2024.05.19
I hate the word "inevitable." I don't believe in fate. Fate is simply where we run aground when we stop paddling on the river of life. It's the opposite of a plan. It's random chance, a circumstance free of intention. If you want to change your "fate" in life, just start paddling. Chance vs Destiny is an either-oar situation.
Please don't mistake my levity for shallowness any more than I mistake your gravity for depth.
[Engineering needs] an environment with little discipline and yet with clearly stated goals. In general, that's in conflict with a corporate form.
A simple answer that is clear and precise will always have more power in the world than a complex one that is true.
Rob [Fulop] used to say that the people who could really make it at Atari were the people who wanted to have as much fun as possible and still go to heaven. They could strike that tricky balance between goofing off enough and still getting the work done.
There was a clever game engineer at Atari who had the best definition for it. He'd say: "State-of-the-Art means when it's broken, nobody knows how to fix it."
But this is before anyone sees a crash coming, and the interdepartmental struggle is ongoing, largely because we can't see the inevitable conclusion. Spoiler alert: Marketing is destined to win, due to a phenomenon I call Warshaw's Law of Marketing Inversion. Consider this: Most companies start out engineering heavy, because there isn't much to do until they have a product. Since engineering represents most of the early budget, they receive a great deal of management's attention (especially if senior management contains engineers/developers). However, if the company starts to succeed, sales and marketing may scale up rapidly to meet the growing demand, while engineering continues making product.
Warshaw's Law of Marketing Inversion states that in a successful company, engineering resources grow arithmetically while sales and marketing resources grow geometrically. The resulting budget imbalances inflate the visibility of marketing in the eyes of management, while diminishing engineering. This tends to shift the power to define corporate direction in favor of marketing. Simply put, the expensive wheel gets the grease.
Silicon Valley is where the world's best, brightest and most ambitious people come to be average.(Also makes me think about prestigious universities and the grade inflation there.)
As the evening sky colors its way into dusk, I'm reminded of an ending for a book I've always wanted to use:
"And as the sun slowly sinks into the east,
we notice the Earth is rotating in the wrong direction."