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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

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1. \n

   Hi :-)

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   I work as a Senior Data Scientist, and about half a year ago I joined a start up that was founded by a large corporation. And while this job comes with the perks of a bigger company - like good salary, paid overtime, \u2026 , - it also comes with its organizational overhead and politics:

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   We are only about 30 people but already a quarter of us acts as managers. I write \u201cact\u201d because the official org chart is flat (with the CEO at the top and the rest of us directly underneath). The unofficial org chart is hidden and depending on who you speak with, you get their view point on how roles and responsibilities should look like.\nAs a result, I\u2019m left with putting together the pieces to build a picture that somewhat resembles the truth. So far, I\u2019ve concluded that we have multiple (!) management layers, that there\u2019s a power war taking place in the middle management layer, and that you can make up your own titles that mean NOTHING, because no one has any official, disciplinary authority over any one, but that are still to be respected! What a great opportunity for job crafting :-D

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   To make things worse, I prefer and come from organizations that have a truly flat hierarchy. For example, I\u2019m used to step outside of my role should the situation require it (like doing some managerial tasks, supporting sales, \u2026) and that I can speak my mind, irrespective of what the title of the person is who I\u2019m talking to. While this was beneficial in my previous positions, this does not work well here! And while I understand that adapting my behavior would be more in line with the company culture, I find this extremely difficult. On the one hand, because of the hidden org chart, on the other because we are all fully remote and I rarely see people from other teams.

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   To avoid accidentally stepping on anyone\u2019s toes, my current solution is to stick my head in the sand and focus on my coding. However, this leaves me disgruntled because I feel like I\u2019m not being myself, and that I\u2019m withholding a viable part of my skill set: to see the bigger picture and serve the company as a whole instead of just implementing tickets.

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   Please help, I do not understand how this company works :\u2019-D How would you navigate the situation? I don\u2019t want to quit because, individually, my coworkers are super nice, and the work is really interesting.

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   All the best <3

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2. \n

   Hi,

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   I\u2019ve been working at a well-known multinational company for a few years now. The entire time I\u2019ve been here, the company has been well behind what I believe to be industry standards, but they have some great perks, which means it\u2019s been really easy for me to create \u201cwow\u201d ideas (just do the same thing that everybody else has been doing for a few years).

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   At the risk of sounding full of myself, I\u2019ve noticed that I\u2019ve created a critical person risk. There\u2019s not only no push for me to train others in my work; things I thought were standard knowledge is entirely new to this team! I don\u2019t want to become the trainer for a team that has no desire to learn new skills, and I don\u2019t want to dumb down my work either. Is there a happy medium where I can build exciting new things and not create an absolute craphow when I leave? Should I even care about it since no one else does?

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• The Tyranny Of Structurelessness - https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
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