diff --git a/_posts/2018-06-01-mafia.md b/_posts/2018-06-01-mafia.md index eb0d24b981b23..57be186491807 100644 --- a/_posts/2018-06-01-mafia.md +++ b/_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) diff --git a/_posts/2024-03-05-mafia.md b/_posts/2024-03-05-mafia.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000..64cc1397730c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/_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: + +
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+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 +
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+ +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.