
You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss - helwr
http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html
======
quanticle
You weren't meant to have a boss. You also weren't meant to read, work on
computers, drive cars, fly, or even practice agriculture. Its very easy to
criticize any modern institution on the grounds of, "Our H. Erectus ancestors
didn't do it, so it must be unnatural." Rather than snark about how the
phenomenon is bosses is somehow unnatural and antithetical to human existence,
why don't we work on creating institutions that preserve the advantages of
having a boss while ameliorating the disadvantages?

~~~
wpietri
I think the difference there is that books, computers, cars, and planes are
tools that one can choose to work with, rather than a system that one has to
work within. More briefly: you use tools, but hierarchical power structures
use you.

And it's worth noting that Graham is working on creating alternatives (
_coughycombinatorcough_ ), so your grumping seems a little out of place.

~~~
alf
Humans also weren't meant to build pyramids, send men to the moon, or write
operating systems. Big organizations are needed for big problems. But I do
generally agree with the article that big organizations are not the best place
to develop as a programmer.

~~~
pg
_Big organizations are needed for big problems._

The jury is still out on that one. The trend lately has been in the other
direction.

~~~
alf
By "big" I mean problems that require many distinct, intelligent decisions.
These problems always has and always will require very large groups of people
working cooperatively. For example, the Apollo program at it's peak employed
34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 contractors [1]. This is really a point of
semantics though, not really worth debating.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA>

~~~
iamwil
We only need that many people because our tools weren't sufficiently advanced
at the time. We had to invent a lot of things on the fly there.

~~~
Uchikoma
So today this could be done by 2 founders without bosses? (the topic of this
thread)

~~~
mattmanser
Eventually, yes.

For example right now a duo are preparing to do a manned space flight, which
would have been unthinkable 30 years ago.

<http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/>

<http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/personel.php>

~~~
Uchikoma
Me: This works with 2 people. You: Yes, look, here they do it with 22 people.

2 of them are described as "Lead" which is contrary to the point you want to
make: "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss."

Additionally the problem of putting someone in space is different from putting
someone on the moon and back again.

------
mannicken
There's just one thing about this article that makes me feel eerie. It sounds
like a piece of propaganda. PG tries evoking an emotional response out of the
reader, pulling some random unsupported facts out of nowhere, like a religious
preacher who'll do anything to support his point of view. What doesn't help is
that since he's an investor, he is directly profiting from people working for
rates below market rates and making it big. Nothing wrong with that. But
still. Eerie.

" The root of the problem is that humans weren't meant to work in such large
groups." WHOA! really? I mean, I don't disagree but this is a fairly huge
statement. He should back it up or <every intelligent reader> will assume that
he's holding them for idiots.

"I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I'd only
seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly
lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They're like
different animals. " Oh, no! I'm not an animal! And if I am, I'm certainly the
WILD TIGER FROM THE JUNGLE rather than a zoo-domesticated kitten. I SHOULD
QUIT RIGHT NOW.

Again, very broad connection. Full-time employees are nothing like zoo
animals. They can leave any time they want, for one.

The question is -- did PG ever work at a big company like
Microsoft/Google/etc? Hard to tell from the article. Perhaps PG's intense
imagination caused him to believe certain things are true while in reality
they're illusions.

"It's the job equivalent of the pizza they had for lunch. " This smells.
Smells bad. This would be a lot better and believable:

I worked at <a huge company> and it sucked. I spent most of my time figuring
out how to impress my boss and come to the office on time, and how to log my
hours properly. When I quit because it got unbearable, I realized that my
logging-hours-properly skills and and getting-to-the-office-on-time skills are
unmarketable, and quite frankly, a bunch of bullshit.

~~~
dgallagher
I've always felt that PG uses his essays to flesh out ideas, thinking out
loud. By putting it out there, others' can question things and draw their own
conclusions (plus they provide a feedback loop). It's like overhearing a
really intelligent person talking at a bar; you don't have to agree with
everything they say, and they might be wrong, but it does get you thinking...

His usage of metaphors paints a more vivid picture of the point he's trying to
get across. If you read enough of his essays, you begin to adhere to this
tone. Interpreting the metaphors literally would be the equivalent of doing
the same towards sarcasm. But like a sarcastic person you just met, it can
take some time to figure them out and "really" understand what they're saying.

PG did work for Yahoo after they acquired ViaWeb in the late 90's. He doesn't
mention this in most essays, so it's understandable to question that here.

