Top all-time · #2479
Alex Komoroske
Personal blog · komoroske.combusinessphilosophy
Alex Komoroske's personal blog at komoroske.com covers business and philosophy. Since 2021, 31 different Hacker News readers have linked it 34 times, most often “Coordination Headwind: How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (17) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Alex Komoroske's slime-mold slide deck on "coordination headwinds", which explains why large organizations slow down. It is often cited as a shorthand for bureaucracy at big companies.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 17 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Coordination Headwind: How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds28 people · 30 mentions · first linked 2021-10-22
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-01-14
What Hacker News says?
The appearance of heroic efforts to get authoritative lists of what datasets went into which major model versions prevented actual data laundering (up to intent and mistakes). But don't attribute malice to that which is far far easier to explain with coordination headwinds: https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]”Submitted Coordination Headwind: How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds as a story · 174 points
HN discussionhttps://komoroske.com/slime-mold/ You're welcome.
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do?”Submitted Coordination Headwind: How organizations are like slime molds as a story · 77 points
HN discussionCoordination Headwind: https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Working on complex systems: What I learned working at Google”Submitted How organizations are like slime molds as a story · 15 points
HN discussionThe following prompt works in ChatGPT: "take this slide show and convert it into something I can read: [ https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/ ]( https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/ )" It conveniently created a .txt file and also expanded the text into a full article. I then asked: "create another version that is just the text from each slide. nothing more" Result: ---------- Many successful organizations pride themselves…
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Coordination Headwind: How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds”Submitted Coordination Headwind as a story · 3 points
HN discussionObviously. It was so easy it took me seconds to verify before posting. But that's fine. It's Sunday morning and I will give you an alternative version that is immune to prompt-ineptness. Cunningham's Law shall not be denied today. 1. Visit the embedded google slides URL https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XMCU2vxtxxqqQ2NY567n... 2. Click File 3. Scroll down to 'Download' and point your cursor at it and wait for…
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Coordination Headwind: How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds”Submitted Collaboration Headwind as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf you haven't seen it yet, you might appreciate this slide deck about how organizations are like slime mold. Slide 57 main image "0.60=0.95^10", text "And thanks to that non-linearity, even a small decline in individual likelihood [of success] leads to a much lower overall decline in the likelihood of success." https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse”Submitted How organizations are like slime molds as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLol I feel the similar, I signed an earlier version when the Manifesto was far different but since they've changed it from that I now want my name removed >:( One of the creators is Alex (former Google Chrome Project Lead ~ https://komoroske.com/ ) and we spoke on a Google meet call recently. He's currently trying to hype up confidential computing which is a cool technical challenge but I have my doubts in regards t…
Comment linking /
on “The Resonant Computing Manifesto”Submitted Coordination Headwind: How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI think the process is poor at accommodating generalists, since most people are not generalists. You might want to design a new feature one day, talk to customers the next, and then refactor your CI system on the third. The org really has no way to accommodate that; the cost to bring you up to speed on all the details is too high and your request is too weird. There is already a product team, support team, and testi…
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Capital One axes 1k tech roles”Submitted Coordination Headwind in Organizations Explained as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere is some criticism of Dunbar which I can't evaluate. Even if the specifics are inaccurate within it, there seems to be some truth to how sets of humans scale. I like the Alex Komoroske presentation below about "coordination headwind" as an explanation that doesn't need evolutionary psychology to work. It is easy to understand and deep enough to be well worth paging through periodically. https://komoroske.com/sl…
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Something weird happens to companies when they hit 150 people (2017)”Submitted Coordination Headwind – How organizations are like slime molds as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe answer is some combination of two phenomena: 1. The Innovator's Dilemma ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma ) This is the premise that a mature incumbent will usually fail to respond fast enough to disruptive innovations by an upstart because their organization is optimized to continue providing existing customers sustaining improvements to the products they are already paying for. 2. The C…
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Bard Extensions”Submitted How organizations are like slime molds as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAlso note this evergreen presentation comparing organizations to slime molds: https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Let slime moulds do the thinking (2010)”Submitted Coordination Headwind as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI think this is the document the article is referring to? https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Internal document explains why Google has become slow and bureaucratic”Submitted Coordination Headwind as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe commenter is referring to the following talk by the same author as the document: https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/ Slime molds are a type of organism that can expand quickly as each entity within the mold is independent. As a result, the mold as a whole can resist any one actor being removed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold The analogy used by the talk is that a slime mold is the polar opposite of a top…
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Internal document explains why Google has become slow and bureaucratic”Submitted Coordination Headwinds as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAlso recently submitted & on thr same topic of effective innovation driving & organizational wayfinding, "Andy Grove on dynamic dialectic"[1], which nicely laid out some of the core top-down vs bottom-up struggles. It pegged bottom-up as "chaotic but smart". Grove talks about something mentioned very early on in Alex's webpage[2] (right under the top link, to a genericized/not-Google-specific Slime Mold presentation…
Comment linking /
on “Internal document explains why Google has become slow and bureaucratic”Submitted Coordination Headwind – How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds [Deck] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAnother presentation by the author (who no longer works at Google, apparently): "Coordination Headwind: How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds" [1]. [1] https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/
Comment linking /slime-mold/
on “Internal document explains why Google has become slow and bureaucratic”Submitted Coordination Headwind – How organizations are like slime molds as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
