#engineering manager

[heph]

D3: Alternate Universe - SONIC BOOM

[hollis-art]

i think about the 30th Anniversary Star Trek Barbie and Ken set so much actually,,, look at them go

[balioc]

Looking at the world from a manager's perspective, you can productively model the pool of workers as being divided into a few basic groups, which are defined and characterized by their driving motivations.

Insert all the usual disclaimers for this sort of thing - this is the roughest type of rough typology. I pulled these categories out of my raw intuition, and possibly a few more would crop up with some additional thought. In reality, the boundaries of these categories are incredibly fuzzy, and almost every individual is actually going to be motivated by a complicated mix of all the relevant motivations; we're talking REALLY SIMPLE HEURISTICS here. Etc.

There have been other well-known worker typologies that share a lot in common with my thoughts here; this is mostly not novel, it's mostly meant to refine a few ideas for particular purposes.

Hustlers are motivated by concrete personal advantage. Most commonly, and most straightforwardly, they want money - as much of it as they can get. They may also be interested in fame, idiosyncratic perks, etc. They do whatever they have to do in order to get what they want.

No surprise: you see huge preponderances of these guys in fields that provide outsize concrete rewards, e.g. finance, the upper echelons of management, etc. But not every natural-born Hustler is in a position to enter a glitzy high-paying field, and in fact you find Hustlers all throughout society and all throughout the economy, finding or making hustles wherever they go.

Having Hustlers working for you is mostly pretty great. They get shit done. They can be induced to work incredibly hard - probably harder than anyone else, under most circumstances - and they'll shank their own mothers if the price is right. If you need anything really important from them, anything at all, it's just a matter of bribing them enough.

...they will also, of course, cheerfully shank you if the price is right. Hustlers aren't the only wellsprings of institutional politics and infighting, but they're the most dangerous ones; they're always potential rivals to everyone around them. Also, you need to keep the tangible rewards flowing in a steady stream in order to get anything out of them, or else they'll put most of their effort into jumping ship (one way or another).

Craftsmen are motivated by the desire to do good work in their chosen fields, for its own sake and for the sake of their treasured self-image as people who do good work.

As you'd expect, for the most part, they're excellent workers and should be prized. But they're not perfect workers. Common weaknesses and downsides include:

They tend to have their own ideas about How Things Should Get Done; they're often resistant to externally-imposed product/service requirements or process changes (and bad at implementing those things) (no matter how important or well-conceived they are), and they're very resistant to "just get it out the door, right now done is better than good."

Being driven chiefly by internal motivation is great, but sometimes it's useful to be able to push things along with external motivators, and Craftsmen are pretty resistant to those. They don't like working more or harder than they're naturally inclined to work, they mostly sneer at carrots, and sticks make them sad and unproductive.

It's important to note that, while noteworthy skill within a field correlates with having a Craftsman temperament and motivation suite - for obvious reasons - those things are not identical at all. Plenty of Craftsmen are bad at their jobs, or just average, and plenty of the best workers are most motivated by things other than the Excellence of the Work Itself.

Fanatics are a relatively rare and specialized group, whom you find mostly within a few specific sorts of culturally-valorized fields. They're motivated by a desire to be part of something Important and Good in a Broader Sense: to Save the World, or some smaller-bore version of that.

They make amazing front-line soldiers, in the sorts of institutions that have "front-line soldiers." They work super hard, and you don't even need to bribe them, you just need to keep them hopped up on inspiration.

The big problem with them is that they're mostly motivated by a feeling - the feeling of Being Righteous - and it's not easy to control where they get that feeling, in any kind of precise way. They're just as resistant to external motivators as Craftsmen are, or even more so, but they're also not being guided by an ideal of effective quality. (No, not even if their chosen cause is theoretically all about an ideal of effective quality, hem hem.) They will happily waste vast amounts of time and money doing useless things, or even counterproductive things, so long as they're engaged in tasks that hit the right psychological buttons for them. There's also a constant risk that a Fanatic will decide that his employer is unrighteous, or that one of his coworkers is unrighteous, and start an internal conflict; the risk scales in a more-than-linear fashion with the number of Fanatics you keep around.

