Peter Thiel's New Man in the Defense Department
defenseone.com
defenseone.com
Then I saw how quickly he rose in Peter Thiel's organization which is impressive.
I started my career working in the defense industry (an early employee at SAIC, which much later changed its name to Leidos). I saw this scenario at least twice working in that industry: someone young and without the "right kind of degree" would get hired. They had great people and organizational skills and ended up being very valuable just because they got stuff organized, then done.
Kratsios may be a lacky, or a skilled organization-person. Or both.
The best managers I met tended to be those that if the circumstance required it, could do the job of those two levels below. So they could actually do the job of the people that are managed by those they manage.
Now, it's true that there are lots of managers that have that problem even at one level down, but incompetent management is a widespread problem (especially because managers are often chosen by incompetent managers that believe that management is an independent and sufficient skill set without domain knowledge, either because they think you don't ever need domain knowledge because you can get by with generic management skills or because they think domain knowledge is easy to pick up by osmosis. The latter is true for a small minority of people—basically, the same people that, if they started with domain knowledge, management skills would be trivial to pick up—but neither is generally true.)
The Russian collusion may or may not be true, but it certainly seems like they’d be getting what they’d have wanted by constantly putting lackluster candidates with in all these positions.
I know this because it was something that became apparent to me when I was a young CTO. Any fully-qualified person, with experience, in their 40s-50s will not take enormous amounts of shit without throwing it right back. Younger, less experienced folks, will not jeopardize their "opportunity" and instead will shovel the shit down the latter. Young people will not push back and instead will seek to make their "sponsor" happy.
While it once hurt my ego to say it, I've come to terms with it, talent has shit all to do with opportunity, most of it is, if not all, is luck.
Not sure about this situation here with the DD, but I'm sure you can cut yourself some slack. Being good enough means exactly that: good enough. And then a dash of luck on top of that helps tremendously.
That's probably a factor, though from every indication I've seen of the internal dynamics of this administration it's probably a bigger factor in the sales pitch of the policy entrepreneurs selling picks to the President than it is in the actual selection process. As I read it, the bigger reasons this administration chooses young allied ideologues for senior positions for which they lack the traditional credentials are twofold:
(1) They want allied ideologues that don't need to be controlled. If they could find qualified people with the right ideological credentials they wouldn't shy away from them, but they usually can't and the ideological credentials are the key indicator that people will make the “right” decisions without explicit control, and
(2) They want a long-term impact on shaping the nation, party, and broader conservative community and jumping members of their fairly narrow factions ahead in resume building this way means that in the next Republican administration, and in Republican/conservative think tanks, media networks, etc. in the meantime, their faction will be far ahead of where it was a few years ago in people with the the kind of resume that gets them positions.
My first thought too. The older manager type isn't going to take shit, and may have their own agenda. A lot of my older managers (like Director/VP/CTO), be they in the Defense Contracting side, or corporate, were pushing contracts to their friends, or fighting personal or ideological battles.
* It’s illegal and therefore people shouldn’t do it.
* It’s illegal because people shouldn’t do it.
* It’s illegal which raises the cost of doing it.
* Other?
Specifically, discriminating against someone over 40 due to age. (29 USC § 621: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/621 )
In what specific way is its legality relevant? The bare observation that it’s illegal doesn’t mean anything.
More experienced developers who actually have kept up with their skills are much better, but the fact is that a lot of the development work out there isn't at that level. A lot of it is just plugging and chugging Java, JavaScript, etc.
Relevant: I had a few “opportunities” in my late twenties.
Huh? That's an ageist comment, and should not be acceptable.
I'm a 20-something occasionally put in a position where I have to antagonize people in leadership positions to make them change how they work. I'm a corporate IT leadership bad cop. You're right, it's much easier to do this with less experienced people - but on average I'd say age hasn't really made any difference. Younger people (<40) just tend to be less likely to get visibly pissed off when I question decisions they've made.
Any person on this kind of position who is not able to push back on the bullshit will likely to be burnt out by 40s-50s,so only the ones that acquired that skill are still around.
