
Why we removed bosses at Treehouse - samscully
http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-removed-bosses-at-treehouse
======
pc86
EDIT: One of my points was mistaken. See the end.

I've seen this is several posts of Ryan's and it continues to bother me (from
Part 3 of the linked series):

> _Everyone is hired at Treehouse at an industry-standard salary level that
> matches their job description. Most of our team is distributed and outside
> of expensive outlier markets (like Silicon Valley or NYC)._

> _The only way to get a salary increase is by performing consistently well in
> reviews. We don’t have a profit-sharing plan or bonuses (other than the
> sales team which has a traditional sales team bonus structure)._

To me this is a way to pay people as little as possible. The "industry-
standard salary" for a position like developer increases year over year by
more than the rate of inflation. But without even standard cost-of-living
increases, it sounds like working at Treehouse for any measurable about of
time will put you in a worse financial position than if you bounced around.

EDIT: It seems they do offer cost-of-living adjustments but only for employees
who are performing well (not that I'm advocating giving raises to poorly
performing employees, but we're talking about 1-2% to cover inflation here).

~~~
jburwell
You need to have two increases annually. The first is an market/cost of living
adjustment that person's salary increases commensurate with prevailing market.
To my mind, this adjustment always works in favor of the employee. Therefore,
if the market actually paid less for a job this year than last, then the
employee would receive no adjustment. All employees receive these adjustments
no exceptions.

The second is a merit increase based on their performance. This increase is
analogous to a traditional raise. An employee may or may not receive a merit
raise based on the incentive system the company has put in place.

Waiting to address poor performance until annual reviews is a horrendous anti-
pattern. When an employee is performing poorly, it should be addressed as soon
as it is identified. Therefore, a poor performance review should never be a
surprise to anyone. Provided that the poor performance did not emerge near the
end of the annual review cycle, truly poor performance reviews should be rare
because the issue should have been resolved (either by the person correcting
the problem or the company and the person parting ways).

~~~
loceng
So in a bubble market where salaries are potentially inflated, and then the
market crashes, yet salaries stay the same? Isn't this a problem?

~~~
pc86
Realistically it’s hard to peg a salary to “market rate,” particularly when
one has gotten merit-based raises on top of that. I think all employees should
get a cost-of-living adjustment, tagged to inflation. So if inflation is 3% in
a year, everyone gets 3% right off the bat.

I’m torn in that I think the flip-side makes perfect sense. If there is 1%
deflation, why shouldn’t employees’ wages be cut by 1% across the board? At
the same time I feel that’s the quickest way to see half your development team
leave, even though we’re talking about less than the cost of a nice dinner
each month.

In an environment where the market crashes and it dramatically affects revenue
for a business, everything has to be on the table, from layoffs to hiring and
raise freezes to voluntary cuts in pay (often to save the job). If you make
$100k a year at “market rate” and there’s a huge crash, and you’re given the
opportunity to cut your own pay to $80k or try to get a job for $60-90k, what
do you do? It’s a tough call for anyone.

~~~
webjprgm
If there was a 1% decline, would it work to not adjust pay but record this
negative inflation so that next year if it's +2% then the employees only get
+1% raises? If the economy continues to go down then this won't work, but it
would handle a short bump fairly without actually reducing anyone's pay. Would
people still leave?

~~~
pc86
Why is it expected to get inflation-based increases with deflation-based
reductions?

------
r0h1n
While I hope this continues to work out for Treehouse, I'm not sure I agree
with Ryan's problem statement:

 _" In my experience, managers’ responsibilities were … \- Communicating
messages from top to bottom \- Settling disputes \- Managing careers \-
Keeping their teams motivated and happy \- Shielding their teams from things
they didn’t think they needed to know"_

I think that's a pretty narrow definition of management, esp. things like
"communicating messages from top to bottom".

While I don't disagree with the fact that a significant component of
management, esp. large parts of middle management, can be done away with, I
don't think any reasonably complex and growing organization can do away with
management altogether.

A great manager (who may also play a part as an individual contributor) can
channel & amplify an organization's creativity and innovation. S/he will also
ensure there is an alignment b/w the organization's high level strategies and
the individual contributions being made.

Much as we'd like to think that tech workers are unusually self-motivated or
that online tools can fully substitute people management, in my experience
neither are the complete truth.

Further reading:

\- How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management: [http://hbr.org/2013/12/how-
google-sold-its-engineers-on-mana...](http://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-
its-engineers-on-management) \- The Flattened Firm—Not as Advertised:
[http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7000.html](http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7000.html) \-
Be a Minimally Invasive Manager: [http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/be-a-minimally-
invasive-manager...](http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/be-a-minimally-invasive-
manager/)

Fair disclosure: I'm an MBA...biases, warts and all.