The biggest group, unsurprisingly, is the Normies. In most fields, it is much the biggest group. Normies are motivated by the desire to be members in good standing of their communities, to have positive relationships with the people around them, and to live up to basic norms and expectations.

Managerial skills, in the traditional sense, are incredibly important with Normies. If you want them to do good work for you - and you should want that, as a manager, you've almost certainly got a whole bunch of them - not only do you have to keep them pointed in the right direction, you have to make sure that they're supporting each other. With Hustlers, you just have to throw money at them (and avoid their power plays); with Craftsmen, you just have to let them do their thing, and occasionally badger them into giving you what you need; with Fanatics, you just have to be inspirational; but with Normies, you have to lead, and construct a productive community. You have to set reasonable, achievable norms and expectations that will get you what you need.

This wouldn't be complete if I didn't talk about the Defectors. The Defectors are motivated by not working. They don't want to be there, they resent having to do their jobs, and their primary goal is to shirk as much as possible. They will, by default, put much more effort into shirking than into their assigned tasks.

Obviously, managers don't want to have to deal with them, for good reason. But they're out there, in large numbers - not always in the places and fields where you'd expect to find them - and learning to manage them is sometimes more viable than trying to get rid of them. ("Moving Heaven and Earth to find them jobs that will change their attitude" is often a good plan, although of course it's not always possible and not always worth it.)

Crucially, Defectors are not Normies. If you start with the assumption that the average baseline worker is lazy and sour, you will make some incredibly stupid decisions. There are some fields where, for structural reasons, you can expect that a very large number of your workers will be Defectors; this is a huge and complicated challenge, well beyond the scope of this post, and good luck to you if you have to handle it, but it's not the default.

----------------------

Once you have those categories in your head, and can play with them, a number of obvious-seeming ideas present themselves. Just a couple, for now:

Most high-level executives are Hustlers, or have strong Hustler tendencies, for obvious reasons. Most of the people around them are Hustlers, or have strong Hustler tendencies. This means that they tend to overweight the Hustler outlook, by a lot, when they try to model what their workers are like. More specifically, I'd wager that a lot of them intuitively divide the world into "good workers" ( = Hustlers) and "bad workers" ( = Defectors). This will lead to a heavy overreliance on tangible rewards, a systematic shortchanging of community-building, etc. Which is in fact just what we see.

In particular - crucially - Hustlers and Defectors are the only worker types who ever become more productive under heavy stress. Hustlers actually benefit from it, because it raises the stakes of the game that they're already playing. (If you succeed, you'll be king of the world! If you fail, you'll be shark food! Go go go!) Defectors suffer terribly from stress, of course, but they can sometimes be spooked into doing their jobs as opposed to doing nothing, and sometimes that's the best/easiest way to get something out of them. But stress is terrible for everyone else. Craftsmen lose their focus. Fanatics lose their hope. It's worst of all for Normies, because they take all their cues from the vibes around them; they're productive when they learn to associate work with comfort and happiness, and when you fill their working world with frantic desperation, you just put them in a permanent cringe state.

stop trying to pit your Normies against each other in competitions for status and rewards dear God what are you stupid

To some extent, you can control your institution by controlling what types of workers you have. But only to some extent. There are only so many Hustlers and Craftsmen to go around, and if you want them, you will have to (a) be able to identify them reliably on little information [HINT: you are probably very bad at this], and (b) provide them with what they want [tangible rewards / comfortable security and interesting work]. "We are going to employ only the good special people" is feasible if you're an outfit of four workers; at a dozen, it's already become a stretch; at a few hundred, uh, pfffffffft. If you want to operate at scale, you need to be able to make Normies do good work, there is no substitute for it.

[bluuscreen]

the thought of fresh meat, it is making me ill

so i’m telling you that you’ll be safe with me

[sablegear0]

I've joked with my partner about Ri Kusuriuri and his "customer service face" (his grumpy little not-quite scowl that is trying very hard to be neutral sometimes) and his horrible customer service job.

But then I realized... That's exactly what it is. The Medicine Sellers are spiritual tech support, the Exorcism Swords are very persnickety troubleshooting devices that require a detailed and accurate description of the problem before they can enact a solution.

