Change Incentives & Oversight to Alter the Flow of Capital and Leadership

You notice as you move startup to startup, firm to firm, that best practices are often not found across all of them--they aren't portable. Or nobody has made them into portable versions.

Nor do service businesses and "APIs as business" normally solve this lack: notably, expertise isn't widespread enough for many businesses to find (and understand what are) the best-in-class or optimal options. The capacity to make the best evaluations isn't widespread enough due to assymetries of information and experience to actually use any they may have--information != informed.

And even those that could potentially serve this function, portably and get widespread attention...they're not normally built to be resistant to being subverted for other goals by new leadership--at which point everyone having adopted them gets screwed.

Meanwhile, "optimal" isn't always best-in-class in all ways, just "most suitable for adoption." 

And commonly, what passes as "most suitable", isn't: it's what people there already feel some comfort about, or have some familiarity with, degrading the firm's performance overall.

This is why you get firms that wind-up buying more MicroS[tuff] and building application front-ends that are little more than forms use Sharepoint and "Teams!" requiring engineering terms weeks or months that could be done...on an ancient Unix system shell in a couple of hours by a guy or two with some caffeine and encouragement.

Then, a really weird thing to notice, but true: 

Firms that do best are firms that will hire people who are creative and "Makers"--who constitutionally cannot stop fixing and improving any problem or thing they find is below what they expect or know could be. 

HOWEVER, many (maybe not most, but MANY--most are "small businesses" after all) firms cannot afford this: they could, however, benefit immensely over anything beyond the "near" or "short" term, and begin raking-in savings and competitive advantages. 

So how to solve this affordability issue? (Often, an issue of where to put that cost in accounting terms--especially if they're on government contracts.) 

The answer is likely a combination of the following: 

* equity (incentivizes awesome work anyway), 

* co-hiring (that is, distribute the cost across many firms). 

In theory, some incubators do something like this--build awesome things and then each becomes a resource for the others. People would likely thing of Y Combinator here.

In reality, such arrangements (seem to) rarely actually serve this purpose: they rather tend to mean each firm is basically required to use the services of other projects and firms incubated by the VC's. 

Even when they could be vastly better served by other options and when the services they procure may actually be more hype than substance. 

In theory, this should be solved: we have advisory firms and firms of nothing but technical engineers, for example, but that's because firms don't want to actually pay for such expertise--so bring it in only on occasion: they aren't even thinking about "let's find the autistic version, put them on stipend, pay them for solutions--possibly recurringly, and be subject to their constant interventions!" Nay, that'd get in teh way of power tripping and "dignity"... not to mention building up "legacies" on the backs of workers screwed (often out of policy- and contract- required payments to those actually responsible for innovations or for "contributoins" to the firm!)... what would all these polite society types do if they couldn't be totally credited (because of command-and-control structuring in the firms and industries)? Get their social status from being charitable philanthropists or something other nonsense rather than putting their names on stadiums? NO F****ING WAY!

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In some way, this is why certain notorious investors say things like,

"autism gives people immense advantages in this cutthroat environment
        --they're obsessively focused on the best thing rather than doing people politics...."

"I can repeatedly make billions just by assembling teams of autistics...
what kind of idictment is that on our society and work culture when autism...
doesn't just give you an advantage, but is necessary in the culture to truly be very effective?"

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In part this is because such people look askance at "how things work" and "the normal way of doing things" and dare ask the taboo: why? 

A lot of people just don't understand how often they appeal, though couched in terms that makes it seem far more sophisticated, to authority: 

nearly everyone given a modern education at one of "the better schools" is actually doing these kinds of sophisticated rationalizations all day long for a living. 

That isn't a knock on them by the way--I'm surrounded by anything but and every time I find myself in their company I can actually talk to someone intelligent! 

But the reality is that intelligence has a natural propensity to drive someone to sniff the air and conform, and rationalize the cool-aid drinking.

That is how "normal intelligence" ACTUALLY "works"--it is what it is for: hierarchy-conforming, not for outsized performance and smashing through assumptions. 

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The result is things that are obvious to any OCD-enough autistic (or people who mimic them, like mis-wired ultra-high-IQ types) are gibberish to everyone else. 

e.g. what if someone says,

"fads like SSOT mean everything must be captured in a single global state, 
destroying in possibilty of efficiency (through parallelism), and driving
high cost throughout a system, with long linear wait times and high costs: 

this is what databases as the basis for operations has given us all, 
and why things like, though not necessarily what we call "NoSQL", 
have such potential and benefits found when deployed: 

state is pushed throughout the system again if you decentralize like that,
and design so you don't have to coralle and reconcile everything:
you get the speed of localism, and the capacity to sync and correlate and 
audit everything (centrally) later, 

so every part of a system is hyper-fast by comparison, unimpeded by waits,
and so enabled to rapidly move--ingest and transform and act upon data--
and if you need to iterate and innovate rapidly you can do so,
locally, without impacting operations or state for the rest of a system." 

If I say that, I'm (slightly) more akin to an "academical", trained, "the higher learning", "sophisticated" type--let's say an "analyst."

Or a "stakeholder consensus builder." Once, of course, it's broken-down into many bite sizes on power-point, explained in terms of "pain points." 

