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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

I agree that companies that don't cut the dead weight have tremendous amounts of very bad internal politicking, up-or-out organizations tend to have politics optimized around moving up...which is very rarely tied to any sort of work performance.

The U.S. military has a similar up-or-out policy (especially among the officer corps) and the result is (more often than not I'd say) yes men who latch onto a strong leader type and ride his coattails into a senior officer position. The result is poorly informed and advised leaders, and senior staff who spend their time figuring out if what they're doing will be approved "by the old man" instead of actually promoting the function of the organization, fight and win wars.

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I'd argue that this problem exists in any large bureaucratic culture, and that its prevalence is often just as bad in non up-or-out environments.

The key difference between up-or-out and the alternative is that, in the alternative, a certain segment of the employee base plays the politics game, and a certain segment kicks back and stagnates in the middle, while the rest try to get ahead honestly. In up-or-out, at least the third category has a decent shot. In non-up-or-out, the people trying to work hard and advance on merit will run up against the entrenched slackocracy and the political Machiavellians.

It's almost like you're describing the dichotomy between military officers and civilian federal government jobs, where somebody can chill in a GS-13 position for 20 years and then retire.

False equivocation. The problems are not all of the same severity, and it is a fallacy to say they are "all the same" just because you use the same word, problems.

I didn't say that.

In my post, "problem" was referring to the parent post's "politics organized around moving up." My point is that most corporate cultures have elements of that focus on upward mobility. Obviously its prevalence varies from company to company. But I'd rather take a culture with an over-focus on upward mobility and potential for upward mobility than a culture with even a lesser focus on upward mobility, but less potential for it (due to all the dead weight).

I'm not holding "focus on upward mobility" equal in that assessment.

The problem there is that the US military usually has a very hard time evaluating actual effectiveness since it's not reasonable to start a war just to see how your employees do.

This means during prolonged periods of peacetime, a form of regulatory capture happens where the metrics used to evaluate promotion become decoupled from actual fitness of purpose.

Metrics used to evaluate fitness being detached from the actual purpose of a position is not only a characteristic of the military.

For example, since success in academics is usually the first requirement to even start in any position above the most menial, anyone who finds it difficult to toe the line and waste hours listening to someone drone on about a topic totally unrelated to their purpose in life, or enthusiastically embrace make-work homework assignments, will likely have a hard road, no matter how well qualified they might otherwise be.

well, I meant the military as an example, it's interesting that you bring up evaluation of fitness during peace vs. war time.

One could argue that the U.S. military in particular has had a tremendous opportunity this last decade or so to conduct exactly the kind of wartime evaluation you're talking about. But I wonder if the evaluation metrics are optimized towards peace-time?

Not a military member or veteran myself, but am friendly with quite a few present and former officers. The culture they describe sounds extremely political. Almost like being a career military officer is equivalent to being a career politician. To some extent, there's a hint of academy politics as well: people who publish, get cited, etc., move more quickly than people who don't. To another extent, there's classic politics: people who schmooze within the Beltway, know how to play the media game, etc., get ahead quicker than others.

In many respects, David Petraeus is the perfect embodiment of these political principles. He published, he politicked, he maximized his media exposure, and he hobnobbed within the right DC circles. I'm not qualified to judge whether or not he was as good a leader as many believe him to have been. But he was certainly a top-notch political operative.

(Other government agencies, e.g., the CIA, have very similar internal political incentives. The game is almost the same. This may explain, in part, the fluidity between military leadership and Agency leadership).

That sounds like a massive conflict of interest.

Usually a "senior" officer needs some command experience to make it beyond O-6. I know the Navy in particular, attaches qualifications to certain positions which would make it hard for yes-men to get promoted, even if they're on the CNO staff. For example, a CVN Carrier skipper, has to command a smaller ship, and be nuclear qualified, and usually a tour as carrier XO, before they get their command.

For the medical corps, above O-6, they usually have commanded at least one smaller facility, before they get an administrative flag assignment. More than a few have flamed-out at O-5 and O-6 commands.

In a carrier squadron, being XO or CO is preceded by being a department head. Maintenance department is a good one to get a command, but there are other departments.

The Army Medical Command had the problem with senior staff, where they were a large number of senior officers, O-8/O-9, involved in the Walter Reed scandal in 2007, were either fired or retired. Covering over issues with memos and paperwork up the chain-of-command by "yes men" didn't cut it.

The problem is that "command experience" doesn't mean that you did a good job at it. The impression I've got from friends who have observed this process first hand is that people get shuttled into a job to get "command experience", do a crappy job but everyone hunkers down and waits because they know they'll be gone to a better gig in 6 months so why rock the boat, and then the person gets promoted with their newfound "command experience".

Some of those same officers get relieved due to "poor command climate" one somewhat recent example; "[Navy Captain] was fired as commanding officer of Navy [a] Health Clinic after a survey found a poor command climate." Doesn't happen as much as it should, perhaps, but its not unknown.

The major difference is that the good leaders (whose coattails others want to ride on) should be able to distinguish capable subordinates from useless yes-men.

If they can't, they deserve to drown themselves. If they can, they will filter out most of the fakers, and collect a team that can get stuff done in real adversial situations - since a great commander with a sucky team will suffer, and an okay commander who is able to build a great team will get whatever achievements are possible.

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