Glen -
I hope I'm not just being argumentative, but I'm not sure of the value
to of an organization of most polymaths? I think my (much) earlier
point about *some of us* on this list being "unemployable" has a
positive correlation with being (one type of?) polymath. Many of us are
self-taught (at least in most of our areas of significant ability, if
not actual expertise) because we are painfully curious and possibly
unable to remain focused on a singular task (completing a full course of
education, especially through an advanced degree (6-12 years of
schooling beyond high school?).
Following your own principle (if I understand you correctly) of
diversity, every organization needs a few polymaths, but too many and it
is likely to lose coherence?
Since many here *identify* as polymaths I suspect, yet most seem to want
a "conventional" (e.g. regular work for regular but significant pay with
benefits, sick leave, vacation) job, there seems to be some tension. We
assert that we are adaptable and clever enough to solve lots of obscure,
abstract and complex problems but can't solve the problems of keeping
steady work coming in (and billing up to date) and keeping healthy (or
arranging for someone else to pay our bills or down time if we fail at
that)?
I think I *was* an asset to LANL for some part of my career, or at least
my next couple of levels of management or my co-workers, or the teams I
lead, but I suspect that as I developed a larger and larger view of the
organization (group, division, laboratory, NNSA, DOE, Big Science, USA,
First World) I became more of a liability. I probably could/should
have left even earlier... but I can be hard-headed and stubborn (or
stupid) sometimes.
I guess my bottom line is that for the first half of my career at LANL
it would have been like *pulling teeth* to hire someone with my
credentials and toward the second half, I *shouldn't* have hired someone
like me!
Just sayin'
- Steve
On 3/15/17 6:38 PM, glen ☣ wrote:
I don't think the indirectness causes the debilitation of polymaths, in these organizations. I
think it's the opposite, indirection facilitates polymaths. But I do agree with the idea that it's
a balance (sweet spot) in a reduced space (direct vs indirect). What the buzzwords do (like
mathematics) is allow a purely syntactical rigor, absent the meaning of the symbols. So, while the
polymath might deeply grok the meaning of, say, "Neo4j" as one example in a large space.
The person who cites exactly the symbol "Neo4j" as a thing they know shows a better
syntactic match, regardless of whether they know what it means. It's the ability to _directly_
misappropriate the overly rigorous syntax that causes the problem. If we disallowed the buzzwords
and relied on standard English, the meanings would have to be maintained, be transitive across
layers.
Indirectness (many layers between the hiring manager and the candidate) in both
syntax and semantics would (I think) heavily favor the polymath.
On 03/15/2017 05:14 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
I'm sure I'm dragging the topic (yet) further astray here...
It seems like the underlying pattern is sort of a dynamic balance in an
abstract system space.
Firstly, I appreciate Glen's acute description of corporations... it IS worth noting that
they always exist within the charter of a government, though it is curious what it means
to be an "international" corporation. It seems that many take advantage of
the seams between different governments, and as we know anecdotally, there are entire
nations which exist somewhat significantly for the purpose of providing a base for these
type of wily? corporations?
I'm curious if there is a "taxonomy of organizations" out there somewhere... and by
"organization" I limit that to organizations of human beings and their artifacts, not
herds of animals, groves of trees, colonies of symbiotic creatures, or ice floes, etc. Where does a
church fit in? Seems like the Holy Roman Catholic church, while located within the boundaries of
Italy and supported (how?) by the Swiss guard, represents a fully extra-governmental organization.
Multinational corporations may also fit that model in some sense? Multinational NGOs? Red
Cross, Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders? What about street gangs or motorcycle
gangs (are they that different?). Drug Cartels? Large cooperatives?
In the case of he workplace and the concept of an HR department. The general
principle of adding an extra degree of freedom in a system to make problems
more tractable would seem to show one of it's downsides here. That extra level
of indirection can yield the kinds of problems we have been citing here...
mostly of disconnection between the goals of the sub-organization (individual,
team, project, division, etc.) and the policies and practices in head hunting,
interviewing, hiring.
I do believe that complex human organizations do take on a bit of a
proto-organism status and do begin to do things like grow and organize
themselves entirely around the principle of self-coherence, perpetuation,
growth, even sometimes propagation.
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