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I've been thinking about the shitshow that is DOGE, and I see two kinds of professionalized arrogance: tech and MBAs. A thread!
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Both computers and finance are pervasive technologies. So much of our society makes use of both of those, and much else can easily be cast into those terms. That can easily make those skills seem universal.
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I think that's made worse by our education systems. If you get a CS degree or an MBA, you can expect to jump into a wide variety of jobs with no industry-specific training or experience.
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That's something I've benefited hugely from as a techie. I've gotten to work in so many different industries: education, finance, publishing, government, non-profits, and more. It has been a huge joy to dive in and learn about another slice of the world. Another set of people and their industry-specific language and culture.
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But I think it's very easy for people with both CS and MBA degrees to start out thinking a broadly applicable skill means they don't have to learn anything. When in my experience, it's the opposite: if you want to be truly effective, you have to dig in and get up to speed pronto. And you'll have to develop a lot of respect for people who know the domain, and for the complexities they've taken years to understand.
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But what if you don't care about being truly effective? What if you're goal is quick nominal wins or self aggrandizement or just extracting a bunch of cash and moving on? In that case, arrogance and ignorance aren't problems, they're tools.
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So what I am seeing in DOGE is the confluence of two kinds of aggressive ignorance. It's a bunch of mouthy white dudes who are used to jumping in, performing genius, and fucking with things they don't understand. Things they won't ever understand. And those dudes, having never experienced the sting of consequences, can even conceive that there might be a problem.
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It could be otherwise, of course. I'm reminded of the Ritual of the Calling of the Engineer. In response to a fatal bridge collapse, a Canadian engineering professor created a ceremony to remind graduating engineers that they had a duty to society: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_of_the_Calling_of_an_Engineer
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But there's nothing like that for most software developers. And from what I hear of business schools, it's almost the opposite: a long indoctrination in the focus on status and profit. Plus, of course, ensuing immersion for both in a business culture that either ignores or actively avoids ("no politics!") a sense of responsibility to other people.
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If we survive the next 4 years, I hope we'll have finally burned out our collective admiration for arrogant, abusive assholes. No matter how adept they are at performing brilliance and promising miracles. I hope we'll turn instead to supporting people who have track records of being careful. Of skillfully maintaining the quietly valuable. Of assiduous, thoughtful repair. Because we're sure as fuck going to need it.
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@williampietri
Some good food for thought. I have a CS degree and an MBA, so I could fit into your criteria at 1st glance. Maybe it's because of having military service both as a vet and civilian employee that I don't have Musk's shallow attitude.
@stargazersmith Could be! My experience with government employees is that there's a real culture of public service. I think it also helps that the firmer structures and slower cycles also make it harder to escape consequences. Or maybe your mom just raised you right!
@williampietri
Thanks for that. I did have a good Mom.
@williampietri
Very well said.
@williampietri "burned out our collective admiration" for keeping women down is the first step on that road.
Seriously.
The only justification to do that is might makes right.
That's the lodestar of arrogant abusive assholes. And the people who follow them.
Once keeping women down becomes despicable, we'll know we've finally stepped away from that.
@williampietri In my more optimistic moments I think we are starting to notice that the arrogant, abusive assholes are emperors with no clothes. In my more pessimistic moments I worry that the worship of the so-called geniuses is so deeply ingrained (at least in the tech world, maybe more broadly too) that it is going to take more than their ongoing failures to turn around perceptions.
@williampietri
Thank you for this. When I was licensed as an architect, there were "oral exams" with licensing board representatives after successful completion of internship and 7 part written and drawn exam. It seemed to be a ritual of sorts; and an exhortation to live the ethical, technical and professional standards of the "title". Ethics and life safety first. Nurture and teach the next generation second. Making money? Never mentioned.
@williampietri I ended up as a professional software developer after graduating in math. As a Canadian, I've always bristled at being called a software engineer, because I don't have the ring.
@hewer_of_code Right? And ring or no, software development is generally much more a job than a profession. I hope one day we'll get there, but signs are not promising.
@williampietri I would agree.
From my experience, it's just too easy for someone to push an imperfect solution for the sake of a deadline.
I'm sure the pressure is there in other engineering fields, but a bridge collapsing is more tangible than software bugs.
@williampietri I was eating lunch with a business associate from another company in a different industry visiting from another state when he stated that whatever one thinks of the current DOGE episode, no one can deny that Elon is a smart man. Here in the valley, I've seen a bunch of idiots in Elon's mold, with no intelligence but a simple behavior pattern that benefits their success at the detriment to their organizations and everybody else in them.
@tsrams For sure. Musk is good at *performing* genius. And I'll grant that he's a talented hype man. But I'm happy to deny that he's a smart man. There's such a long list of examples otherwise!
@williampietri @tsrams I'd say the evidence is that every time Musk puts his finger in the pie his companies lose value.