Author: Joe Luciano

Stagnation

Image Credit: https://mronline.org

I thought working for a reasonably large tech company would be insightful. This would be an opportunity to make leaps and bounds in my knowledge and ability. I expected to learn some “secrets” about how successful companies manage themselves and how employees contribute to their company. I pictured a summer where I got to perform well and feel great while doing so. Unfortunately, I neither felt accomplished, or any more knowledge than before the summer began.

The Experience

I had a lot to do at the beginning of the summer. To become effective on my team I had a lot to learn. Every day consisted of many diagrams, questions, lectures, and a lot of unclear responses that took time to digest. I enjoyed this stage very much. There was always something to do and an obvious path to follow that always led to more work. However, my undying curiosity slowly wore out as I started to see some patterns. Recycling old products results in “fresh” products, revolutionary projects do not meet the “criteria” to be pursued, and priorities do not reflect the mission. The day began to go by a lot faster as less and less got done.

The lack of innovation broke my heart. Recycling ancient product lines takes priority over exploring new technology to develop truly superior products. Instead of discovering future capabilities through research, products created by other corporations are bought for the customer. Better approaches seemed so obvious at first that I began to question the thoughtfulness and standards accepted at the company. Too many deliveries to the customer do not get created internally. Outsourced products cost shocking amounts of money despite the imperfect solutions with unreliable support to fix issues. Management consistently struggles to obtain fixes for systemic problems from outside companies. Implementation of cover ups in internal products takes the place of proper solutions from contracted products.

A handful of projects were exploring the capabilities of the company to advance the industry. However, there were always excuses for why the industry did not accept the new innovations being proposed. Customers can’t move in a more innovative direction without risking safety and reliability. There is no motivation to accelerate the advancement of the industry because every single customer is satisfied with the what exists. The story is that the customer is scared of moving to a radically new product. But I believe no one is willing to go through the hard work of coming up with an improved solution that’s wildly different and provides an amazing experience because it’s so much work. Huge company’s take control of the industry preventing small start-ups to clear a niche.

Almost every day feels like a waste of time despite all of the opportunities I see for my future here. One of the first days a couple of engineers were bullshitting when they got onto the topic of their careers. I started asking some questions when one shared that in hindsight, he would do things a lot differently. This got me thinking a lot about what I really want to do in life and what my future could look like. Weeks into the summer I could not understand his essential role to this company. Seeing someone with no passion perform so well confused me even more. This man developed so much content and supported the company so well it blew my mind. But the company continues to provide just enough to meet the customers expectations.

Reflection

Price’s Law gives insight into large companies: the square root of the employees perform half of the work. For example, a 225 person company likely has 25 people performing half the work. I never fully absorbed this concept until I began to see it in person. Watching smart and talented people slave away for similar compensation as their useless peers destroys my confidence in this system. However, 10-year employees have a significant advantage over new hires. Approaching a problem requires a full understanding of the business dynamics and all the systems at play. Learning the workplace environment takes years longer than it should due to the lack of documentation and tools to properly train employees.

The idea of job security and the promise of a paycheck every two weeks sounds amazing. However, watching smart people with lives dedicated to a company has left me to question this norm. I believe a career all about something other than myself would leave me both painfully unsatisfied and overwhelmingly regretful. Imagining a future in the position of my coworkers terrifies me. Restricted to weekends and a couple hours a day for chasing what I love has led me to search for something better.

Grow Up

Did you pick what you ate today? What about yesterday? Did you consciously choose each item out of desire or did a lifetime of stimuli dictate the decision? Maybe it just happened?

If you watch a video presenting evidence of carcinogens in coffee, you may choose to skip your next morning brew. Unfortunately, that next morning goes terribly without your laser focus and pristine work ethic. You find yourself struggling to get any work done and go for a cup of coffee in the afternoon. You then finish the day, still caffeinated, and unable to fall asleep. Regretting ever listening to some overhyped conspiracy theory video, you go back to the daily routine of waking up and running for that morning coffee.

Out of your own “free will”, you made a decision to skip that morning coffee and get one in the afternoon instead. But that wasn’t the original plan. The goal was to skip the coffee altogether and save your body from all those carcinogens. However, you didn’t anticipate the hours of exhaustion and daydreaming.

Here’s something else to consider with “free will” in mind. We began as single celled organisms scattered around the globe. They were born out of some unlivable environment. They grew over a couple billion years with each cell struggling for survival and making as many copies of itself as possible. Now the Earth has me pounding away on my keyboard and you looking at a bunch of tiny flashing lights. Life began as a product of its environment and adapted as environments changed. We all started our journey at birth and now have years of experience influencing our decisions.

Examining “free will” is a way to begin thinking about how and why we make decisions. Accepting that the environment has a significant impact on everyone’s life, you may be able to focus in on what you should be doing and not what others should be doing. Perhaps you can work together and help others do what they should be doing as they help you. To be clear, I don’t find questioning the existence of free should change how we treat others.

  • If we don’t have free will then we can’t blame anyone or make them responsible for any bad choices that they make. Instead, as a society, we must have compassion and help those who make bad choices and guide them to a better path so we can all happily live together.
  • If we do have free will then we will continue to make decisions that assist us pursue happiness. We will use trial and error to traverse this world in search of satisfaction. We are in complete control of what we do and can often work together to achieve our goals.

These statements do not fully explore the implications of the existence of “free will”. However, I believe they’re a starting point and suggest that when making bad decisions, we need to reflect and change to correct ourselves. This is not some revolutionary idea as you can find variations of the same concept all across the internet. We should all strive to consistently grow alongside those around us.

I find working with everyone around me to accomplish amazing things to be one of the only ways to achieve satisfaction. Whether we have free will or not you can’t hate people for who they currently are, we all need each other. Limiting our pool of peers doesn’t allow us to grow in the long run. Although, anyone can be “dangerous” before we really get to know them. In the short run, someone may be bad and bring those around them down. In this case I see 2 obvious options:

  1. We can all choose who we keep around us. We don’t have to get along with everyone and have the choice to get away from them.
  2. If you focus on yourself, you can start moving forward and maybe they will choose to follow. Once your on your own path forward good habits are as hard to break as bad ones making it harder for people to push you around.

I find these idea very humbling when exploring them every now and then. No human has any foresight as an infant to assist them in planning out their life. I have a few friends born into volatile families that crumbled throughout their childhood. I often find myself caught up in my life that I lose sight of reality and begin acting as if everyone had the same past. When something upsets me I begin to question everyone’s actions, including my own, until I get extremely frustrated. Ruminating on “free will” or similar ideas brings me back to the idea that we are not the creators of our present success or failure. But we can be the creators of our future successes and failures. At this moment, I can try to blame a clueless individual for doing me wrong or we can try to grow up together.