Just to play grumpy old guy for a sec., I can't say that I've ever seen this in action. In my experience.
. Line managers rarely make the leap, if anything they jump laterally or go into 'new opportunities'.
. Actually escaping the gig and advancing, and I'd say that being a manager manager is a far more desirable line of work, seems to be more tied to selling yourself and to being associated with high visibility/profitable/successful projects which often has little to do with your own personal skills.
In my experience, managers who step into a role that someone else has already occupied tend to get stuck. Those who grab territory and take newly created roles as a company expands tend to move quickly.
> In my experience, managers who step into a role that someone else has already occupied tend to get stuck. Those who grab territory and take newly created roles as a company expands tend to move quickly.
Sounds like that could just be because the latter case indicates the company/org is growing quickly and making room for people to grow.
Or it sounds like the Gervais Principal to the T[0]. On one side Ryan climbs the ladder and has opportunity for getting the director title in front of him within weeks of joining. The other hand, Michael Scott almost put Dunder-Mifflen out of business with his tenacity to do better or growth. What I’m trying to say is that sociopaths are still on top.. they are just a bit nicer these days thanks to the liberalization of drugs
I've definitely seen managers get promoted into senior management and executive jobs, but not always linearly (they become their old boss).
I do agree that the skills of a senior manager are materially different than just "be a better manager". Failing at any of the things listed in the article can prevent your progress, but doing them all well doesn't guarantee you advancement either.
In my experience that comes mostly down to politics, in the worst cases including outright abuse of your team's performance. Not always but often enough. Selling yourself well enough and advance by changing gigs is also working nicely, just jump before any issues catch up with you in your old gig. And then there is the luck part, to always be at the rigzjt place at the right time.
The rare few higher managers that achieved their positions also through domain knowledge and competence were a delight to work for and with. The others not so much.
I wonder how a well meaning manager can avoid falling into this sort of situation though. I know that that many managers are well meaning and do want their team to succeed but have the unsavory job of getting their teams to do shit on time, by force if necessary since the business depends on it.
It’s possible that there is no good answer I guess. Managers might just be the bogeyman bringing bad news but it’s the business (and execs) that ultimately make these choices.
Well meaning or otherwise, it's impossible to avoid falling into this sort of situation at some point or another. What makes or breaks a manager is how well they navigate it.
Pushing your team to do shit on time by force may work, but it's a risky and generally unsustainable strategy. And the immediate repercussions of doing so are largely opaque higher than you as the immediate manager (and potentially your boss). Strategic failure or missed deadlines can generally get the visibility you need to ensure you get the consideration or resources going forward to prevent it from becoming a norm. But that also has political costs and considerations, so you have to have a firm grasp of your position in the org, your positioning and messaging on the issue, and how well you capitalize on the follow up before the window for change/resources closes.
Business executives may not understand what you or your team do, but their decision making process is largely similar to a systems engineering problem. When joining the company as a manager, you have to rapidly understand the general structure of the legacy system that is your new company, where your team fits into that architecture, the integration points and dependencies your team and reporting structure has with the wider company (which is as much personal and political as it is technical), and approach the maintenance, oversight, and positioning of your team as appropriate.
It's a very active process, and without the benefit of source code, documentation, or logging you may have when getting up to speed on a technical system. A passive manager just acts as a message bus passing through demands from the business until the service that is their team becomes overloaded and things only get better if the upstream demand decreases. An active manager attempts to influence the overall system in such a way where those spikes are rare enough to be manageable, trigger the appropriate alerts (from an organization perspective), such that the upstream demands and downstream capacity to service those demands are in alignment.
I would argue that a grocery store is a combination store and marketplace in that case. Stores have plenty of in-house brands, they also have racks of goods that are stocked and sold by third parties wherein they get a cut.
To be fair, I think I would be more comfortable comparing Amazon to Sears in it's heyday.
>, they also have racks of goods that are stocked and sold by third parties wherein they get a cut
I'm sure that exists, but it's not common. Grocery stores often charge slotting fees, but that's not the same as renting shelf space--the store still owns the product (even if there is an agreement to buy it back if it doesn't sell).
Also retail stores take on more product liability than marketplaces like flea markets do.
All of the ones around here do. Used DVD racks still exist. Soft drink vending machines. Seasonal items. Newspaper racks.
In the case of items actually run through the register, I'm not sure how that's dealt with from an accounting standpoint. I do know that the stores have the ability to return 100% of unsold goods in those cases.
