

Tear It Down - greenyoda
http://randsinrepose.com/archives/tear-it-down/

======
loomio
This was seriously inspiring. Thank you for posting it.

We are running a completely flat organisation, but with the full awareness
that just saying there's no bosses in no way removes the power dynamics from
human interaction. Breaking down power hierarchies and reconcieving leadership
in the way Rand eloquently describes here requires constant conscious effort
and innovation in information flows, communication, delegation, and decision-
making.

Through practice, we've come to the very same conclusion that the fallacy at
work in traditional hierarchical organisations that fail by many humanistic
measures (happiness, creativity, autonomy) is not that management and
leadership are important - they absolutely are - but that the people who
perform those functions should be placed higher on some sort of pyramid and
paid more, and that the work of management should be necessarily embodied in
specific _people_ as opposed to a function that can be spread amongst many,
according to their specific abilities and capacity.

We're still working out the specific mechanics and processes, but we're making
headway. It's great to see others thought leading in this space.

------
shadowfiend
‘They furiously and passionately wave their hands, but as you and your team
stream back to your desks, you wonder “How does all the hand-waving apply to
me? It sounded great, but, well, so what?”’

Worth mentioning is that it's possible to understand _exactly_ how all the
hand-waving applies to you and your team even if you're not a Lead or Lead of
Leads. That may be a sign you're qualified to be one of those (whether you
want to be is a different matter).

As such, the only thing I'd say is that the roles stated here are the things
you expect from those people, but they aren't exclusive. It's possible for a
“mere” engineer to have some strategic understanding of the playing field, but
not want to take a lead role. It means their picture probably won't be as
complete, but that additional understanding will probably help them do their
job better—and possibly help them to help their lead do _their_ job better in
turn.

~~~
hobs
After reading the article, I don't think a great director is someone who makes
the minions think "so what?", and if they do they generally either are:

1\. Not looking to their leads for guidance on this crazy inspired person. 2\.
Completely right and the guy is full of shit.

Worst case for a good director is people say something like "Wow, I am
inspired, but I don't understand HOW to accomplish that lofty goal." and that
is where the leads come in.

~~~
eitally
The single most helpful thing directors and leads of leads can do is to ensure
the right people in a vertical organization know the right facts and
strategies. Organizations that compartmentalize, play favorites, introduce
political wrangling (over things like budget, popular projects, etc) are going
to suffer. This is indisputable and also unavoidable, but by forcing
information dissemination across the board the damages are easily mitigated.
People are more flexible and resilient than most realize, and generally
speaking the hive mind self-organizes to support the larger vision. Assuming
there is a clear mission and vision, which is by no means guaranteed.

------
throw12345away
The irony of this is that I've seen Rands in action in management. And he
really should listen to his own advice.

Rands's article sounds all nice and dandy, but he can't even apply it
effectively in practice.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
Just like with engineering, there are many other factors that come into play
when actually applying what you know to be right in practice.

Rands wouldn't be a good manager if he hadn't failed a lot as well. Just like
the rest of us.

One vague anecdote of failure doesn't disqualify his advice.

~~~
mturmon
You're right, but I'd go farther. I work at a large enterprise (~5000 staff,
about 2/3 technical) and his synopsis rings true to me.

I used to scoff at (to use his terms) some Leads, and especially Leads of
Leads. But then I saw a few good versions of Leads of Leads, and I don't scoff
in a generalized fashion any more. Having a good appreciation of what other
teams across the org are doing, and being able to make the right connections,
is a real talent. It's also a talent to not be parochial about the
collaborations you encourage.

------
mjmahone17
I've seen claims from organizations that have "equal but separate
management/director & eng tracks." Usually, one starts out as an engineer, and
then after getting a few promotions, becomes eligible to switch to the
management track. I wonder if you could do a similar thing with middle-
managers and directors: you don't become eligible for a director position
until you've been promoted to a certain level on the eng or management tracks,
but if you so desired, you could climb the same pay scale as a director, even
if you choose to stay a manager, just like the very top engineers supposedly
have the same pay scale as directors.

~~~
kabouseng
Thing is, and most engineers don't like to hear this, to climb in payscale,
you have to take on more responsibility and risks. And just staying a pure
engineer (no management / leading people / deciding company strategy / client
and contractual responsibility), you don't take on much risk or
responsibility.

~~~
lsc
You are, of course, right.

The reason why this seems so counter-intuitive for Engineers is that
Management obviously doesn't take any more personal risk than an individual
contributor does. If they screw it up badly enough? they get fired, just like
we do.

The risk and responsibility that management takes? it is not personal risk. It
is risking other people's money. It's a responsibility to those other people.
In a real way, management is acting as the agent of the investor who actually
owns the place.

It's not about fair. It's about who is closest to and has the most control
over the actual cash, and who is in a stronger position because of that
control to negotiate a higher rate. (or in a more ideologically pure world,
the investor thinks that her interests are served by paying her agent well.)

It's sort of how sysadmins payscales are often not based on the difficulty of
the task, but instead are based on how expensive the thing they are supporting
is.

~~~
kabouseng
>>The risk and responsibility that management takes? it is not personal risk

I am not so sure. Usually it isn't the entire team that gets fired, it's the
project manager. The company still acknowledges the knowledge and value locked
up in the engineer, and if he did his job, but the project manager / whomever
made the wrong choices, the engineer is pretty safe.

Unless of course the entire company goes down, but when you have management
tiers, the company is large so usually some project managers gets fired first
before everybody else.

>>It's not about fair. It's about who is closest to and has the most control
over the actual cash, and who is in a stronger position because of that
control to negotiate a higher rate.

That is absolutely true, and is why the CFO is usually one of the best paid
employees in a company, even though his value to the company might be lower
than other key employees.

~~~
lsc
>I am not so sure. Usually it isn't the entire team that gets fired, it's the
project manager. The company still acknowledges the knowledge and value locked
up in the engineer, and if he did his job, but the project manager / whomever
made the wrong choices, the engineer is pretty safe.

If the _project_ fails, well, seeing to it that the project doesn't fail is
the manager's job, so yeah, if the _project_ fails, the manager is more likely
to get fired than an Engineer, especially if other managers think that the
project failed due to poor management.

However, if the _engineer_ fails, it is the manager's job to fire the Engineer
in question, before the Engineer's failure turns into a project failure.

So either way, yeah, if you are perceived to have failed at your job, you are
likely to get fired. The manager has a different job than the engineer, and
thus is likely to get fired in different situations.

But I don't think that managers have less job security than Engineers. In
fact, I think Managers face rather less systemic risk in terms of technology
changes than Engineers do. For instance, when UNIX beat mainframes? There were
a lot of SysAdmins who had to scramble for serious retraining or to make the
jump to management.

------
IanDrake
>force multiplier as a Lead

I'm glad he mentions this because it's what most people don't understand about
management and their paychecks.

People who gripe about CEO pay don't understand that they're really paid based
on their value to the company. Being the top, a good CEO's force multiplier is
huge, even at mid-size companies. Same thing with the best athletes and
actors. They're worth the money because they make everyone around them better
and draw more external interest.

~~~
acdha
> People who gripe about CEO pay don't understand that they're really paid
> based on their value to the company.

Or they have a more sophisticated understanding of economics and know that the
theory you're advancing is only one of the possible explanations and that it
doesn't explain all of the behaviour seen in the market (i.e. the continued
trend towards across-the-board increases irrespective of job performance).
There's a ton of work looking at the degree to which the trend is partially
explained by other factors like the interconnected nature of boards and the
ability of senior executives to suggest comparisons which favorably support
compensation increases.

