
Ex-Valve employee describes internal politics at 'self-organizing' companies - mepian
https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/
======
danielvf
An essay written in 1971, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" really nails the
failure forces that are active against structureless orgs, and well as how you
can combat those forces.

It's one of those essays that is just plain important to read for life,
because you will see the forces it describes everywhere around you, for the
rest of your time on earth.

[https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm](https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm)

~~~
ismail
Great post. “Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing
as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes
together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure
itself in some fashion”

I have always looked on and decided I would create a “flat structure” in my
co. To avoid “politics”.

I have since changed My view. An insight is that there will always be a
hierarchy, or more appropriately recursive levels of control and moniotoring
needed. The question is do you acknowledge that or not, do you design for that
or do you let it spring up adhoc?

If you take a look at any biological system that must exist, sustain itself,
there is always a control and monitoring system.

This model exists for example in the body i.e our regulatory system.

Stafford beer has developed a model for this, the viable system model.

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

~~~
sn41
> If you take a look at any biological system that must exist, sustain itself,
> there is always a control and monitoring system.

This may be a sweeping statement. We do know of collections of cells, for
example, the cells in the heart muscles beat together without a central
monitor. Swarms like flocks of birds, schools of fish etc. do not seem to have
a hierarchical order.

Steven Strogatz has a book called "Sync" related to spontaneous
synchronisation. He also has given a Ted talk:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync/transcript...](https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync/transcript?language=en)

~~~
jonathankoren
Pigeons flocks have hierarchy.[0]

Also, to state the obvious, nonhuman social structures aren't always
applicable to human social structures. Very often, the have very limited
applicability to human organizations, for the simple reason that they're
biologically based.

Instead you should turn to history and anthropology, not biology for advice.
Sadly, there are very few (if any) examples of long lived leaderless / flat
human organizations. Inevitably, a small cadre form an elite core (either
through influence (Politics! Gasp!) or force / intimidation (politics by other
means! Double gasp!) You can see this with various anarchist organizations,
intentional communities such as communes, protest movements, even the tragedy
of the commons.

[0] [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/04/when-pigeons-flock-
wh...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/04/when-pigeons-flock-whos-command)

~~~
sverige
I'll never forget the hilarity I felt when I heard about the gigantic
political fights happening at a big convention of anarchists in Minneapolis in
the 80s. I was a college student working on a history degree and remember
thinking, "Wait, why are people who want a society with no laws or rules
holding a convention? And what is the fight about? Rules? Goals? Leadership?"

I still can't do anything but laugh when someone tells me they're an
anarchist. No you're not, what you mean is you don't like the current
structure, whatever it happens to be. You have an idea of what you think it
should be, even if you can't clearly express what that is exactly or how to
get there.

~~~
thecrash
Anarchism as a political philosophy does not "want a society with no laws or
rules".

It wants a society where power (social, political, economic, etc) is not
distributed based on a hierarchy.

Some misinterpret this as meaning that anarchists oppose the structuring of
power in general (a.k.a. chaos), but in fact power can be organized through
all kinds of non-hierarchical forms.

Anarchism as a broad philosophy is not prescriptive as to how power /should/
be organized, only how it should not. There are many complementary and
competing ideas about how a society or group can best structure itself to
minimize hierarchical power, and anarchists argue about these a lot.

They also actively experiment with them, and often the experiments fail. But
sometimes they succeed, and those discoveries help all of us expand our
possible modes of social organization. So basically I think even if you don't
subscribe to anarchist philosophy, you should not be so dismissive of it.

------
hitekker
>Criticism we've seen from ex-employees, however, suggests that while Valve
works for the in-group it can be alienating and anxiety-inducing for others.
Multiple ex-employees have now said that Valve's non-hierarchical structure is
not what the company says it is, and that projects and people are subject to
power dynamics and executive decisions just as they are in any other
workplace.

My takeaway. At organizations that pretend to be egalitarian, you're golden if
you're in the in-group. But if you're outside of that group, you matter zilch.

Basic primate social behavior.

~~~
Avshalom
>>works for the in-group it can be alienating and anxiety-inducing for others

see also: literally every company in existence.