"Isn't conservatism basically forcing people to not progress? Some might see that as a nearly violent act against their freedom. But really, what else is there to conservatism than "do not change"?"
To some degree I suppose. Given the natural tendency in politics to produce two opposing groups the monikers always become overloaded. In eras where 'conservatives' represented the mercantile class, change went hand-in-hand with building the huge trading companies, the industrial revolution, modernization and 'rightsizing' of farming practices, etc. so it depends.
If, 20 years ago or before, you had told me that the West was practically going to civil war over the question of the value vs harm of mass third world immigration, I'd have laughed at you. The rest of the disagreements are window dressing at this point I think.
The book is a bit expensive, although I'd like to have a copy.
Given the turn that modern politics has taken, I guess all that matters was this sentence:
"Today, as cultures cross-pollinate, and as technologies topple timeless ways of living, it is an open question whether the familiarity of Rome’s ancient forms will be felt much by those who live in the future, beyond the next horizon."
It's not a bad question really, with 'Rome' as a stand-in for all the well-worn bits of culture. Are 500 year old nursery rhymes still in practice and will they be? You can certainly see the change in the teaching of literature in schools. Latin or Greek are scarcely taught anymore. No doubt there are 100's of examples. 'Rome' of course is an imaginary construct that is really a later Anglo-American version of historical matters.
I doubt I'll live long enough to see the results of states that knock out the underpinnings of common culture. Perhaps they'll build their own fresh ones, perhaps it never mattered.
> I doubt I'll live long enough to see the results of states that knock out the underpinnings of common culture. Perhaps they'll build their own fresh ones, perhaps it never mattered.
I think the elites of the world are steadily converging toward a common culture, which is exactly what gave the Roman empire its identity.
"He should appeal to Trump. Pretty sure Trump would enjoy trolling the Left forever about it."
That's an interesting notion. Perhaps have Trump pardon him.
Never gonna happen given who actually runs government.
There are a ton of people who are pro-Snowden who are anti-Trump so I do like the idea of watching the uproar. Honestly, I think that kind of paradox is good for peoples' minds.
It's just my own ignorance speaking (probably), but I can't say that I like the idea of Android getting near/intertwined with mission critical systems. Hopefully 'infotainment' implies something that is well clear of 'stopping' and the like...although I'd just as soon that they dropped the 'tainment' part and simply provided an interface for diagnostics, HVAC, &tc.
What bugs me the most about the 'tainment' part is that not only do I find most of it irritating, but that you are binding technology that obsoletes quickly with an expensive product that should last 10-20 years. It's a shame that car companies have picked this as an area for product differentiation.
Completely agree, especially on the second paragraph - just like how 'smart' TVs ship a long-lasting high quality panel with an obsolete/user-hostile operating system.
On the first paragraph, I thought I'd read this battle is mostly lost already, not with respect to Android, but car software in general is far more intertwined and less robust than you'd think prudent.
It can be quite hard to ignore the smart part. For example, my TV can't even display the input selection menu properly. It moves about as it tries to load an ad, then can't.
Just because you mentioned smart TVs - I had the same opinion, but was then blown away by my new LG OLED TV. It's so freaking fast with Netflix / Prime / YouTube and the UX is really well made (others are probably similar by now). For now I'm really happy with it and I can't see how the software will detoriate the TV so much in the future, that it I will hate the smart stuff.
Yes. It's obviously common practice to partition systems in cars. The infotainment is not running the ABS or airbags.
That said, the people who work on infotainment have to take safety very seriously too. Even just static visual imagery can cause distracting optical effects if it's high contrast or the right shape/pattern. Anything with motion or audio presents very real risks.
If you take the 30k foot view, tbh, the auto world seems kinda nuts. We buy objects that are a sizeable fraction of our annual income if not more, that very rapidly depreciate, and then 20 years later we toss them out as scrap metal to recyclers.
There are many parts to cars. Don't forget the basic ones: exposed to the elements for decades, driven across uneven bumpy bits, even the 'consumable' parts also degrade fairly rapidly...
For an electric, I'm unsure on the long-term life of motors. Batteries are the main consumable, but are actually safer and simpler compared to hot oil and fuel separated by thin gaskets.
Still, even with the consumables exempted, I'm not sure that cars actually seeing road-salts in the winter and scorching sun in the summer last that long (40 years seems optimistic, and I know I HATE being behind any 'classic' ICE that no longer has to pass emissions).