~~~
mannicken
I have to admit I wanted to spice things a bit, playing devil's advocate on
purpose. Make the discussion more interesting by challenging status quo and
see if it holds up.

~~~
dgallagher
Ah ha. Fun fun! :)

------
techiferous
What if you agree with this article, you _do_ feel constrained in an unhealthy
way by your job in a large organization, but you don't feel that leaving for a
small company or startup is an option (or at least not an option anytime
soon)?

Well, here's a coping skill that can help you. Focus on doing your duty as
well as you can, regardless of the context.

In other words, imagine your boss says that the web app must be written in C++
for political reasons, and you cannot convince him to switch to Ruby on Rails,
and you just _know_ that the project would die a slow painful death if written
in C++. Well, supposing you are correct, you are in a crappy job: constrained
to do the wrong thing and with a boss that cannot be convinced otherwise. And
for whatever reason you've got to stick it out through this project.

Focus on being the _best_ C++ web developer in the world. Do the absolute best
job you can on the tasks that are assigned to you. Throw yourself into your
work 110%. But to do this you have to shift your point of view. You cannot
think about this as "wasted effort" since you know the project will ultimately
fail. You must think about this as training. You are putting your mind through
intense training, keeping your skills sharp, so that when the opportunity
finally does come to leave your job (or perhaps a new boss comes along), your
mind is in top form and ready to go. Sure, you've probably acquired some less
than useful skills for web development (managing pointers) but you've probably
acquired and maintained some very good transferrable skills.

Whatever you do, don't give up, because then your skills will atrophy.

~~~
alexro
Or alternatively I'd do this: spend as low energy on this absurd project as
you can, read about new stuff at your work if you can and grow your normal
skills at home. Have a project on a side, help real people to solve real
problems. Have no pity when you leave this boss and the company behind.

~~~
parfe
>spend as low energy on this absurd project as you can, read about new stuff
at your work if you can and grow your normal skills at home

If you were any good you'd solve the problem the absurd project was created to
solve. Instead you can't solve it so you pretend to be elite by "learning"
rather than doing.

~~~
a3_nm
Your boss tells you to solve the project using the wrong tools. Maybe you
would be able to solve it with the right tools, but you're being denied the
possibility.

------
mindcrime
_Or rather, a large organization could only avoid slowing down if they avoided
tree structure. 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._

This is the most interesting bit in the whole article, to me. I honestly
believe firms can be organized like this, and probably should be organized
like this. Interestingly, there was a book that I read a few months ago.. I
_think_ it was this one ([http://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Enterprise-Sense-
Respond-Orga...](http://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Enterprise-Sense-Respond-
Organizations/dp/0875848745)) that argued for something similar, and went into
a lot of depth about how it could be done.

~~~
pg
Me too. But the organization doesn't have to be a "firm" in the usual sense...

~~~
mindcrime
True, and I'll admit to being lazy in my use of language there. I'm using
"firm" and "organization" as though they were completely synonymous. That need
not be the case, of course, depending on whose definition of "firm" you use.

Anyway, I find it interesting that Coase argued that firms exist to mitigate
transaction costs resulting from imperfect information... and then Downes &
Mui argued that digital technology would reduce transaction costs to a point
of eliminating the need for large firms, creating what they called "The Law of
Diminishing Firms."

So far we haven't seen big corporations fading away, but I still come down on
the side of an eventual transition to networks of collaborating (smaller)
entities displacing some of the bigger firms.

------
dkokelley
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=you+weren%2...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=you+weren%27t+meant+to+have+a+boss)

How is it that this article is getting reposted? It's a great article, I know.
But couldn't the HN community submit and upvote new and current articles?
Wouldn't the community be better served by this? I suppose if enough members
haven't seen it then the upvotes and front page placement are a net gain, but
please don't let this stuff rise to the top just because pg wrote it. If it
must stay up here, let it be because users who have not read the article prior
find value in it.

/self-righteous rant

~~~
coderdude
The weird thing is how selective HN is about duplicate articles. I've
submitted things just to find out they were originally posted up to 3 years
ago after it redirects me to the submission. A PG essay can be resubmitted,
same URL and title, without issue at least several times (as the HN search
link shows).

I'd love to know how HN goes about deciding which content is OK to resubmit
over and over again.

~~~
colonelxc
It keeps track of the sites in memory. That means if the machine gets kicked,
old urls can be submitted again.

It is also just simple URL based limitations, adding some bogus parameters to
a url, or a hash, would be enough to get around it.

I don't know the specifics of the algo, but it may also add sites to its cache
if someone visits one of the old comments pages, which could make it look more
sporadic and picky.

------
masto
People who are successful by accident sometimes develop a tendency to preach
that the only way to be successful is to do what they did. It's almost like a
kind of auto-cargo-cultism. "I had a pear tree in my front yard when I made my
first million, so if you want to be rich, go out and plant pear trees!" Paul
Graham is one of the better examples of this phenomenon. I would say he's gone
off the deep end, but from what I can tell he's always been there. Of course
there are nuggets of wisdom in his large accumulation of writing, but they're
much fewer and further between than, for example, Joel Spolsky.

