[HN Gopher] Rickover's Lessons
___________________________________________________________________
Rickover's Lessons
Author : pepys
Score : 82 points
Date : 2025-03-23 04:18 UTC (1 days ago)
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| ggm wrote:
| We don't have time machines and so can't re-run the experiment.
| I've read biographies of Rickover and not all people who lived
| through this time are complementary.
|
| It's certainly true the strategic arms processes and nuclear
| submarine engineering benefited in a long term view.
|
| I just find myself asking if the US army recruiting tag line _Be
| The Best You Can Be_ was really met, or if Rickover achieved what
| might be more akin to crystallography "local optimum" where
| there are better peaks out there, but this one is mine. (To
| borrow another army concept)
|
| Viewed from Australia the current state of US submarine
| construction is woeful. We're on the brink of being ripped off
| having prepaid for access to Virginia class subs soon, and AUKUS
| subs in future. We expect to be told we cannot have Virginia
| class subs ever, we cannot have longterm crewing or command ever,
| but we can host them retained in US HANDS and we can continue to
| pay for them.
|
| Not that Rickover made that happen, but whatever his lessons are,
| the US submarine building industry doesn't seem to have learned
| then, or be able to apply them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > I just find myself asking if the US army recruiting tag line
| Be The Best You Can Be was really met
|
| Why would an army saying be relevant to an Admiral in the Navy?
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Rickover famously asked Jimmy carter in an interview: "Did
| You Do Your Best?"
|
| Carter replied: "No, sir, I didn't always do my best."
|
| And Rickover asked "why not?"
|
| This significantly impacted Jimmy Carter and eventually
| became the title of a book:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/645520.Why_Not_the_Best_
|
| I think GP is probably pattern matching a bit too much. It's
| plausibly connected, but I doubt it.
| hitekker wrote:
| Yeah, feels like lazy pattern-matching. The top-level reply
| mixes context across decades and doesn't bring concrete
| evidence to the table to support its criticism.
|
| IMHO, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover
| article is a much more balanced take.
| nostrademons wrote:
| He died in 1986, so everything in the Virginia program happened
| well after his death. His forced retirement in 1982 was largely
| because he made a lot of political enemies by making a stink
| about General Dynamic's flaws in workmanship on the Los Angeles
| class. His whole management style was to push for
| accountability and sweat the details.
|
| I think what you're country is seeing is general flaws in
| quality for basically everything American-made these days.
| Which, if I'm being totally blunt, are because Americans are
| lazy and don't care about quality and basically do the minimum
| that won't get them fired. Hell, I started my career caring
| about quality and craftmanship and now I do the minimum that
| won't get me fired too, because there's no point busting your
| ass for some lazy manager up the chain to take credit for it.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Rickover's final testimony to congress _in 1982_ speaks about
| this:
|
| _Corporate Power A preoccupation with the so-called bottom
| line of profit and loss statements, coupled with a lust for
| expansion, is creating an environment in which fewer
| businessmen honor traditional values; where responsibility is
| increasingly disassociated from the the exercise of power;
| where skill in financial manipulation is valued more than
| actual knowledge and experience in the business; where
| attention and effort is directed mostly to short-term
| considerations, regardless of longer-range consequences.
|
| Political and economic power is increasingly being
| concentrated among a few large corporations and their
| officers - power they can apply against society, government
| and individuals. Through their control of vast resources,
| these large corporations have become, in effect, another
| branch of government. They often exercise the power of
| government, but without the checks and balances inherent in
| our democratic system.
|
| With their ability to dispense money, officials of large
| corporations may often exercise greater power to influence
| society than elected or appointed government officials - but
| without assuming any of the responsibilities and without
| being subject to public scrutiny. Woodrow Wilson warned that
| economic concentration could ''give to a few men a control
| over the economic life of the country which they might abuse
| to the undoing of millions of men.'' His stated purposes was:
| ''to square every process of our national life again with the
| standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have
| always carried in our hearts.'' His comments are apropos
| today._
|
| Summary:
| https://www.worldfuturefund.org/Articles/rickover.html Full
| testimony: https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress
| /Economics...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| There's a quip about organizing sales orgs that resonates
| with me:
|
| _Expect every salesperson in your company to optimize
| their own compensation. If you want to change their
| behavior, then change your sales compensation plan to drive
| the behavior you want._
|
| I don't think this is appreciated enough at the management
| and CEO level of engineering-based companies.
