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Posted by rzk 13 hours ago

Coordination Headwind: How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds(komoroske.com)
139 points | 45 commentspage 2
randomImmigrant 11 hours ago|
There’s a lot that’s good here, but you just can’t be slime molds in a modern capitalist corporation.

A substantial portion of company goals is set by a very small group that is far removed from the day to day work, and the goals are often connected to timelines and financial expectations well before any team member gets into the project.

To have slime mold like behavior, a corporation would have to hire employees, give them time and resources, and general guidelines and goals, but let specific targets and projects bubble up.

This is fundamentally incompatible with a next-quarter profit driven corporate financial structure.

hackeryogi 10 hours ago|
True. This was written with the context of Google which was, to a large extent and up until very recently, a good example of the resilience and magic a slime mold can be.

It is not true today, and as you mentioned "fundamentally incompatible with a next-quarter profit driven.."

copperwire 5 hours ago||
Ah, the distributed amoeba problem. Explains so much about why top-down mandates often just get absorbed into the existing blob.
kwhitlock 5 hours ago||
Totally get this. Been on projects where the 'leader' was just the nutrient source everyone was blindly flowing towards.
jubilanti 9 hours ago||
sounds like a lot of words and strained metaphors for https://enwp.org/Brooks's_law
ironqcold 4 hours ago||
[flagged]
DonHopkins 12 hours ago|
Harvesting, cooking, and eating Dog Vomit Slime Mold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfbLSl_4o78