> I.e.: Who’s going to arrest the King?

Power asymmetry always exists and in many tech orgs I have been, while the work of ICs is concrete and measurable (Jiras, commits, PRs, features, releases), the decision makers exist more in the verbal space where very little is committed to written form in a way that could lead to accountability.

The higher you go the less that meetings begin with an agenda or end with summarized minutes.

I had a former boss tell me an anecdote along these lines re: when he knew his days were numbered with his Director.

Director feigned ignorance of some inconvenient information so my boss reminds him that he had sent an email about it, to which the director responds "how do you know I read it, you can't just email me, you have to tell me next time".

Not an unreasonable response in isolation, however shortly later a similar discussion with the same Director feigning ignorance about another piece of inconvenient info, that went something like "I don't recall you telling me about this before, you really gotta put this stuff in email".

I know he was acting in bad faith because he pulled something similar on us where we proposed a plan of splitting some approved CapEx over 2 years to stretch capacity and get better hardware in year 2 for the same dollars. In year 2, of course, he grilled us about why we were asking him for servers again 2 years in a row and denied it.

It is next to impossible to enforce accountability upwards.

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jiggawatts 3 days ago | parent [-]

"I emailed you." -> "You didn't tell me about it."

"I told you." -> "You didn't put that formally in writing."

"I told you and emailed you." -> "There were other (unspecified) priorities."

There's always an out.

	▲	alnewkirkcom 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I understand the sentiment. That's the current status quo: keep things verbal, keep them fuzzy, keep an escape hatch handy (i.e., plausible deniability). The whole point of bi-directional accountability (via CBC) is to shut those doors up front. Once you (two or more parties, e.g., leader/report) agree to "do" CBC, you're immediately bound by the methodology, which essentially means a work contract you negotiate and sign off on. Escape hatch removed. The system makes deviations visible, costly, and merit-eroding.
	▲	DoctorOetker 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		discuss and email the need of a public or shared signed list of priority evaluations, and recommend bumping up the priority of item X. but I agree, there is always some excuse. While those who believe in contract driven accountability may constitute a minority, they could start a mailing list to coordinate and discover companies or startups applying these principles, and putting the rules into legally binding contracts and the company bylaws or whatever. Nothing would happen until a local critical mass was reached, unless the work could be done remote at first. The first such companies could then spin out branches that do non-remote work (lab work, manufacture, ...).