Absolutely MBAification. But also complexity crisis.
My two most major issues with the world today.
Boeing got some but worse, and also made their products so complex that humans can’t understand it as a whole let alone communicate it to others.
It’s not just Boeing. It’s everyone, everywhere. All systems in every market require so much extra “stuff” that we’re on a spiral.
Compound that with MBAs that insist things “run lean” and “the core competency group you aren’t in found X, so meet your target of Y or find somewhere else to work” to “We need that BlackRock money, so do whatever the govs of NY, IL, and CA say to do because their trillion dollars speaks”.
Software is unfortunately a big part of the complexity crisis. What you are describing is an investible consequence of abstraction (not that abstraction cannot be handled sensibly at some level, but it at any point you reach a situation where nobody is capable of understanding the entire software stack, then we are in trouble. We are almost certainly at that point now in most industries).
There was an interesting lecture Jonathon Blow gave a while back that addressed this issue but it was predictably panned as the ramblings of an insane game developer, I think wrongly. A lot of the points made were true.
Most of the complexity in modern software is not inherent to the problem meant to be solved by that software, but instead emerges from both the organizational structures used to develop software, and from the modern engineering culture of software development.
For instance, Boeing famously bungled the 737 Max. But 737s were first created in the era of slide-rules, there is nothing about the plane which is too inherently complex to be done well. MCAS, the software portion of the debacle, was so simple in principle it could have been easily implemented by one competent engineer plus a few more to check his work. Complexity inherent to the problem space is NOT the problem here.
Go on then, explain why you believe something like MCAS is too complex to make properly. Mismanagement is the root of these problems, not the supposed complexity of the problems.
MCAS was one flight control law, a one that was poorly conceived in the first place and then botched in implemention, but still only a single flight control law. If you think that such a system is too complex to created properly, then please tell me how many thousands of engineers must have been on the team that created the first all-digital fly-by-wire system for an aircraft. That was a hell of a lot more complex than one flight control law on a 737, and they were actually doing something new back then. Thousands, why it must have taken tens of thousands of people amirite.
When did I talk about any specific system? You can’t make a toaster without at least five databases. You can’t change oil in a car without consulting the internet because there are 400 oils and special mfg requirements like a programmer to reset the counter or to run a replaced oil routine.
It’s not my fault you can’t think beyond Boeing.
It’s the whole world, and you are just one of the people that even if it is pointed out to them can not see it. Because like I said, you haven’t made anything to see the issue.
> Boeing got some but worse, and also made their products so complex that humans can’t understand it as a whole let alone communicate it to others.
> It’s not just Boeing. It’s everyone, everywhere. All systems in every market require so much extra “stuff” that we’re on a spiral.
Nah. That's just another facet of engineering incompetence.
Complexity doesn't just happen, it is allowed to happen.
We repeatedly went to the moon over 50 years ago, with complex systems that were well understood by the different teams that built them.
Now, 50 years later, if we are not capable of repeating the same feat, we are doing something wrong.
If we use software-controlled hardware and then throw are hands in the air screaming "it's too complex", we are doing something wrong. That stuff shouldn't have been used in the first place.
My two most major issues with the world today.
Boeing got some but worse, and also made their products so complex that humans can’t understand it as a whole let alone communicate it to others.
It’s not just Boeing. It’s everyone, everywhere. All systems in every market require so much extra “stuff” that we’re on a spiral.
Compound that with MBAs that insist things “run lean” and “the core competency group you aren’t in found X, so meet your target of Y or find somewhere else to work” to “We need that BlackRock money, so do whatever the govs of NY, IL, and CA say to do because their trillion dollars speaks”.
No one is ready to address either issue.