I realize people tend to become invested in reinforcing the status quo but I
am still baffled at how every time Steam comes up 99 out of a hundred comments
act as if office politics aren't exactly as powerful and unaccountable as
every anecdote about Steam and their cliques.

~~~
markmark
Yes. Disgruntled employees leave companies all the time. Yet when one leaves
Valve it's because their organisational structure doesn't work, not just that
that person wasn't a good fit for the company. Meanwhile Valve probably can't
hear what people outside are saying over the noise of their money-printing
machine.

~~~
jack9
I really don't understand how criticisms get so much attention, when it's
nothing close to a constructive study. It's just some unhappy employee's
porthole and it seems to be too successful to dismiss.

~~~
teamonkey
> seems to be too successful to dismiss

...Or that it worked _just_ well enough while they were creating a platform
that set them up as a gatekeeper and quasi-manopoly, and works _just_ well
enough to maintain it.

~~~
slavik81
Were they actually a flat organization during the development of Half-Life 2
and Steam? I had assumed Gabe stepped back from his authority some time during
the development of the Half-Life Episodes. If I had to guess, the transition
began some time in late '05 and progressed over the next few years. Just a
guess, though.

------
austincheney
My experience with corporate development has people in 3 buckets:

* beginner or crappy

* moderate or senior-delusional

* seniors/experts

Most of the time the actual seniors are not the people trying to prove
themselves or validate their existence. They honestly know how they perform.
If the current job doesn't work out they know they can get another easily
enough. If anything this camp may even try to hide some of their skills to
avoid getting pegged into those crappy tasks you cannot seem to hire anybody
else for.

The middle group is composed of people who are honest about their station in
life. These honest people are happy where they are and aren't dicking around
with office politics, but they do play the game just enough to avoid rocking
the boat.

Then there are the dishonest people in the middle group. Sometimes this
dishonesty is intentional because they are an imposter... to the point of
fraud. Usually, the dishonesty is unintentional. These people are often
disillusioned into thinking they are some sort of senior level rock star but
curiously wonder why their management completely disagrees. These people are
easy to spot because they talk a big game and their work is hilariously out of
sync with the hot air.

Warning. Dishonest people are dangerous to your career and will run you over
because they are too busy looking out for themselves. If you challenge their
dishonesty they may put up a fight that pits you are as the evil aggressor. If
you don't challenge the stupidity you can easily get stuck cleaning up their
code failure. Pick your battles wisely.

Likewise there are honest beginners who understand their station in life and
are eagerly learning to improve their skills. These are the people you dream
of mentoring. Then there are also really crappy developers who can't figure
out why nobody wants to mentor them or why they always get the worst
assignments.

In a hierarchical organization I can usually hide from this stupidity well
enough. I can only imagine the horrid levels of back-stabbing that occurs in a
flat organization.

~~~
Fnoord
You just described the Dunning-Kruger effect [1] in practice.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

~~~
austincheney
Is there a similarly named condition for people of high ability who don't
appropriately view their skills as superior resulting in distress when their
peers fail to achieve equivalent performance?

I want to say something like Aspergers* but without the emotional or decision
impairment that otherwise comes with Autism. I am thinking a similarly lacking
self-awareness with regard to the immediate social environment, but a deflated
sense of self-worth opposed to inflated.

The result of such inverted bias is judging one's self in reflection to the
performance of that person's peers only to be frustrated that certain
performance or results are seemingly incomplete or of noticeably weaker
quality. Since the biased person is judging themselves in reflection to the
performance of their peers they will incorrectly view this incompetence as a
reflection of their own performance or potential while the people who actually
performed the supposedly incompetent work don't see the ascribed faults
resulting in the biased individual over-compensating for faults that are
generally not valued. This reminds me of OCD and perfectionism.

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

~~~
Fnoord
I'm honestly no expert on the field but here's my take on it.

What you described is _also_ covered by the Dunning-Kruger effect. From the
Wikipedia page:

"the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self,
whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about
others."

Seeing the effect in visual presentation (as a graph) might also aid you in
understanding the above.

I got an autism diagnosis in 2017 (and my partner a week ago at age 35 and 36
respectively). According to DSM-5 (in effect since 2013 IIRC), asperger
syndrome and all other previous specific autism disorders are superseded as it
falls under the larger umbrella of ASD (autism spectrum disorder).

You described: "but without the emotional or decision impairment that
otherwise comes with Autism." Someone who has all the traits of what was
previously known as asperger syndrome sans what you described can still get an
ASD diagnosis.