Elections have consequences, and the consequences of 2016 will be felt for a long time.
That's not anything new. NYT, 1999: https://archive.is/GjzkI "The certification was the first such notice to Congress under the law, which was passed in the aftermath of a Congressional uproar last year over the transfer of sensitive missile technology to China."
But no - we shouldn‘t. Sure there a people who obtain a PhD and haven‘t learned much. And there are those who are great engineers and have no formal education.
But in those cases, they have shown beyond doubt that they can study by themselves and they have also put in the work which is needed for a deep understanding of anything complex.
Now of course there are engineers who lack leadership or social skills. But there are also those who have that as well. And those should be picked. In a country of that size which easily produces them.
Then again. That does seem to be the single most important asset one can have to get where they want to be.
Just out of curiosity, what else comprises the Peter Thiel portion of Silicon Valley?
You can tell the smart guys from the smart-sounding ones by looking closely at how good of an understanding of the real world they have, measured by how many true non-obvious predictions they make.
Paul Graham, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Peter Thiel score high. To grow ones understanding of the world one must be open, look closely, read those interviews and books, form your own opinion, without prejudice or partisan filters.
Making things true by pulling your wallet or smartphone out of the pocket isn't exactly a good proxy for intellect.
Also ironically Taleb's most salient observation is that smart people should be very aware of the fact that the things that actually matter can't really be predicted at all.
So many interesting, fundamental topics.
You say this is measured by the number of "true non-obvious predictions" - can you list those for each of these folks?
I'd also think a batting average would be useful, instead of just a count of "correct predictions".
Paul Graham:
- That web-based apps were the future of software; the product that made him rich the first time around was Viaweb, the first ever web application, built in about 1995 when everyone else was selling thick-client Windows desktop apps in shrink-wrap boxes (http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html)
- That Yahoo was effectively a Ponzi scheme in 1998-99 (http://www.paulgraham.com/bubble.html)
- That startups using niche languages like (in 2004) Python and Ruby would do better than those using mainstream platforms like Java and MS .Net (http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html)
- That Bayesian filtering was a better approach to spam filtering (http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html)
- That startups were becoming dramatically cheaper/easier to start, and therefore could be started by fewer, younger people, didn't need "business people" early on, could get much further without needing to sell controlling stakes to VCs, and could effectively be mass-produced (http://www.paulgraham.com/webstartups.html)
- That a team of founders who funded themselves by selling novelty breakfast cereal would build an amazing company, even if their idea seemed to suck (http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html)
- That a new, tech-focused news discussion forum, in a world that already had Slashdot and Reddit, could become popular and could remain popular for many years by employing specific mechanisms to raise the standards of content and discussion (http://paulgraham.com/hackernews.html)
Nassim Taleb:
- He explained the fundamental weaknesses in the economic system that would lead to crashes like 2007-08, and the present turmoil.
- Has made huge financial gains during each of the major financial market crashes of the past 35 years: 1987, 2000-2001, 2007-2008, 2020 (https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/bloombergProfile.pdf, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-08/taleb-adv...)
- Was on record suggesting a Trump win was more likely than most believed - https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/03/black-swan-author-nassim-tal...
- Was among the earliest raising the alarm about the Covid-19 pandemic https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1221486205847646208?lang=...
- Was predicting that a pandemic was the world's greatest risk at least 7 years ago (don't have time to sift through all the material but plenty is out there if you care to search for it)
Peter Thiel:
- Identified in 1993 that Silicon Valley offered more compelling career opportunities than NYC legal/securities work
- With Max Levchin, predicted that a money transfer platform would be one of the most important pieces of infrastructure, so launched PayPal, and built the team that enabled them to win the market
- Made first investment in Facebook, predicting that it would be a key piece of internet infrastructure due to its focus on identity, and that Zuckerberg - then aged 20 - would be able to execute
- Identified that big data analytics could be useful/attractive for government intelligence agencies, founded Palantir
- Was one of the first to suggest, in 2011, that the U.S. higher education market was in a bubble (https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubb...). (Granted this hasn't been proven yet but there are signs the current crisis may be the needle that brings on the burst).