|
| How many engineering-tied metrics were explicitly part of
| Boeing's CEO's comp plan? If "Boeing makes less money, but
| produces safer planes" = more money to the CEO, then that
| happens.
|
| And yet we're suprised when, absent that, individuals act
| in their own self interest and optimize for bad engineering
| outcomes.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| This expands to any department, or really any human
| activity.
|
| I had an econ teacher who loved the phrase Rules,
| Incentives, Action, Outcome. She even had pens with RIAO
| printed out for students. The meaning is that each step
| led inevitably to the other, but also that you could
| start at the outcome end, and work your way backwards to
| what rules created that outcome.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Sales organizations are often the most game-theoretic
| rational folks in an organization: a large fraction of
| their compensation is directly attributable to recent
| efforts.
|
| That doesn't make them honest or efficient or
| trustworthy, just canny and responsive.
|
| By way of contrast, operations can only be seen
| negatively (if things are working, that's normal, and if
| things are not, that's bad) and development usually has
| conflicting incentives (stability! and features! and
| responsiveness! and bugfixes!) with cycle times and group
| responsibilites obscuring attribution.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| This is why founder mode "works".. it is a way to
| overcome game theory* .
|
| (I hope that does not mean that resurrecting George
| Washington is necessary)
|
| *At least in the von Neumann-Morgenstern style
| marbro wrote:
| Most of the powerful corporations in 1982 no longer exist
| or are much smaller because there is great turnover in
| corporate power. Governments don't lose power unless they
| lose a war, a rare event today that was common 100 years
| ago.
| mmooss wrote:
| Especially look at military contractors, which
| consolidated significantly since the early 1990s, an
| intentional change desired by the Department of Defense.
|
| > Governments don't lose power unless they lose a war, a
| rare event today that was common 100 years ago.
|
| A good point, but of course they do lose power with every
| election - that's the point, a peaceful transition of
| power.
| jandrese wrote:
| "Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome." --
| Charlie Munger
|
| In other words, if you want to solve a problem you need to
| align the incentives. If you don't your solution is likely
| to fail, especially on larger scales.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Which, if I'm being totally blunt, are because *American
| managers* are lazy and don't care about quality and basically
| do the minimum that won't get them fired.
|
| FTFY.
|
| I care but I am not allowed to. VC only cares about numbers
| that are larger then previous numbers. They hire management
| who tells us to make the numbers go up. those numbers go up
| with production so production is king. Production can be
| increased with a decrease in quality if we degrade the
| process or improving the process preserving quality.
| Improvement takes time and money - two hard things. So
| degrade it is. It's cheap, fast, and makes management look
| like a super star. If management doesn't give a shit, why
| should you?
| cjs_ac wrote:
| The AUKUS deal is just Australia shovelling money at the US and
| getting four fifths of fuck all in return, but that's purely
| for political reasons.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah it's basically paying the US for protection.
|
| I don't blame them though because they do have a whole
| country full of about 15 times as many space-constrained
| citizens next door (Indonesia)
| willvarfar wrote:
| That calculus must change with the new administration
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes, just like it does with the EU.
|
| And yes we didn't spend so much on defense as Trump says,
| but(!) America never really wanted us to be too powerful.
| They were really happy to play top dog, obviously the
| more powerful we are as EU, the more viable a
| geopolitical opponent we are. The US have never really
| been too happy with nuclear capabilities in Europe and
| this is the main thing that deters agressors like Russia.
| Even the UK's is largely built by the US like the Polaris
| missiles.
| piokoch wrote:
| Yup, this is how collective security system works. It is far
| from perfect, but it managed to keep the World in more or
| less peace for pretty long time. We had wars, sometimes
| bloody, but still local once.
|
| The corner stone of this system is nuclear weapons
| nonproliferation. This is, on one hand, unjust - why
| Australia cannot have its own nuclear arsenal and not be
| dependent on USA to give them protection? But on the other
| hand, though, think what would happen if we didn't have
| proliferation and every second African country had nukes
| (e.g. Yemen Houthis, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Algeria, etc.).
|
| How Algeria would resolve, say, Algerian-Spanish their
| territorial dispute if Algeria had nukes and Spain did not?
|
| This system is certainly not perfect, but it worked, we'll
| see if it will work in future.
| loudmax wrote:
| The way things are going, we're likely to see how things
| turn out _without_ the global nonproliferation system. I 'm
| not looking forward to it.
| mmooss wrote:
| It binds the two countries together, over the long term, in
| countering China. There's also a 'track 2' program that
| brings in other countries in the region.
