Effective Project Execution, Moloch's Grip, and Going Beyond Programming
Hey there! 👋 I’ve discovered three thought-provoking pieces that challenge how we view project management, competitive systems, and technical careers. Hope you enjoy ✨
How I’ve run major projects (Ben Kuhn)
There are many more ways a project can fail compared to the number of ways it succeed. A project’s successful delivery is dependent on the effective management of many aspects, among them: communication between people involved in the project, setting reasonable scope, expectations, and goals for the project that makes it “affordable” for execution, keeping the project output maintainable and extendable, continually updating and change the project plan given new evidence, etc. Combine this with the fact that most great managers don’t want to become managers and you rarely witness effective project management at work.
The great managers I worked with had technical experience (so they understand technical feasibility & appreciate challenges), have clarity of thought (so they understand a project, its goals, and break it down into sub-projects or tasks to get there), and highly focused and organized (so they guide you to deliver).
Ben Kuhn does a great job explaining what is it like to manage technical projects, explains his method, and even turns it into a “How to” document!
Meditations On Moloch (Scott Alexander)
The world is hell and we don’t know why! No one wants hell, yet we live in it!
Wherever we look, systems are broken: health, education, economy… Everything is in an ugly state of Inadequate Equilibria. If we, humans, are the only one here, then who is causing this misery?
Answer: “Moloch”.
At the essence of each one of us are “instincts” (survival, maternal, sexual, etc.) that make us compete with one another. Sometimes, we find that we can win by harming others, and the tradeoff is worth it. If we take it, we prosper, if we don’t, others will and we die. Even if we don’t want to, we can’t guarantee others won’t. And there is no way to coordinate with others not to. The result is an ever grinding exploitation machine (Moloch) that is fascinating yet dangerous. Our civilization was built by this ever optimizing machine for incentives. Yet, hopefully, this is not a race to the bottom, hopefully we can design better coordination and incentive mechanisms for the wellbeing of humanity.
Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer (Patrick McKenzie)
An open invitation to pop the nerdy “technical bubble” and understand how business value moves in a company, adjusting for our own good. Some highlights:
- Engineers get hired to create value, not to program things.
- In most businesses, “value” is either reducing costs or increasing revenue.
- Your tech stack doesn’t matter. Talk about accomplishments rather than technicals.
- People matter, as in: network, perception, impression, status, politics, relationships, communication, sales, ALL MATTER!