~~~
lmg643
I love the Treehouse article. 90% of the employees voted for it. The 10% who
did not were the managers. :)

I wonder if any managers voted for it; or it any employees voted against it. I
would be curious to hear from the displaced Treehouse managers as to what they
think about the move. Maybe they were already doing fiefdom building and
things that are orthogonal to the founder's vision.

I would also love to hear a follow up a year from now from an anonymous
employee or two as to how it worked out.

nb. I did read the article from HBR on Google and managers - while I found it
compelling, I also had to wonder whether HBS needs articles like that in their
publication to ease the conscience of their students and alumni about the
value of their degree and their utility to the companies they work for.

~~~
solidspace
I was one of those Treehouse managers and I voted for it. Still very happy
that I did. :)

~~~
thoughtpalette
What does your role at the company pivot into?

~~~
solidspace
It's really not as different as everyone is assuming. Fewer meetings, which is
good. :) I wasn't demoted, everyone else was promoted, in a way. Anyone can be
a leader. So I'm still leading, it's just on smaller teams and on more focused
projects that change more frequently. I'm better able to apply my talents
where they're needed from day to day.

~~~
thoughtpalette
Sounds like a challenging and rewarding transition :}

------
confluence
You'd be surprised how fast rank gets pulled when the money stops flowing.
Management structure is basically irrelevant at a company that's doing well.
It's only under stress that you understand why the military has a strict
hierarchical structure. It's to prevent organizational collapse under
extraordinary conditions.

~~~
toadi
In the military you are trained to go into extraordinary conditions. The
reasons for this exercise is to stay out of the extraordinary 'issues'.

------
ChuckMcM
I find it interesting that this starts with : _As we added more people to the
team, we noticed something disconcerting: rumors, politics and complaints
started appearing._

This suggests that Ryan has confused "leadership" with "management". Good
leadership means that people are all working to the same goals, good
management means that people are working efficiently.

If you want to fix rumors, cliques, and back stabbing. Look to your
leadership. If you want to get more done with the same number of people look
to your managers.

~~~
goldvine
If you want to fix rumors, cliques, and back stabbing...it's not a leadership
problem.

It's a people problem! Hire better people that won't engage in petty crap like
that...

~~~
crygin
It's been my experience that those negative social phenomena are emergent with
any sufficiently large group of people. You need structural components in
place to prevent them, or you need to not grow.

~~~
goldvine
I'd rather not grow ;-)

~~~
alttab
So youd rather fail? Or stay lifestyle?

------
dingaling
Part 2 discusses more about forming projects and clarifies that whilst there
are no 'formal' managers to cajole people into doing things, there still need
to be 'sticks' to hold groups together.

[http://ryancarson.com/post/61606695537/how-to-set-
priorities...](http://ryancarson.com/post/61606695537/how-to-set-priorities-
create-budgets-and-do-project)

I think it's interesting that beneath the tagline of 'people work on whatever
they want' there is actually an expectation that peer pressure will prevent
this; once you're onboard with a project, you are expected to stay and
contribute otherwise you will be penalised in your quarterly reviews. So
manager-in-person has been replaced with manager-in-peers.

This is also the means by which people are discouraged from working on solo
projects; since no-one can really rate them at review time, they'll slip down
the rankings.

As usual, however, no discussion about how boring regulatory things are done.

Edit: actually that last statement was incorrect, sorry . If there is such a
need then management is imposed:

 _There isn’t any top-down prioritization (unless we are required by law to
act on an issue or some “red alert” type work is required, which should be
rare)_

~~~
adventureloop
I would imagine if the solo project benefited peers greatly, they could still
score well in the peer review. Think of someone building a powerful internal
tool.

