[6gvONxR4sf7o]

You can’t conflate unsolved problems with unsolved organizational problems like that. If you are really into the politicking and people stuff, sure. But that’s why I love being an IC. I want to build stuff to solve our user’s problems. Sure, I have to navigate the org stuff to have big impact, but that’s the part where I want to spend the least focus. Which is a part of how I’d measure organizational dysfunction.

That said, I’m grateful for people who are really into the org stuff. I’ve worked for a savant at that stuff and it really did improve things. Thank you all who suffer the politics on behalf of the rest of us.

[throwawaygh]

Agreed. Org stuff is important, but even the most well-managed org in the world won't make good progress without the right technical people.

I have a really hard time believing that Defense has a strong bench of IC engineers and scientists working on ML Safety. I've received job offers from these types of firms and they're always paying at least 300K less than the competition when they probably need to be paying 200K-300K more (requires a clearance, WFH is impossible, my executive is not technical, etc.)