And like any customer service/tech support job, the biggest obstacle is the people having the problem in the first place. Being cagey about what they did wrong or giving bad info because they don't fully understand the situation.

So what I'm saying here is:

A) If you've never worked a customer service job but you've watched Mononoke (particularly the series), it's kinda like that.

B) We need fanart of Ri and Kon in tech-support headsets talking the other characters through diagnosing their mononoke problem.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Reverse engineers bust sleazy gig work platform

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/23/hack-the-class-war/#robo-boss

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

Supposedly, these lines were included in a 1979 internal presentation at IBM; screenshots of them routinely go viral:

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1385565737167724545?lang=en

The reason for their newfound popularity is obvious: the rise and rise of algorithmic management tools, in which your boss is an app. That IBM slide is right: turning an app into your boss allows your actual boss to create an "accountability sink" in which there is no obvious way to blame a human or even a company for your maltreatment:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

App-based management-by-bossware treats the bug identified by the unknown author of that IBM slide into a feature. When an app is your boss, it can force you to scab:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

Or it can steal your wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But tech giveth and tech taketh away. Digital technology is infinitely flexible: the program that spies on you can be defeated by another program that defeats spying. Every time your algorithmic boss hacks you, you can hack your boss back:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

Technologists and labor organizers need one another. Even the most precarious and abused workers can team up with hackers to disenshittify their robo-bosses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

For every abuse technology brings to the workplace, there is a liberating use of technology that workers unleash by seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

One tech-savvy group on the cutting edge of dismantling the Torment Nexus is Algorithms Exposed, a tiny, scrappy group of EU hacker/academics who recruit volunteers to reverse engineer and modify the algorithms that rule our lives as workers and as customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Algorithms Exposed have an admirable supply of seemingly boundless energy. Every time I check in with them, I learn that they've spun out yet another special-purpose subgroup. Today, I learned about Reversing Works, a hacking team that reverse engineers gig work apps, revealing corporate wrongdoing that leads to multimillion euro fines for especially sleazy companies.

One such company is Foodinho, an Italian subsidiary of the Spanish food delivery company Glovo. Foodinho/Glovo has been in the crosshairs of Italian labor enforcers since before the pandemic, racking up millions in fines – first for failing to file the proper privacy paperwork disclosing the nature of the data processing in the app that Foodinho riders use to book jobs. Then, after the Italian data commission investigated Foodinho, the company attracted new, much larger fines for its out-of-control surveillance conduct.

As all of this was underway, Reversing Works was conducting its own research into Glovo/Foodinho's app, running it on a simulated Android handset inside a PC so they could peer into app's data collection and processing. They discovered a nightmarish world of pervasive, illegal worker surveillance, and published their findings a year ago in November, 2023:

https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/Exercising%20workers%20rights%20in%20algorithmic%20management%20systems_Lessons%20learned%20from%20the%20Glovo-Foodinho%20digital%20labour%20platform%20case_2023.pdf

That report reveals all kinds of extremely illegal behavior. Glovo/Foodinho makes its riders' data accessible across national borders, so Glovo managers outside of Italy can access fine-grained surveillance information and sensitive personal information – a major data protection no-no.

Worse, Glovo's app embeds trackers from a huge number of other tech platforms (for chat, analytics, and more), making it impossible for the company to account for all the ways that its riders' data is collected – again, a requirement under Italian and EU data protection law.

All this data collection continues even when riders have clocked out for the day – its as though your boss followed you home after quitting time and spied on you.

The research also revealed evidence of a secretive worker scoring system that ranked workers based on undisclosed criteria and reserved the best jobs for workers with high scores. This kind of thing is pervasive in algorithmic management, from gig work to Youtube and Tiktok, where performers' videos are routinely suppressed because they crossed some undisclosed line. When an app is your boss, your every paycheck is docked because you violated a policy you're not allowed to know about, because if you knew why your boss was giving you shitty jobs, or refusing to show the video you spent thousands of dollars making to the subscribers who asked to see it, then maybe you could figure out how to keep your boss from detecting your rulebreaking next time.