~~~
austincheney
I probably shouldn't have described autism as I did with so few words. I did
not mean to sound insensitive in my limited understanding of the subject. As I
understand it autism is a wide umbrella of various possible disorders.

~~~
Fnoord
FWIW, you didn't sound insensitive to me.

------
elvinyung
Yehuda Katz [1]:

> Any sufficiently complicated company [without] management contains an ad
> hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of management.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/wycats/status/368752712894017536](https://twitter.com/wycats/status/368752712894017536)

------
esturk
I think there's merit in a flat structure if the company is inherently small
(~10). But once it gets to a medium size company (100+), that usually degrades
because the degree of separation is too low.

What a flat structure entails is a star-like structure where everyone is just
1 degree of separation removed from everyone else. This high degree of
coupling is bad in design and IRL because it creates high interdependency like
the ex-valver mentioned. As others have mentioned, every action you do effects
practically everyone else since people are so closely connected.

There's a reason why most structures are tree-like such that people are
sufficiently insulated from others. Creating a comfortable degree of
separation will allow better separation of concerns in the things you do.

Value created the 2nd greatest lie in tech about "not having a boss is cool"
because it attracts people who think they're too smart to be working for
someone else. But if you're working for no-one in the company, you're
practically working for everyone.

~~~
noobermin
I'm not sure if this is a problem with the structure as much as it is with
Valve specifically because many other organizations and companies have a
similar flatter structure. Moreover, he points out that Valve wasn't really
flat, it had a class of managers and a class of developers (producers). That
doesn't sound "flat" to me.

~~~
Nuzzerino
Reminds me of the film "Office Space", where the protagonist has something
like eight managers he answers to. I worked for such a "flat" organization
once, and that's how it was. It was not a good thing.

~~~
brodo
Having multiple managers to answer to can also be quite good. If they know and
respect each other, they will try not to give you too much to do because they
don’t want to “steal” time from the other guys. For me this results in having
only stuff to do which lies in my area of expertise.

------
Spooky23
There is a trade off between flat and deep org structure. Deeper org
structures build familiarity, process, etc. It works when there is a stable
process, but doesn’t turn well.

Shallow orgs can move quicker, but that isn’t free. Because the designated
leaders cannot actually manage up to dozens of direct reports, you end up with
what I call a “circle” org structure. People get voted on/off the inner
circle, and the downstream leaders get disempowered.

I’ve never worked in a place with no explicit command structure. Perhaps I
lack imagination, but I cannot see that ever working. Fundamentally it’s a
lie, because some individuals have to control the money.

In my experience, shallow orgs also have a half life. They need to be purged
every 18-24 months.

~~~
lfowles
> In my experience, shallow orgs also have a half life. They need to be purged
> every 18-24 months.

Valve hadn't had a half life since 2007. They're surely due for another one :)

~~~
canada_dry
LOL, we can't very well have a conversation about Valve without mentioning
HL3!

Where the hell is it Gabe?!?

------
jancsika
Yanis Veroufakis on how pay is determined[1]:

> This is a haphazard process. The payment mechanism is to a very large extent
> bonus-based. So the contracts usually have a minimum pay segment in it,
> which is more or less established by tradition. And then the interesting
> part in this contract is how much is left to the peer review process, which
> is very complicated. It involves various layers of mutual assessment.

Yanis Veroufakis. Greece's former finance minister, known for his ability to
describe Greece's financial collapse and negotiations with the EU in terms
that the average Greek citizen could grasp-- called the Valve's bonus system
"complicated."

This in a piece where his position as Valve's economist-in-residence
ostensibly meant he was trying his best to paint Valve in a positive light.

Did anyone here decide to work for Valve _after_ reading his interview at
Gamasutra[1]? If so I would love to have a glimpse at the decision tree that
led down that path. I can only imagine three nodes in that tree, one of which
is, "Must eat."

