Comment by OhMeadhbh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by OhMeadhbh | Hacker News Reader

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When I was in the Marines, we had a rule of thumb that every Marine needed to know their own mission and the mission of units two or three echelons above them. So individual Marines needed to know their mission, their platoon's mission and their company's mission. Company commanders needed to know their mission, their battalion's mission and the division's mission. More specifics for echelons closer to you.

This is complicated by the fact that Marines deploy as MEUs, MEBs and MEFs [1] which aren't "pure" echelons, but it's a rule of thumb and guiding principle more than a hard and fast requirement.

I've ALWAYS been annoyed by engineering organizations that don't think developers at the leaf nodes of the org chart need to know what's going on. Devs may not do anything with the info, but letting people in on what's happening seems to send the message that "management thinks you're important enough to hear what we're working on" and every now and again, individual devs need to make decisions that depend on these more abstract / higher-level goals.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_air%E2%80%93ground_task...

My dad is a retired Marine and I learned several things from the NCO system and Marines in general: good leaders (EM/Sergeant) will generally never ask you something they cannot also do (implies they are your peer, even if they are not), and Marine Corps manuals are able to take anyone who can read and make them operate technical things. Their manuals are written in a very direct stepwise way to get people up to speed in doing whatever task they are assigned which I learned early on is just plain good documentation.

Servant leadership works really well when you have high agency individuals, and can grow high agency individuals. I have definitely been on the other side of that with control freak machiavellian / nearly adversarial leaders as well.

<Servant leadership works really well when you have high agency individuals, and can grow high agency individuals. I have definitely been on the other side of that with control freak Machiavellian / nearly adversarial leaders as well.>

This. Every time I've lead people, IF they were already or were able to become high agency, we were efficient and capable. Control freak managers were usually guilty of what they obsessed over before they became managers. Good workers always leave bad managers in time, which always hurts the company.

As a former Naval Flight Officer, it's somewhat ironic how the private sector is more "sir, yes sir" command and control than the military ever was, and they're the ones who stereotype servicemembers for being drones who can only follow orders.

The other thing I've seen incredibly less of in software than in uniform is a bias for action at all levels. Combined with understanding the mission, a mentality that "in the absence of being told what to do, I will act." Better to ask forgiveness than permission, etc. etc. So many people in the private sector just wait for the boss to push them around like chess pieces, and I can't understand how they're OK living like that.

When my boss (non prior service) at Amazon found out I was prior service he said "I want to run my group like a military unit." Without thinking I blurted out "what? you want to spend 80% of your budget on training?"

> So many people in the private sector just wait for the boss to push them around like chess pieces, and I can't understand how they're OK living like that.

I think a lot times, office workers will be reprimanded for taking action if they don't realize their chain of command are not supportive. Have this happen a couple of times, and you will quickly move into this mode of "I'm not going to do anything I'm not told to do." I can recall more than one former company where taking the initiative to perform some action independently was very risky to your career there.

Because every time I've done something of my own initiative, one of three things happens:

1/ I'm punished or reprimanded for doing something that my time wasn't explicitly scheduled for. This comes from managers.

2/ Nobody cares and I'm now further behind on the things I committed to.

3/ People care, are happy I took the initiative, but I'm not materially rewarded in any way. At worst, I'm given more work.

In all cases I am no better off. I just don't do it anymore. Employers don't want employee autonomy, so they don't get employee autonomy. Employers only want to give paychecks not profits, so they get employees who only want paychecks.

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