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Comment by jsyang00 | Hacker News Reader

Some of it is greedy incompetence but a lot of it is just incentives structures.

It is easier to make the justification in a lot of orgs that you need to go out and hire someone to replace someone who left at "market rate", than that you need to pay someone x% more, based on work that is probably nebulous to whoever you need to make the case to.

I don't think there has ever been a time where this has not been the case outside of very small companies or niche operations. The same sort of incentives are endemic in a business of any scale, because ultimately org structures end up as pyramids and people will intrinsically compete to be at the top

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That's no kind of answer! The system made me do it is not an answer! Recall the incentive structures are made by management. So who in hell is in charge here? Management or the paperwork? People or the small 'c' culture of the company? There's no way to double talk or tap dance you're way out: management blew it. 9% is less than the new guy's pay. The old guy is pissed which is why he wrote post. And the rest of us have recorded one more reason "vaunted" American management is stuck on stupid.

(Note I am American and work for American companies. I've had good experiences and terrible in the ol' USA. We have the fundamentals here but damn it too many management people just don't listen to it.)

> Recall the incentive structures are made by management.

I think more incentive structures naturally emerge over time. Managers have other managers who have other managers... etc who have some different set of incentives. There are also shareholders

A lot of time the right smart thing is done anyway, but usually that's luck in having a couple of good smart people in your org chart chain, or just the rising tide of the economy making it easier for generosity to prevail

Management "blew it", but there were probably no negative consequences to them in the case. There are negative consequences for the shareholders when this sort of stuff happens over time in the aggregate... which I believe you get to call the "Principal Agent Problem" if you earn an Economics degree or understand game theory or something...

I hear you ... and in fact you make a good point re: couple of smart guys (or ladies - sometimes the guys are the problem). It's essential to have people with enough self awareness and security and medium to long term thinking to not bow to as I perjoriatively labeled it small 'c' culture (as opposed to the good cap 'C' culture). Culture like political parties are only as good as the fundamentals they hold up long term.

Part of that skill is knowing what can go wrong. And to that end there's no better short read than Ishikawa's tqm the japanese way.

I also agree with your other point: defects are often seen in aggregate when unfortunately the damage is done and cynasysm and infighting are almost unstoppable.

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