|
| Countering the Soviet Union in Europe had the advantage that
| the countries were accustomed to an existing alliance and
| working together. In the western Pacific, South Korea, Japan,
| the Philipines, Australia, etc. are not at all used to
| working together. Many are traditional enemies with long-
| termm animus. And the distances are enormous.
|
| The top US foreign policy goal since 2020, arguably, has been
| to bind them together with each other and with the US to
| counter China. The US has been amazingly successful for such
| a short time, but it's still far from NATO levels of
| integration.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| > I've read biographies of Rickover and not all people who
| lived through this time are complementary.
|
| History is written by those who remain in power and Rickover
| was a man who embodied speaking truth to power. His career was
| largely ended when some corporate powers he spoke truth to
| finally punished him for his opposition.
|
| > but whatever his lessons are
|
| Rickover was _very_ forward about his lessons:
| https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm
|
| Near the end of his career he mainly wanted to spend time
| promoting his own philosophies, however his anti "power"
| message was obscured via political spectacle and threatening
| corporate power ensured that those that wrote the history books
| made sure his accomplishments and philosophy faded into
| obscurity.
| yodon wrote:
| Fantastic article on leadership - thanks for linking to it
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I would just make sure that you read this article to
| complement it: https://quietwarriors.wordpress.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2014/...
| mmooss wrote:
| > Viewed from Australia the current state of US submarine
| construction is woeful.
|
| It was great for the War on Terror era, when submarines were
| only useful against the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS aircraft
| carriers. :) Spending money on subs, which includes staffing,
| operating, and maintaining them, was a waste.
|
| Now the US needs to build capacity, which takes time. It turns
| out that getting the next AI startup moving is faster than
| building new nuclear submarine manufacturing facilities,
| training workers, creating supply lines, and building subs.
| MVPs generally are not good for submarine warfare.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| missing from the account is just how much rickover was hated
| internally by the navy, until he wasn't. IIRC his office was in
| converted women's room in the pentagon.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| " _People will forget what you said, people will forget what
| you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,_
| " as Maya Angelou has it.
|
| Rickover, for all his delivery talents, apparently made a good
| proportion of people feel like shit.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| i don't think that's really it. he was hated because of his
| interactions with his superiors, not generally because of how
| he treated people below him.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| The quote applies to everyone!
| pizlonator wrote:
| His best lesson, in my opinion:
| https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html
|
| His writing style is very good, and he succinctly summarizes the
| phenomenon where a technology that is substantially complete to
| the point that it has known issues is looked down upon while a
| technology that is purely "on paper" (the "paper reactor" as he
| calls it) is treated as a good alternative, since the paper
| technology isn't far enough along for the problems to even be
| known. That's not even a good TL;DR, so you should just read
| Rickover's essay.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| It's like the current situation with "vibe coding". An LLM can
| build you something which demonstrates a principle in some kind
| of hand-wavy fashion, but the gap between the thing produced by
| the LLM and a sustainable product is just huge. And, as with
| the gap between Rickover's paper reactor and his practical
| reactor, it's often extraordinary difficult to explain to a
| non-specialist _why_ that is so -- because the difference is
| all in the detail.
| pizlonator wrote:
| That's a good analogy!
|
| A lot of the bubbles in our field have been like that.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Um.
|
| I don't know how many people on HN have served and heard of
| Rickover? But I'm pretty sure most people on HN could not
| function in a Rickover style management context. It gets things
| done, but it's not terribly polite about going about getting them
| done.
|
| To the article's credit, it does touch on this aspect of his
| management style. But engineers today are from the Millennial or
| GenZ generations. A lot of that just would not fly. I chuckle
| thinking about the shock and surprise on the average HN'ers face
| when one morning they come in and find out they're fired because
| a hypothetical "Rickover" did a code review last night and found
| a long existing bug they didn't fix yet.
|
| And keep in mind, this hypothetical "Rickover" would review your
| code, and that of all your reports, _every night_. He doesn 't
| like the architecture you chose? You're gone. He finds issues in
| the code of one of your subordinates? That subordinate is gone
| and you are too.
|
| It's harsh. I'm not sure today's Americans are ready for that?