- Understood that a well-executed operation could take down Gawker
- Saw that Trump could win in 2016, and would be worth his while to endorse/support
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No doubt they've all made predictions that have turned out to be wrong or mistimed. I follow Graham and Taleb on Twitter and often see them make comments I disagree with or doubt.
You could argue that this was a false prediction by PG: http://www.paulgraham.com/divergence.html
But it's not really; he was posing a question, which helped him to make further decisions about how to proceed as he built YC.
YC itself has funded many more companies that failed than succeeded, but that's fundamental to the business model - http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html
What matters is that they're able to identify investment opportunities with a very big upside potential relative to the downside risk, and back them even if almost everyone else believes they're insignificant/wrong/stupid.
Thiel's investment fund Clarium Capital has famously lost plenty of money, but other investments of his have performed spectacularly well; that's how investing works.
Bottom line: all three of them have become vastly wealthy by repeatedly making bets that others didn't notice or thought were stupid.
It really depends on the role and the organization and where Kratsios is a degree in Political Science is going to be valuable. The role of CTO is not to be the most technical person in the room, but rather to lead the most technical people in the organization. This requires technical acumen, but more so requires good communication and leadership skills.
I view it as necessary, but not sufficient by itself.
Usually the problem boils down to judgment. They cannot tell who is producing the core value of the enterprise. They create unnecessary work. They add useless process. They have bizarre and unworkable ideas for products. They don't understand how to correctly price talent, and to retain it. They don't have the humility to know what they don't know. They overestimate how much they add to the enterprise.
The good people end up jumping ship and they are left with a rump of pure mediocrity, if anything at all.
It was about how in principle he can reason about markets, but it takes forever and „it all becomes very sad“. Or something like that.
edit: found it https://www.joelonsoftware.com/category/reading-lists/recrui...
„ These softball questions seem too easy, so when I first started asking them, I had to admit that I really expected everyone to sail right through them. What I discovered was that everybody solved the problem, but there was a lot of variation in how long it took them to solve.
That reminded me of why I couldn’t trade bonds for a living.
Jared is a bond trader. He is always telling me about interesting deals that he did. There’s this thing called an option, and there are puts, and calls, and the market steepens, so you put on steepeners, and it’s all very confusing, but the weird thing is that I know what all the words mean, I know exactly what a put is (the right, but not the responsibility, to sell something at a certain price) and in only three minutes I can figure out what should happen if you own a put and the market goes up, but I need the full three minutes to figure it out, and when he’s telling me a more complicated story, where the puts are just the first bit, there are lots of other bits to the story, I lose track very quickly, because I’m lost in thought (“let’s see, market goes up, that mean interest rates go down, and now, a put is the right to sell something…”) until he gets out the graph paper and starts walking me through it, and my eyes glazeth over and it’s very sad. Even though I understand all the little bits, I can’t understand them fast enough to get the big picture.
And the same thing happens in programming. If the basic concepts aren’t so easy that you don’t even have to think about them, you’re not going to get the big concepts.“
It’s a big problem when you take people who shouldn’t be in a position and put them in it. It’s an even bigger problem when you do it in a place with a long history of pedigree. If I’m a director who was hired into the culture when that mattered, and now I’m several steps under a boss who flouts that, that’s a huge upsetting culture change.
Now luckily, he’s only going to be in this job for a few months so the damage will be largely mitigated, but still. This is an idiots game and it doesn’t make us smarter for trying to nit it to being acceptable. It’s not.
Apply this principle to elite-university admissions, big-tech hiring, or to developed-country citizenship and see how far you get with it.
Having independent knowledge and skills would enable him to discover when he is being lied to, and usually prevent the attempt.
But he has been installed to direct budget to certain parties outside government, and can probably succeed at that. He might have been installed to commit the DoD to continue delivering budget to those parties long after he has been dismissed.
https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/technologies/taylor_more.h...