>I see it all the time in large organizations, where different teams forget what the goal of the company is and instead get hyperfocused on their teams KPI's to the detriment of the company as a whole.
I thought it was well understood that this kind of misalignment is the cost of someone afraid to admit outloud what the goal is.
Mr. Beast, like Hollywood production companies before him, can say "don't forget, your job is lowest common denominator slop."
This is hacker news, so take a tech giant (doesn't matter which) and imagine what it would mean for leadership to tell the rank and file what their actual goals were. For starters it would be internally demoralizing, externally scandalous, and include mens rea for many of their legal "whoopsie daisies" over the years.
> Mr. Beast, like Hollywood production companies before him, can say "don't forget, your job is lowest common denominator slop."
This feels to me like an intentionally hostile reading of the content. I think all of us have had the experience of working with a co-worker who is either brilliant but extremely prone to going down rabbit holes, or a co-worker who seems to have a completely different idea of what we’re doing than everyone else. “Make the best YouTube videos possible, not the highest quality” is the same sentiment behind “eventually you have to actually ship your software”. It’s the same sentiment behind the derision in the term “architecture astronaut”. It’s the same sentiment behind the “worse is better” axiom. It’s the same sentiment behind “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. In other words you need to know what it is that pays your bills and be laser focused on delivering that. A YouTube channel isn’t the place to make art house silent films. A community theater production isn’t the place to practice your improv comedy skills. If your company sells a database, it’s not the place to be writing memory safe shells in rust to replace bash, no matter how annoying maintaining your startup bash scripts are.
Why? I specifically mentioned Hollywood to try avoid the rose colored glasses and just skip to the matter of fact stage. If it's just churning out content then it's just churning out content.
> Liz Lemon (friendly, trying to gain favor): Whatcha guys working on?
> Ritchie (Deadpan): Piece for the Today Show about how next month is October.
Because "lowest common denominator slop" is a culturally contextual judgement of media, and varies from place to place, time to time and culture to culture. Fine French Dining fans would call a pizza parlor "lowest common denominator slop", but no one would be offended if the employee handbook for a pizza place said "You're here to make the BEST TASTING PIZZA. Not the best looking pizza. Not a pizza made from the most expensive artesian ingredients. Not the fanciest pizza. Not a pizza lovingly hand crafted with dough that was hand massaged by virgins under the light of a full moon. If it's not making the BEST TASTING PIZZA, it's not your job."
I thought it was well understood that this kind of misalignment is the cost of someone afraid to admit outloud what the goal is.
Mr. Beast, like Hollywood production companies before him, can say "don't forget, your job is lowest common denominator slop."
This is hacker news, so take a tech giant (doesn't matter which) and imagine what it would mean for leadership to tell the rank and file what their actual goals were. For starters it would be internally demoralizing, externally scandalous, and include mens rea for many of their legal "whoopsie daisies" over the years.