I’m not sure how to say it in another way.
Moral mazes are selected to exist by management because they disperse liability for decisions that benefit management while harming employees, customers, and (often) shareholders. Maybe not 100%, some of their instantiation details I’m sure are just spandrels. But they have a purpose and fulfill that purpose.
Am roughly in middle management. Can confirm. Basically I and everyone around me is trying to walk some line between take enough responsibility to get results (the primary thing you’re evaluated on) but don’t take so much that if something goes south you’ll be in trouble. Generally we don’t want the pain to fall on ICs (“individual contributor” employees whose scope of responsibility is ultimately limited to their own labor since they need sponsorship from someone else or a process to commit to big decisions) unless they messed up for reasons within their control.
I generally see the important split as who is responsible and who is accountable. Responsible means here something like “who has to do the work” and accountable means something like “who made the decision and thus gets the credit or blame”. ICs do well when they do a good job doing whatever they were told to do, even if it’s the wrong thing. Management-types do well when the outcomes generate whatever we think is good, usually whatever we believe is driving shareholder value or some proxy of it. ICs get in trouble when they are inefficient, make a lot of mistakes, or otherwise produce low quality work. Management-types are in trouble when they make the wrong call and do something that produces neutral or negative value for something the company is measuring.
Basically I think all the maze stuff is just what happens when middle management manages to wirehead the organization so we’re no longer held accountable for mistakes. I’ve not actually seen much serious mazes in my life because I’ve mostly worked for startups of various sizes, and in startups there’s enough pressure from the executives on down to hold people accountable for stuff. I think it’s only if the executives get on board with duping the board and shareholders so they can wirehead that things fall apart.
I meant to be referring to “I think Moral Mazes is a misleading meme that itself contributes to the problem”. Why is it misleading? Why does it contribute to the problem? What evidence or reasoning leads you to believe that?
It’s the thing where an extreme mistake theorist comes up with epicycles that are increasingly implausible to explain why the system in question is layered mistakes rather than the much simpler one that it is a conflict. ‘moral mazes’ implies complexity and connotes the undecidability of morality.
Everyone I’ve seen be really into moral mazes as a concept takes a strongly conflict-theory approach to systems they believe are mazes. That the presence of the epicycles means there is no working with it and the whole system must be burned.
Now that I think about it, much of the purpose of the label could be to allow one to use conflict theory modalities on a system that won’t acknowledge (and may genuinely not see) the conflict. Zvi’s Out To Get You posts certainly seem to be that.
(Fwiw, I thought I knew what you meant with your top level comment, but this elaboration wasn’t what I expected and is much more interesting).
I’m not sure how to say it in another way. Moral mazes are selected to exist by management because they disperse liability for decisions that benefit management while harming employees, customers, and (often) shareholders. Maybe not 100%, some of their instantiation details I’m sure are just spandrels. But they have a purpose and fulfill that purpose.
Am roughly in middle management. Can confirm. Basically I and everyone around me is trying to walk some line between take enough responsibility to get results (the primary thing you’re evaluated on) but don’t take so much that if something goes south you’ll be in trouble. Generally we don’t want the pain to fall on ICs (“individual contributor” employees whose scope of responsibility is ultimately limited to their own labor since they need sponsorship from someone else or a process to commit to big decisions) unless they messed up for reasons within their control.
I generally see the important split as who is responsible and who is accountable. Responsible means here something like “who has to do the work” and accountable means something like “who made the decision and thus gets the credit or blame”. ICs do well when they do a good job doing whatever they were told to do, even if it’s the wrong thing. Management-types do well when the outcomes generate whatever we think is good, usually whatever we believe is driving shareholder value or some proxy of it. ICs get in trouble when they are inefficient, make a lot of mistakes, or otherwise produce low quality work. Management-types are in trouble when they make the wrong call and do something that produces neutral or negative value for something the company is measuring.
Basically I think all the maze stuff is just what happens when middle management manages to wirehead the organization so we’re no longer held accountable for mistakes. I’ve not actually seen much serious mazes in my life because I’ve mostly worked for startups of various sizes, and in startups there’s enough pressure from the executives on down to hold people accountable for stuff. I think it’s only if the executives get on board with duping the board and shareholders so they can wirehead that things fall apart.
I meant to be referring to “I think Moral Mazes is a misleading meme that itself contributes to the problem”. Why is it misleading? Why does it contribute to the problem? What evidence or reasoning leads you to believe that?
It’s the thing where an extreme mistake theorist comes up with epicycles that are increasingly implausible to explain why the system in question is layered mistakes rather than the much simpler one that it is a conflict. ‘moral mazes’ implies complexity and connotes the undecidability of morality.
Everyone I’ve seen be really into moral mazes as a concept takes a strongly conflict-theory approach to systems they believe are mazes. That the presence of the epicycles means there is no working with it and the whole system must be burned.
Now that I think about it, much of the purpose of the label could be to allow one to use conflict theory modalities on a system that won’t acknowledge (and may genuinely not see) the conflict. Zvi’s Out To Get You posts certainly seem to be that.
(Fwiw, I thought I knew what you meant with your top level comment, but this elaboration wasn’t what I expected and is much more interesting).