
Holacracy is Bullshit - _pius
http://cbracy.tumblr.com/post/79876957198/the-github-debacle-why-holacracy-is-bullshit
======
matthewmacleod
This is fucking stupid, given we have almost literally no information about
what has happened at Github, nor the extent to which any events were due to an
absence of hierarchy.

I really wish people would dial back on the gloating promotion of their own
pet theories and maybe wait until a little bit more information is available
before jumping to conclusions.

~~~
pron
These aren't pet theories but an excellent starting point for a discussion.

I would have expected a community of smart individuals to sincerely examine
these accusations, even if they are not the whole story behind this current
scandal, because we could only benefit from such a discussion.

That this article has been flagged by several people only demonstrates a great
level of immaturity and that we, as an industry, more than deserve scorn. We
can certainly not claim to be open minded and thoughtful after this.

~~~
shadowfox
> I would have expected a community of smart individuals to sincerely examine
> these accusations

From my experience, smartness, sincerity and a sufficiently malleable ego
(that enables one to look at accusations constructively) don't always go hand-
in-hand. They seem like orthogonal qualities.

------
jowiar
To me, Github's structure is largely an overreaction to the culture flaws
elsewhere. Belief that managers are more valuable than doers, and thus paid
more. Belief that engineers are infinitely replaceable. Belief that one should
be paid proportionate to the number of people below them in the org chart.

Management has a purpose - but companies poor treatment of engineers over the
years has blinded many engineers to this. A great manager ensures their people
are pointed in the right direction, makes sure that they're not running into
roadblocks, and frees up their people from dealing with bullshit so they can
be the best they can be. This really doesn't have anything to do with
"oppression", or whatnot.

Managing is orthogonal to engineering - and saying either is worth more than
the other is simply wrong. If we can decouple the ideas of "managing" and
"building" with systematically being valued / paid more or less than others,
we'll have progress. Right now, most are erring on one side or the other.

~~~
hapless
Managers' higher pay isn't some kind of conspiracy squatting in the industry.
It's the result of market forces. Those outside pressures will not evaporate
simply because we do not like them.

Pay grades are telling us things we do not wish to hear:

\- engineers _are_ more replaceable than their managers

\- management staff are consistently difficult to find

~~~
jowiar
Is the market saying that? There were higher starting salaries coming out of
my CS undergrad than my management masters. That was 5 years ago, and I don't
think things have shifted away from engineers since.

Look at the acquihire prices engineers are getting these days...

~~~
hapless
That is another unpleasant lesson: credentials don't make the man.

Your master's degree in management appears to be much less valuable than
experience.

------
Torgo
After Jeri Ellsworth was fired from Valve, she had said that the "flat
organization" of Valve masked an informal but very real hierarchy that was
made up of elites and their cliques. I realize that flat organization is not
the same thing as holarchy, but it could be that they both are trading formal
hierarchies for informal ones rather than dispensing with them.

~~~
pron
Found it[1]. She says, "The one thing I found out the hard way is that there's
actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company, and
it felt a lot like high school... There's popular kids that have acquired
power within the company, then there's the trouble makers and everyone in
between."

[1]: [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-08-valves-
flat...](http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-08-valves-flat-
structure-leads-to-cliques-say-ex-employee)

------
doktrin
> _When you allow a power vacuum to emerge someone will fill it, and it’s
> usually the people who have traditionally held power_

I've never really given this issue much thought, but it sounds reasonable.
Illusions can be dangerous, including the illusion of equality.

I was instantly reminded of the famous commandment in Animal Farm : _" All
animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"_. It now seems
almost naive to pretend that there wouldn't be people in the organization with
vastly more power than others.

All that said, until very recently I was someone who admired GitHub's flat
hierarchy from afar. If they were being naive, then so was I.

~~~
buro9
It's not that you can't have flat hierarchy, it's that you have to ensure that
it's supported by transparency and process to then prevent it actually being a
mask for another power structure.

That is the major failing with a lot of the companies doing this. The belief
that everyone shares the same ideals and it will work itself out without
requiring very strict constraints and process.

All that happens is that the inequalities are layered behind façades, becoming
a lot harder to address and resolve than if a traditional power structure was
used.

~~~
saraid216
> It's not that you can't have flat hierarchy, it's that you have to ensure
> that it's supported by transparency and process to then prevent it actually
> being a mask for another power structure.