It does mean that any endeavor that doesn't produce quickly would be a bad
candidate for a solo project.

------
corry
I initially felt positive about this -- and I don't doubt that it's working
for them -- but I have the nagging feeling that there would be a break in the
accountability chain.

I can imagine a board meeting where an investors asks "so why are you behind
on your customer growth this quarter?" and one of the founders says "no one at
the company thought those projects were worth doing this quarter, and we're
only 'guides' to the planning process so we can't ensure that something like
that gets done."

Or a customer asks "why didn't you patch that security hole that we knew about
last quarter?" \- "no-one thought that project was as worthwhile doing this
quarter as a bunch of cool but ultimately less-valuable features, and we are
only 'guides' to the planning process so we can't ensure that something like
that gets done."

There has to be someone setting specific overall goals and being accountable
for hitting them. (Edit: at least if I was an investor / customer / employee
of the company, I'd feel better if that was in place)

I'd be curious to hear more about how that's handled!

~~~
andreaja
It's feels great to be able to blame managers when something goes wrong, but
that's the only real difference between having or not having your
'accountability chain'. And if your company is structured to have someone to
blame when things go wrong, you're not really building for success.

I get that everyone is afraid of prioritization going out the window without
managers, but in my experience (and ymmv), managers are no better than
productives at prioritizing. Grown-ups are used to taking responsibility.

------
mseebach
This is a link-baity title. They have clearly not done away with "bosses", as
the two co-founders clearly are and remain bosses. They have just decided that
between the two co-founders, they don't need _more_ management, they can rely
on self-management, which is completely sensible.

~~~
humanrebar
As long as someone is handing out performance reviews, bonuses, and raises,
there are bosses. This obviously includes the people with the checkbooks, but
it also includes the advisers, formal and informal.

------
at-fates-hands
Its interesting as someone who's worked at two companies and run four others,
I'm surprised he missed one of the most basic jobs of a manager:

Sets objectives. The manager sets goals for the group, and decides what work
needs to be done to meet those goals.

Also, when you have a flat structure, what incentives are there for people to
aspire to anything other what they're doing now??

While I can appreciate his leap of faith, I'm not sure this will work out long
term.

~~~
falcolas
I agree with you about missing a basic job.

> Also, when you have a flat structure, what incentives are there for people
> to aspire to anything other what they're doing now??

However, I feel that this makes the mistake of believing that the only way
people want to ever grow is into management. For myself, this is absolutely
not the case. There really do need to be other ways to grow other than into
management.

~~~
webjprgm
Personally I do not want to grow into "management" because I don't want the
job of managing people and careers. But I do want to grow into guiding product
direction and picking my own projects. At most companies those two are linked.
The more tenure/respect you have the more you can influence managers, but the
managers still have ultimate say on the product direction.

Because of this I keep thinking about whether it would be worth the hassle of
being a manager just so I could have the control I want.

It also makes being a startup (co-)founder very appealing because I'd be much
more involved in what development gets done. Except then it would add even
more overhead on top of managing people, since co-founders also manage
finances, legal, PR, and take on risk.

I agree there needs to be a better way for people to grow. That's why I'm
interested in flat structure experiments.

~~~
at-fates-hands
>> I agree there needs to be a better way for people to grow. That's why I'm
interested in flat structure experiments.

I worked at a startup who got bought by a large corporation. We had already
had a flat structure:

Manager

Team Lead

Senior Developer

Developer

As soon as you moved to Senior Developer, your development ceased. Which lead
to essentially a flat structure for developers since most didn't want to go
into management. The only option was to quit - which happened frequently and
increased turn over.

This lead to another crisis of how to give developers a role besides
management to aspire to. They came up with two roles. One was a "research and
development" role and the other was an "application development" role.

This lead to another crisis. When you have a large team of developers and only
two roles to aspire to - you again have another flat structure. Too many
people for too few spots put them right back where they started. If you didn't
get an "R&D" or "App Dev" spot, developers got frustrated and left. It created
more politics and backstabbing and "cliques". If you knew the manager, you got
preferential treatment to get into these now prized roles. It actually created
more problems than it solved.

In order to get around this, you have to build a hierarchy structure, not just
new roles. This include title changes as well as increase in pay, increase in
responsibilities, etc. You can give developers a non-management track, but it
as to be structured, and give people a sense they are achieving their goals
and not feeling like they're being marginalized or just another cog in the
wheel.

This is why I'm not sure flat structures will work. When you reduce the
ceiling of achievement for everybody, what else is there to look forward to?