Also, could people stop spouting nonsense about what "humans weren't designed"
to do or eat?

------
Gormo
This concept relates to a thought that I've had for a while regarding why
large organizations always seem so inefficient and tend toward stagnation.

In a small group, _formal_ rules and processes exist as layers of abstraction
built on top of a substantive social context established by the complex
interactions among the individual members. All of the cues, feedback
mechanisms, and communication channels inherent in human nature are in full
effect, and these usually generate appropriate and efficient responses to
changing circumstances in real time.

But once you've gone beyond a certain level of scale, those mechanisms no
longer function, and the more natural, emergent social context no longer forms
a consistent substantive base layer. The rules and processes that originally
existed as an abstraction layer instead become the lowest available level of
complexity; and since these rules are the product not merely of design, but of
design that originally took place within constraints that are no longer
present, the formal rules are usually quite insufficient as a substitute.

Even those who recognize this problem at this point can do little about it,
because there's no longer a workable context in which to generate and
implement a solution. It may only be possible to avoid in advance by being
very deliberate in the process of scaling, and building the organization as a
'confederation' of smaller groups divided along natural functional 'seams'.

This phenomenon may actually be more evident in politics than in business.

------
alexro
The food analogy is ingenious. Like junk food kills my real hunger and makes
me a less active hunter/farmer, so the "junk" job makes me want to learn less
and keeps me with safe choices.

Both in the not so long term destroy me as a competitive creature.

~~~
Sandman
Hmm. I don't know, I started some of my own projects precisely because what I
did at work was not intellectually satisfying. The boredom of working on
mundane things made me want to do something new and innovative (well, at least
new and innovative to me) in my spare time. So I'd say it really depends on a
person rather than a job. If you want to learn you'll learn.

------
justinhj
There's a really great book written by an anthropologist living with a group
of pygmies in the Congo. They literally have no leader. Very interesting and a
similar vibe to that of PG's lion
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forest_People>

------
ww520
Whether you meant to have a boss or not, one thing I notice when working for
myself is this - absolute creative freedom. There is no boss to tell you to
finish a project you don't like. There's no boss to tell you to start a
project on someone else's idea. There's no boss to tell you to use a certain
technology or tool. If you want to suspend a project to pursue another one, no
one would stop you. You have complete control over your creative process.

~~~
georgemcbay
Complete control over your creative process often results in the Star Wars
prequels (or worse). Overrated!

Cleverly working around limitations on your freedom is where the real art is.

------
wccrawford
While I disagree with the title (even in the hunter-gatherer days there was
always a leader), I agree with the theory that people work better in smaller
groups. I actually thought the number was more like 4-6, but 8 is pretty close
to that.

I was actually just remarking about that the other day when enumerating some
advantages that startups and other small companies have over large ones.

------
jleyank
quanticle says it well, but I wanted to add that some things require a scale
that's unavailable to "a small bunch of guys". Say, for example, you'd like to
cure a disease. Can't be done on the small, as you need various flavors of lab
people, slugs of lab hardware and then a number of suits required to get
$COUNTRY approval.

You can do this, I guess, with outsourcing (assuming you can protect the IP),
but then you need even more $$ to get people to do what you want - doubt
they'll work for equity.

In short, there are good large companies and bad large companies (as I suspect
they are good/bad small companies and startups). Hunter/gatherer people had no
excess capacity, so you died if you couldn't keep up. It's a nicer society
when there's sufficient scale to tolerate old, expert or otherwise non-
critical path people.

This goes with life as well as work.

------
kennystone
I agree with this article. What I find strange, however, is how he implies
silicon valley is the normal way for humans to act, and yet the default way to
do business there is to take huge amounts of venture capital. VC results in
all sorts of restrictions employees and an impetus for the company to
radically grow into the kind of large, unnatural company he's writing about.
"Come to y-combinator to act more human so you can build a less human company
if you're really successful!" The 37signals style relaxation bootstrapped
business, however, well that seems to fit much better.

------
Sandman
This is article is really not so much against bosses per se as it is against
large companies. But it seems to me that even small startups, if they are
successful, grow into large companies with strongly defined structure and
teams, and team leaders (or bosses, if you prefer that term).. and there's
really not much that can be done about it. It's just natural - if you grow,
you need to change your organizational structure. If there's 500 people in
your company you can't pretend to be a small startup consisting of 5. You need
to accept the fact that you've grown large and act accordingly. That means
having a structure that's suitable to your current size.

