
Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub? - ninamiriamjnana
i.e. firms using collaborative&#x2F;innovative&#x2F;participatory methods of organizing?
======
guijemont
At Igalia ([http://www.igalia.com/](http://www.igalia.com/)), we are a worker-
owned free software consultancy. There's a generic presentation of how we work
spread among the various sections of [http://www.igalia.com/about-
us/](http://www.igalia.com/about-us/), but one of us also wrote a series of
blog posts that explains us pretty well:
[http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/05/no-
master](http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/05/no-master)
[http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/13/but-that-would-be-
an...](http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/13/but-that-would-be-anarchy)
[http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-
money](http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money)

In a nutshell: people who work for Igalia own it (with equal amount of shares,
usually after three years in the company) and participate in the assembly
(usually after 6 months-a year in the company). From that premise, our
decisions and ways of working are generally very flexible towards employees.
Having the same salary (with more for people who live in more expensive
countries) or being able to work from wherever you want is just the tip of the
iceberg.

~~~
ninamiriamjnana
igalia sounds amazing. congrats on your company. can you tell me how many
people are worker-owners? are there also freelancers working yor you?

~~~
guijemont
Thanks! Basically, everybody who's been here for more than 3 years is a co-
owner. I just did a quick count (I might be off by one or two), and I think
we're 36 owners out of 41 people. Our explicit goal when we hire someone is to
keep them long term and have them become co-owner. Our workers (including
owners) who live outside of Spain (where the company is based) typically have
an official status of freelancers, though they have only one client and are as
involved in the company as the ones who have a status of employee in Spain.

------
marcusf
I'm subjective, but I think Spotify uses slightly innovative ways of
organising. See: * [https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-
cult...](https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-
part-1/) * [https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering-
cult...](https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering-culture-
part-2/)

Happy to answer questions.

~~~
fractalsea
I recently spoke to a recruiter at Skyscanner, and he mentioned that they have
also adopted a similar model to Spotify. He called the model "Squads and
tribes".

~~~
SaturnMoth
I work for Skyscanner, and can confirm this. It's a very effective model for
managing a business this size, and IMHO fosters innovation within the
business. Very basic description of the model as it is at Skyscanner:

Tribes - High level products (hotels, flights, car hire)

Chapters - "Departments"; areas of expertise (data acquisition, front end)

Squads - Autonomous project units (New features, development of an existing
feature)

Guilds - Informal interest groups (Linux, Python, agile development)

Everyone is in a Tribe and a Chapter relating to their "department", and area
of expertise; Squads are formed to work on projects, then disbanded once the
project is finished; anyone can join and participate in Guilds, which serve as
interest/support groups for technologies/strategies/methodologies.

Edit: Corrected my brainfart. Thanks ssabev! Can't believe I did it twice...

~~~
benaston
I suppose the difficult thing to gauge is whether using these cool-sounding
names has any effect.

~~~
marcusf
That's a good question. I think about it as a way to distinguish from e.g.
departments, projects etc and set the connotation that these are different
things. If you use them to mean a 1:1 mapping to e.g. projects, then it falls
apart. The terms aren't important per se.

In other words – you can't make a race horse by painting a pig brown.

------
ntoll
In a similar vein, Fry-IT ([http://www.fry-it.com/](http://www.fry-it.com/))
are a small web-development company based in London that organise themselves
around the outlook of "industrial democracy"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_democracy))
proposed by Ricardo Semler
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler)).

They're also great supporters of the London Python scene (also another good
indicator of a good company to work with).