~~~
vellum
That's not really "flat" in the sense that the OP is describing it. What he's
talking about is restructuring a company to look more like an FOSS project.
You have the project maintainers (c-level team) that set the goals. They sign
off on all subprojects that are aligned with those goals and have enough
people who want to work on them. The subprojects are run the same way, with
people deciding what to hack on, in a way that is aligned with the goals, plus
has support of the other team members.

The situation you described has all the crappiness of a corporate hierarchy,
but none of the promises of meritocracy ("work hard and advance"). From the
programmer’s perspective, he’s stuck both in rank and in skill.

Contrast this with the FOSS model, which creates the feeling that he’s working
on something, versus working for someone. He can work on whatever project he’s
interested in, or create a new one if it has enough traction. Since he’s not
going into management, that leaves him with advancing in either depth or
breadth. He can advance in depth by choosing to work on something that
challenges his skill level. Or he can advance in depth by working on new
technology or in a new area (e.g. frontend vs. backend).

~~~
at-fates-hands
>> He can work on whatever project he’s interested in, or create a new one if
it has enough traction.

Just to play Devils Advocate here, but what happens if everybody wants to work
on the same project? And this same developer doesn't have enough traction for
other projects he would like to start?

~~~
vellum
If everyone works on the same project, there's only so much work to go around.
If no one wants to work on something, it's probably a sign that it's not worth
doing.

------
chadwickthebold
When Valve gets invoked like this, it's not always a positive thing. There was
a good post about Valve's flat management structure about half a year ago [1],
which raised several interesting points. Seriously, check out that post, and
read up on 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness'.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6017748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6017748)

~~~
mercer
That's exactly what my reservations are about this approach. Perhaps the
problem is not so much that they chose a management-less structure, but rather
that they imposed a new approach top-down.

Hierarchy isn't always bad, nor are managers. I mean, the army (special case
perhaps) probably wouldn't function without it.

Perhaps in companies that can experiment in this manner, a better approach is
to try and organically grow models that fit _that_ specific company. As
another commenter mentioned, you could start with giving developers x% time to
do whatever they want, and scale up from that. Then regularly review any
metrics that matter to you (the boss), and adjust.

The way I see it, humans in any context need structure of some kind. Why not
focus on having people that are good at feeling the needs within the company,
and grow structures from there. Maybe some parts of the company actually need
hierarchy, and maybe others don't.

------
modoc
I love the idea of this, but am not sure how this works when you have things
like on-call rotations, support hour coverage, unpleasant tasks that need
doing (late night deployments, etc...). If you let everyone self manage, and
no one is handling support tickets during your published support hours, who's
fault is that? How do you make sure that the least aggressive/most agreeable
person doesn't get stuck with all the 3 AM deployments?

Have a manager solves those problems, and I'm not sure how they'd get handled
in a flat structured company. Without ownership and accountability for
specific responsibilities and/or deliverables, I think that the least pleasant
jobs would get dropped...

------
thisone
There are degrees. The company I'm with as a senior dev, has less than 25
people, yet I've got 4 layers of management above me.

If everyone is as professional and as dedicated as everyone else, and if
conflict resolution and communication is easy between all people at the
company, I can see the "no management" approach working.

~~~
jnbiche
Wow, my jaw just dropped open. Less that 25 people and 4 levels of management?
How can you operate with that much bureaucracy in a small company? Very
slowly, I'd imagine.

~~~
etherealG
all depends how involved each layer is. perhaps the top layer never even
speaks to the other 3 more than a yearly meeting.

