Top all-time · #729
Jerry Pournelle
Personal blog · jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanorhardwarewriting
Jerry Pournelle writes Chaos Manor Musings, a personal blog at jerrypournelle.com about hardware and writing. Since 2008, 88 different Hacker News readers have linked it 134 times, most often “The Iron Law of Bureaucracy (2010)”. The last post was in 2011, but the archive is still widely read.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, that organizations end up run by people devoted to the organization rather than its goals, to explain institutional problems. Some also point to his other essays.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- Read his SSTO rant; his 9/11 mail column gives a very good perspective; the Iron Law might interest readers.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Iron Law of Bureaucracy (2010)47 people · 62 mentions · first linked 2017-12-16
- /reports/jerryp/iron.html11 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2011-07-01
- /reports/jerryp/iron.html3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-10-13
- How To Get My Job3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-11-15
- Old day of s100 based word pressing (Jerry pournelle chaos manor)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-14
- Science fiction author Jerry Pournelle has died2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-09-10
- Jerry Pournelle has died2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-09-09
What Hacker News says?
"Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collectiv…
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “Firefox is on a slippery slope”Submitted The Iron Law of Bureaucracy (2010) as a story · 67 points
HN discussionhttps://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scien…
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “Institutions try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”Submitted Jerry Pournelle has died as a story · 61 points
HN discussionThis is more or less Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “Institutions try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”Submitted How To Get My Job as a story · 23 points
HN discussionI think this is due to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy : https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html "In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agri…
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year”Submitted Science fiction author Jerry Pournelle has died as a story · 5 points
HN discussionImagine being so close to understanding something, but your whole identity requires you to not understand it. Venture capital (VC) is fundamentally at odds with good business. VC demands exponential growth from a finite world; something has to give. What usually happens is the company grows to the point that it's impossible to keep the "professional fakers" away. Then the Iron Law[1] kicks in, or enshittification[2]…
Comment linking /archives2/archives2mail/mail408.html
on “Founder Mode”Submitted Jerry Pournelle has passed away as a story · 5 points
HN discussionOnce a company becomes successful, it attracts the second kind of people in Iron Law of Bureaucracy. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “Founder Mode”Submitted $90,000 fines for selling 600 bunny rabbits: why are we paying for this? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionYou should read one of Jerry Pournelle's rants on the subject. There was a lot of bitterness from people who supported the program. The problem with SSTOs, in general is that while getting them to take off and land isn't a big hurdle, getting them into orbit with more than a nontrivial payload is pretty difficult. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/SSX.html It's a concept with its supporters, but there's a pre…
Comment linking /slowchange/SSX.html
on “SpaceX launch webcast: Orbcomm-2 Mission [video]”Submitted Old day of s100 based word pressing (Jerry pournelle chaos manor) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe difference is they aren’t paying the engineers 300k they are paying an endless amount of administrator executives with “industry experience” aka 20yrs emailing spreadsheets between other managers at IBM. I realized this once when I started attending (Canadian) gov ‘innovation’ events and ‘startup’ funding initiatives. There was hardly anyone I’d consider an engineer that is benefiting from these systems. It’s a…
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs”Submitted Jerry Pournelle: How to Get to Space (2000) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAs I've linked to many times on HN: The Iron Law of Bureaucracy > Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people": > First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agric…
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “Intel's disruption is now complete”Submitted Are you qualified to be a "professional"? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionTo get a sense of how our nation felt in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the mail column Jerry Pournelle (R.I.P.) had at the time gives a very good perspective: https://jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail170.h... “yes, we are at war. This is our generation's Pearl Harbor.”
Comment linking /archives2/archives2mail/mail170.html
on “September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time”Submitted Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy as a story · 3 points
HN discussionStories like this make The Organization Man by W. H. Whyte[0] seem prescient. And never forget Pournelle's iron law: >Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people": >First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch…
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects”Submitted Dr. Pournelle Health Report – Chaos Manor as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “Codex CLI installs a persistent, self-updating background daemon by default”Submitted How To Get My Job (1996) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYes making the actual product is very very secondary to successfully appeasing Congress, produce 'jobs', and follow the litany of rules in place about now the money is used and paperwork after to check boxes. These aren't businesses operating in a competitive market with pressure to produce the best things quickly. Their goal is simply to be the best gov lapdog vs the only 1 or 2 other gov lapdogs. Being extremely l…
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on SpaceX Crew-9”Submitted The Iron Law of Bureaucracy as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy [1] presents a problem for anyone seeking to rectify the problem of an organization having too much power. In order to fix the problem, you first need power, which means that you need to create the institutional structures needed to secure that power, which means you have just exacerbated the problem. If you then actually follow-through with your original goal, nobody will listen…
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case”Submitted The Estate of Jerry Pournelle Announces New Website and Facebook Group as a story · 2 points
HN discussion>This might be true for any organization. Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html Or the Peter Principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
Comment linking /reports/jerryp/iron.html
on “Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design (2003)”Submitted How to Get to Space as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
