This excerpt from Science of Discworld 3, from a chapter titled “A lack of sergeants” somehow resonates in light of @pmarca builder essay. Loss of capacity for building is the loss-of-sergeants problem.pic.twitter.com/89gJcL8Lco
Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.
You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more
Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more
Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more
By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.
| Country | Code | For customers of |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 40404 | (any) |
| Canada | 21212 | (any) |
| United Kingdom | 86444 | Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2 |
| Brazil | 40404 | Nextel, TIM |
| Haiti | 40404 | Digicel, Voila |
| Ireland | 51210 | Vodafone, O2 |
| India | 53000 | Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance |
| Indonesia | 89887 | AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata |
| Italy | 4880804 | Wind |
| 3424486444 | Vodafone | |
| » See SMS short codes for other countries | ||
This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.
Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.
When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.
The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.
Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.
Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.
Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.
See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.
Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.
This excerpt from Science of Discworld 3, from a chapter titled “A lack of sergeants” somehow resonates in light of @pmarca builder essay. Loss of capacity for building is the loss-of-sergeants problem.pic.twitter.com/89gJcL8Lco
Thing is, this is not a world that does its building in sergeant-mode anymore. Either you have the “full-stack” doer who can do everything from ideate to execute (which doesn’t scale well) or you have an algorithmic “sergeant” layer that can scale but only coordinate simple work.
The Industrial Age formula the sergeant fits into is this: Precondition: army trained to follow orders with steady pay Officer: assessed risks and goals and decides a trench must be dug Sergeant: assigns sections of trench, hands out shovels Infantry grunt: digs, no thinking
This is WW1 coordination formula. WW2 blitzkrieg coordination formula still needs sergeants, but initiative/creativity devolve down the stack. Sergeants have to act more like resourceful CEOs rather than bark orders. Infantry is not grunts anymore but have to maneuver skillfully.
Now we’re in late-stage OODA/2-pizza team world. The sergeant is the scrum master running sprints in small teams, not a tactical field commander running dozens of men or a WW1 sergeant lining up lots of cannon fodder.
I’m in a later stage still... free agents/indie consultants where there are effectively no sergeants. Effective coordination has to emerge, and it rarely dies. Thing about sergeant-based coordination is it is a paycheck-economy paradigm.
I’m actually decent at sergeant-mode operations. I just don’t *like* doing sergeant-mode work. It is a stressful, thankless role, and has neither the satisfaction of doing something with your hands and saying “I dug that trench” nor claim the idea as “I thought of the trench”
In civilian world, sergeants morphed first into managers/shift supervisors, and then into clueless middle management layer of taller orgs, getting slowly depressed working coordination problem far removed from either end of the satisfying action — leadership and doing.
I wrote about this in Unbundling the Manager a few years back. I have no bright ideas on how to fix this.https://breakingsmart.substack.com/p/unbundling-the-manager …
Science of Discworld 3 is from 2005, so not ancient despite the WW1 mental model (the book is not really about this... it’s a digression) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Discworld_III:_Darwin%27s_Watch …
There may be a hard constraint here: complex coordination requires a closed-world condition. It can only happen in layers relatively shielded from risk to the point they can act like algorithms. That’s why so much sergeant work is being reduced to algorithms.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.