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| yeah but this hypothetical rickover wouldn't also be the same
| person constantly telling them to put off fixing the bug to
| build out a feature that the nontechnical product manager
| thinks customers want.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _I don 't know how many people on HN have served and heard of
| Rickover? But I'm pretty sure most people on HN could not
| function in a Rickover style management context. It gets things
| done, but it's not terribly polite about going about getting
| them done._
|
| Ex-Navy nuke here; I had to interview with the KOG [*] to get
| into The Program.
|
| My guess is that most people on HN would do fine in a Rickover-
| style program -- albeit likely after some culture shock. After
| 50 years I can still recite my own interview with the man
| pretty much verbatim. I served only five years on active duty;
| I've forgotten most of what I knew about the specific subject
| of nuclear engineering. But the no-bullshit, face-the-facts
| general management style that Rickover created and propagated
| in the nuclear Navy was likely the single biggest professional
| influence of my life. To this day I regularly quote Rickover to
| my law students: _You get what you INspect, not what you
| EXpect._
|
| And _in the fleet_ , most of us nukes were regular people, not
| nearly as abrasive or peremptory as he could be.
|
| [*] KOG = Kindly Old Gentleman: Of those four things, Rickover
| was at most two.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > [*] KOG = Kindly Old Gentleman: Of those four things, he
| was at most two.
|
| I must not be hip to the joke. What's the fourth thing?
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _I must not be hip to the joke. What 's the fourth
| thing?_
|
| Kindly. Old. Gentle. Man.
| aeontech wrote:
| Probably breaking it down into [ kindly, old, gentle, man ]
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _He doesn 't like the architecture you chose? You're gone. He
| finds issues in the code of one of your subordinates? That
| subordinate is gone and you are too._
|
| I doubt it would have been that severe unless it was a
| recurring thing. But it does bring to mind a story told by the
| USS Enterprise's then-chief engineer, about an episode before
| my own time aboard. Back in the day, there was a "billet" (org-
| chart position) known as the "shaft officer"; those were
| experienced, mid-level officers, as in, late 20s to early 30s
| in age. Each shaft officer oversaw (IIRC) one of the ship's
| four propellers and its shaft, along with the specific engine
| room and two nuclear reactors that drove the shaft.
|
| (Enterprise had a total of eight nuclear reactors in four
| numbered "plants"; each shaft officer would have been roughly
| equivalent to the chief engineer of a single-plant ship.)
|
| During one Rickover visit to the Enterprise, an officer is
| introduced to him as the shaft officer for 3 plant. Rickover
| immediately asks, "You're the shaft officer? How long is your
| shaft?" The shaft officer could have given either of two
| possible answers -- and either answer would have saved him --
| but he "failed open" and couldn't answer. Rickover supposedly
| de-nuked him on the spot.
| FootballBat wrote:
| The oolie to end all oolies.
| haneefmubarak wrote:
| Wait how are there two answers to this? Is shaft length not a
| well specified term?
| dctoedt wrote:
| The question "how long is your shaft" also has a more, um,
| _personal_ answer ....
| seal4irt wrote:
| I see what you're saying, but as soon as you go in the
| direction of "engineers today are from the Millennial or GenZ"
| I'm writing you off. My boomer parents were spoiled little
| snowflakes. I spent six years operating Rickover's reactors on
| US Navy submarines. I actually served on the boat that finally
| got Rickover fired. So I'm very qualified to say that this has
| absolutely nothing to do with generational pampering.
| Rickover's methods wouldn't work anywhere outside of the Navy
| during the Cold War because even there they were considered
| draconian and extreme (and generally nutty), and in most of the
| rest of the world a boss isn't allowed to literally put their
| employees in jail for any reason they make up.
| FootballBat wrote:
| >Rickover's methods wouldn't work anywhere outside of the
| Navy during the Cold War because even there they were
| considered draconian and extreme (and generally nutty)
|
| What people forget is that Rickover controlled one of the
| largest budgets in the DoD, so there were people lining up to
| kiss his ass just to get a piece of that pie regardless of
| his behavior.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Well, seeing as Sam Altman cited him as a role model that
| tracks.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| My favorite style is his style and I wish it was more pervasive
| in the tech sector. At the same time, I understand it's not
| practical in today's society in a practical sense.
| FootballBat wrote:
| I alluded to it above, but I'll say it again here: the only
| reason the K.O.G. was successful was because he controlled
| one of the largest budgets in the DoD and people were lining
| up to kiss his ass to get a piece of that pie regardless of
| his behavior.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| I think you're right, but also wrong at the same time.
|
| I haven't read as much as I should have on him, but from
| the stuff live gleaned, his personality didn't change once
| he got into that position of a large budget. Sure, his
| persona and leadership style evolved along with him, but it
| was always there. It's what got him to be what we know
| today.
| cossatot wrote:
| Having read Eric Berger's _Reentry_ about SpaceX and having a
| few friends who work at Tesla, my impression is that those
| organizations are not too dissimilar. They are also populated
| largely by millenial and gen Z people because older workers can
| 't/won't deal with the hours and other working conditions.
|
| Furthermore I think most blue collar American workers, and many
| white collar workers, are used to the concept of sudden and
| arbitrary termination.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| That you are comparing Rickover's nuke program to Tesla and
| SpaceX kind of illustrates the cultural gap. Anyone at SpaceX
| ever get jailed for whatever reason his/her boss dreamed up
| off hand? Any analog to Skipjack at Tesla?
|
| Think about that, today, Tesla and SpaceX are "tough"
| environments to people.
|
| It's kind of a sign that a lot of people today have no idea
| how things worked back then. We will definitely have trouble
| bringing those environments back.
| nradov wrote:
| So why is the quality and reliability of Tesla products so
| bad compared to competitors? From an outside perspective it
| seems like Tesla engineers are generally lazy and
| incompetent, at least relative to an organization like Naval
| Reactors which maintains much higher standards.
| upghost wrote:
| I'm sorry this is getting down voted. The kayfabe surrounding
| Rickover and the Nuclear Navy is pretty impressive -- it's hard
| to find anything negative about it when you do an internet
| search.
|
| For instance, you won't find any mention of the "Skipjack
| Skydiving Club"[1].
|
| It would be interesting if they released statistics for the
| suicide rate within the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program vs.
| the rest of the population. Anecdotally I would guess 30x.
|
| [1]: "Skipjack", named after a Naval Vessel, is the name of the
| tallest dormitory at the Goose Creek Naval Weapon's Station
| Nuclear Power School. I'm sure you can do the math on where the
| club name came from.
| tristor wrote:
| > I don't know how many people on HN have served and heard of
| Rickover? But I'm pretty sure most people on HN could not
| function in a Rickover style management context. It gets things
| done, but it's not terribly polite about going about getting
| them done.
|
| I have never served. I am a Millennial. I prefer Rickover's
| management style. I thankfully had some of the earliest
| managers in my career who /had/ served under Rickover and
| applied this management style.
|
| Some of the things I found very comforting under this
| management style is:
|
| 1. Everyone would be held accountable and managers would be
| held accountable for their subordinates
|
| 2. Everyone was expected to actually know their job, and not
| just hand wave away things. It's okay to say "I don't know",
| but it's never okay to bullshit.
|
| 3. Outcomes trump platitudes, which means it's absolutely okay
| to point out the emperor has no clothes.
|
| I've had a very successful career considering my origins, and I
| attribute a lot of that success to that fact I hold myself
| strongly accountable in a way that is rare, both in my
| generation /and/ in older generations. Managers trust me, even
| in dysfunctional organizations, because I am razor sharp about
| what I do know, what I reasonably believe/assume, and what I do
| not know, and I have no qualms whatsoever about speaking the
| truth to anyone, regardless of title or position. The only
| times I've ever been reprimanded/fired or otherwise faced
| career challenges with my behavior were in organizations that
| were participating in unethical and arguably illegal
| activities, otherwise I've found that nearly everyone
| appreciates honesty and accountability, even if it's few and
| far between in their larger organization.
|
| I think you'd find that for all the ink shed about the
| necessity of politeness and niceness, that the kindest thing to
| nearly everyone in the workforce is to be honest to them, both
| to their face and when they are not present, and to hold them
| accountable in a fair and even-handed way. Being kind is not
| being nice, and telling the truth is not always polite, but it
| makes a team, organization, and the outcome (product) better
| when people act in this way and that is incontrovertible.
| Almost everyone prefers to be part of a winning team, a team
| that produces high quality outcomes, and can clearly point to
| their contributions to that outcome because they took ownership
| of their work, accountability for it.
|
| The fact we /don't/ act in this way towards people in younger
| generations is, in my opinion, one of the reasons there's so
| many mental health problems and dissatisfaction with life in
| early adulthood. Nobody feels ownership over anything, and they
| feel as if they have no control over their own life or anything
| that surrounds it, just floating along in misery. Taking
| accountability is the first step to taking control, and having
| the deep knowledge about the things you do every single day is
| something that builds a confidence born out of competence that
| nobody can challenge unjustly. So many people in tech
| completely lack both competence and accountability, so it is no
| surprise to me that they suffer deeply due to this.
| lproven wrote:
| > I don't know how many people on HN... and heard of Rickover?
|
| Eliding "have served" -- not American, don't care.
