The Best Defense

This article has been the occasion for some rumination.

I knew Tim when we were lieutenants. We ordinarily didn't work together directly, but we served in a unit of a size and under circumstances such that we were in regular social contact for a year or so. There is a personality type likely to ascend bureaucratic hierarchies, so . . . no, we were not friends.

That said, I don't have an informed opinion about his removal as NSA director. I'm inclined to trust the people reported to be involved, but also to say that I would have assessed Tim as likely to rationally follow the incentives as they were presented to him. I can only hope the Trump administration is working to bring those incentives into long-term alignment.

But my rumination isn't really about Tim, except in the most general way. It's really about my career-long inability to deal effectively with Random Acts of A$$holery. No, not everyone I dealt with in government service was as an asshole. But the culture doesn't seem to do much to deter it, and I personally couldn't seem to deter it when it was directed at me. The textbook solution is, I suppose, the same as it was in Junior High: it is deterred by the credible threat of retaliation. But I sucked at it in Junior High, and I sucked at it in the armed forces. It may be counterintuitive, but I have thought more about this since getting my Dream Job and realizing that, no, not all organizational cultures are toxic.

While composing this post in my head, I thought several times about giving specific examples of that toxicity, and each time become mentally buried under the avalanche of potential vignettes. There may be a limit to my trauma re-enactment. But read the linked article above about the personality type. Then read the Venkatesh Rao articles linked there. Then imagine a company of a million employees, most of whom want to grow up to be David Wallace and Jan Levinson. That was what it was like, and it gives me recurring nightmares to this day. I can only be grateful that it is now behind me.