> but that you are binding technology that obsoletes quickly with an expensive product that should last 10-20 years.
Manufacturers want you to have reasons to upgrade. Manufactured obsolescence is absolutely a feature to them. Don't want to keep driving your sufficient vehicle after 5 because "it's insecure and doesn't run the latest OS"? That's a guaranteed revenue stream if they can get enough of the other manufacturers go to along.
The same was probably said 15 years ago about the computerization of the car engine and their rapid deprecation. Did the average lifespan of a car decrease since then? How ridiculous is it to drive a 4WD into the desert, full of electronics that can’t be repaired and where a single chip can cost 300$ and has to be shipped from mainland America...
So yep, with car computerization they reduced the lifespan from 30 to 12 years, and with infotainment they’ll reduce it to 8 years. Same length as a Tesla warranty.
Vehicle manufacturers are just giving customers what they want.
My family recently bought a new car (a Volvo FWIW) and for the first time we really didn't care about horsepower or fuel efficiency or anything really related to vehicle performance. It was all about the electronics and safety features.
There has to be a balance. Electronic fuel injection (EFI) is far more reliable and adaptable than even the best carburetors. Electronic safety systems may have reduced some of the longevity of a vehicle, but the alternative is higher chance of injury or death.
I think that the EFI argument is something of a red herring, no one is suggesting a return to the Quadrajet.
OTOH, EFI can be done as a modular (and replaceable) product rather than as part of monolithic whole-vehicle design, but that last bit of goodness or regulatory need is likely not met.
I just think of it all as being Peak ICE. The last generation of piston engines is going to be crazy complex and probably deserve to be usurped by it's battery-powered successors.
> The last generation of piston engines is going to be crazy complex and probably deserve to be usurped by it's battery-powered successors.
My car-loving boss just got a hybrid RAV4, and he absolutely loves it; combines the best features of both with (presumably) the only downside of lower maintenance (but even then there's less wear-and-tear on the ICE side). I suspect we will see quite a slow, gradual transition through hybrids to battery-only.
Of course, this is Australia (and I'd imagine similar in the US and Canada) where it's more common to drive long distances.
I have a car with EFI and it's 28 years old. We can the best of both worlds. Simple and reliable electronics, instead of a full computer running Android.
I’ve got a 91 Ranger (EFI) kicking around here and have the exact same experience. It has been nothing but reliable in the last 5 years I’ve had it. A couple small mechanical things that had to get changed, but electronically there has been zero complaints.
"where a single chip can cost 300$ and has to be shipped from mainland America..."
that assumes that the failed part is even available.
I'd sure be irritated to have the controller board for a Cadillac XLR convertible top fail and have to shop junk yards, no doubt the wrecking yards are hip to small things of value that they can store on a shelf somewhere.
To be fair, I know more than one purchasing guy, usually in boutique electronic product companies, who spend a fair amount of their time tracking down obsoleted parts on eBay to repair or build one last batch of a metal box with circuit boards inside. It's just the nature of modern times I guess, but luckily we can often pick the era we want to live in in our personal lives.
I just need to stock up on old Thinkpads, avoid home automation, and carefully choose any car purchases.
Unfortunately there are very few car electronic controllers made in the last 20 years where you can replace modules without re-coding them... a $2 part from the scrap yard is useless without the manufactures re-coding software and a couple of hours at the dealership. Unless you're rich I doubt there will be any "classics" from 1990 onwards you can maintain yourself.
This is exactly why, instead of buying a new vehicle, I'm repairing my 15 year-old one myself. I hate the thought of something so expensive and resource-intensive being thought of as disposable.
Between the need for expensive training and diagnostic equipment, and the ever-widening view of things that are .gov mandated and covered under smog or safety laws including spare parts sourcing, we are largely there.
I'll counter. In a world of electric cars (which I'm in favor of), how long until the politically well-connected emissions testing industry becomes repurposed into mandatory safety inspections at the same or higher price?
" Chevy Small Block v8 is a little newer starting mid 1950's"
...and not used since 2003. Honestly, it's probably best to view an engine family like this as a form factor, not a design. It isn't like there were any 1955 parts in a 2000 engine, but the interconnects are (mostly) the same. Generally, any 90 degree V8 with a cam in the block is going to be the 'same', designers have pretty much standardized on just a few layouts.
An invariant SBC is like saying disk drives haven't evolved if they use the same mounting points and cabling/logic standards.
