Did American and Israeli management consultants revolutionize production by introducing socialist ideas?

Some interesting observations in this. As much as agile/lean practices have suffered from semantic diffusion to the point that they’re meaningless in most companies, reading this and thinking about the places I’ve worked that do those things properly is kinda :thinkin-lenin:

  • BigLadKarlLiebknecht [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Roy Singham is a Dengist and donates to PSL?! Fuck, my respect for TW has just gone up even higher.

    Also, for a tech millionaire’s spouse, his wife seems relatively good:

    In the summer of 2010, controversy arose over Evans' alleged 2008 remark to Debbie Lee, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq that "Your son deserved to die in Iraq if he was stupid enough to go over there.”

    • LoudMuffin [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      "Your son deserved to die in Iraq if he was stupid enough to go over there.”

      goddamn it takes some guts to say that lmao that's fighting words

      • BigLadKarlLiebknecht [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        That’s so cool. Once upon a time I worked for a similar lean/agile company. The CEO was far, far removed from that - he literally told people to read Steven Pinker when workers expressed discomfort with USAF contracts. :cringe:

        fwiw, all the ex-TW folks I currently work with are some of the most well adjusted people I’ve ever met in tech.

        • LoudMuffin [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          what is TW? is tech filled with crazy people? why are we alive? Should I finish my computer science degree?

          edit: lol

          The funniest thing about this whole transaction is that Neville Roy Singham always talked a big game about socialism, Hugo Chavez, central planning, etc. He's all about the government redistributing wealth. But when it comes to his own wealth, instead of gifting the company to the workers who built it, he has all kinds of excuses for why it needed to be sold to a private equity company.

          It doesn't surprise me one bit. What individuals won't do voluntarily themselves, they want the state to force others to do.

          Neville isn't offering to give a dividend distributing the sales profit to all his workers. No no no ... he's going to use it himself for his charitable works. Much like Hugo Chavez's succesor in Venezuela, Maduro, takes all the resources of the country on the "behalf of the people" and distributes it himself. I'm sure the prestige and power associated with being the distributor is not a motivating factor at all.

          • BigLadKarlLiebknecht [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            TW = ThoughtWorks, a software consultancy.

            Tech is filled with folks who lack any semblance of class consciousness and a belief that they are living in a just world, coupled with liberal brainworms.

            I can’t really explain the purpose for being alive sadly.

            If you’re enjoying it, go for it, but I will say that my career hasn’t been satisfying due to ever growing alienation :deeper-sadness:

            • LoudMuffin [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I'm from a poor immigrant family (:so-true: WOW PROUD IMMIGRANT STORY LEARNED TO CODE THE SYSTEM WORKS) so the money alone would transform my entire families life but I honestly never even think about this stuff outside of class

              I do more or less enioy it, but I can tell I'm really not like the other nerds in my classes. TBH I'm realizing my thing is just being super well rounded, but employers don't give a shit about some dude who has like a gajillion interests

              • BigLadKarlLiebknecht [he/him, comrade/them]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Yeah, I hear you on being well rounded…like I have so many interests outside of work that aren’t tech, and then even within tech I’m a major generalist as I get bored of different tech stacks quickly. I’ve found it make me a better engineer overall though, as I’ve seen a wider range of problems tackled in different ways…but it’s not always easy to find an employer that recognises that rather than “oh you’ve only got 2 years of experience with technology X, we’re gonna ignore your other years of experience as they can’t possibly help you grow as an engineer”.

          • BigLadKarlLiebknecht [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            That’s wild to see Goldman Sachs used to money launder donations to an ML party :sicko-beaming:

            Here’s a good basic intro to lean wastes as applied to software.

            I feel like I have a post in me some day about how venture backed startups and their incentive structures inherently prevent the notion of “building quality in”. This inevitably leads to a literal ponzi scheme of technical debt, curtailing the period in which a company can be innovative, with folks hired later stuck in a position of simply trying to keep the ship afloat. Which I guess is showing that learning about and applying lean has properly revealed some contradictions to me! :comfy-cool: