Greasy Spots on Chairs [Steve Yegge]

Watch Steve Yegge's podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v4z46Ea35Qacompany is like a bodyit's not like a person like a humanbeing it's like a thing it's an entitythat has its own agenda and its owngoals and its own control of resourcesand its own value systemand uhthe individual members of the companykinda don't matter as long as they'redoing their joband the company cares about them rightthe way you care about your heart andyour lungs but if you had a chance toreplace them with a better heart andlungs you would and that's the waycompanies operate too a company you knowsort of maintains its own healthuh uh or asks for government handoutsthose are the sort of two optionsand um and so to understand you know andthe original people who started thecompany sure when it's small and it'sjust a small group of people it's just agroup of people but when it grows to acertain size everybody becomesreplaceableokayand this is important to understandingwhy amazon is so dominant across the theboard okay in everything that they doit's it's really crazy soso what happens is umgroups can get diseasesand sometimes we call it dysfunction butit's it's really a disease it's anailment right uh you know to give you areally simple example you might have onefamily member who's uh a real problemsomebody who's in and out of jail andalways you know uh getting in troubleyou know with the law or always stirringup trouble at family gatherings or justgenerally a problem rightyou can have those in companies tooright maybe not getting in and out ofjail they won't last long at the companymost likely unless they're the ceobut you have people that are creatingproblems okayuhand uhso that's not really a disease so muchas like a wound you know like apulled muscle you know or a sore that'shaving trouble healingssdsdbut it's still a problem an illness anailment with the companybecause it's preventing other peoplefrom getting stuff doneif you have a whole bunch of those allover your body then it's a diseaseif you have a whole bunch of people inyour company who are holding on tokeeping other people from beingproductivein any way there's lots of differentways they can do this then your companyis diseased a great example of this ismicrosoft and we'll go into great detailabout this uh down the road in anotheranother episodeumit's a really common pattern there arethere are there are companies have awhole host of diseases that they can getand they're common like many companieswill have the same diseaseand the diseases could potentiallythere's a taxonomy you could name themand you could uhyou know learn how to diagnose them andlearn what the symptoms are and learnhow to treat them and learn which onesare fatali mean like nobody's done this you knowi'm going to start talking about them inmy show you can call me dr steveuh you you know it's really kind ofadvanced to the state of maybe veteranyou know horse medicine at this pointlook at a company and just like shoot itbut um you know the the reality is thatuh companies you know they get their owndiseases just like populations getdiseases they can get real diseases orthey can get diseases like beinganti-facts now i'm not blaminganti-vaxxers if you're anti-vaxx uh youknow don't angrily turn off my show youknow i'm not blaming you for beinganti-vaxxed it's really a failure of theeducation system and of uh science uhmarketing and of the government and abunch of other reasons uh that thatbecause it's a very real phenomenon imeanthere you know some 30 40 of the entireworld's population maybe is isfirmly anti-vaxuh but it is a disease in in aggregatebecause it's killing people i meanthat's kind of the definition of adiseaseand so you know how does this happen imean diseases can be diseases of themind in a sense and companies they donot have the willto cure their diseases i mean if you ifyou're like you're talking about the oldwest and you know you you get you knowan arrow to your to your knee and youhave uh you know uh an infection and youknow you're looking at it and it startsto gangrene and the docdoc you know who's your buddy who youknow drinks you know as much whiskey asyou says man we're gonna have to takethat offokayand so saw you know sawing your leg offto save the body to save your lifei mean it happens today still right it'svery painful and traumaticand breaking up a companycan be very painful and traumatic orrooting out a systemic illness from acompany because companies are made ofpeopleand even if companies don't reallymatter people do you know and uh and andthere's also a lot of like legalobstacles to companies just snuffingthings out we do have at will employmentwhich means they can fire you anytimethey wantat least in the united states and thatisabsolutely huge for productivity i'm noti'm not uh trying to justify ituh and you know in europe they protectpeople's rights workers rights more thanthey do in the united states or in asiabut in the us and asia which are farmore productive than europein the tech sector uh you can firepeople at will and it's that constantthreat of being fired that keeps peoplesort of behaving keeps the the lungs andthe circulatory system and everythinglike workinguh because people know that they'rebeing held accountable right for beingyou know for not not diseaseduh but diseases do happen and you knowamazon i'm i'm gonna just say it rightnowthe number one reason that amazonexecutes so well is that they aremerciless about rooting out disease assoon as they find itand i told you i'm going to talk about alot of different specific diseases thati've seen in action at corporations oreven been a part of okay it's a learningexperience for all of usuh and uh you know we'll talk at greatlength about them but basically there'ssituations wheregroups of people within the company canhold the company hostagethis happens all the time a specificgroup of people becomes large enough tobecome sort of like a a political lobbyor a labor union or you know some sortof you knowa sub entity within the company that hasits own agenda and it's starting tofight the host rightand uh and it it's just to give you anexample so that i'm not you know you'renot guessingbeing territorialis a huge diseasein companies a very common one beingturfy that's mine you can't work on thati'm not working on it and you can't workon it eitherso ...