(Note: I used to do sub-contract work with them. The first thing that happens
when you work with them is you get sent a copy of one of Semler's books on the
subject.)

~~~
ninamiriamjnana
cool :) did you get seven day weekend or maverick?

------
jstayton
They call it "Open Allocation". "Holacracy" is similar as well.

A few other companies doing it...

* Zappos — [http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-title...](http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-titles-no-managers-no-hierarchy)

* Treehouse — [http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-re...](http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-removed-bosses-at-treehouse)

* WL Gore & Associates (parts of the company) — [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/02/gore-tex-tex...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/02/gore-tex-textiles-terri-kelly)

~~~
jstayton
We've been doing Open Allocation at Monk Development
([http://www.monkdevelopment.com](http://www.monkdevelopment.com)) for about a
year now, but haven't yet written anything about our experiences.

------
publicbenemy
Gore always gets named in this context:
[http://www.gore.com/de_de/aboutus/culture/corporate_culture....](http://www.gore.com/de_de/aboutus/culture/corporate_culture.html)

Atlassian seem to be doing things differently.

Umantis in Switzerland democratically elect their CEO:
[http://www.umantis.com/en/press/haufe-umantis-ag-
employees-e...](http://www.umantis.com/en/press/haufe-umantis-ag-employees-
elect-marc-stoffel-as-chief-executive-1/)

I'm very interested in this question as well, especially companies in
Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg and Copenhagen. Anyone else know of companies doing
things differently?

~~~
flyingfsck
As an end user of Atlassian products - their support leaves a lot to be
desired. Not sure if that ties in to "doing things differently" but there you
go.

------
balsamiq
Here's a subreddit full of resources about this topic:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/flatmanagement](http://www.reddit.com/r/flatmanagement)

I'm a mod of it...we're pretty flat at Balsamiq, too.

~~~
zerr
But you never had an opening for an engineer (during last several years, I
believe) ;)

------
rohamg
There are lots of tiny companies (2-20 people) that can "wing it", but it's
difficult to make decentralized or distributed decision-making work at scale.

We're a slightly larger team (almost 50 peeps) at Axiom Zen
([https://axiomzen.co](https://axiomzen.co)). Our entire raison d'etre is
predicated on coming up with interesting, high-risk ideas and carrying them
through the various stages of market validation, prototyping, iteration, and
growth. Because of this, we are working really hard to become and remain the
best place for brilliant people to build awesome things.

We try to clearly define our values (just like Valve/GitHub), build them into
our products, and use them as a heavy filter for hiring. We also go out of our
way to ensure total transparency in the team, using GitHub for everything from
sales to hiring so that everyone can see the stage everything is at, decisions
leading up to a particular status quo, etc. Also everyone has an equal voice
in jumping in to suggest / push forward changes.

For a bit on our workflow, take a look at this blog post:
[https://www.zenhub.io/blog/beyond-code-use-github-zenhub-
for...](https://www.zenhub.io/blog/beyond-code-use-github-zenhub-for-all-
company-workflows/)

We'll eventually polish up and publish our company handbook which dives into
the `how` and `why` much more thoroughly than I ever could here.

------
rscott
Not sure if this fits the bill, but I've always found the openness of
Thoughtbot quite impressive. They have an open "playbook" describing how they
operate and develop.
[http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/](http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/)

~~~
ninamiriamjnana
thanks, thats fascinating

------
hacknat
I love this model of working, but I think it's a lot more common in
engineering teams than people realize. My company isn't anything special, and
certainly most of the rest of the company doesn't work open allocation, but
the engineering team pretty much does. You work on what you want, and you tell
people what you're doing. Does anyone else feel this way?

~~~
erikschoster
It's not formalized in any way, but we have a small team that works this way.
I would imagine it would be hard to scale, and takes the right sort of people,
but it's a really great environment to work in. We are constantly
experimenting and everyone is welcome where they feel they can be helpful -
our video production team is deeply involved with the devops side of our
streaming server for example...

------
znq
Not sure if it's in the same bucket as Valve or GitHub: at Mobile Jazz
[http://mobilejazz.com](http://mobilejazz.com) we're only 20 people (and that
makes things a lot easier), but we've quite a different way of working
compared to traditional companies:

* We pay fair salaries. For most people in our team it's way more than what they've earned before.