|
| I suspect the name is familiar to a lot of SF readers, as
| Rickover reactors play an important part in Kim Stanley
| Robinson's SF novels about the colonisation of Mars. That's
| where I know it from.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| And even if they weren't "ready for it," what does it matter?
| Give me any asshole leader, no matter how accomplished, and
| I'll show you someone who would have been even more effective
| if they'd gotten down off their high horse and worked on their
| social skills.
|
| Then again, I was an aviator, and find the constant lionizing
| of Rickover irritating. He was effective in his context, but he
| also wasn't perfect. And on top of that, his context is not the
| only one you can learn from, even in the United States Navy.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> without cost overruns_
|
| That's downright un-American!
|
| I love hearing stories about him. One that I have heard, a couple
| of times, is that a salesgoblin went into his second-floor office
| at the Pentagon, with a sample of some electronic equipment.
|
| Rickover is said to have grabbed the device, walked over to his
| window, and dropped it to the ground beneath. He then said
| something along the lines of "If it still works, we can talk."
| thijson wrote:
| That's kind of along the lines of something I heard that Steve
| Jobs did to the iPhone prototype. He threw it in the fish tank
| and said, all those bubbles are wasted space. Could be this is
| an urban legend though.
| nradov wrote:
| I heard the same story about a Japanese consumer electronics
| executive with a prototype of the first compact video camera.
| CalChris wrote:
| President Carter served under Admiral Rickover. He was even sent
| to lead the cleanup of a reactor meltdown.
|
| https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2025/february/c...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah Carter was a really sound guy. Smart and honest. Even
| after leaving the presidency he negotiated for peace all over
| the world. I think he doesn't deserve the bad rep he got.
|
| If there's anyone who could have made America "great" it's him.
| Of course I'm not American so I know I'm butting in where I
| don't belong..
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| His presidency was a shambles.
|
| But Carter is far and away the 2nd best ex-president the US
| ever had (Geo. Washington gets the 1st place nod for choosing
| to set the custom)
| psunavy03 wrote:
| He was in over his head as President, but he was still a good
| man, which is more than many other ex-Presidents from both
| parties could say.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Complex jobs cannot be accomplished effectively with
| transients._
|
| I love this quote.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| tech could seriously learn from his other quote:
|
| > _I did not recruit extraordinary people. I recruited people
| who had extraordinary potential--and then I trained them._
| sgarland wrote:
| I'm a former USN Submariner, Nuclear Electronics Technician, and
| served from 2006 - 2016. Boy do I have some thoughts. Not all
| quotes here are from TFA, some are from various speeches he gave.
|
| > Free discussion requires an atmosphere unembarrassed by any
| suggestion of authority or even respect.
|
| This has always been an interesting idea to implement at tech
| companies. I've not yet been reprimanded for it, but I have
| definitely gotten raised eyebrows when the CEO or some other
| higher-up makes a statement, then pauses for replies. It seems
| like management isn't expecting anyone to do anything other than
| applaud.
|
| > Responsibility is a unique concept. You may share it with
| others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it,
| but it is still with you. If responsibility is rightfully yours,
| no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the
| burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the
| man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have
| never had anyone really responsible.
|
| This is my number one source of frustration in tech, specifically
| in incident management / retrospectives. Companies have fully
| latched onto blamelessness in such a way that obliterates any
| responsibility. There is a difference between blaming a person
| for causing a problem, and holding a person accountable for their
| actions. The former usually also implies a disinterest in finding
| and fixing the root cause, instead looking for a scapegoat. That
| is flawed thinking that will not yield positive results. However,
| it's also patently absurd to pretend that when Bob has caused 3
| of the last SEV0s, Bob isn't at least related to the problem. "We
| need more guardrails," they'll say, and implement automated
| checks to prevent the specific issue. I have no problem with
| guardrails, but what bothers me is when the guardrails become so
| onerous that it's difficult to do my job, and the bottom line is
| no one is holding Bob accountable. If you are careless with your
| work, no amount of guardrails will fix that; the problem is you.
|
| > I am not satisfied with bringing an individual to a qualified
| level once, and then forgetting about him. Therefore, we
| continually reinforce theoretical and practical training with a
| continuing training program. This includes frequent practice in
| plant evolutions and casualty drills.
|
| As much as any sailor hated drills, you can't deny that they
| work. I was jolted awake once by the sound of the collision
| alarm, followed by the announcement of flooding. While it turned
| out that it wasn't flooding, but merely a "controlled seawater
| leak," (someone messed up a rig for dive and left a valve open;
| that's an entirely different discussion), the fact remains that
| everyone knew where they needed to go, and what they needed to
| do.
