[xbpx]

I identify with much in this blog post. One novelty argument:

Managing is hard because it embodies the dialectic between capital and workers. Therefore a deep understanding of the Marxist critique (and exposé) of capital will help provide an analytical framing around what an effective manager needs to do. You can approach it from other lenses but they all break down due to the two polar forces most strongly at play.

This has honestly aided me greatly. Your mileage may vary.

[cturner]

A difficulty with marxism is that it is thoroughly old fashioned about bucketing people into categories. In a feudal society you were born into a life where you were a serf, or a craftsman, or an aristocrat. Marxism massages the labels but essentially accepts this worldview. The primary handle on each person is a class label, assigned at birth. Talent is irrelevant.

One of the challenges of management after feudalism is making the best of the variety of individual contribution. When you are moving rocks around or ploughing, each individual is roughly equivalent. This was obsolete by the industrial era. A factor in Japan’s rise in auto was giving workers direct and individual (ie not union-filtered) feedback into the manufacturing process.

Now, the multipliers are higher still. There are regular situations where an aggressively small team has executed where several well funded teams of thousands failed.

My view is that capital is nearly irrelevant in mainstream technology now beyond achieving bootstrap and avoiding dumb renumeration errors that alienate talent. Rather, the key tensors are 1. how high you can get the ceiling on your core talent and 2. how small you can get that team, in order that this talent can be engaged with the big picture, in order that they can be identifying and focusing on the most important problems. They are related. The more capable your talent, the more it can participate in the big picture.

These dynamics do not resolve easily with the orgchart-centric, bigger-is-better assumptions of traditional worldviews.

Possible limit to the view - I have not had exposure to fields with vast ongoing capital cost, or complex cross-discipline stuff like silicon manufacture

[hnfong]

> My view is that capital is nearly irrelevant in mainstream technology now beyond achieving bootstrap

Wasn't that true for traditional businesses as well? Beyond bootstrap, the company itself (revenue streams, assets, etc.) is the capital.

I mean, if I wanted to be a landlord in the middle ages the only capital I need is a bag of gold coins to buy enough land and build a fort and "bootstrap" my lordship... (and maybe a fake birth certificate :)

[cturner]

"Beyond bootstrap, the company itself (revenue streams, assets, etc.) is the capital."

Thanks for this correction.

[aspenmayer]

You have any suggested reading or links related to Marxism, especially as it relates to work?

[hohohmm]

Very well said. This has indeed helped me too.

[babyshake]

How do you feel about labor unions in tech or corporate environments? The labor move seems to have its roots in Marxism.

[phreeza]

The labor movement predates Marxism, even if you exclude pre-industrial incarnations. I believe workers pooling their power is just a result of the dynamic between capital and workers, and Marx started out by describing, rather than prescribing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement#History