* We pay everyone the same (base) salary. Regardless of their role or title.

* We pay quarterly bonuses based on pro-activity, responsibility and other performance indicators.

* Everyone can work from wherever they like, still many people choose to work from our main office in Barcelona. (For example I work many weeks out of my camper van with 3G/4G connection from beautiful surf locations)

* In theory, everyone can choose how much or how little they want. Not always possible, but we try to make it possible as much as we can.

* We have managers, but they don't demand things. They are responsible that certain things happen, but decisions are being made collaboratively.

* All managers are either engineers or designers. No bullshit managers.

* We don't have a dedicated sales person. All work we get is from word-of-mouth and the first person a new client speaks to is either an engineer or designer (or both).

* We play Mario Kart / StarCraft after lunch ;-)

* We do a lot of sports activities together

* We have a lot of BBQs on our terrace

* We use some of the profits for fun internal experiments (small projects without an expected outcome other than having fun & learning). However, some of them are now actually turning into actual products: [http://bugfender.com/](http://bugfender.com/)

* MJ University: we take online classes together as a group

* MJ Talk: weekly presentation about an interesting topic (not necessarily tech related). For example we had talks about personal finance (investing), achieving happiness, etc.

* We encourage pair programming where it makes sense

* MJ Weekend: once or twice every year we fly everyone to Spain, rent a nice villa with pool and have a good time together. Some pics: [http://blog.mobilejazz.cat/work-life-balance-at-mobile-jazz/](http://blog.mobilejazz.cat/work-life-balance-at-mobile-jazz/)

* MJ Retreats: we're going to remote places and work there together. At the moment six of us are on an island in Thailand. In February we go skiing in Austria.

* We put a lot of effort in hearing everyone's opinion and feedback and try to put it into action

With all that we've managed to attract and retain incredible talent, but most
importantly we have a very pleasant time together.

That said, we're a company optimizing on lifestyle and happiness, rather than
profit. So this way of running a business is probably not applicable
everywhere.

(Edit: formatting, typos and a few additions)

~~~
_mikz
Hi from 7th floor (3scale.net)! Good luck with candidates. Looks like pretty
nice place to work.

~~~
znq
We've regular BBQs. We usually let you guys know. Just come up next time and
say hello :-)

------
bane
Gore is a widely known company that does. However, a review of their glassdoor
profile shows it is not as great on the inside as the marketing makes it out
to be.

Here's my previous comments on it
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270601)

~~~
sheepmullet
It sounds pretty similar to most large organisations. In particular:

"Now instead of getting work done, people will dedicate their time to internal
politics and jostling for group position"

Internal politics and jostling for group position happens in every large
organisation I have worked at.

"unresolved because nobody could assume the role of dictator and push through
needed work prioritization schedules"

Again, at every large company I have worked for the "dictators" of successful
projects were rarely the people with official ownership of the projects or
people high up in the org chart. So I'm not sure why nobody could assume the
role of dictator.

~~~
bane
One of the things that formal organizational structures provide is a set of
tools you can use to fix logjams when consensus-building isn't possible.

By building an organization _only_ on de-facto group dynamics, you toss away
all of those tools and you have literally no option but to play along with
these informal processes.

One of the few things modern management practice has identified for success is
that informal processes need to be brought under some semblance of
organizational control or they become incestuous and optimize for local
efficiencies rather than enabling the entire organization to be successful.

>Again, at every large company I have worked for the "dictators" of successful
projects were rarely the people with official ownership of the projects or
people high up in the org chart. So I'm not sure why nobody could assume the
role of dictator.