|
| Companies, especially / mostly ops-related departments, should
| practice scenarios. DR, loss of a K8s cluster, whatever. If
| you've automated everything, terrific; find something new that
| you haven't automated, and see if people know how to deal with
| it. This leads me to my next point: understanding fundamentals.
|
| > I recall once several years ago an Admiral, whose
| conventionally powered ships were suffering serious engineering
| problems, asked me for a copy of one specific procedure I used to
| identify equipment which was not operating properly. He believed
| that would solve his problem, but it did not. That Admiral did
| not have the vaguest understanding of the problem or how to solve
| it, he was merely searching for a simple answer, a check off
| list, that he hoped would magically solve his problem.
|
| and
|
| > One of the elements needed in solving a complex technical
| problem is to have the individuals who make the decisions trained
| in the technology involved. A concept widely accepted in some
| circles is that all you need is to get a college degree in
| management and then, regardless of the technical subject, you can
| apply your management techniques to run any program...
|
| Rickover understood that in order to operate things, you have to
| understand how they work. To this end, the training pipeline for
| my job began with basic algebra, in order to assure a baseline
| level of knowledge, and then proceeded through the structure of
| an atom, electrons, PN junctions, diodes, transistors, and logic
| circuits, before finally learning a great deal about the CPU
| (Motorola 68000 when I was a student; I was part of the
| curriculum overhaul years later to "modernize" it to the Intel
| 386) at the logic signal level. All this, to operate with massive
| layers of abstraction. But critically, that fundamental knowledge
| is there. We could, if absolutely necessary, troubleshoot a logic
| board (which are simply specialized computers) down to the
| component level, and desolder / resolder the new one.
|
| Tech largely operated in this manner for decades by necessity. If
| you asked how to do something, you were told to RTFM. If you
| instead said, "I read section x.y.z but don't understand what it
| means," there was a much better chance of someone offering
| guidance. The onus was on you to understand enough of your
| current layer to apply it to the abstraction above. Instead, we
| now have vibe coding, and people pushing PRs having neither
| written nor tested any of the code. We have people copy/pasting
| error messages into Slack and asking what they mean, instead of
| taking the 10 seconds required to read it. We have people who
| have successfully memorized Leetcode, but who can't apply any of
| that knowledge to real-world problems.
|
| Rickover was an asshole, but he had an extremely transparent and
| level requirement of all his employees: know your job inside and
| out. If you didn't, he would destroy you.
|
| There _has_ to be a middle ground somewhere that modern companies
| could strive towards.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| As is pointed out in the article I linked elsewhere in the
| comments he should've remembered what he said about
| responsibility when the Thresher happened.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| You seem to harp on this every single time Rickover is
| brought up, but I'll make two points:
|
| I can't find evidence of that call anywhere but your single
| cited source, and that source does not cite it.
|
| He immediately completely overhauled procedures to prevent a
| reoccurrence of what they thought the most likely issue with
| the plant, if it did cause the sinking.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| Another previous Submarine Nuclear ET here.
|
| I agree with you, and it's interesting to look back and realize
| how many of my outspoken opinions and ideals are simply due to
| internalizing Rickover's Philosophies. I agree with them,
| sometimes to my detriment.
|
| I actually had to leave both the Submarine and Nuclear world
| after an injury, but stayed on in the Aviation and
| Expeditionary Warfare world until I hit 22 years. I cannot tell
| you how many times I made enemies by insisting on his lessons
| in those communities, but I got results. Enough so that I had
| to fight to retire; they wanted me to stay as long as they
| could hold me and stick me in another problem spot.
|
| One example that may apply for those on this site (and I'm not
| trying to make this example for YOU, this is just one I hammer
| on) is the practice of just pulling in a ton of dependancies
| without understanding what they do, what you are trying to do,
| etc. I get that things need to move faster in business to make
| a profit, but I cannot and will not condone that type of
| philosophy. Look at the recent slew of compromises due to
| exactly this behavior, the ballooning system requirements due
| to it, etc. LLM coding is another such issue; we are going to
| have a ton of programmers who have no idea how to structure
| something from a plain sheet of paper, who can't trace down
| issues in complex code because they don't even know how to read
| it and chart program flow, etc.
| sgarland wrote:
| You and I are fully aligned with your example bugbear, fellow
| Bubblehead.
| Animats wrote:
| > Rickover understood that in order to operate things, you have
| to understand how they work....