~~~
Sharlin
And how does the top layer make any decisions then, without being aware of
what's happening in the company? If they only make decisions that can be made
by participating in a single meeting per year, it doesn't really make any
sense for that layer to exist at all. Continue recursively.

If there really are four layers of management in a company with 25 employees,
that basically means each manager has zero, one or two subordinates. I really
cannot see how that could work very well at all.

~~~
etherealG
i was thinking ownership for a top layer, but that could be true for lower
ones too. but i see your point, ownership and management are different things.

------
infinity0
Of course, there will be lots of criticism that such schemes "don't scale".
This is a BS red herring that detracts from the real issue.

The general idea is for companies to be run as a democracy, like how
governments are. IMO this is even more important than Basic Income. You spend
1/3 of your life working under these conditions, so why shouldn't corporations
be democratic?

As for "implicit hierarchy" or "informal authority", yes that is partly the
_point_. Not for positions of absolute authority to be ill-defined by top-down
management which don't reflect reality; but for recognition and respect to be
awarded based on _actual merit_. Cliques and inappropriate peer pressure might
form (as claimed by articles about Valve not too long ago[1]), but you can
deal with that another way, instead of resorting to hierarchy and absolute
authority.

How do democratic governments work? That could be how corporations work.

[1] Whether or not actually true is a side point; the things it described
certainly _could_ happen and therefore are theoretically interesting

~~~
forgottenpass
_but for recognition and respect to be awarded based on actual merit_

 _you can deal with that another way, instead of resorting to hierarchy and
absolute authority_

Could you elaborate on both of these please? I am incredibly doubtful that a
meritocracy naturally springs up and enforces itself. How does that actually
work when everyone is on board with that idea? How does it defend against
people that are just in it for themselves from exploiting it?

You can make theoretical arguments that hierarchical management is the best
form of management for meritocracy as well, but that doesn't hold up in
practice either.

Right now your post doesn't do anything to explain why the "no management"
model works, you just more forcefully assert that it does, and handwave away
two of the readily apparent points it could go wrong.

~~~
infinity0
> Could you elaborate on both of these please? I am incredibly doubtful that a
> meritocracy naturally springs up and enforces itself. How does that actually
> work when everyone is on board with that idea? How does it defend against
> people that are just in it for themselves from exploiting it?

Look at how many FOSS projects work. Look at how many hackerspaces work.
People gain reputation for doing good things, and in turn they are listened to
(gain soft authority). People that try to take over get ignored, or thrown
out.

Yes, I know that the economics are a little different, since it's a lot easier
to fork a software project. However, this gives us a base to work on top of.

> You can make theoretical arguments that hierarchical management is the best
> form of management for meritocracy as well, but that doesn't hold up in
> practice either.

Sure, all of this is theory and useless, we need people to try it. My point
has always been "the counter points are invalid", to encourage people to try
it.

> Right now your post doesn't do anything to explain why the "no management"
> model works, you just more forcefully assert that it does, and handwave away
> two of the readily apparent points it could go wrong.

I'm not handwaving them away; I am saying that they are not critical to being
able to sustain a "no management" model. There are existing projects that work
like this. The problems people mention are real problems that are either
solved well, not solved well, or not all that important, but it is very rare
for them to be _critical_ , which is the common (invalid) argument.

------
auctiontheory
I paid for an annual subscription to their web design classes and thought they
were horrible - I've subsequently found free resources that are much superior,
like Codecademy.

Maybe some good managers could have helped by taking the unpopular stand of
"guys, this sucks, we need to do better."

------
dscrd
Is it just a coincidence that I never hear again of a company that declared
something like this?

~~~
mattlutze
Other than Valve, of course.

HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3877674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3877674)

Their new employee manual:
[http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf](http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf)

~~~
enjo
SEMCO, to me, is the best example of this. While they haven't fired all of
their managers, they are a _very_ large company doing self-management in a
whole bunch of different verticals.

Books by the SEMCO founder, Ricardo Semler:

Maverick - [http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-
Workpl...](http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-
Workplace/dp/0446670553/ref=sr_1_1)

The Seven Day Weekend - [http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-
Work-Works-...](http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works-
ebook/dp/B000PDYVXE/ref=sr_1_2)

------
sturadnidge
Bryan Cantrill from Joyent delivered a really good session at Surge this year
on a similar theme, Leadership Without Management: Scaling Organizations by
Scaling Engineers. Well worth watching.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI)

------
ransom1538
Stock the fridge with tons of beer, pay young 20 something engineers tons of
money, then remove accountability. Also, the "non-boss" founders should just
walk around talking to who they like the best. This will drive the company
towards a better product.

------
chockely
This makes sense for projects, but how does it work for the perpetual parts of
running a business. Who takes care of payroll, tax filing, keeping the
infrastructure running, etc.?

Are these perpetual, "projects?"

If anyone has any experience with this, please share.

~~~
arethuza
You can outsource payroll, general accounting and tax stuff fairly easily.
Serviced offices give you rooms, desks, chairs, someone to answer the phone,
toilets, kitchens, physical security etc.

------
peeters
To me, the core issue here isn't specifically about management, but about
allowing their developers to follow their intuition. I think a great way to do
that is to set aside a time for developers to work on whatever they want to
(within the scope of the project). Feel like your test coverage is lacking?
You get X% to work on that. Some technical debt always been bugging you? Use
your X% on that.

The beauty of this approach is that it can start as an experiment, say 10% (or
a day every two weeks), but then migrating to an environment where employees
set most of their work queue is just a matter of adjusting X.

------
MSSU
Sounds great ... call me in 10 years and let us know how it went. Somehow, I
think the company will be acquired & re-orged, dead, or someone will take over
who re-injects managers.

It's sad, really, because in principle, I agree.

------
bowlofpetunias
A manager's primary goal should be to make themselves superfluous as much as
possible. Whether that can be attained for the full 100% depends not in a
small part on the type of business your in.

Doing away with managers entirely is not a one-size-fits-all solution.

I also can't fail to notice that like this example, most of these attempts
start with horror stories about a failing management / organization. Just
because doing completely without management is better than the previous
situation, doesn't mean that there isn't a middle ground which might work even
better.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
> A manager's primary goal should be to make themselves superfluous as much as
> possible.

My experience is that most managers have climbing the ladder as their primary
agenda. Making themselves superfluous almost always does not align with that
goal.

------
puppetmaster3
In my experience programming is a dead end job, as is any work that creates
'output' (ex: a marketing document). To progress, you should be a parasite,
and not work. Just create meetings and emails to stop others from working.
They decide what you should work on and when you should be done by, how
motivational. Am I a salve? The career goal and company goal are 2 different
things.

Unless you remove the parasites that have no output. So good job removing
managers. I have a start up, I am a founder and I'm doing the same thing!

------
probablyfiction
Someone needs to say something about that hideous layout. It's mobile-first
and I had so much wasted real estate on my screen. So annoying.

~~~
bauer
[http://readability.com/articles/droi9kvk](http://readability.com/articles/droi9kvk)

------
cloudflare
Similar lack of structure exists at CloudFlare.

~~~
aet
How does one get fired at CloudFlare? Who evaluates employee performance?

------
saosebastiao
There are many flaws with contemporary management practices, but its existence
is not a flaw. You would do much better by not tying pay/promotion to
management. When that happens, you explicitly create a whole level of
organizational politics that is contrary to the organization's goals.

------
hexis
Another way to remove bosses is to work for yourself and co-ordinate with
others through prices.

------
adregan
I'm curious about the on boarding process for a new hire—green or experienced.
When you go flat, whose responsibility is it to show the new person what to do
and how to do it?

------
ryancarson
Thanks for posting this. It's been fun to document how #NoBoss actually works
day-to-day. My hope is that other companies will try this.

------
notjustanymike
Is this -the- Ryan Carson of YouTube pre-roll ad fame? Because I still see
them EVERY SINGLE TIME.

