EP47 - The Complexity Strategy
"German engineering is the number one in the world!"
An engineer slams the door and came to me, furious he was passed over for promotion.
He said his solutions were the most elegant. The most efficient.
He solved our biggest scaling problem with 100 lines of code.
I dont think he understands.
That's precisely why he'll never be a director.
He thinks corporate rewards people for solving problems. Corporate reward people for creating dependencies.
His 100-line solution is brilliant, simple, and easily maintained.
It also makes him completely and utterly redundant.
I took the same problem. Proposed a "multi-platform, enterprise-level, synergistic framework."
I required a new department of 12 people. A seven-figure budget.
Demanded a 2-week paid retreat for the engineers to learn about the best practice of 6-sigma Jujutsu kaizen kanban strategy.
My solution is a tangled, bureaucratic nightmare.
A fortress of complexity that only I have the blueprints to.
The corporate can't fire me. I'm a strategic liability.
Efficiency makes you replaceable. Complexity makes you indispensable.
This isn't a promotion. It's a hostage negotiation where I hold a critical system captive, and getting paid a ransom in the form of stock options.
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Context
Why is bureaucracy everywhere?
When people are paid to add complexity, that is exactly what you will get.
To be a successful at getting promoted in your career, it is essential that you must understand this law.