It's also overstated, vs say,

"let's ingest incoming records as text files, name them to keep them
distinct for purposes of signalling to rules about who can access
what for security purposes and privacy, 
and use standard average unix tools to enable rapid global search
across de-centralized information centers,
and local development of tools as-needed for hyper-efficiency and
advancement of the business units without poor impacts to any other
part via changes--i.e. changes without having them ripple effect 
through everything else and step on toes." 

But "the game" these days dictates overstatements like the above to sound more posh and polished. Though more dense and inaccessible.

Stating things in another way, however, gets you...noses turned-up offended about putting things in bare, raw terms.

Which is the issue: the bare, raw terms = effectiveness, = power. 

What I just described, for example, is how you enable "sophisticated high-frequence trading of cutting-edge Wall Street firms." 

Which can be summarized even more:

"dump data onto the Unix filesystem in raw text files
and pour over them in search for patterns via use of 
[GNU] grep." 

(Because GNU grep does the least, so works the fastest, and does the most, of any [not-]commercial off-the-shelf available tool.)

The obvious (massive) advantages (free money) of people who build systems this way probably need not be stated. 

But for some reason, few do it: probably because they just don't know...and they're incentivized (from within) NOT to know it...

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In large part, hyper-performance and advantage comes from the ruthless elimination of pretensions or capacity for it. 

And opening-up of command-and-control in every functional area to everyone who can contribute via building and iterating on things. 

But few firms--given their corporate structures, cultures, and expectations, have the cultural capacity to pull this off. 

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So one thing I've been pondering for some time is this,

FIRMS CAN GAIN AN IMMENSE MARKETING ADVANTAGE
        BY ADOPTING "DISRUPTIVE" SERVICES

OF MAKERS TO DO LITTLE MORE THAN DIG-IN
            AND EVISCERATE POOR TO UNDERPERFORMING

OPERATIONAL PROCESS AND TOOLS AND TECH,
        BECAUSE IT ALSO ELIMINATES THE CAPACITY
        FOR...LET'S SAY "SELF-DEALING" DECISION-MAKING
        TO OCCUR AND NOT BE FOUND OUT 

AND REMOVED (AND POTENTIALLY, PUNISHED)
        UNDER THE NORMAL DYNAMICS OF FIRMS: 

BECAUSE THE FIRMS BECOME SUBJECT
        TO REVIEW FROM OUTSIDE, THE NORMAL DYNAMICS OF 

POLITICKING AND FORMING ALLIANCES FROM WITHIN
        BECOME SUBJECTED TO INTENTIONAL

SCRUTINY THAT CAN OUST SUCH EFFORTS
        TO INVESTORS (LAW$SUIT$!!!) AND SO ENFORCE

GOOD BEHAVIOR--EVEN INTENTIONAL PRE-CHECKING,
        BEFORE SOME THING GETS DECIDED UPON, LIKE

        "HEY, WHAT WE'RE ABOUT TO DO, CAN YOU TELL US
        IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING BETTER?"

THAT MEANS THEY CAN MARKET THEMSELVES
        (UNDER THE RIGHT AGREEMENTS AS)

        e.g. "SUBJECT TO INTENSE SCRUTINY
        BY AUTISTICS TO INSURE BEST-DEPLOYMENT & LEVERAGE
        OF CAPITAL AND ACHIEVEMENT
        OF OPTIMAL OPERATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND EFFICIENCY
        FOR THE SAKE OF OUR INVESTORS. WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING,

OR WHEN WE MAY NOT BE AWARE THAT WE DON'T KNOW BEST,
        OTHERS FROM OUTSIDE ARE THERE TO RELY ON OR INTERVENE
        AND COMPENSATE, TO INSURE MAXIMUM LEVERAGE AND 
        DEPLOYMENT OF CAPITAL FOR OUR INVESTORS."

And just by outsourcing (let's face it:) power over decisions to outsiders, you avoid the crippling dysfunctions of normal corporate dynamics.

You put everyone on notice of "Normal as harmful" and "self-dealing will be found and punished." 

Which has the side-effect of...driving such people OUT sooner than later, especially given that criminal prosecution may be waiting.

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This gets us to another important point: 

it's not actually desirable to be in the lead or in-charge!
       

Everyone is constantly talking of the need for "representation" in positions of power...

Such as in management. Yet, you rarely see them talk of RESPONSIBILITY in those positions!

if you change the incentives so that they understand
people in power will be held to account, soon not later,
in this life and not deferred,
I will bet you'll get more talk about
                "insuring everyone fair-treatment environments,
                  with common standards (and interpretation thereof) for evaluation,
                based on performance, 
                under the leadership of the best-qualified, enlightened, and benevolent but firm,
                so 'fair'".

That is, just like you don't see talk of "representation in garbage collection",
"leadership" and "power" become truly about the good, and not Machiavellian targets.

I suppose that for that, we always will have Congress!

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Rather than people clamoring to get (or help their preferred bunch of people in whatever way bunched) get power: nobody will clamor if they all know that, by default, that position puts their head on a chopping-block... That it's RESPONSIBILITY and not AUTHORITY-only that they will get for it!

And that the standards to evaluate whether they get an axe or praise will be...ruthlessly consistent and unnuanced about any other criteria: 

As a mix (I myself am a mashup of many minorities, and then some) I know how this would get many people hollering--but I can also suggest more than a small handful of supposedly under-represented persons to fill such shoes (who would do amazingly well, I'll add). Ironically, who would never accept any such position in the name of representation--they're too dutiful to play such games with others' investments and lives (the workers).