
You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss - jeremynixon
http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html
======
thewarrior
But I think this is the weakest part of the article :

    
    
      "And since human nature limits the size of group that can work together, the only
      way I can imagine for larger groups to avoid tree structure would be to have no 
      structure: to have each group actually be independent, and to work together the way
      components of a market economy do."
    

There's a reason for that . Ronald Coase in his Theory of the firm explained
that the reason we don't have an arrangement like pg describes above is that

    
    
      "According to Ronald Coase, people begin to organise their production in firms 
      when the transaction cost of coordinating production through the market exchange, 
      given imperfect information, is greater than within the firm .."
    

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm)

Sometimes , I think that the zeitgeist has swung too far in favour towards
being an entrepreneur instead of working for someone and making something
awesome.

~~~
panarky
Case study: At Sears, Eddie Lampert's Warring Divisions Model Adds to the
Troubles

    
    
      Eddie Lampert’s big idea is that markets and competition rool, so
      he’s forcing the different parts of Sears to compete for resources
      just as if they were independent firms, with individual division
      profitability the only criterion for success.
    
      ...
    
      If the different divisions of Sears have no common interests,
      if the best model is competition red in tooth and claw, why should
      Sears exist at all? Why not just break it up into units that have
      no reason not to compete?
    
      For that matter, why should any large firm exist? Why not just have
      small firms, or maybe just individuals, who make deals for whatever
      they need?
    
      ...
    
      There are some things you don't want to leave up to the market — the
      market itself is telling us that, by creating islands of
      planning and hierarchy.
    

More here: [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/john-galt-and-
th...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/john-galt-and-the-theory-
of-the-firm/)

And here: [http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-
edd...](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-eddie-
lamperts-warring-divisions-model-adds-to-the-troubles)

~~~
thewarrior
My own company works this way. It's absolutely ridiculous. Each division
hoards good programmers , projects and expertise, and people sometimes get
stuck in other divisions without much work , while a few efficiently managed
divisions land all the good work , leading to all the good people in the poor
divisons leaving because they aren't growing , it's almost like working in a
different company if you're in a different division.

~~~
Retra
I am a bit mystified as to where people get the idea that competition is
fundamentally better than cooperation. The only time competition has ever done
any good is when it leads to greater cooperation.

~~~
thewarrior
That's not always true. Competition always produces better performance ,
atleast in individual activities.

~~~
deciplex
Individual activities are precisely not what we're talking about, and at any
rate you're wrong even at the level of an individual.

------
overgard
I agree with the diagnosis, but there's something important that's omitted
here: the point of a startup is to create the type of large business that PG
is advising against joining. The entire point of a startup is exponential
growth. A company that stays small is generally derided as a "lifestyle
business" and Silicon Valley investors seemingly have absolutely no interest
in funding that sort venture, even if it's more sustainable for most people.

------
Bahamut
"We've now funded so many different types of founders that we have enough data
to see patterns, and there seems to be no benefit from working for a big
company."

Can't say this has been true based on my experience so far at startups - there
are a lot of bad managers/executives out there who have no business managing a
business and the damage is probably a lot worse at a startup than at a big
company. Based on a lot of anecdotal stories from developers, this seems to be
an all too common pattern at startups.

Also, startups tend to have a bad problem unless bootstrapped - they're
beholden to their funders, who can sometimes recommend courses of actions
counter to what a good long term business should be doing, causing executives
to make bad decisions with regards to treating their employees properly.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
>they're beholden to their funders

This. Once you accept funding, you're _working for the money people._

Forget those narratives of heroic freedom. Your situation isn't really all
that different to any other corporate environment.

If the money doesn't like you as a founder, you can lose your job (at best) or
be back-stabbed out (at worst.)

And if the project isn't viable, it dies anyway. So you're still out of a job.

There's a cultural difference, in that you have more agency at the start. But
the script you follow is already written by the surrounding financial culture.

You have _no freedom at all_ to deviate from it - unless you bootstrap.

~~~
habitue
And if you bootstrap, you lose freedom in other ways. What kinds of businesses
can be bootstrapped constrains your options. The market becomes your boss, and
no amount of soft-skills or convincing arguments can change its mind.

Put that way, with investors you can say "At least my bosses are human"

(Note, I'm not saying one is better than the other in all cases, just that
"bootstrapping gives you ultimate freedom" isn't true)

------
CPLX
While I see some value in his practical insights the logic is deeply flawed. I
would much rather he just share his observations on optimal work environments
than try to explain what we are "meant" to do in some kind of incomprehensible
pseudo-science.

