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Comment by llamaimperative | Hacker News Reader

“Alignment” and certainly leadership isn’t sufficient to prevent a highly complex, highly interdependent system from becoming totally unresolvable, i.e. impossible to work on or within. Amazon could hardly ship software due to complex interdependencies which is why Bezos’ decision process and leadership compelled him to modularize and decouple the various systems and teams. If he hadn’t done that (to greater or lesser degree), it wouldn’t matter how hard he whipped the horses.

I didn’t say Amazon is successful “because” of the API memo nor did I say alignment is a technical problem.

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> “Alignment” and certainly leadership isn’t sufficient to prevent a highly complex, highly interdependent system from becoming totally unresolvable, i.e. impossible to work on or within.

Yes, but Leadership is a necessary condition for alignment to happen.

> Bezos’ decision process and leadership compelled him to modularize and decouple the various systems and teams

That is the essence of leadership. Make an important decision and have people follow it. If Bezos just made a decision but not enforce it, he would not reach same scale Amazon and created AWS as by product.

> You push the points of interaction to very few, very well-managed interfaces and allow modules (teams, services, components) to operate freely within those confines. > nor did I say alignment is a technical problem.

For me, you suggested technical approaches either via process, organisation, and technology.

I don’t know what you’re arguing against.

I am arguing against people that bring SAFE, microservices, consultants, and architects to solve lack of leadership and alignment. I experienced, first-hand, meetings about the same problem for years, impossible to maintain codebases, millions wasted on idiotic projects without customers and constant carousel of VPs and theirs cronies. While everyone pretend that software development is somehow different, more meritocratic, egalitarian, and somehow we can just “collaborate”.

Okay, I can't tell if you think that's what I'm proposing (it's not) or if you're just taking the moment to rant?

Your assumption is that alignment cannot arise out of a natural ecosystem that rewards collaboration between two individuals with no leader, that there must be 'Leadership' orchestrating the ecosystem to be in a state where alignment is possible.

Who, then, leads the leader?

Wikipedia definition:

> Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "lead", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations.

Everywhere there is more than one person, there would be an element of leadership where one person would try to influence another.

> Your assumption is that alignment cannot arise out of a natural ecosystem that rewards collaboration between two individuals with no leader

Alignment for me is when people are working toward the same goal. For alignment to happen, you need the individual to agree on a shared goal. You can have a group of people leading each other as long they share a goal.

Effective leadership mean that there are timely decisions made that are communicated and committed to by the group. Everyone involved should know why they are doing something and what is the end state.

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