[1] (linked from the article)
[https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/187296/How_Valve_hires_h...](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/187296/How_Valve_hires_how_it_fires_and_how_much_it_pays.php)

~~~
MichaelMoser123
[http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-
what-d...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-do-we-
need-corporations-for-and-how-does-valves-management-structure-fit-into-
todays-corporate-world/)

Here the same person was much more positive about the system (easy to
understand he is not, at least not to me), wonder were he was telling the
truth.

[http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-
here-w...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-what-
its-like-and-what-im-doing-2/) Also Michael Abrash thinks it is a swell place
to work for - I guess if you have something to say within such a company then
the experience is way better.

~~~
jancsika
> Here the same person was much more positive about the system (easy to
> understand he is not, at least not to me), wonder were he was telling the
> truth.

I don't think I understand what you mean.

Here's the relevant passage from your link wrt bonuses:

> [Before writing more in this, especially regarding Valve, I shall need to
> become better acquainted with the peer-review based process of determining
> bonuses. Watch this space!]

That's from August, 2012 on an internal blog. The external interview he gave
where he calls the review process "very complicated" is from February, 2013.

So let's recap:

* A reasonable person joining Valve after reading the Aug. 2012 blog would be worried because their "economist-in-residence" is publicly reserving judgment on the peer-reviewed bonus system

* A reasonable person joining Valve after reading the Feb. 2013 interview would be worried because their "economist-in-residence" is characterizing the peer-reviewed bonus system as "very complicated" to a reporter

* A reasonable person joining Valve after reading the Aug. 2012 blog _and_ the Feb. 2013 interview would be _very_ worried because their "economist-in-residence" moved from reserving judgment on an internal blog to criticizing the bonus system in a public interview

At the very least, I see no discrepancies in what Veroufakis said in Aug and
Feb that would lead you to conclude he wasn't telling the truth in one of
those links.

What am I missing?

~~~
MichaelMoser123
i read it as an examination of a boss-less system 'that works'. For an
individual (prospective employee) the question of how much you get and if its
worth it is central, for him as a person examining the larger scheme of things
it is less central.

to quote:

"The tantalising thought arose, during my musings, that this organisational
structure may be as scalable as a market mechanism (assuming that the right
technologies are in hand, ensuring transparency and low communications’ costs
within the company).

There is one important aspect of Valve that I did not focus on: the link
between its horizontal management structure and its ‘vertical’ ownership
structure. Valve is a private company owned mostly by few individuals. In that
sense, it is an enlightened oligarchy: an oligarchy in that it is owned by a
few and enlightened in that those few are not using their property rights to
boss people around ... "

blah blah blah.

------
jandrese
IMHO the proof is in the pudding. What was the last first party title that
Valve released? Left4Dead 2? It can't take that many people to make hats or
ignore the numerous longstanding issues on Steam. It's not like they are
providing tech support or policing the marketplace. What have all of those
people accomplished in the last decade?

If there is still a games division in Valve it is exceedingly dysfunctional.

~~~
gsich
In term of new game ideas: Portal 1 in 2007. All other titles were sequels.

~~~
jandrese
Portal was a reimplementation of Narbacular Drop after Valve hired the
developer.

~~~
ivm
It's their strategy: they also hired developers of Dota, Counter-Strike, Team
Fortress, and even Ricochet.

------
kemonocode
> As for why he does not name Valve directly, Geldreich tells one person that
> he did not use "the V word" specifically to avoid press.

Trying to avoid press, only to have said press knocking on his door and asking
for an interview. Classy.

That being said, it doesn't surprise me a bit. I worked on a startup for a
year or so that touted a flat structure. I was lucky to be in the in-group and
in the end, our decisions (A couple other senior engineers + me, plus the
founders themselves) were the only ones that mattered. Not gonna lie, it was a
rather enlightening and profitable period in my life, and when I parted ways I
made sure I did so in good terms, but it still leaves me with a slight bad
taste in my mouth. Had I not been a childhood friend of one of the co-
founders, I'd probably have gotten treated like nothing, or worse yet, not
hired at all.