Although this article idealizes the romantic picture of a small creative,
innovative startup that disrupts large behemoth-like businesses, the fact is
that most game-changing startups these days are, in fact, middle-to-large
companies. Facebook has over 2000 employees. LinkedIn, 1000 in 2010. Groupon
reportedly has over 3000 people in 29 countries [1]. The exception here is
Twitter which only has about 450. If you want to be big, you got to grow big,
and once that happens you got your teams, and bosses and so on.

But I disagree with the statement that big companies necessarily stifle your
creativity. Google, for example, is a great example of a company that actually
fosters creativity. As for not being able to learn as much working in a large
company as working in a startup.. Well, I'd say it really depends on the
company and people there. I learned a lot from my mentors at my first job
working as an intern at a large company, and I would definitely say that, if
anything, it made me a better developer.

[1] <http://www.businessinsider.com/3000-people-in-29-countries>

------
hxf148
I am leaving a full time and very good IT job with the federal government at
the end of August. I don't have a super solid alternative income lined up but
I am going after my dreams and that feels right. Having several layers of
management and "bosses" has been so wrong for me in the last decade that it
began to affect my health.

------
callmeed
I recall reading about Dunbar's Number in a Gladwell book.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number>

I'm curious if this jives with what pg is saying about group size–or am I
comparing apples and pears?

------
zipdog
Small companys have an advantage, but the potential influence of a large
organisation suggests that there's a great benefit in size if you can
effectively overcome the natural tendency toward stagnation through a tree
structure.

I think technology can certainly help an organisation work effectively
together with weaker integration, but ultimately a huge portion of it will be
culture and personality.

Developing effective technology that assists in the development of the right
sort of culture for a fluid, large organisation would be an interesting
challenge. I think it might address the same sort of things that 'team
building' exercises and retreats usually spectacularly fail at.

------
ececconi
I think Paul makes some great points in this article. One thing he might
overlook, however, is that people can have great mentors even in large
organizations. Freedom is great and all, but is it really detrimental to work
in a large organization? There is a reason that the organization as a whole is
still around. Not everybody has the ability nor drive to run wild, come up
with brand new ideas, and be revolutionary straight out of college.

~~~
kevingadd
I think the insidious thing about large organizations is not a lack of freedom
or an inability to exercise your creative muscles.

The insidious thing the large organization teaches you is that this is how
things operate, and that a successful career means never having freedom and
never exercising your creative muscles on a succession of larger and larger
projects for a larger salary, so that you can buy a house you can't afford
that's just barely close enough to the office but still so far that it takes
you two hours to get to work.

If someone decides they want to trade freedom and creativity for job security
and a stable paycheck, that's perfectly fine, as long as they're making the
decision. If your first job out of college is an entry-level gig at a bigco
that you barely managed to get, 8 years of inertia later you'll be coasting
along at some mid-level position at a bigco, doing basically the same things.
Inertia combined with the peer pressure of seeing everyone else doing what
you're doing can be a powerful thing.

------
etruong42
What are we "meant" to do? Some people enjoy the active lifestyle full of
exercise and unprocessed foods. Others don't mind eating whatever is
convenient and enjoy other pursuits. Some don't even have the choice and would
be (presumably) happier with either.

We can talk about what diet leads to greater cardiovascular health or what
employment strategy is more productive. But trying to talk about something as
amorphous as having more "meaning" is a lost cause.

------
scythe
>It's not only the leaves who suffer. The constraint propagates up as well as
down. So managers are constrained too; instead of just doing things, they have
to act through subordinates.

<http://orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/english/e_eleph>

------
giaskaylee
PG offered some intriguing and keen insight with this article.

Think of YC as a company, and all the YC-founded startups as tiny, self-
governing units under this big brand, you'll come to realize that despite the
company lacks any form of management and a real boss _in the traditional
sense_ , it's working well and profitable.

------
adnanymously
Humans as small groups have always had a leader. And that leader in earlier
times was the guy who was most powerful. When bosses are actually capable of
being a boss (in terms of their ability), we're okay with it. It's only the
dumb boss that irritates.

------
rimmjob
didn't the prehistoric groups of our ancestors probably have some kind of
leader or hierarchy?

------
nfriedly
> [1] When I talk about humans being meant or designed to live a certain way,
> I mean by evolution.

Do you think that humans will eventually evolve to work better in larger
groups if they keep getting pushed that way?

------
paulnelligan
I'm presuming that Lions in the wild have a far greater chance of death and
injury as well - a good reason to stay in the zoo perhaps ?

Eitherway, good luck to us all!

------
jscore
Really? I know plenty of people that aren't meant to be bosses and need
someone else to guide them.

Not everyone is cut out to be a CEO or President, etc.

------
derrida
The suit is back.

EDIT: Reference -> <http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