Here's how this works in flat organizations

employee a: I need you to do this

employee b: no

and that's the end of the story. Sometimes, if the organization is setup
according to some kind of flat org theory you'll get these steps also

employee a: well I'm going to take this to committee

employee b: ok

<months pass, committee meets>

employee a: I told employee b to do the thing and he said "no"

employee b: employee a was acting like my boss and we're flat, I didn't feel
the need to give into his demands ( _committee members nod in assent_ )

committee: we've decided that employee b does not, in _fact_ , need to do the
thing

and now the thing doesn't get done

Here's how it works in a grown-up organization

employee a: I need you do this

employee b: no

employee a: boss, I need b to do this for <business reasons>

boss: employee b, do the thing

employee b: no

boss: rethink that

employee b: okay, I'll do it

souls are crushed, free will is diminished, but the thing gets done and the
company moves on

However, more importantly, many so called "flat" organizations are not, either
formally or informally. Informally they'll all succumb to informal group
behavior that all humans exhibit in groups of more than 1. Formally, they'll
all have some kind of hierarchy, but will attempt to hide it or obfuscate it
in some way. This is usually tested trivially by offering to swap a low-level
employee with a high-level one and seeing if it actually happens ( _hint_ it
almost never will)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Ok then, the 'flat' organization devolves into a hierarchical one where you
have to ferret out the real structure (or guess). So that a/b scenario never
happens, even in the flat company.

~~~
bane
Except the structure in a flat organization is all ad-hoc, there's no teeth
behind it. Just because Joe in accounting talks loud and operates with
charisma doesn't give him dictatorial powers backed by "do it or you're fired"
powers.

It also means that when shit goes wrong, there's no "buck stops here" person
who's ultimately responsible. Joe can always argue that he's just a member of
a committee and defer responsibility to everybody else, and use his charisma
(and probably a backlog of favor trading) to scapegoat somebody else.

The most important thing is that all this is a distraction from the business
of the company. All this time that Joe has to invest in gathering and
cultivating meaningless power that he shouldn't have, and putting in place an
invisible power structure that everybody around him has to navigate...could
better be spent doing, I dunno, accounting perhaps?

Flat structures tend to work only when organizations are _very_ small, or can
be compartmentalized into very small groups, but there's tacit acknowledgement
that even in those cases there needs to be a formal dictator to make sure the
ball is moving forward and people aren't wasting time in power brokering
exercises. When the organizations get large, it becomes a necessity.

Peer groups define fashion, not progress.

------
chimeracoder
You didn't specify in your question - what size firm are you thinking of?

There are _lots_ of small firms (ie, ~5 people) who use this approach.
Arguably, for a team of 2-5 people, it's the most natural strategy anyway.

The challenge, of course, comes with scaling this to a team of 50 or 500
people. At that scale, there are far fewer examples (though the comments in
this thread point out some exceptions).

Assuming you ask because you're looking to find a place to work, in addition
to the other names mentioned here, you may want to look at very small
companies as well, because the odds are very much in your favor of finding
one. Just be aware that the team dynamics may change as the company grows,
which you may find you like, or which may mean it's time for you to look for
your next step.

~~~
ninamiriamjnana
thank you. I am not looking for a place to work actually, I am working on a
research project and at the moment i am interested in everything that is out
there. but of course, I am interersted in companies that actually have to do
some thinking about organisation in order to get things done

------
sciurus
Can anyone confirm that Github still operates this way?

~~~
codahale
Some LinkedIn job titles from current GitHub employees:

    
    
      * VP, Business Development & Services
      * Head of Technology Partnerships
      * CIO
      * VP, HR
      * Vice President, Strategy
      * Vice President, Marketing
      * VP Communications
      * Director of Outreach
      * Director of Sales

~~~
to3m
See also: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/technology/valve-a-
video-g...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/technology/valve-a-video-game-
maker-with-few-rules.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) \- "The few employees who’ve
put titles on business cards do so to satisfy outsiders apprehensive about
working with people without labels. The same applies to Gabe Newell, one of
Valve’s founders."

(no idea whether this is the case here...)