Later on I found out the company had gone bankrupt and the founders had parted
ways, probably fishing for that buyout or that VC money they never got. Every
once in a while I correspond with the friend that let me in, but we try not to
talk about our time in the company.

------
canada_dry
As a retired (read: old school) IT Exec the "flat" management concept has
always intrigued (and terrified) me.

Clearly a military like hierarchy doesn't work well in systems development.
Most aspects of systems development are fundamentally creative processes that
are somewhat diametrically opposed to being micromanaged. At least this is
what I have found in my experience.

As jofreeman.com notes there are fundamental constructs of organizational
structure that are critical. Ie: one of the most important (IMHO) is the top
down delegation of duties. A good leader ensures critical things like cross
training and staff development are achieved.

Bottom line: every organization has the same human dynamic - no matter how
it's organized - if you get face time with the leaders, you wield power
through association.

~~~
dnomad
It's funny because I've always felt this is something the military gets right.
(At least the Marines do.)

The military understands quite well that most tasks cannot be planned or
managed at all. It is never a matter of giving people scripts and having them
execute scripts. The world is chaotic and unpredictable. It's also very hard
for any one person to get anything done. Most work requires a team which
introduces even _more_ chaos, failure modes and unknown variables. Therefore
the military introduces the concept of 'command'. Commanders are not there to
micro-manage anybody. Good commanders understand quite quickly that they
cannot control everything. Commanders are there to work _with_ the chaos.

Once you accept the concept of command the next step is the basic
understanding that there are some people who are good commanders and others
who are not just bad at it but they may actively dislike it. The commanders
may indeed thrive off a certain amount of chaos and structurelessness may
despise being "micro-managed." Give them a big goal, the necessary resources,
and set them off. As long as feedback mechanisms are in place they'll get
there. The specialists want routine and stability. They want to be part of a
team where roles and responsibilities are clearly laid out. They want to be
able to focus and specialize on a single problem and excel in a particular
domain.

BTW, this division, like most binaries, is not written in stone. Excellent
results can be achieved by rotating commands over time. Specialists who claim
to dislike command should sometimes be given command responsibilities simply
to edge them out of their comfort zone and broaden their perspective.
Sometimes commanders need to get to their hands dirty to grain a deeper
tactical perspective. Avoiding a rigid hierarchy and command structure is how
good organizations scale and adapt.

The problem with the completely flat model is that it may serve commanders
very well (who again, can thrive off chaos) but specialists will experience a
lot anxiety and frustration.

------
bumholio
> The payment mechanism is to a very large extent bonus-based. So the
> contracts usually have a minimum pay segment in it, which is more or less
> established by tradition. And then the interesting part in this contract is
> how much is left to the peer review process, which is very complicated. It
> involves various layers of mutual assessment.

Triggered. Are they trying to create an office politics cluster-fuck on
purpose?

"various layers of mutual assessment" sounds like the ultimate tit-for-tat
game where compensation has no longer any relation to the real-world and is
strictly determined by internal politics, especially in the face of a limited
total bonus fund.

------
jimmystix
This doesn't surprise me. Without a hierarchy, one will naturally form anyway
and the person that is most agressive will win.

This self-organizing company fad rears it's ugly head under different names
every decade or so, and it usually ends in utter disaster.

~~~
moonrobin
That wasn't my takeaway from reading all the Twitter posts. The author
mentions he will never work at a non-self-organizing company again. It was
just the bonus driven toxic culture at Valve which encouraged unhealthy
competition and sabotage between the developers.

~~~
toomuchtodo
A self-organizing company is toxic by its very nature, due to the lack of
formal organization.

A hierarchicy will _always_ form, and if you don’t deliberately form it, the
result will be, as described, suboptimal.

~~~
brodo
The problem is that people think that egalitarianism is the natural state of
the world and hirarchies have to be artificially introduced. I can see the
appeal of this sort of thinking. People belive it, because it is a nice thing
to belive.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Agreed. It is marketing with no basis in reality.

