventual obsolescence of drivers (truck, taxi, bus) is widely perceived as science fiction, even though self-driving exist today. Because, you know, "there always will be the need for human intervention". (Even then, it wouldn't mean a human is needed in the damn truck all the freaking time. The truck can make a phone call when it has a problem.)

No, not cynical only realistic and maybe a little bit sarcastic. The whole system is oscilating towards mediocracy (if such a word doesn't exist, I already apology for my English), and it seems a lot of companies, espacialy the big ones, have reached a point where the only choice left is either playing the game or try to get things done. The latter won't work.

Regarding the pie picture, people care too much about the relative size of the piece they get and not about getting a ton or a mere 10 gramm...

> mediocracy

Just FYI, the word you're looking for is "mediocrity"

I like the original word better: a system of government by the middle? :-)

I think his word choice was right, "mediocracy" means rule by the mediocre which definitely fits his comment.

Yeah, that'S what I was looking for. But after all it seems in getting it wrong I got it right in some way, didn't I? ;-)

The rest of your post doesn't really have anything to do with the article but...

Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change.

It is a cynical view, but another way the author could have stated it would be to say that in order to have people know who you are, you should do projects that matter to people and make sure they know you are doing them.

The worst people I have worked with, on teams, as employees etc. are the ones who decide to do things like optimize the backup process by 50% when no one needs that done. They miss the big picture which is easy to see if you follow the author's (while I admit cynical) strategy.

but another way the author could have stated it would be to say that in order to have people know who you are, you should do projects that matter to people and make sure they know you are doing them.

In my view, it is only about visible progress that they can see, but they cannot easily see invisible progress that actually matters.

The worst people I have worked with, on teams, as employees etc. are the ones who decide to do things like optimize the backup process by 50% when no one needs that done. They miss the big picture which is easy to see if you follow the author's (while I admit cynical) strategy.

The big picture includes having a backup plan and having a backup plan that works.

Having a backup system in place is important, and I think most management understands that and would like to "see" it be built.

If someone is ultra technical and working with someone ultra non-technical that will create friction if they are talking about future potential problems, especially due to scale.

But, I would assume any company you are working for as a technical person generally has someone technical in charge of you.

I would never run a company as a business person with a lot of technical knowledge without a strong technical cofounder who can manage the technical team.

I am probably making an assumption here that everyone thinks like that, and most likely that is a bad assumption.

Also, I went to your games wiki, looks pretty cool.

You should add Red Alert series to RTS & WarCraft II to RTS

The big picture includes having a backup plan and having a backup plan that works.

Sure, but the grandparent was complaining about overoptimization. I've been in management, and having an engineer who seizes on the wrong thing - something which could be better, but is currently good enough - and ignores the higher priority item I want them to work on, is a terrible headache.

I didn't totally agree with the article but could explain your criticism a little; I wonder if we read the same article or maybe interpreted it in wildly different ways. The author is just using kind of this common sense pragmatism/cynical stuff many people probably hear from their bosses already.