Imagine you’re a manager at a big company, and one of your programmers is slacking on a task for motivational reasons that don’t make sense to you. Should you say “ugh, interpretive labor”? No! Checking in with your direct reports to make sure they understand the business case for what you’re asking and how it might help them advance in their careers—not asking tons of questions, but getting a feel for whether there’s shared understanding—is the door to the stairs to the next level of your career. I’ve seen so many managers ignoring that door for years and wondering why they’re stuck with a team of underperformers. Don’t get stuck like that! Jump on every chance to do interpretive labor!
I think that’s the same question for all the purposes I care about—why name exactly one example, and specifically an example of a subordinate doing interpretive labor towards their manager? This sort of selective attention is the mechanism by which asymmetric demands for interpretive labor are made.
The question is, who are we talking to, when we write? And why?
Is the reader of a comment on Less Wrong more likely to be a manager, or more likely to be a subordinate? I’d wager that a much higher percentage of the readership fall into the category of “grunt programmer who disdains boring business stuff” than fall into the category of “manager, frustrated that his programmer underlings are slacking on tasks”.
So that’s the “who”; and as for “why”, well, if you’re a subordinate whose career is floundering, you could benefit from advice to do more “interpretive labor”; this could even be a game-changer for you. If you’re a manager, you’ll probably do fine in life without reading advice on rationalist blogs.
Furthermore and most importantly, the advice to the subordinate is good advice regardless of whether the advice to the manager is also good advice.
There’s a mode of writing, and of thinking, where one takes the “god’s-eye view”, and forgets to consider to whom one is supposed to be talking to. “Everyone should do more interpretive labor—subordinates and managers!” A fine sentiment—from the god’s-eye view. But no one chooses “everyone”’s actions; people choose their own actions only. The subordinate can choose to do more “interpretive labor”, or not. The choice before him is what it is, regardless of what we might proclaim from the god’s-eye view.
Managers already do the bulk of interpretive labor though
Why should I believe this? One manager typically manages multiple people, so at first I’d expect that each employee spends much more time interpreting their manager than their manager spends interpreting them. Remember that some of the manager’s time will also be spent interpreting their manager, which competes with time spent interpreting their employees.
I wonder if this is in part a representativeness heuristic problem. Because managers have to control the behavior of so many other people, they may end up spending nearly all of their time doing interpretive labor, whereas managed people have to interface with their object-level tasks much of the time. So interpretive labor is a more characteristic activity for a manager. But this is a response to the underlying dynamic where the many-to-one relationship between managers and managed makes managerial interpretive labor scarce. Interpretive labor is characteristic of managers because they have less total capacity to do it per subordinate than their subordinates do per manager, not more.
each employee spends much more time interpreting their manager than their manager spends interpreting them
Agree about the time ratio. But interpretive labor of managers is more efficient per time spent, because they specialize in people, while programmers specialize in computers. For example, if you want to present a new project to superiors or partners, a good manager can craft the right communication in a day, where a brilliant programmer could spin their wheels for a week and in the end the message would fall flat. The same is true for manager-programmer conversations I’ve seen, managers are far better at reading them and it comes from skill, not position. That’s why I say programmers have more room for growth.
Why didn’t you give this example instead?
Imagine you’re a manager at a big company, and one of your programmers is slacking on a task for motivational reasons that don’t make sense to you. Should you say “ugh, interpretive labor”? No! Checking in with your direct reports to make sure they understand the business case for what you’re asking and how it might help them advance in their careers—not asking tons of questions, but getting a feel for whether there’s shared understanding—is the door to the stairs to the next level of your career. I’ve seen so many managers ignoring that door for years and wondering why they’re stuck with a team of underperformers. Don’t get stuck like that! Jump on every chance to do interpretive labor!
Why not both?
I think that’s the same question for all the purposes I care about—why name exactly one example, and specifically an example of a subordinate doing interpretive labor towards their manager? This sort of selective attention is the mechanism by which asymmetric demands for interpretive labor are made.
The question is, who are we talking to, when we write? And why?
Is the reader of a comment on Less Wrong more likely to be a manager, or more likely to be a subordinate? I’d wager that a much higher percentage of the readership fall into the category of “grunt programmer who disdains boring business stuff” than fall into the category of “manager, frustrated that his programmer underlings are slacking on tasks”.
So that’s the “who”; and as for “why”, well, if you’re a subordinate whose career is floundering, you could benefit from advice to do more “interpretive labor”; this could even be a game-changer for you. If you’re a manager, you’ll probably do fine in life without reading advice on rationalist blogs.
Furthermore and most importantly, the advice to the subordinate is good advice regardless of whether the advice to the manager is also good advice.
There’s a mode of writing, and of thinking, where one takes the “god’s-eye view”, and forgets to consider to whom one is supposed to be talking to. “Everyone should do more interpretive labor—subordinates and managers!” A fine sentiment—from the god’s-eye view. But no one chooses “everyone”’s actions; people choose their own actions only. The subordinate can choose to do more “interpretive labor”, or not. The choice before him is what it is, regardless of what we might proclaim from the god’s-eye view.
One might equally well advise workers to correct the power imbalance caused by the asymmetric interpretive labor bottleneck by unionizing, of course.
Again, why not both?
“Stop ignoring business stuff if you want to advance career-wise, even though it doesn’t come naturally and is hard. Also, unionize.”
(This is assuming, of course, that unionizing helps at all. I take no position on this.)
No one’s argued for “not both” here.
What’s that? Having high self agency and being proactive is a win state?
Why yes we say that often. Around these parts.
Managers already do the bulk of interpretive labor though. And too often programmers just yawn when the conversation turns to business stuff.
Why should I believe this? One manager typically manages multiple people, so at first I’d expect that each employee spends much more time interpreting their manager than their manager spends interpreting them. Remember that some of the manager’s time will also be spent interpreting their manager, which competes with time spent interpreting their employees.
I wonder if this is in part a representativeness heuristic problem. Because managers have to control the behavior of so many other people, they may end up spending nearly all of their time doing interpretive labor, whereas managed people have to interface with their object-level tasks much of the time. So interpretive labor is a more characteristic activity for a manager. But this is a response to the underlying dynamic where the many-to-one relationship between managers and managed makes managerial interpretive labor scarce. Interpretive labor is characteristic of managers because they have less total capacity to do it per subordinate than their subordinates do per manager, not more.
Agree about the time ratio. But interpretive labor of managers is more efficient per time spent, because they specialize in people, while programmers specialize in computers. For example, if you want to present a new project to superiors or partners, a good manager can craft the right communication in a day, where a brilliant programmer could spin their wheels for a week and in the end the message would fall flat. The same is true for manager-programmer conversations I’ve seen, managers are far better at reading them and it comes from skill, not position. That’s why I say programmers have more room for growth.