------
mnm1
Clearly "non-hierarchical" is a pr term and the people that work there don't
buy the bullshit. From the examples, it sounds extremely hierarchical with the
only difference being that the hierarchy is hidden from most employees. I
worked at a place like that in sf for a few weeks. It was a giant clusterfuck
of clusterfucks. Didn't do anything productive the whole time there. Half the
time the internet didn't work and the rest I was required to browse the web
and wait around but not allowed to work from home. The server room literally
caught on fire. There certainly were bosses and a hierarchy especially at the
executive level but we all pretended, as I imagine they do at valve, that
there was no hierarchy. Stupid. I left there after being physically hit in the
head with a paper ball by some drunk guy before he left to jump in his car and
drive home drunk. Got decent severance for being there less than a month. I
can't imagine they lasted much longer after that. Flat management just means a
hierarchy one can't see and a whole lot of lies to cover it up. I'm amazed
valve gets anything done but it sounds like the employees really pay the price
for this pr lie.

~~~
andyidsinga
> the server room literally caught on fire

...is not what I would have imagined popping up in this comments section.

------
guhcampos
I worked at a vary traditional company that had a "peer recognition" system
you could use to send bonuses for colleagues to reward them for going above
and beyond.

Sounds good on paper, and execs love to brag about how this brings people
together to recognize excellence and talent and blah blah blah, but what
really happens is that people start to condition their work to your likeness
to recognize them. If you are known to send bonuses often, your requests are
magically fulfilled. If you are not into it, prepare to have support tickets
forgotten for months.

In the end, you can't expect much from increasingly large groups of people.
Eventually interests will diverge and self interest will prevail, politics
will emerge and abuses will happen. Some kind of governance is required to
counterbalance that, even if it usually fails catastrophically.

------
gersh
I think self-organizing lead to more secretive hierarchical structures.
People's positions are inherently insecure, and there is more pressure to
organize cliques for people to secure their positions and then shut out
everyone, who isn't part of the clique. I think it inherently ends up reward,
whoever is best at political maneuvering.

I've seen various people organize their own hierarchy where certain people
take control of the ability to push the code or access to the founder. This
control is premised upon getting everyone to maintain the party line, and
shunning anyone who deviates from the party line.

------
openfuture
I think people who are interested in this subject should look at Sensorica and
open value networks.

Self-organizing structures are not necessarily the most effective structures
because they are given form by the information technology that the agents are
using and are shaped by the constraints placed by the environment.

When there is no mold (the information technology is too shapeless - human
speech or something like forum software) then the whole thing will essentially
implode once the information grows out of bounds for every individual to keep
up with all of it (delegation and separation of concerns is not explicit so it
doesn't happen so readily).

Coming up with a sensible communication system that gives shape to
organization without restricting the freedom of the agents is an interesting
21st century problem that should get more attention.

When people say that no structure works with few agents it has to do with the
fact that humans, when in small groups (tribes), establish informal
hierarchies that are very fluid and natural. However at larger scales the
group needs to be fragmented into several factions which are also ranked,
sometimes explicitly, it becomes important for individuals to signal a visual
indication of rank or somehow show which group they belong to (this can be
seen throughout history, I recommend a book called "The Dominant Man: The
Pecking order in Human Society"). I think the trick is to try and create an
"unstructured" network out of units that are small enough that they don't
reach the threshold of needing formal structure, these cells can be informal
and comfortable (tribes) but compose to create the organisation.

Effectively this means thinking of 'two pizza teams' as individuals when
organisations are at scale and abstract out the individual as just a member of
his team. Giving the team complete autonomy over how it handles its internal
affairs and only judging it based on the work it produces i.e. as an
"individual".

------
ggg9990
Anyone who has read even the tiniest amount outside of HN and Zed Shaw knows
that there is no such thing as a group of humans where everyone is equally
powerful. It is a stupid fantasy or deliberate lie in all circumstances.

------
sudosteph
It's worth reading the whole series of tweets, even if twitter is kind of an
inconvenient medium for this. I read them a few days ago after a friend
recommend the read, was a little disturbed at how closely it matched my
experience working at a much less visible and less developed "self-organized"
organization. I especially enjoyed his references to "Barons" and
"Supporters", with the implication being that the actual dynamic of a
decentralized self-organizing company with a few ultra-influencers (founders /
board of directors) is much closer that to feudalism than to the ideal of a
democratic or syndicalist meritocracy.

------
CurtMonash
Ursula Leguin nailed the problems with "anarchist bureaucracy" in The
Dispossessed.

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

------
lordnacho
The worst thing about not having an explicit hierarchy is that it allows the
emergent tyrants to claim that everyone had equal influence on the decisions,
everyone was consulted, and everyone agrees. Then when things go wrong, it
wasn't their fault.

I've run into this problem a couple of times. Ultimately it means you can't
really discuss problems and you can't place responsibility.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>No matter how hard you work, no matter how original and productive you are,
if your bosses and the people who count don't like you, you will be fired soon
or you will be managed out.

Is there any organization where this is not true? Every single organization
has stories of talented people who lost out because they could not convince
the right people of their value to the organization.

------
dtornabene
Unsurprisingly no seems to have mentioned Mondragon yet, which would derail
from the "typical primate behavior" type of comments. Worth noting that while
not without its problems, Mondragon is one of the largest employers in Spain.

