Weekly Axis Of Easy #389
What Did You Get Done Last Week?
There’s been a lot of emotion on social media about the pros or cons of Elon Musk sending US Federal employees an email asking them to explain what they did last week. Instead of getting caught up in the bickering and arguing, I found myself not getting too excited or outraged about it.
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Maybe instead of getting triggered at DOGE and Elon, it can get us thinking more about how to rectify that in our own jobs and lives.
nota bene - this email arrived shortly before the federal election in Canada. My response was kind of targeted at a some (possibly imagined) subtext of his letter. in retrospect I think I was mostly using it as an excuse to monologue.
Hi Mark,
Long-time customer, first time caller; been reading your thoughtful essays for many years now.
I really appreciate your section about being deliberate and reflecting on how you’re spending your time every day, and using DOGE’s emails to prompt a constructive discussion. I follow some management newsletters from the great Jonathan Dursi (now with NVIDIA) and similar strategies are a constant theme.
I have to admit, though, that I do think this specific concept needs to be used with a great deal of caution when applied at scale and in the manner seen in the States, and I believe that might be contributing to the pushback you referred to. This is particularly true in certain sectors of the economy. As C.H. Clark put it back in 1900, “A large amount of apparently unproductive work must be done before the microscope can be advantageously used as a working tool.”.
As a member of a publicly-funded scientific research facility, I have observed that, particularly in any cutting-edge field, it can be extremely challenging to extrapolate how well things are going from a short snapshot of someone’s labour. One should consider examples such as Wallace Carothers, who would not be able to point to any productive labor for many months and then next week invent the very concept of a polymer, with an overall economic impact in the trillions.
In that respect I think it’s understandable for emotion to seep into these discussions, because these are preludes to actions that will - that have - upheaved industries, programs, competitiveness. For example, NIST’s team in Atomic Spectroscopy has been operating since 1904 and, by all accounts, extremely consistently knocking it out of the park - their coefficients are relied on by practically every single industry in the phone book; and yet their entire facility has been shuttered as a result of these questionnaires. Maybe being unable to promptly articulate the value you bring to society is itself a failing and a fault to be remedied - maybe not engaging with the public so that your function is unquestionable is itself a minor sin - but I struggle with the idea that it should be a fireable offence.
All the best,
Daniel Correia