One of my former colleagues had this sort of experience at one job, where his
job title was "programmer" (you got this title if you were a programmer; there
weren't any others available). He was finding it sometimes difficult to get
people to return emails, presumably because he didn't sound important enough.
Apparently the last straw was being roundly ignored in a particular meeting
with one external company! A swift title upgrade (no changes in
responsibility...) fixed all of this.

------
ianpenney
I feel like this describes my present employer. The company culture emphasizes
that everyone should experience maximum Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose,
Transparency, Empathy and Fun in their job. Hierarchy is way less important to
us than getting results. We're in Toronto and we have more about this at our
website: [https://nulogy.com/](https://nulogy.com/)

~~~
psycr
How is management structured? How are product decisions made?

~~~
ianpenney
Ah! Josh, your name was familiar to some of my coworkers!

A couple of points to answer your questions:

\- We do centralize our product strategy and portfolio planning, but we
decentralize our release and iteration planning.

\- We focus on building strong teams of diverse talent sets that are becoming
more self managing. Teamwork is big for us, flying solo on any task is rare-r
than in other places I've worked.

\- Our management (and everyone else) are really accessible for a medium sized
company. I have faith that if I sent a calendar invite to our C*O for a 15 min
chat on a free timeslot, they'd show up. Of course, respect goes both ways and
I wouldn't book their time unless I really needed them specifically and it
couldn't be handled asynchronously.

Thanks for the questions!

~~~
unclesaamm
Well, the point is some companies don't have management. Sounds like yours
does ;)

------
jackbravo
Monty Widenius published the
[http://hackingbusinessmodel.info/](http://hackingbusinessmodel.info/) which
they were using at MySQL AB (before Sun I think). I don't think they use this
at MariaDB Corporation. We try to use this at
[http://axai.com.mx](http://axai.com.mx), a small company I belong to in
Mexico.

------
bdimcheff
We do this at Olark to a large extent, but I don't think anybody has written
about it in any detail yet. We have a peer-driven project proposal process
that allows anybody to propose a project, and then "vote with your feet" to
get it done. It's still pretty new, but I'd guess we'll write about it once we
have a little more experience with it.

------
tijs
Springest in NL (and some other companies too) practice Holocracy

[http://devblog.springest.com/holacracy-at-springest-dev-
team...](http://devblog.springest.com/holacracy-at-springest-dev-team-kick-
off/)

As far as i know the only 'new' management trend that has catched on here.

~~~
rikmatena
That we do! If you're interested, our founder Ruben more recently also wrote
an article about the challenges of adopting holacracy:
[https://medium.com/@rubzie/8-challenges-to-overcome-when-
ado...](https://medium.com/@rubzie/8-challenges-to-overcome-when-adopting-
holacracy-9bc38f5cbab4)

------
peterjaap
Here in the Netherlands we've got Voys
([http://www.voys.nl](http://www.voys.nl)), they were on HN a while back too;
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420802)

~~~
peterjaap
They have a flat management style, see [http://www.voys.nl/over-voys/het-voys-
model](http://www.voys.nl/over-voys/het-voys-model) (it's Dutch but, you know,
Google Translate)

------
jedberg
Ok this is a little off topic but maybe someone can tell me. These orgs make a
huge deal about how salary is selected by your peers. How does that actually
work though? Like the detailed logistics of it? Who exactly picks what you'll
get? How is the final decision made?

------
lazyant
Semco. You may want to read Ricardo Semler's book
[http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-
Workpl...](http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-
Workplace/dp/0446670553/) it's 20 years old but for some reason it's not a
classic in startups or US business environments (edit: oh I see someone
mentioned it). He wrote a more recent book I haven't read:
[http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-
Works-...](http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works-
ebook/dp/B000PDYVXE/) anyone with comments on this one?

------
elihu
Galois has a pretty flat structure, and employees can choose what they work on
among the currently funded projects (they do mostly grant-funded research).

[https://galois.com/](https://galois.com/)

------
jackbravo
There's gcoop ([http://gcoop.coop/](http://gcoop.coop/)). A software
cooperative in argentina. I think they have around 20 people working on a
cooperative model.

