Why wasn't the federal government doing this? How hard would it have been for the new "shipping czar" to have gone down there and seen what at least one simple issue was and get it fixed?
My comment seemed to be a little too subtle. Let me lay it out:
Our willingness to shame this guy (and other guys, by extension) for spending time with his family reflects our willingness to shame women for taking the same time off.
Our acceptance that he should put work over his family forces SOMEONE to put his family over THEIR work. In a male-female marriage (yes, I know he is gay), this means that men should work and women should stay at home. This attitude contributes to the gender pay divide and stereotypes that men shouldn't be great fathers.
It hurts our wives and our strength as husbands and fathers.
I didn't get appointed by the President to a Secretary position overseeing government resources.
I work at a tech company. I have responsibilities that I actually care about, and they are important to me and many others, so I could not possibly just disappear for 2 months. I can barely take a weekend off without feeling guilty.
It's not about why he wasn't there... it's that he wasn't there, for any reason. It shows that he doesn't care, and the people who picked him and allowed that to happen, also don't care.
Many people manage to spend time with their family and respond to work emergencies. They don't get paid as much or as much media attention, tho. So they don't really count.
Because US ports are run by private companies and not the federal government. The "Port of Long Beach" run by the local port authority is primarily a landlord. It's called capitalism.
I think the Port of Virginia is run by the State of Virginia and actually did pretty well. East Coast longshoreman unions are less insane than those on the West Coast.
People are waking up and realizing that government is pretty useless for specific action. Our representatives would rather pontificate about vague niceties.
I mean, you have to have law and order. That means laws. Someone has to be able to take specific action regarding those laws, and that means a government. We just have to expect competency and responsiveness from the government. There’s no alternative (get rid of the government and a power vacuum would develop and then be filled within seconds and you’d have a new “government” with a warlord or whatever).
This story actually had a good ending so far as the government actually responded about a day after the Flexport CEO’s Twitter thread. Sure, we wish the problem was solved earlier, but this is a good thing and should be celebrated!
>People are waking up and realizing that government is pretty useless for specific action.
Well, sure. The higher up you go, the less tactical (and more strategic) you become. You wouldn't want your CTO to launch code to production. You want her to make sure there is a plan to utilize CICD practices- that the ICs implement.
This comes in cycles, there are many famous ceos who made their name from rolling up their sleeves and working the lines.
If you have too many strategic thinkers you lose the ability to execute tactically, too many executors and you start building well optimized versions of the wrong thing.
I mean, good leaders actually DO dig into the tactical details if a massive bottleneck occurs. Because they’re often the only ones with the authority to solve it.
