I think the conclusion is not Epoch shouldn’t have hired Matthew, Tamay, and Ege but rather [Epoch / its director] should have better avoided negative-EV projects (e.g. computer use evals) (and shouldn’t have given Tamay leadership-y power such that he could cause Epoch to do negative-EV projects — idk if that’s what happened but seems likely).
This seems like a better solution on the surface, but once you dig in, I’m not so sure.
Once you hire someone, assuming they’re competent, it’s very hard for you to decide to permanently bar them from gaining a leadership role. How are you going to explain promoting someone who seems less competent than them to a leadership role ahead of them? Or is the plan to never promote them and refuse to ever discuss it, which would create weird dynamics within an organisation.
I would love to hear if you think otherwise, but it seems unworkable to me.
I think its not all that uncommon for people who are highly competent in their current role to be passed over for promotion to leadership. LeBron James isn’t guaranteed to job as the MBA commissioner just because he balls hard. Things like “avoid[ing] negative-EV projects” would be prime candidates for something like this. If you’re amazing at executing technical work on your assigned projects but aren’t as good at prioritizing projects or coming up with good ideas for projects, then I could definitely see that blocking a move to leadership even if you’re considered insanely competent technically.
I think the conclusion is not Epoch shouldn’t have hired Matthew, Tamay, and Ege but rather [Epoch / its director] should have better avoided negative-EV projects (e.g. computer use evals) (and shouldn’t have given Tamay leadership-y power such that he could cause Epoch to do negative-EV projects — idk if that’s what happened but seems likely).
Seems relevant to note here that Tamay had a leadership role from the very beginning: he was the associate director already when Epoch was first announced as an org.
This seems like a better solution on the surface, but once you dig in, I’m not so sure.
Once you hire someone, assuming they’re competent, it’s very hard for you to decide to permanently bar them from gaining a leadership role. How are you going to explain promoting someone who seems less competent than them to a leadership role ahead of them? Or is the plan to never promote them and refuse to ever discuss it, which would create weird dynamics within an organisation.
I would love to hear if you think otherwise, but it seems unworkable to me.
I think its not all that uncommon for people who are highly competent in their current role to be passed over for promotion to leadership. LeBron James isn’t guaranteed to job as the MBA commissioner just because he balls hard. Things like “avoid[ing] negative-EV projects” would be prime candidates for something like this. If you’re amazing at executing technical work on your assigned projects but aren’t as good at prioritizing projects or coming up with good ideas for projects, then I could definitely see that blocking a move to leadership even if you’re considered insanely competent technically.