# Bell Labs empowered young people “Empower young people” is another one of those admonitions like “have light management” ([[Bell Labs management was extremely light]]) that sounds uncontroversially good, but is both hard to do in practice and easy to screw up. Bell labs’ tendency to empower young people is illustrated by [[Jim Fisk]] being in charge of radar/magnetron work at age 30 in the middle of WWII.  Empowering lightly-or-unproven people can clearly backfire, so doing it depended on a substrate of trust - both upwards, that higher management wouldn’t second-guess the decision and downwards, that the empowered young people could handle it. Where did that underlying [[Trust]] and conviction come from? It’s not clear to me, but getting to the root of it seems important for riffing on Bell Labs. [[Research requires more trust than other disciplines]]. Keep in mind that empowering young people was probably not a uniquely Bell Labs thing ([[Bell Labs didn’t have a unique model]]) but a broader cultural trend in the first half of the 20th century. However, [[Mervin Kelly]] was even willing to promote young men *at the expense of* veterans, which is doubly risky and vaguely violates other cultural norms like the idea of loyalty being rewarded.   Also note that it was empowering technically-trained young people to do things that were in or adjacent to their areas of training. This stands in contrast to what feels like a more 21st century Silicon Valley take on “empower young people” which is to say “why shouldn’t we bet on a 22 year old with a philosophy degree to start a drug company. Empower Young people!” [[People who have done a thing should be in charge of a thing]]. ### Related * [[The more trust an institution has, the less it needs formal process]] * [[Bell Labs hired people before they had a role or expertise]] * [[Research requires more trust than other disciplines]]