All this data-collection and processing is bad enough, but what makes it all a thousand times worse is Glovo's data retention policy – they're storing this data on their workers for four years after the worker leaves their employ. That means that mountains of sensitive, potentially ruinous data on gig workers is just lying around, waiting to be stolen by the next hacker that breaks into the company's servers.

Reversing Works's report made quite a splash. A year after its publication, the Italian data protection agency fined Glovo another 5 million euros and ordered them to cut this shit out:

https://reversing.works/posts/2024/11/press-release-reversing.works-investigation-exposes-glovos-data-privacy-violations-marking-a-milestone-for-worker-rights-and-technology-accountability/

As the report points out, Italy is extremely well set up to defend workers' rights from this kind of bossware abuse. Not only do Italian enforcers have all the privacy tools created by the GDPR, the EU's flagship privacy regulation – they also have the benefit of Italy's 1970 Workers' Statute. The Workers Statute is a visionary piece of legislation that protects workers from automated management practices. Combined with later privacy regulation, it gave Italy's data regulators sweeping powers to defend Italian workers, like Glovo's riders.

Italy is also a leader in recognizing gig workers as de facto employees, despite the tissue-thin pretense that adding an app to your employment means that you aren't entitled to any labor protections. In the case of Glovo, the fine-grained surveillance and reputation scoring were deemed proof that Glovo was employer to its riders.

Reversing Works' report is a fascinating read, especially the sections detailing how the researchers recruited a Glovo rider who allowed them to log in to Glovo's platform on their account.

As Reversing Works points out, this bottom-up approach – where apps are subjected to technical analysis – has real potential for labor organizations seeking to protect workers. Their report established multiple grounds on which a union could seek to hold an abusive employer to account.

But this bottom-up approach also holds out the potential for developing direct-action tools that let workers flex their power, by modifying apps, or coordinating their actions to wring concessions out of their bosses.

After all, the whole reason for the gig economy is to slash wage-bills, by transforming workers into contractors, and by eliminating managers in favor of algorithms. This leaves companies extremely vulnerable, because when workers come together to exercise power, their employer can't rely on middle managers to pressure workers, deal with irate customers, or step in to fill the gap themselves:

https://projects.itforchange.net/state-of-big-tech/changing-dynamics-of-labor-and-capital/

Only by seizing the means of computation, workers and organized labor can turn the tables on bossware – both by directly altering the conditions of their employment, and by producing the evidence and tools that regulators can use to force employers to make those alterations permanent.

Image: EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/files/issues/eu-flag-11_1.png

CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[ew-selfish-art]

Dp x Dc AU: Jazz Fenton, after years of fixing her brother’s injuries, becomes a Doctor with an inclination towards behavioral health and psychology- In order to make the difference she wants to see in the world she joins Dr. Leslie Thompkin’s practice. 

Jazz Fenton, M.D. has spent years of her life doing research, doing the hard work and the emotional labor, and finally, finally, she’s joining a practice she can feel 100% confident in. She’s goddamn good doctor and she wants to make the biggest impact that she can. 

Dr. Thompkins (who insists that she call her Leslie as they’re colleagues now), is a kind woman, sharp as a tack and keeps her practice open at odd hours to help the most unfortunate. It took some time for them to bond and trust to be built, but now Jazz is being allotted a few night shifts here and there. 

It’s incredible. Jazz gets to spend time with the kids who come in and really talk to them (in addition to getting them antibiotics, heating pads and pokemon themed bandaids) to help equip them with a few coping skills. Her passion for psychology never disappeared after all, but the expansive knowledge of how to heal the human body has made her find a sense of fulfillment like no other.

Having proven herself and worn Leslie down, Jazz now takes up about 1/3 of all the night shifts in the month. She’s hoping to get to 50/50 by the end of the year but she’s content with what she has. Danny keeps odd hours anyway so calling him after work on her walk home can happen any time of day and he will always answer enthusiastically. 

It’s a particularly busy night before he comes in. The Red Hood. 

He was known for being an ally to Leslie, despite being on contentious terms with the Bats, but Jazz had never asked directly. Never one to turn away a patient with bullet hole wounds, she hops into action to get his wounds cleaned, sewed up and gauze wrapped. She’s handing him a sheet (an Infographic! Dani made it with her! Graphic design is her passion!) on how to care for his wounds when he first seems to recognize that she’s not Leslie. 

