I surprisingly thought a lot about the nature of power at my last job as an integration engineer, where my role involved making design decisions that impacted multiple groups. It was tricky because individual decisions usually negatively impacted specific groups, even if it’s the best decision overall. I had to build a lot of trust with people to get buy-in. In practice, this meant being transparent, getting input from stakeholders, being intentional with when I made a decision vs deferred to someone else, and trying my hardest to act based on technical integrity, not office politics. It was a slow, distributed way of gaining influence, but over time it was powerful and effective to get people to collaborate and reach consensus. But what threw me were a few coworkers who practiced the opposite, but somehow still zoomed to positions of authority above me, where their actions had negative impacts across the company. I wasn’t sure if that reflected something fundamental about the nature of power, or just the systems in place at that particular company. I even wondered if cultural influences were at play— I was the only East Asian person making that level of inter-system architectural decisions, and most of the people with more technical authority than me were white men. Like am I reading these descriptions of LBJ’s approach to power, relating it to old coworkers, and getting the ick because the ghost of Confucius lives on in me? Lol. It makes me curious how power systems work in cultural contexts outside the U.S.
I’m halfway through The Path to Power myself. This book is giving me so much to think about, especially as someone who actually worked in politics in Washington DC recently.
Caro shows the opportunities for exercising agency and wielding power in any position. Fracking is a terrific analogy. You just have to be disposed to see the chances and seize them.
The first part of this article[1] had a similar theme, relating the ability of software developers to see problems as software-shaped, and traceurs see a city as parkour-shaped. It looks like the underlying skill is the ability to look past the semantic meaning of a system in order to comprehend and manipulate the actual mechanics.
I'd imagine this "vision" is essential to basically any expertise. I would consider painting (or art in general) to fall under this umbrella; in order to paint skillfully, you must stop seeing "tree is green", "sky is blue", and so on, instead seeing the true color of the thing you are painting.
Brilliant selection of load-bearing analogy. It's masterfully levered to synthesize two massive biographies.
I frack for several things in my life. It's always messy. But until now I've never thought so deliberately about the sand and water components. Only the oil.
Great read. There’s an uncanny similarity between Lyndon Johnson and Dov Charney the founder of American Apparel. Not a comparison I thought I’d ever make!
LBJ is a fascinating person to study with respect to political power. I read several of the Robert Caro biography books years ago and your essay is inspiring me to read them again.
I appreciated the overview of the sort of pyramid or network of job accumulation and distribution. I've only ever thought about this in the context of one's "network" and seeing it grow organically as time goes on, never considering how it could be leveraged in this way. You might find the academic Brian Klass of interest for his work on power.
Reading how you talk about optimization and how normal people care about a lot of things that each happen a bit made me think about the comparison system we use to decide between what to optimize for, which feels like the next, unstated step in your essay. I guess it's something like ethics, or a personal value system, that tells us "I should care about this good thing more than this good thing", or maybe it comes down to arbitrary preference. Especially when you think about LBJ as a 3-year-old being somehow wired to look for and frack for power in small ways. So how changeable are those value/comparison systems?
As a great example of this, Caro's take on why LBJ is so against idealism and so ruthless, is that he was reacting to the complete collapse of his father's career and fortune. Because his father completely bankrupted the family and created enormous suffering and poverty for his family (including LBJ) by following his idealism, LBJ always saw idealism and principles with enormous suspicion.
Clearly the makeup of LBJ mattered, but this cultural shock also played a massive role (at least in Caro's model)
I surprisingly thought a lot about the nature of power at my last job as an integration engineer, where my role involved making design decisions that impacted multiple groups. It was tricky because individual decisions usually negatively impacted specific groups, even if it’s the best decision overall. I had to build a lot of trust with people to get buy-in. In practice, this meant being transparent, getting input from stakeholders, being intentional with when I made a decision vs deferred to someone else, and trying my hardest to act based on technical integrity, not office politics. It was a slow, distributed way of gaining influence, but over time it was powerful and effective to get people to collaborate and reach consensus. But what threw me were a few coworkers who practiced the opposite, but somehow still zoomed to positions of authority above me, where their actions had negative impacts across the company. I wasn’t sure if that reflected something fundamental about the nature of power, or just the systems in place at that particular company. I even wondered if cultural influences were at play— I was the only East Asian person making that level of inter-system architectural decisions, and most of the people with more technical authority than me were white men. Like am I reading these descriptions of LBJ’s approach to power, relating it to old coworkers, and getting the ick because the ghost of Confucius lives on in me? Lol. It makes me curious how power systems work in cultural contexts outside the U.S.
I actually find LBJ’s story strangely empowering.
I’m halfway through The Path to Power myself. This book is giving me so much to think about, especially as someone who actually worked in politics in Washington DC recently.
Caro shows the opportunities for exercising agency and wielding power in any position. Fracking is a terrific analogy. You just have to be disposed to see the chances and seize them.
The first part of this article[1] had a similar theme, relating the ability of software developers to see problems as software-shaped, and traceurs see a city as parkour-shaped. It looks like the underlying skill is the ability to look past the semantic meaning of a system in order to comprehend and manipulate the actual mechanics.
I'd imagine this "vision" is essential to basically any expertise. I would consider painting (or art in general) to fall under this umbrella; in order to paint skillfully, you must stop seeing "tree is green", "sky is blue", and so on, instead seeing the true color of the thing you are painting.
[1] https://jasmi.news/p/claude-code
Fascinating essay. As a worker bee, I’ve always been too busy to pursue power, except to get to make the art I want to make. Hummm.
Brilliant selection of load-bearing analogy. It's masterfully levered to synthesize two massive biographies.
I frack for several things in my life. It's always messy. But until now I've never thought so deliberately about the sand and water components. Only the oil.
What a wonderful piece of writing
Great read. There’s an uncanny similarity between Lyndon Johnson and Dov Charney the founder of American Apparel. Not a comparison I thought I’d ever make!
LBJ is a fascinating person to study with respect to political power. I read several of the Robert Caro biography books years ago and your essay is inspiring me to read them again.
I appreciated the overview of the sort of pyramid or network of job accumulation and distribution. I've only ever thought about this in the context of one's "network" and seeing it grow organically as time goes on, never considering how it could be leveraged in this way. You might find the academic Brian Klass of interest for his work on power.
Reading how you talk about optimization and how normal people care about a lot of things that each happen a bit made me think about the comparison system we use to decide between what to optimize for, which feels like the next, unstated step in your essay. I guess it's something like ethics, or a personal value system, that tells us "I should care about this good thing more than this good thing", or maybe it comes down to arbitrary preference. Especially when you think about LBJ as a 3-year-old being somehow wired to look for and frack for power in small ways. So how changeable are those value/comparison systems?
I suspect our value structure (or what to call it) is strongly shaped by culture, and sometimes through deliberate personal effort
As a great example of this, Caro's take on why LBJ is so against idealism and so ruthless, is that he was reacting to the complete collapse of his father's career and fortune. Because his father completely bankrupted the family and created enormous suffering and poverty for his family (including LBJ) by following his idealism, LBJ always saw idealism and principles with enormous suspicion.
Clearly the makeup of LBJ mattered, but this cultural shock also played a massive role (at least in Caro's model)