Grifters, believers, grinders, and coasters
seangoedecke.com
seangoedecke.com
I’m 42 and I’ve been all of these things at different times.
Believer - When you first join the company and they sell you on the vision
Grinder - You work hard for a year or two to make a difference
Coaster - You realize you wont get promoted, they company will always have no money on the bonus pool, except for the execs. And that the company will go on by sheer force of momentum, not by your grinding.
Grifter - You see the company hire friend after friend of execs, friends' kids as interns, friends' wives as Executive Directors, execs' girlfriends as "Chief of Staff" - and you realize you need to get something too, so you use company time to form your own startup.
Now you repeat the cycle, except you are the person at the top and someone else goes thru these stages.
They do this because no one wants to work at their startup. How do you see this being solved then?
The rest gets the cozy positions and does nothing.
Not really. Startups cannot really operate without doers, and most doers want something out of the experience -- equity, money, promotion, etc.
I've seen two start-ups (one Series A SF startup with bigname VCs) which promoted VC-frields' kids while the doers waited and waited.
In one case, the "child" was 25yo, became manager 6mo later, became Director 6mo after that, became senior Director 6mo after that. Some facebook stalking revealed the relationship, some photos at Lake Tahoe.
Eventually the startup collapsed because there were so many senior folks w/o real experience. I saw the same individuals follow leadership to a new company, which also had a huge implosion.
"These aren’t immutable aspects of your personality. They’re more categories for how you approach the job of software engineering - you’ll move around between quadrants as you change your approach to work, for all the usual reasons."
unless you're talking about the stock measure, in which case it is less contextual (but sorta), but very real and sought after.
Probably could make a garmin watch function to plot "stress level" vs "body battery"
That is, this is an instance of a diagram that you'll see repeated over and over in business texts; I personally call it a "fourbox" but I suppose "business matrix" is more common and "quadrant analysis" or something like that is even more descriptive. The idea is that you identify two different things, graph those as separate axes, label the quadrants and then tell a story about the four different labels. The Eisenhower matrix is the usual example (one axis is how close is the deadline, near vs far, the other is how much is lost by missing the deadline, a little vs a lot. The immediacy is called "urgency", the stakes are called "importance," things that are important-and-urgent should be done by you now, things that are important-not-urgent should be scheduled, things that are urgent-not-important should be delegated to someone else, and everything in the last quadrant should be safely ignored).
A "true" fourbox in my view should tell a particular story, which I call "cynefin flow" after a different iconic fourbox that told this story compellingly. According to this flow, there should be motion in a circle about the center of the axes, except that it gets interrupted at one transition between the quadrants and becomes stuck in a U-shape, unless some outside stimulus pushes it over that edge. So there is a motion I -> II -> III -> IV around the quadrants but then things get stuck in IV unless an outside stimulus pushes it back into I.
The cynefin story for the Eisenhower matrix ends with things getting stuck in not-important-not-urgent, so that is your IV quadrant. Of the two stories you can tell from there, the more compelling story is that, "Things that are important but not urgent, become important-and-urgent as the clock runs down, but then the deadline will pass and the pain becomes a sunk cost and they become unimportant-and-urgent, only to eventually fade to being unimportant-and-not-urgent, until an external stimulus acts to suddenly attach additional stakes to them and make them important again." So you have a bill (I), that bill comes due (II), you miss the deadline but still have a chance to pay it (III), and finally it gets sent to collections and impacts your credit (IV). And it sits there until either the debt expires or you're trying to get a new house, in which case it becomes Important again (I) to clean up your credit history.
Similarly with the BCG matrix, which is a fourbox with your capture of a market on one axis, the market's growth rate on a separate axis. Then the businessfolk carefully write "cash cow, question mark, star, dog" on each of these four quadrants. But what makes it a true fourbox is that your "question marks" that you invest in become "stars" as you capture their markets, then become "cash cows" as growth dries up, then become "dogs" as the market itself stagnates, until some external stimulus creates the opportunity for growth and more question marks again.
OP's diagram has "work intensity" on one axis, and a sort of "idealism-vs-pragmatism" axis for the other, and they have identified the intense pragmatist as naturally falling under a Cynefin flow into being a coasting pragmatist as they burn out. Presumably this is the accumulation point and those are the III and IV of the system, in which case some external stimulus causes coasting pragmatists to become coasting idealists, at which point they will naturally become intense idealists as their aspirations come to the fore, and then naturally become intense pragmatists as the organization fails to reward their idealism?
As for why it is a part of my definition of what makes such a diagram "correct" (as opposed to 4 random labels applied to irrelevant axes), it's kind of because that's the only interesting story that can be told in those 2 dimensions?
