* management. My current manager refuses to understand actual technical challenges that we're dealing with. Instead he is just trying to figure out how the team can organize itself, and work with other teams, and scale itself, and collaborate, and track work, etc. I think we are making a lot of wrong decisions at the moment due to this stubbornness to understand the actual types of problems we're trying to solve, and from there understand how we can organize work to better serve us and allow us to make progress.
* research. There can be a lot of bike shedding, or drive-by feedback, on complicated projects. Rarely people want to actually dig into one part of the problem, and really understand it. Most engineers think that it any problem is easy to solve. Yet when they have to solve it, they get lost. Research is about taking it one step at a time, understanding everything that's in front of you before going to the next page. It's only when you accept that you are going to have to invest time into this, and take it slowly, that you start making real progress, and start getting a real understanding of the whole problem.
Managers are needed to communicate between these experts, and it should go without saying that it's impossible for them to have the same expertise as each of the 2-1000s of experts under them.
> I think we are making a lot of wrong decisions at the moment due to this stubbornness to understand the actual types of problems we're trying to solve
Almost certainly you don't understand the types of problems your manager needs to solve also.
A garden, being big or small, is still chaos: not that there's no order, but that there's different species (animal, vegetal, mineral) that coexist and upon which coexistence you can plan some sort of order.
But that plan and that order is purely the product of both what you, as a gardener/manager have in mind, and what the species can and let you do with them.
If you don't have a good understanding of what you can or cannot do with what you have (the framework), and what level of engagement is required from you (let it flow or actively intervene/change/break rules). And if you don't know people that are experts/practitioners as you are, that may help you - you may by chance have something nice/according to plan. Or not at all.
Well, music/craft/painting can also be (and is often) the result of a complex organization/network, when you take all the elements in place to obtain something: you, your skills, your desire, your tools (and those that build them and can help you), your fellow artists.
What Bill's talking about sound like a particular perspective on the Donning-Kruger effect, that applies to both small scale (managing single-person projects) and large scale (managing at large in an org).
Yours?
Also, for work inspired by Bill Evans, I would recommend Chucho Valdes' lovely solo tribute, "Bill (Evans)". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0efPOn5C4c
I’ve been listening to those four albums very regularly for 6-7 years now. For a while I listened to at least one of the four each night.
Nice to see some jazz fans on HN.
I can listen to that album without ever getting tired.
I recommend trying out Ahmad Jamal maybe you like him too
It's recorded weeks before his death. There's something special in his later performances.
“If I spread myself all over the place I would have lost sight of everything.”
“Gosh if you try to accept every problem you’re just going to go insane. So you have to choose some field in which you operate at your best capacity which will then serve as an influence towards all the other problems that you may worry about. So if I take care of the music the best I can with my truest beliefs, then all these other things will be affected as I desire them to be affected, as much as I can affect them.”
I am immediately a fan of him.
It also reminds me of the spontaneity Bob Dylan consciously strives to bring to his songwriting. He tries to avoid writing out of his conscious knowledge of how to write a song, and let his unconscious do it instead: "It’s nice to be able to put yourself in an environment where you can completely accept all the unconscious stuff that comes to you from your inner workings of your mind. And block yourself off to where you can control it all, take it down" https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/05/21/bob-dylan-songwrite...
The Universal Mind of Bill Evans (1966) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXAqIaUahI
Are there modern equivalents of this type of content? Longform discussions with a genius about their field, it is so good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFt0cP-klQI
If you consider comedy a refined art as I do, Marc Maron gets into the pith with musicians, actors , writers and comedians as a rule. Another reply here makes the same point - podcasts seem to be the venue for this these days. I’d say creating space for the longer discussion is key.
Docs like this are diamonds in the rough though. Great post.
As Miles Davis said of Bill Evans: "he played the piano the way it should be played, like sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall" ;)
Broken Time: Nardis and the Curious History of a Jazz Obsession
https://ethaniverson.com/2020/04/08/riffs-second-set/ https://ethaniverson.com/reds-bells/
Also really like the Milestones of a Jazz Legend - Jim Hall on Guitar Vol. 2 on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/5bwrg1BJvmtGEVxXmBvM2r?si=szA...
That how 2007 looked like?
At about 35 seconds into this[1] filmed version of So What, recorded between the 2 sessions for Kind of Blue, you can hear Gil conducting his intro, arranged for his orchestra. It sounds like pretty much exactly what Bill and PC play on the record.
I'll give him credit for the sound of Flamenco Sketches[2] though, maybe my favourite Miles track, adapted from his Peace Piece. And I love the 1958 Stella he was on[3], although for me Coltrane is the star of that.
Also I love his duo records with Tony Bennett.
I really, really dislike his trio stuff though, gee. (Jazz pianist here.) Unswinging, and argghh that clunky locked-hands style is the worst. It puzzles me when people talk as if everything he ever did was uniquely great, and rave about his genius. </rant>
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_What_(Miles_Davis_compositi...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diHFEapOr_E