~~~
shanghaiaway
Mondragon is basically a corporation. It is not flat.

------
codingdave
There certainly are many things wrong in these descriptions. But they aren't
unique to flat companies. Tech organizations always self-organize to an
extent, but it only becomes painful when the hierarchy and the self-
organization don't match up. In a good company, they'll be aware of what is
going on, mentor and guide the unofficial leaders as necessary, promote and
reward everyone based on how well aligned they are to business goals. The
hierarchy will set strategy and deal with money, while the self-organization
will figure out the best way to get the creative work done.

It sounds like Valve may need some work. It also sounds like the author may
need some work. There are two sides to every story, and we're getting the
tweetstorm from someone who has built up years of frustration and is now
letting it out.

Sitting in a place where you aren't happy, or where you are envious of the
positions of others, isn't a good place to be either personally or for your
company. All companies are flawed in some way - you need to find a place where
you are accepting of the flaws and can be productive and satisfied with your
work anyway. If you aren't in such a place, take action - either invoke change
to make it better, or leave.

------
morbusfonticuli
> At self-organizing firms you might be placed into a huge open office and
> given massive monitors. This is to normalize all communications and for more
> effective surveillance. Everything will be monitored either directly by a
> corporate arm employee, one of their barons or friends.

This. I'm a compsci master-student and currently (since 2017/03) work at a big
german tax-software company.

This company is not a self-organizing firm, but has a clear hierarchy (from
small groups of 5 ppl to several divisions with up to ~300 ppl. Nevertheless,
they tried to adapt some aspects of thr american work big players - such as
the open office concept.

The situation there is even worse, as students/interns have to dynamically
choose a random workplace every day.

In the open office -filled with ~100 ppl in total- I felt surveillanced and
could not concentrate on my current projects as every now and then someone
passed my desk and glanced into my code etc.

Lucky for me: I do have a pretty exotic status&job at this company and was
able to get a company laptop that enabled me to wander from place to place
within the company until I found a pretty isolated room for ~20 ppl (full with
software testers). I managed to get access rights for this room and am
officially allowed to work there.

Although the ambient noise is worse than in open workplace (those software
testers are chatty as shit :-) ...), I'm generally more concentrated and
prefer wearing hearing protection now and then, instead of working in an
panopticon.

Conclusion: after my graduation I'm looking for a small/middle sized company
and consider buzzwords like 'flat hierarchy', open office, free fruit, etc. as
red flags.

------
keithnz
To me, it sounds like the bonus's and firing policies are huge factors in how
things self organize. I'd expect the experience could be quite different
depending which pockets of the company you end up in.

I think it would be an interesting thing to analyze, I wonder if anyone at
companies like this track this stuff, looking at what structures get created,
key people, how things shift, and who lets go,etc.

------
fallingfrog
I'm not sure that the story here is that a non-hierarchical structure is
impossible- but rather that just changing the org chart is not really enough.
I've heard stories of widespread sexism in 60's hippie communes, for instance.
The problem is that you've still got the same old people, just in a new
situation. For the change to be real you have to change the culture and the
way people see things, but all these people were born and raised within the
traditional hierarchies. So they end up recreating them in a different form.
But that's not to say that it's impossible to really flatten the org
structure- it's just going to take a lot more work and self-reflection than
just printing a new employee manual.