So suppose you had an hourglass shape of flow; then if you conditionally invert one of the axes (invert y when x is negative) you get a conventional cynefin flow. So if you were faced with a case where intense idealists were turning into coasting pragmatists, it suggests that you would want to just choose a different axis for one of the sides. Say you wanted to keep idealism-vs-pragmatism, but now you have to describe something that's "intense work if you're an idealist, but coasting if you're a pragmatist." And you might call that "mission work" or "evangelism" or something, acting out your most fundamental values. If you choose that as your axis, the one side inverts and the hourglass becomes a conventional fourbox (or 2x2 as a comment above calls it).
Curious, did you write all this out for this comment? I appreciate it either way because I was truly skeptical at first but kept reading thru the end.
In theory text-to-speech is a significant accelerator even though I'm a touch-typist? I haven't found an AI that can actually properly mirror my style and hit the basic points that I'm interested in in a way that I can say "eh, close enough."
But the idea that every 2x2 is a state space that has some kind of attractor path in it only covers a subset of such plots. There are lots of other kinds that don't fit that paradigm, e.g. binary action vs binary outcome, diagnostic test pos/neg vs condition true/false, etc.
And yes, I agree, I am trying to exclude a large class of 2x2s. I don't consider "false positive, false negative, true positive, true negative" as a more insightful classification of the four quadrants than just saying "test=positive condition=negative" etc., and the point of such a diagram is not to tell a story to your management. (In this particular case it's usually to point out that by making the test more or less stringent, you have a tradeoff between false positives and false negatives.)
Similarly, a 2D graph can also be used to depict a cost-benefit analysis for a bunch of different options, to try to emphasize "I think this is a low-cost high-benefit remediation strategy compared to those other strategies", I don't regard this as a "proper" 2x2, it's just a persuasive tool.
Which is, I guess, a way to say that often when I'm "coasting", I'm working -- just not as effectively as I would like. I usually feel guilty when I'm unsure what to do.
I've definitely burned out a few times.
They're also a good source of slack -- "They’re also good for teams that have a lot of last-minute requests or questions". Coasters can do more work when that's what's needed. OTOH, a grinder always working at 100% can never give more.
Said another way, with one fewer category, but with a clearer and more general approach.
I've never read anything better to describe nearly all organizations of a certain size.
It's like Freud where it doesn't really stand up to serious empirical evaluation, yet there are so many uncomfortable truths.
The author kinda loses the plot after the part about power talk, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics
A taxonomy of partial engagement in software development would be an interesting topic. I've worked at quite a few places where there was something pathological I couldn't change or where I could have worked harder but it would have created a lot of strife with people who (don't work as hard|don't work as smart|don't see the big picture|aren't careful|don't know how to write joins in SQL|learned to design software by learning answers to interview questions|...)
In a case like that you can still get stuff done with 50% engagement, getting a lot more done might not be feasible without getting the support you need from your co-workers and if you lower your standards your life gets easier and you still get something done. It can sometimes feel pretty good and it can sometimes feel like dying inside.
Why are these people always flirting with psudoscientists and charlatans?
Seriously? Why is this linking to Wilhelm Reich? Why does this look like some shit Lacan would have written? Why does this link to the devils NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming)
Why couldn't scientists in this era just stay in their fking lane and not say dumb shit?
I'm so tired of having to debunk yet another crack-pot stupid ideology from this era. This is psychoanalysis for the STEM-lord, and just as full of nonsense.
On one hand I am trained as a physicist and work as a computer programmer and have a lot of respect for arch-reductionists like Forester and Minsky but I also have an a schizotypal brain that causes me to have unusual experiences: I have a knack for dowsing rods, pendulums, ouija boards and the like even if I don't believe in them.
Korzybski is an interesting case because you cannot get a good edition of his Science and Sanity so it is not possible to evaluate his work as a whole. I'd agree with L. Ron Hubbard (half jokingly) that Korzybski did not develop a workable system but Korzybski asked interesting questions and in some sense has less bullshit per mile than most approaches to getting more out of the human nervous system (e.g. I had a therapist who gave me CBT worksheets that Korzybski would have been giving out had he attained the "workable system")
True. Also it should be the managements'/team leads' role to act as a midiators. It's a waste of time to constantly argue over what is "right" when all proposed solutions are functional.
Should we spend more time flushing out the unknowns? Should we launch ASAP and interate fast? Should we automate the process? Do we have data to back our assumptions?
The "culture fit" is not superficial and I've always been advocate of fire fast if one is culturally unfit because it slows down everyone
I'm just trying to imagine the different traits for liberal vs conservative grifters (thought leader vomit vs machiavellian connivance), believers (thought leader vomit vs constant market research), grinders (ship lots of code vs write lots of tests) and coasters (shitpost all day on random slack channels vs do the bare minimum to appear to be working)
and now you have my attention. only, i'm reading it from the asshole's perspective.
