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Comment by duffydotsvg | Hacker News Reader

This is new to me. Not sure I totally agree but it's a useful heuristic. Despite being easy targets, orgs do in fact need coordinators, middle managers, administrators, etc. Especially as they scale. (And no AI won't render them obsolete.) Finding the balance between productivity and bureaucracy is the hard part.

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It's true that large orgs need all that bureaucracy. But is it still true that productivity needs large orgs? We see a lot of massive hits coming from small teams - whether it's startups, movies, indie games, etc.

With almost no exceptions, movies are never made by small teams beyond the student film level. Even then, dozens of people are usually involved in some way. Writing, acting, score, foley, editing, distribution, graphic design, color grading, wardrobe, effects, lighting, cinematography, scheduling, props, location scouting, set decoration, casting, mixing… the list goes on. Any one of those things sucking badly enough can make the whole movie suck. And that’s kind of the point with a lot of this stuff. I know from having plenty of experience on both sides of the fence that tech folks often don’t realize that most non-tech roles are as-or-more difficult than tech roles, many requiring years of hard-won expertise, and directly contribute far more to the outcome than they imagine.

Not to mention smaller (successful) production teams are often comprised of veterans of the industry who have worked on large scale productions and bring that knowledge set with them. Same with many indie games. You have to play with the big dogs to understand what is and isn’t necessary for a product. You can’t just walk in with a plucky attitude and a dream unless you want to waste a lot of time and money.

The part that is also usually glossed over is how exploitative the production is (low pay/awful hours), even if it’s sometimes self-inflicted.

> bring that knowledge set with them

Not just knowledge but personal connections for favors. “Hey, [talented editor] it’s [famous DP], do you think you could tame a crack at this scene in your spare time? I’m trying to make something out of nothing and I’m positive you’ve got the chops.”

I don’t think anyone could reasonably call any of the exploitation self-inflicted. You have to take shit work a lot of times because a) nothing else is available and you still need to eat, or b) that’s the only way to get your foot in the door for the chance of being slightly less exploited. Unfortunately the industry collapsed when I graduated school as a career switcher getting into Houdini simulations. The software skill set is utterly devalued on the open market. I couldn’t get exploited if I wanted to. Now I’m a union tradesman. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I worked in the industry for over a decade and unfortunately it is very exploitative :/ i’ve watched line producers pressure production assistants, the lowest of the low on set, into lying about their hours so they don’t have to pay them OT under the guise of “being team players.” Lots of nonsense like that, mostly on non-union gigs.

The self-inflicted comment is a bit tongue in cheek because they do it to their own production to effectively “crunch” (to use video game parlance) but they also crunch themselves in the process. Difference is they have way more to gain. The sound mixer on an indie darling isn’t getting much out of it.

It’s pretty sad. I knew a lot of people in the union crafts (New England, which is way different from LA from what I hear) during the good times and they said it was all great, but as soon as things got tight, it was tribal as fuck. (The IATSE set building roster went from a few hundred dues-paying members to a couple dozen, and most of them were persistently out of work… it is in pretty bad shape, so there’s only so much you can do I guess.) Most of the other people I know were in VFX houses/animation and that hasn’t been non-exploitative in like 20 years. Considering how much money a few people make in that business, it’s pathetic.

Dude vfx houses are awful. They pull insane hours, win awards, and then get shut down. It’s working as a video game dev by all accounts. My buddy worked Bladerunner 2049 and the third post house he’s worked at since just shut down.

Even the video game industry reformed significantly after the bad press they got a few years ago. I mostly know people at Rockstar, but also Blizzard and Epic and they said they’ve really rented over a new leaf. I’ve still heard bad things about CD Projekt Red. It’s crazy how shit the VFX houses are.

Not so sure about R* https://www.dexerto.com/gta/fired-gta-6-devs-speak-out-about...

Oh that’s too bad. They had a good run at least.

Sadly they’ve demonstrated a decades-running pattern of promising to do better and then just doing exactly what they did before. I don’t support their games anymore at this point.

When I say small I'm referring to anything under 50 people. Maybe you could go as high as even 100 without needing a ton of bureaucracy. I think a lot of indie films have teams under 100.

Totally agree the hits are coming. But from the POV of someone at a large and still growing org that's fully embraced AI, it's so obvious to me where the limitations are (and might always be). The nuances/complexities of leadership, decision-making, strategy, creative marketing, sales, comms, etc., feel too abstract to be replaceable. As the hard skill means of production are commodified, whatever alpha is left will lie in the soft skills. In other words, the models would be A+ STEM students, but they don't have the sauce for liberal arts.

There are 3 web engines generally useful. Each produced by 100s of people. Small teams have not matched their output. How would you explain this?

The issue is that most dedicated to caring for the bureaucracy tend to overvalue the organization and undervalue the mission.

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