~~~
mgbmtl
Similarly in Montreal: [https://www.koumbit.org](https://www.koumbit.org)
(legally a non-profit, run mostly by consensus)

------
joelgascoigne
At Buffer we've started to move in this direction. I can highly recommend
watching this video if you're interested in self-management and the idea of a
new management paradigm:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk).
Frederic's book by the same name also goes into further details and shares
several example companies: Buurtzorg, AES, Morning Star, FAVI, RHD and others.

~~~
s3nnyy
This is the most eye-opening talk, I've listened to since a long time.

It is sad that it was published in August this year and was only viewed 8k
times. I don't think this is a big number for the applicability this has.

------
sbarg
I remember two firms from previous HN posts that stuck with me, Fog Creek and
Balsamiq. Joel's methodology might be a little complex, but it makes sense.

[http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/](http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/)

[http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html](http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html)

------
mereghost
Not sure how we compare to those but here @ VAGAS.com we have a radically
horizontal management model.

Everything, from strategic planning to everyday decisions, are open to anyone
participate, but well... our founder can explain this way better than me, so
here it goes: [http://www.managementexchange.com/story/horizontal-
managemen...](http://www.managementexchange.com/story/horizontal-management-
vagascom)

------
vide0star
We have a flat structure with no technical managers at Smarkets (London).
Engineers self-organise into projects. Projects are self-directed and members
of the project appoint a lead and have quantitative goals. Salaries will be
set from anonymous peer review. We're a team of 11 engineers.

------
dajbelshaw
You might find this from Laura Thomson (Director of Engineering Operations at
Mozilla) useful: [https://speakerdeck.com/lauraxt/minimum-viable-
bureaucracy](https://speakerdeck.com/lauraxt/minimum-viable-bureaucracy)

------
satyanash
Zoho Corp. is also an interesting company. Their CRM is often considered a
better/cheaper alternative to SalesForce.

Their Zoho University concept is also an interesting attempt to solve India's
problem of creating quality engineers (vs quantity).

~~~
ZenoArrow
Do Zoho have a flat management structure?

~~~
satyanash
I'm not sure about a completely flat structure, but they do value the actual
work done than the post of an employee.

Employees are often encouraged to move between products as both of them
mature.

Their attrition rate is also very very low.

------
fiatjaf
Morning Star is the best I've heard: [https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-
all-the-managers/ar/...](https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-
managers/ar/1)

------
d--b
Bunch of them in there:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization)

------
lavamantis
If the organizing method at Valve is so great, where the hell is the third
episode of the Half-Life 2 trilogy? I've been waiting 7 years for god's sake.

------
ceejayoz
[https://www.balancedpayments.com/open](https://www.balancedpayments.com/open)

------
lunae
Attlasian

~~~
Gonzih
Do you have any information on how exactly Attlasian works (links to some
presentations/posts would be great)? From what I know they are not even close
to Github/Valve kind of flow. But I might be wrong.

~~~
chillax
Found this from 2011: [http://www.managementexchange.com/story/its-culture-
stupid-h...](http://www.managementexchange.com/story/its-culture-stupid-how-
permeating-information-culture-leads-corporate-success)

and of course their official pages on it:
[https://www.atlassian.com/company/about/values](https://www.atlassian.com/company/about/values)

------
beautybasics
Bridgewater Associates

------
JikkuJose
Have you checked: www.assembly.com & www.kickstarter.com

~~~
knd775
I don't think that is what was meant by OP. I think they were asking about the
atmosphere/organization inside of the company, rather than companies that
allow people to collaborate.

~~~
lazerscience
Yes I think this is what the question is about. Some people might call it
"Holocracy" or something like that...

------
yuhong
I still remember michaelochurch suggesting that Google should use open
allocation.

