add mafia post

_posts/2018-06-01-mafia.md

@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ author: Charles Sutton
 tags:
 - social skills
 - painfully extended metaphors
+- mafia
 ---
 
 [Benjamin "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Ruggiero)

_posts/2024-03-05-mafia.md

@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: 'What I Observed about Research Networking from Joining the Mafia'
+author: Charles Sutton
+tags:
+- collaboration
+- mafia
+date: 2024-03-05 08:00:00
+---
+
+I've written before about Joseph Pistone, an undercover FBI agent who tricked his way into joining the U.S. mafia in the 1970s,
+and how [his account of the mafia](https://www.amazon.com/Donnie-Brasco-Undercover-Joseph-Pistone/dp/0451192575) 
+reminds me of my experience of doing research. Here's another connection between the underworld and the research world.
+Brasco tells this story about his boss, Sonny, who has just come back from a meeting with the big boss
+of another organization (Trafficante).
+Think of this like a middle manager meeting with a CEO of a different company.
+This is what we read:
+
+<figure class="quote">
+<blockquote>
+In the car Sonny unwound. “It was a feeling-out conversation,” he says, “I told [Trafficante], ‘listen, I'm no sophisticated person. I'm a street person all my life.’ I says, ‘I love the streets, you know. I don't know nothing about nothing, about gambling or anything.’ I says, ‘Me, I just like to go in the street, rob who the f__k I gotta rob.’” -Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia
+</blockquote>
+</figure>
+
+What impressed me about this was that mobsters *have* feeling-out conversations.
+If you want to be a career criminal, you can't do it all on your own. You need to know other people
+who can steal stuff along with you, buy the stuff you have stolen, fight people who are trying 
+to cheat you.
+The truth is --- according to my reading, I don't have first-hand experience! --- that 
+professional networking is absolutely vital if you want to make money in the mafia. 
+
+I could imagine the equivalent of this feeling-out conversation in the tech industry, or in academia.
+We don't go into the street and rob anybody, of course, we'd be laughably incompetent at that.
+I could imagine a professor telling a new student, "Oh, I still like to write code once in a while,
+it helps me stay grounded." Or I think of advice for [tech managers about how to stay
+technical](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/staying-hands-on), you know, so they can "go in the street".
+
+I was thinking about this when I was starting a new collaboration, a while back.
+You want to work together, you both talk about why you're excited about the direction,
+how it's going to be great because we're all bringing complementary skills to the table.
+Maybe you mention how much you've enjoyed reading their work over the years.
+Probably this is all true --- you wouldn't be considering the collaboration otherwise!
+But from now on, every time this happens, I'm going to be thinking about those two
+mafia guys in the 1970s, considering a new potential "collaboration" down in Florida.