Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: a rant on politician-engineer coalitional conflict, published by bhauth on September 4, 2023 on LessWrong.

Sometimes, a group in some organization has a highly technical and highly effective leader. Kelly Johnson (Skunk Works) and Hyman Rickover (US Navy nuclear propulsion) are famous examples. A naive economist might expect such people to be well-liked by management above them, because their skills are good for the organization and complementary to those of non-technical managers. That's not what we generally see in reality.

In my experience, and in the stories I've heard, such technical leaders are especially disliked by upper management, far more than a highly effective non-technical MBA would be. I've even been told that unique competence being noticed by upper managment is a negative for career prospects in that situation.

Why would that be the case? The only explanation that makes sense to me is that effective technical managers are considered a threat by management above them - but why would they be more of a threat than a MBA who talks the business talk?

There are some cultural differences between engineers and non-technical managers, but I don't think that's an explanation. One reason is, technical leaders can find allies even higher up that support them. For example, Rickover had allies in Congress, and that's the only reason he wasn't pushed out...until he got pushed out by John Lehman, a Ph.D. in American foreign policy who's worked as an investment banker. Leslie Groves was almost pushed out in 1927, but Major General Edgar Jadwin interceded and noted that Groves's superiors were at fault for the problems blamed on him - that was a guy 5 ranks above Groves in the Army.

My current view is that politician-type managers and engineer-type managers naturally form opposing coalitions. They each favor people of the same type, and try to push local organization norms in different directions.

In America, today, politican-type managers have won conclusively almost everywhere. I've actually seen some of a conflict between such coalitions play out once, and I'd say it's an even match when the groups are equal in size and nobody else is involved. One group backstabs and fights over social dominance like high school girls, but that's balanced out by the other group spending half their time arguing about who's smarter and the other half arguing about emacs vs vim; the underlying dynamic is the same, but one group has the pretense of authority being tied to intelligence, and has a greater tendency to argue about actions instead of personnel selection.

Normies prefer business speak to technobabble, while nature has the opposite preference, and so the balance is tipped depending on which is more relevant.

I am, of course, exaggerating somewhat, and all groups have some overlap in their tendencies. There are also other ways to organize hierarchy, such as:

pure seniority, like Senate committee positions

pure credentialism, like companies that use exclusively PhDs for upper positions

effort-worship, like how Elon Musk deserves to be in charge because he works 100 hours a week

That last one is perhaps my least-favorite. Anyway, we see a similar effect, where organizations based around seniority are all-in on seniority, because the people who want that to be the principle are in charge. There's always a social hierarchy, so in a sense the only choice society and leaders get to make is what's used as its basis.

Companies often have distinctive corporate culture, but companies have to interact with each other, and people move between them, so there's some pressure towards homogenization. In America, ongoing consolidation has been towards what's described in Moral Mazes. From inside the system, it might seem like the only possible system, but take heart, for alternatives are poss...