------
mvkel
At some point over the last 30-40 years, the word “bureaucracy” became a bad
word.

I felt the same, until I read “Requisite Organization” by Elliot Jacques. It
changed how I run my company. Jacques explains very clearly why hierarchy
exists and is needed in any organization of people. It’s instinctual.

------
jahaja
On the surface, it does seem to somewhat prevent the proliferation of bullshit
jobs as described by David Graeber. I don't have an updated figure on the
number of employees at Valve, but it's usually in the 3 figure range.

------
dave_sid
This stuff makes me cringe. Self organising teams. As soon as that’s old news
there will be something else that the consultants start peddling.

~~~
beerlord
If you read the full series of tweets, its apparent that the leadership team
of Valve are basically absent. They are completely unopposed in using their
money printing machine - Steam - and have made billions of dollars. Gabe
Newell for example is worth $5.5 billion.

If you're a leader who doesn't want to provide leadership, and is fortunate
enough to own a near-monopoly service, a self organising team takes a lot of
work off your shoulders.

------
ashelmire
Does Valve even make anything other than Steam anymore? Why do they hire
developers at all?

------
wpdev_63
Valve hasn't released a game in YEARS... What the hell is the 300 odd
programmers doing over there?

~~~
jzl
They also pretty much developed the Vive and all accompanying software. HTC
was originally not much more than a partner that created hardware to their
specification.

------
Theodores
Seems as if we are talking in terms of 'self organising/flat' or
'hierarchy/pyramid' with this being a binary choice.

What made Valve go for the 'self organising/flat' option in the first place?

Was this in reaction to the founders experiences of working in technical roles
at 'hierarchy/pyramid' style companies?

I think that society currently is quite fearful of the technically able folk
who can put people out of work with algorithms and robots. These technically
able people can also put processes in place and bring in efficiencies that
lead to a bigger business and the need for more people. If you sell twice the
amount of stuff you might need twice the amount of people doing customer
service, quality control, production, warranty and other things for the new
business brought in. However these people need to be thinking people, not the
people that did stuff by rote and were automated out of existence by
algorithms.

Despite there being a veritable internet based industrial revolution underway
society wants to promote people with accounting skills or a law degree to the
top of the org chart lest the technically able class end up running the show.
In fact techies are only allowed to go into management if they abandon actual
tech and keep their hand out of it.

To be honest a lot of office departments could be obliterated with a few well
designed website forms and a few API calls. There isn't any need for A.I. or
self driving cars for this level of revolution to happen, a lot of people
really could be replaced by a few 'if statements'. Then there are the
pointless jobs that congeal into existence in any medium sized company that
are absolutely not needed.

Yet the people that put the company business logic into code know how the
whole thing works. They also have the data. If your tool of business is the
phone and your idea of work is shuffling from one meeting to the next then it
must be hard to accept that customers prefer the website and even harder to
accept that you should be way down the org chart compared to the people that
can code. It might not have been cool twenty plus years ago to learn tech so
those that didn't can't really accept that they missed the boat on the tech
revolution.

I think that this fear of the unknown, this idea that code is voodoo, this
insistence on keeping programmers in the basement is the bigger problem than
'flat/hierarchy'. We have ended up with a management class that are about as
useful as our politicians and there is real danger that in the Anglo-West we
will lose to China bigly like how the Germans and Japanese reamed us out so
badly with engineering during the last century.

------
auslander
The way any big corporation fails - there is that strange notion that Managers
know better than Engineers and can make technical Decisions.

Good engineers, who love coding, can design a big system, are unlikely to rule
over the Design. It'll be bad engineers, now Managers, with good political
skills, that got promoted because its their only way to survive, being
otherwise useless.

It is totally upside-down, hence the mess, unless you have Bill Gates at the
top, true coder.

------
chmike
The site is not accessible unless I authorise all advertizement companies.
There is no way to scroll down the list of advertizers on iPads. The only
button accessible is accept all on top of the list.

Is there any mirror of the article without the advertizement nd tracking trap
?

~~~
knolan
Press the reader view icon in the address bar.