By precisely the same reasoning we are meant to rape women to impregnate them
and murder members of competing tribes, and are not meant to have birth
control, surgery, or a level of technological complexity in the world that is
beyond the power of any one human to fully comprehend.

~~~
couchand
Woah. It's not like he's saying "this newfangled thing is bad because it's
new", he's citing specific health and well-being effects that he has observed.
I doubt you could make the same case for rape.

------
fbrusch
_And since human nature limits the size of group that can work together, the
only way I can imagine for larger groups to avoid tree structure would be to
have no structure: to have each group actually be independent, and to work
together the way components of a market economy do._

 _That might be worth exploring. I suspect there are already some highly
partitionable businesses that lean this way. But I don 't know any technology
companies that have done it._

Isn't Valve such a company?

[http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...](http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf)

~~~
mrbgty
github too

[http://www.fastcompany.com/3020181/open-company/inside-
githu...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3020181/open-company/inside-githubs-
super-lean-management-strategy-and-how-it-drives-innovation)

~~~
swombat
And Morning Star, Zappos, Stripe, Medium, Semco, W L Gore, Whole Foods, and
others... [http://danieltenner.com/open-
cultures](http://danieltenner.com/open-cultures)

~~~
akamaka
Also, the guy who founded VISA has spent his later years putting forward ideas
on how build large organizations that still maintain the anarchic qualities
which allow independance from too much central control.

[https://books.google.ca/books/about/Birth_of_the_chaordic_ag...](https://books.google.ca/books/about/Birth_of_the_chaordic_age.html?id=osgYgo_lHp4C&hl=en)

------
Delmania
>Technology tends to separate normal from natural. Our bodies weren't designed
to eat the foods that people in rich countries eat, or to get so little
exercise. There may be a similar problem with the way we work: a normal job
may be as bad for us intellectually as white flour or sugar is for us
physically.

It's not technology, it's society. The notion of "working from 9 to 5 until
65" is a relatively recent construct brought on by the industrial revolution.
There's a great section on this in the book Your Money or Your Life. If you
read some of the literature of the times, there was a period in which some
authors and thinkers started saying that people would have more leisure time,
and thus be more creative. Industrialists didn't like this since it limited
productivity and the potential for growth. Moralists didn't like this, since
they believed idle hands lead to trouble. A massive campaign was waged to get
society to buy into the concepts that growth (not sustainability) is needed,
and that productivity is important. This also coincided with the growth of
consumerism, as people started thinking they needed more stuff.

~~~
markbnj
>> It's not technology, it's society. The notion of "working from 9 to 5 until
65" is a relatively recent construct brought on by the industrial revolution.

I'll buy this if by "brought on by the industrial revolution" you mean
"demanded by organized workers in response to the excesses of the industrial
revolution." If it weren't for unions I don't think the 40 hour work week
would be anything like the norm.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
If not for unions it would be 'work from 7 to 7 until dead.'

------
falcolas
Sure, because no hunter/gatherer tribes had a chief, medicine woman or other
revered person who both gave direction to their tribe, and to whom the tribe
was responsible.

A pretty weak argument against bosses. Humans naturally tend to form
hierarchies - the boss is simply one node in that hierarchy.

That some people thrive in such positions doesn't mean it's our natural state.

~~~
astazangasta
Humans don't naturally form hierarchies. At least I don't always look to an
authority figure to tell me what to do. I usually want independence and
creative space, along with the advice and aid of knowledgeable colleagues. I
chafe under the yoke of arbitrary authority.

But maybe I'm not human.

~~~
habitue
You're human, but you're not _all_ humans. I think people have a continuum of
attitudes on what they're willing to trade autonomy for. I've met a lot of
people who are happy to have someone tell them what to do, because it means
they don't need to figure it out for themselves. That's not bad, it's sort of
a necessary ingredient of working together that some people need to be more
willing to follow than to lead.

