Reno - 5:58 pm on Apr 5, 2007 (gmt 0)

I have posted this observation once before and I'm sure many of you disagree with its premise, but again I'll say that I believe that -- in part at least -- what we have going on here is the "curse of bureaucracy". And let's face it, any multi-billion $$ multinational company is most definitely a bureaucracy.

I don't care if it's corporate bureaucracy, or governmental, or non-profit, the same pattern can apply -- here is how I see it at Google:

[1] Highly trained very bright software engineers are being paid big money;

[2] They aren't being paid to sit on their hands and leave well enough alone, so they tinker with things that in many cases are not broke;

[3] Sometimes they make things better for the organization and for its constituency, so we sing their praises;

[4] But other times, while they have no malevolent intentions, the fact is that sometimes they unexpectedly make things worse;

[5] But even when things get worse for the organization as a result of their tinkering, it is not bad for them, because then they have to try to FIX what was not broken to begin with!

So, they manage to justify their high salaries by staying busy all day long, and in their little world, everything is beautiful.

Eventually, they'll tinker some more and it will all seem OK again.

Until the next time after that......

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