|
| _" Tech largely operated in this manner for decades by
| necessity. If you asked how to do something, you were told to
| RTFM. If you instead said, "I read section x.y.z but don't
| understand what it means," there was a much better chance of
| someone offering guidance. The onus was on you to understand
| enough of your current layer to apply it to the abstraction
| above. Instead, we now have vibe coding, and people pushing PRs
| having neither written nor tested any of the code. We have
| people copy/pasting error messages into Slack and asking what
| they mean, instead of taking the 10 seconds required to read
| it. We have people who have successfully memorized Leetcode,
| but who can't apply any of that knowledge to real-world
| problems."_
|
| More than a rant, that is an idea that needs to be more fully
| developed. For now, it's worth thinking about how tools such as
| Google, Stack Overflow and now LLMs have made it possible for
| system complexity to exceed what the people working on it can
| understand. There used to be an effective upper limit on API
| complexity from the limits of the human brain. That's been
| passed. This may or may not be a good thing.
| mikey_p wrote:
| Gene Kim talks about Rickover quite a bit on the Idealcast
| podcast. This episode[1] with Michael Nygard has a great story
| where he shares a memo that Rickover wrote to the representatives
| that he had at contractor sites. (The context is people in The
| Naval Reactor Organization or NR, granting waivers to their
| contractors from NR rules):
|
| > From time to time, I note evidence that NR representatives at
| field offices, such as a shipyard or laboratory, do not fully
| understand their primary mission. It is amazing to me how
| representatives new to these positions uniformly get themselves
| into the frame of mind, where they conceive of themselves as
| intermediaries between NR and the contractor. That is, that their
| job is to judge who is right, NR or the contractor, and then make
| the decision on their own. In many cases, not even notifying NR.
| In this way, the NR representative then becomes in effect NR's
| boss. All NR representatives are of course, encouraged to state
| their views to me at any time, but it is not their job to assume
| my responsibility. Another and more serious mistake arises when
| the NR representative decides what he should or should not report
| to me. Frequently, he decides not to report things to me because
| he feels he can handle the matter better himself or he is afraid
| that by notifying me of the situation, which is his job, I will
| take ignorant, improper action and upset the applecart. Nearly
| all NR representatives have had inadequate experience to handle
| the important and complex tasks they face. I do not expect them
| to be able to make wise decisions on all matters by themselves.
| Under some circumstances, it is better to have no NR
| representative at all because I would not then be lulled into
| thinking the NR interests are being taken care of. Please bear in
| mind always that you are the NR representative. That you are to
| carry out the policies of NR. That you are not to judge NR or to
| represent the contractor to NR. To achieve the status of a true
| NR representative requires the acquisition of godlike qualities,
| but you can try. Signed H.G. Rickover.
|
| [1] https://itrevolution.com/podcast/the-idealcast-episode-10/
| areoform wrote:
| I was talking to someone who worked at McKinsey and they told me
| about the pains that the consulting group took to assure everyone
| that they were the "best and the brightest." That everyone
| working there was brilliant -- assuredly. And they'd stand
| around, gassing each other up and sharing these stats... "Top 3%
| of their graduating class!!!"
|
| If you've watched Game of Thrones (before it lost the plot), you
| might be aware of the moment where one of the characters turns
| around to a petulant, teen tyrant-king and says, "Any man who
| must say, 'I am the King,' is no true king." I think that
| statement rings true for McKinsey and the obsession a lot of
| companies have with "hiring the best."
|
| Admiral Rickover was a true king; i.e., the opposite. He didn't
| hire the "best." No, he hired people with extraordinary potential
| and then worked with them to develop their potential.
|
| The theater with the chair and his hiring practises were filters
| to find people with agency whom he could teach how to be capable
| and smart. I wonder what the modern equivalent is today.
|
| Side note, almost exactly a year ago (~51 weeks), I edited
| together a video of him talking about how there aren't any
| extraordinary people waiting to be hired;
| https://x.com/1517fund/status/1775253578916974606
| smitty1e wrote:
| His bust is at the entrance of the engineering building, Ricker
| Hall, at USNA.
|
| The nose is a bright gold-ish hue against the brown of the rest
| as the Midshipment rub it for luck on their way to exams.
|
| Which never afforded me much, alas.
| pjdesno wrote:
| I'd have to go back and look through back issues of the New
| London Day to get any details, but having grown up in the area
| (graduated high school in '82) I seem to recall that he may have
| stayed in his position for a number of years past his sell-by
| date.
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