~~~
astazangasta
I think people confuse division of labor with hierarchy. The former means
other people make decisions I don't care to. The latter means others tell me
what to do and are acknowledged as my superiors.

~~~
habitue
Yes, this is true. There's definitely a difference between "this guy is making
strategic decisions and interfacing with the rest of the company on my behalf"
and "this guy is my superior and should be paid more than me". Unfortunately,
the bosses make the salary decisions, so it just sort of falls out of that

------
cma
There was a lot of this going on:
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature)

------
glaberficken
_" (...) a large organization could only avoid slowing down if they avoided
tree structure (...) I suspect there are already some highly partitionable
businesses that lean this way. But I don't know any technology companies that
have done it."_

Isn't this what Valve has done?

------
dagw
_we are clearly not meant to work in groups of several hundred. And yet—for
reasons having more to do with technology than human nature—a great many
people work for companies with hundreds or thousands of employees._

The size of the company has little relation with the size of the groups you
work in. I've worked for a couple of companies with around 8-10k employees and
a couple more with around 1000 employees, and all those cases I've always
worked in groups of 2-20.

Also, having a (good) boss is great. They handle all the shit work (like sales
and customer relations) and run interference so that you can do you real job.

------
amelius
> Another thing you notice when you see animals in the wild is that each
> species thrives in groups of a certain size.

This is another reason why we should really limit companies to a maximum size.
Other reasons are that companies should not become too big to fail, and that
smaller companies lead to a more modular economy, where one company uses the
outputs of several other companies, instead of having a few MegaCorps with an
opaque, internal economy.

~~~
nhaehnle
_smaller companies lead to a more modular economy_

This is a very interesting point, which I would extend to saying that it might
lead to a more _resilient_ economy.

The trouble is, scale is such a powerful thing. When you look at industries
like the automobile industry, or even inside technology the chip industry, you
appreciate that. It's hard to imagine modern fabs being run by groups of less
than 100 people, for example. (Interestingly, this is something that might
change in the extremely long run as production technology matures.)

~~~
dropit_sphere
There's an argument to be made for larger companies in terms of resilience:
they will usually be able to absorb more risk. Modularity of small companies
is good for if they fail, but I suspect they are more likely to fail. I don't
have an opinion one way or another, just musing.

------
lazyant
You always have a "boss", either the regular one you report to in a company or
if you are the founder/owner/CEO of a company it will be your clients, your
board or stockholders. Also having a good boss that shields your from the BS
may be better than no boss at all.

------
musesum
Animal analogy is interesting. Any animals that cultivate crops? Are there any
Human hunter/gatherer societies that scaled?

Here's a snippet of dialog from one of my favorite movies:

Jeremiah Johnson: You wouldn't happen to know what month of the year it is?

Bear Claw: Why no, I truly wouldn't. I'm sorry, pilgrim. Winter's a long time
going?

Jeremiah Johnson: [exhausted] Ah.

Bear Claw: Stays long this high.

Jeremiah Johnson: March. Maybe, April.

Bear Claw: March maybe. I don't believe April. [rising to depart] March is a
green muddy month down below, some folks like it, FARMERS mostly.

\---

Recently, a company that I worked at was acquired. Felt like like farming. So,
I bailed; hunting for something new.

~~~
joshuapants
> Are there any Human hunter/gatherer societies that scaled?

I'm not aware of any, and I think that it would be impossible. You can't
really achieve a lot of density with hunting and gathering because before long
you've hunted and gathered everything around you at a rate beyond which those
natural resources can regenerate. Thence cometh agriculture.

------
gress
We aren't meant to have bosses, but we are social animals who are meant to
work in groups. Groups often _do_ need leaders who are able to synthesize a
path that is mutually beneficial and help people to work in concert.

The problem is that we have developed economic structures that make it hard
for individuals to reject bosses who are not leaders.

------
jleyank
pg said: "We've now funded so many different types of founders that we have
enough data to see patterns, and there seems to be no benefit from working for
a big company."

I assume he's funding companies in the States? One of the bigger advantages of
working for a large(r) company is health insurance. Or do all of Y
Combinator's startups have good health insurance?

And as others have written, things involving "stuff" tend to need to scale.
This might not be a problem in that pg might be confining his remarks to
software startups, not things like engineering or science companies?

The odd thing, is that many bloggers have written that while it's great to do
a startup, it's crap to work for one. So if it's crap to work for a startup
AND for a larger company, I guess everything will be done in groups of 2-4
people?!

------
averiosus
_Financing a startup with debt is usually a stupid move._

Why? Isn't that better than giving away equity, assuming that you actually
believe your company will reach multi-billions in valuation in the future?

~~~
Spooky23
Debt is a bond, and your creditors have priority for payment. Creditors
generally adopt a "FU, pay me". So you end up burning hard cash to make your
payments + interest.

An equity investor theoretically has an interest in the enterprise actually
succeeding.

------
known
It's
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triarchy_%28theory%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triarchy_%28theory%29)

------
pinaceae
oh my.

let's look at animals again, shall we. ants? bees? any form of colony or
swarm? penguins? birds all over?

cherry pick examples to fit a narrative, nicely worded but utterly wrong.

for some things small and nimble is best. for other things, like flying to the
moon or producing hardware scale is needed.

you don't like big corp environments? fine. but just like being a vegan it is
a choice, not an absolute truth.