Maybe throw in some flavor from the 6 types of working genius (WIDGET: wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement, tenacity) and meyers-briggs personality types for fun.
I love it!
you just described the angst of every phd student.
Being a coaster/believer also makes sense, you are essentially trading status for a job you enjoy doing. They are not suckers, they will accept to do more work for less but only if you give them the job they want, otherwise, they won't do it.
Grinder/believers are probably the most likely to be exploited, but it doesn't mean they are suckers either. These are the kind of people who have standards, break their standards and you will find yourself with a surprise letter of resignation. If they are an essential element, as they often are, they will be more than happy to see you struggle as they are now working for a company they deem more worthy, they may take a few fellow believers with them too.
the difference is grinding when you're not getting a payoff or gain
- free time, low stress, calm life
- fulfillment through delivering functionality
- fulfillment through pride in the craft
- money and status through career progression
- social validation through relationships with coworkers/bossesGrifting is always a form of aberrant behaviour -- manipulative, cruel, deceitful, larcenous. Unless you are Humpty Dumpty, I don't know why you would choose a word for a quadrant that requires you to clarify that you do not mean to associate its actual meaning with the behaviours in that quadrant.
"Politician" (albeit with a small p) is a much, much better word for the personality type in the description.
Politics is only sometimes a form of aberrant behaviour.
> They respect the company mission as written, but what they really value is what the leaders of the company show they care about.
> Grifters aren’t very good at changing the culture of their organizations. They tend to go with the current instead.
To me loyalist fits this well, not because they are necessarily going to do dirty work, but because they are loyal to the rules that are in place.
I just am too much of a believer/anarchist to see loyalty as any better than grift. A grifter does their own evil, a loyalist does someone else's. I'm not sure which is more repugnant but I'm sure that my view on this is quite biased. I guess that makes me the target audience re:
> this article is really aimed at people who are trying to have a bit more empathy for the assholes they work with
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
But I think it would very much argue in favor of people being on average more like loyalists. Just regular Joes trying to get a promotion and causing untold damage in the process.
Every resignation has been a bit of a manifesto though, so it's not like everything is perfectly normal, but it works out well enough.
There is literally a "Me" in the graph.
This gives me a little Zizekian vibes, where it's intentionally trying to confuse and shock in order to shift your perspective without you even realising it. I like it. The relabeling is just another form of understanding by interacting.
I dunno. The whole thing is wobbly really.
Like, the post says "You want a grifter leading a complicated engineering project".
No, you really, really, really don't.
You do.
Believers are too inflexible and will kill the project eventually because of it.
Coasters won’t work enough to deliver the project.
Grinders will eventually burn out and devolve into coasters, or start divert the project into unrelated territory (focusing too much on optimization, testing, accessibility).
Grifters are the only ones who can lead projects, because they understand where the wind blows.
(Which it might be, because AI)
It might take work to be get away with being a fraud, but you're not doing work that's helping anyone you're working with.
(Well, maybe not just this day and age ... this is a rather timeless observation.)
A<B means that person considers B’s interests to be more important than A’s (in the work context here).
Visibility is the single most important thing during the promotion cycle thus it is the most important thing for such people. Go write a class and then pretend that you invented the wheel and promote yourself to everybody, never spent the time on anything that can't be "sold" to management even it if it useful for the team.
both extremes are insane
the middle should be labeled "realist"
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
According to Rao, every company survives by blending some combination of the following populations, varying by stage of lifecycle:
- Sociopath = people who know the game and play it to win
- Clueless = people who buy and spread the story the company is selling
- Loser = people who accept the wage bargain, generally exchanging low devotion for minimal advancement
This maps nicely to OP's quadrants:
- Sociopath = grinder-grifter
- Clueless = grinder-believer
- Loser = coaster-grifter
- (Coaster-believers get fired.)
one day Rao will get the recognition as the leading modern worklife philosopher he so richly deserves.
Engineers don't get mad at each other often, the issue is that none of those four archetypes are engineers. Engineers have a common formal training, certification and can build things to specification and timelines which avoids most of the culture clashes.
If you want to resolve what's described here the solution is to work somewhere that looks more like Lockheed and less like a frathouse.
And if you really care about software engineering as a discipline, avoid an organization that sounds like this:
"In most software companies, you really want a handful of engineers obsessing about issues like accessibility, security and performance all the time, even when the organization as a whole doesn’t care about it"
This kind of 'management' is suitable for R&D. It's additionally suitable for any company in which software is a means to an end rather than the end itself.
A textile factory manager, for instance, doesn't care if you write documentation for the changes you're making to the 40 year old Pascal program which runs the machines.