“No, Of course not. I’m Dr. Fenton. I can’t blame you for not remembering but I did introduce myself as you bled in the entry way. You’re Red Hood, right?” 

“Hm. Didn’t realize the practice was expanding. Where can I find-” He grumbles before pushing her hand aside from where she had still been supporting his shoulder.

“Hold on there, mister. You’re going home, you’re following this infographic and you’re going to get some sleep.” 

“Lady you don’t know-” His voice modulated ton came across antagonistically. As if he was trying to intimidate her. Ha, Jazz rolls her eyes at the inclination.

“Who I’m talking to? Who I’m dealing with? You’re hilarious. I can eat you vigilante’s hero complexes for breakfast. Tell me who I’m calling to pick you up and then you can say thank you.” Jazz snaps at him. It really had been a long night but his whole dialogue thus far is making her a bit batty. 

“Oh really Doc? You know Leslie’s tough shit, and from what I can tell you’ve got nothing on her-” 

“Trying to make me feel insufficient when I just saved your life? That’s cute. I’m sure a lifetime of abandonment by both of your parental figures gave you that. I’m also sure that you inherited this desire to prove you’re not going to be dependent on anyone who wants to help from whoever got you dressing up in tights to fight crime in the first place. Again, I’d love to talk at length about how predictable you-” 

“Bwah- wait- I’m Predictable? You’re probably some nepobaby who had parents who told her she could have the world-” But Jazz cuts him off with hysterical laughter- he couldn’t be further from the truth. Her parents loved her, but nepotism? With what, the ghosts? If anything she got that from Danny, but he doesn’t need to know about her ghostly titles. 

“You’re just some guy who came back from the dead and made his trauma everyone else’s issue. So shut it. And tell me how I’m getting you home from this clinic.” She seethes though her voice stays devastatingly level with each word. 

Speechless for a moment, he eventually relents to Jazz that he’s already called for help on the comms but it will be hours before they can come for a pick up. The sun had already come up and the night had been over for most of them before Hood had walked into trouble. She groans and the realizes the time for herself and the empty clinic around them.

“Fine. My shift just ended anyway. I’ll get you home in one piece and I swear to all the ancients that you’d better follow the directions on the infographic.” 

And that’s how Jazz ended up calling her brother while supporting the weight of a grown ass man (who no longer wanted to talk to her) on her walk home. 

The next time Red Hood appears in her clinic, he’s brought a dozen roses in addition to the cut on his neck that definitely needs to be pressurized like ASAP. Did he stop for the flowers on his way to the clinic? He’s going to pass out from blood loss! She doesn’t even like roses!

[fiannans]

If it was a choice between actually getting to know our companions better and developing their relationships with Rook as the player's avatar through classic, Bioware-style investigative conversations or having companions appear in random locations every time you return to the Lighthouse to listen to them spout banter that I could have just heard in the field instead, I know which I would have preferred.

[alpacalamamama]

Come on down to Mama K’s, the best steak house this side of Baldur’s Gate!

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

I was wondering, does Fiddleford still have a wife in your Halloween au? And if yes, does she know about him being a vampire?

I've been sitting on this ask for a bit, but I think I should finally answer.

In my AU, Fidds is actually pretty old-- not like ancient or anything, but surely a few centuries?

Anyway, so way back, when he was human, he did have a wife and a kid!! But when he got bit and became a vampire, he actually outlived them :(

He tries to think about them often, but it's definitely one of the things he chooses to erase when he creates the memory gun

[yashmel]

[jolivira]

did anyone ask for an Arcane band AU? 👀

Cait is the main vocalist and, well, let's say most of the fans are sapphic ;)

they're called The Brige, half-zaunites half-pilties

Jayce plays the guitar and is Cait's main confidant, meanwhile Vi plays the bass and mostly annoys Ekko (drums) about her huge crush

((art of Vi coming soon!!!))

[lomotunes2008]

Gordon noooooo!!!

[28ms28]

Lando really needs to understand that his car is miles above everyone else's right now or god help me.

[galinneall-dearg]

Happy 8/8! Go read Small World by @mean-scarlet-deceiver !