Paul Buchheit: Can you see the wolves in your organization? | Hacker News Reader

Paul Buchheit: Can you see the wolves in your organization?

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

12 pointsabstractbill16 comments

I didn't understand the story. So essentially, if too many Marshmallows start showing up, something bad is going to happen? Seems to me I have read more profound things on news.YC before.

I think I get the marshmallows (beaurocracy?), but how do the wolves relate to the marshmallows, and why do they make sheep look like marshmallows with ketchup?

There is evidence to say that marshmallows are bureaucracy and office politics, and eating them is engaging in those activities, but there is also strong evidence to support that marshmallows are bugs (and eating them is fixing them). They are likely both.

Remember the third M. This essay seems to both comment on Google and its bureaucracy, and Wyvern, full of bugs and a poor architecture created by a less experienced Steve Yegge, which he has been trying to improve since taking it offline nine months ago.

I think Yegge was deliberately obtuse with the marshmallows until the very end. He finally reveals that they represent eating your own dog food, i.e. a company using its own tools whether they're best for the job at hand or not. Programmers whose productivity has been killed in this way are the mangled sheep, or marshmallows with ketchup.

I think the landowner represents the company founders. The wolves are the suites who come in later. The marshmellows are things that creep into the organization when it starts growing like cooperate BS, politics, poor internal company tool etc. The story teller is someone who just left such an organization and is attracting a cult following of young fresh faces hackers/entrepreneurs/engineers/workers etc.

""I don't know what I'll do next, but I suspect it will involve teaching some sheep a few basic fighting maneuvers, and also a fair amount of long-overdue repair to our floating platform and our in-progress mansion."

I don't think Rauser is leaving the organization.

You could be right about him not leaving the organization. But I fail to understand why he would stay in the organization since the wolves are still there, he didn't say he found a way to fend them off, and they're still eating his sheep.

Wolves are a natural part of the ecosystem.

I could never stand this stuff in english literature classes. "What does the blah blah represent?". My brain is not wired for that stuff. I vastly prefer direct, cut-the-crap, tell it to me straight up if you have something to say style comunication. I just don't have time for manatees that represent jesus and sheep that are your father's conscious or things of that ilk, sorry:-)

If you think the wolves are bad, look out for those that give them counsel. http://www.askoxford.com/firstnames/ralph?view=uk :-)

So the wolves are those who play office politics?

I'm guessing from his note at the end that the story was originally told by one of his friends at MS?

No. How can someone at MS and someone at Google have the same wolf? It's Google Kirkland I suspect.

The same metaphorical wolf.

Not the exact. same. wolf.

Emperor Palpatine.

Just think about this. Sorry for the person who downmodded me, but I'm serious.

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