To wit, this is the actual democratic experiment that people keep thinking
they refer to when talking about America.

"Holacracies" aren't impossible. It's just that they're _hard_. Brady's point
is more that many people refuse to admit this and, accordingly, run into the
worst problems posed rather than having ways to deal with them as they arise.

------
rootedbox
Holacracies still have a vested management power structure.. Basically you
still have owners / top-tier management who's goals may not align with
workers.

Want to be a really progressive start up.. become a COOP.

------
mbillie1
Eh. I worked at a reasonably holacratic/flat organization (a high-profile
agile consultancy, actually), and when I say it was flat, I didn't know who my
boss was, or who to give notice to when I quit. It was honestly very flat, and
in no sense did this mean "secretly rich white guys ran the show." It _did_
lead to a bit more cliqueyness than might otherwise have been desired.

I think that a holacracy, like most things dealing with human beings and their
behavior, is dependent on the specific human beings in question with regard to
whether or not it will succeed.

On a slightly meta level, it is interesting why the startup/development
culture seems to flock to articles like this, saying "such-and-such thing can
never work as a solution to people problems because it didn't work here" \- we
see this crop up on HN constantly, pro- and anti-, with things like working
from home, pair programming, etc. Maybe it's too much to ask that we say
"different things work for different groups of people"?

~~~
alukima
I think I work at the "high-profile agile consultancy" you're talking about.

I've been there two months and I still have no idea who I talk to about X,
where X is a variety of things. Before getting staffed on a project I spent
time working on whatever I wanted to learn. At several points I wondered if
there was someone I should check in with. It felt so weird to just do what I
wanted without having to get permission or justify it to someone.

That said, I don't think I could ever go back to reporting to a manager,
especially a non-technical manager.

>Maybe it's too much to ask that we say "different things work for different
groups of people"?

I couldn't agree more. I think the flat model works at my company because
harassment wouldn't be tolerated by anyone. I turned down positions at
startups because their culture was too fratty. Even if they had a management
system I wouldn't have felt comfortable bringing up issues.

~~~
mbillie1
> That said, I don't think I could ever go back to reporting to a manager,
> especially a non-technical manager.

After working in a flat organization (I'm 99% sure we're talking about the
same place here) like we do/did, I agree. It's amazing how much more
productive you can be (provided you're a generally high-aptitude, motivated
person to begin with) when you are left alone to do what needs to get done.
I'd prefer only to work in similar organizational structures from now on. In
my experience, even the little cliqueyness you get is hardly an argument
against the alternatives (rigid organizational structure, difficult to move
vertically, documentation, all the waterfall stuff, and/or the domineering
personality of a god-complex startup founder)

------
binarymax
My father, who I consider to have been one of the "real" hippies, told me that
he couldn't deal with hippie communes. He claimed that when the group becomes
large enough and everyone should be considered equal, a jerk comes in to take
advantage of the situation, starts managing, and fucks everything up.

~~~
pron
The dynamics of the counterculture communes has been studied, and it is of
interest as counterculture was certainly a forefather to modern day Silicon
Valley.

See here:

* [http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/how-silicon-valley-became-the-m...](http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/how-silicon-valley-became-the-man/)

* [http://vimeo.com/73536828](http://vimeo.com/73536828) esp. 54:10 and on

------
jballanc
If you say "we don't have office politics at our company" the reality is that
you _do_ have office politics and it's completely unrestrained due to the
blind eye turned on it by "management".

If you notice that the cars you build tend to rust, and that water causes
rust, you might say, "well, we're going to build cars that don't encounter
water," and you'd be rightly laughed out of town. Office politics doesn't
happen (or not) because the founders wrote it into their business plan. Office
politics happens because offices are occupied by humans.

------
neom
Not to change the subject: Having just come out of a totally flat org that was
pushing hard for 100% Holacracy I have to say if I didn't leave for other
reasons it would have been that. It can be incredibly incredibly difficult to
get things done in this environment and sadly made me feel like every day I
had to wake up and battle my coworkers because everything was by committee.
I'm all for collaboration, but I also believe at the end of the day someone
has to be accountable and responsible for actions taken or not taken.

~~~
icebraining
But that's not what Holacracy pushes for. The organization is supposed to have
people with power to decide certain stuff and be accountable for it. It's just
not supposed to have a single hierarchy that ends in the CEO and which
concentrates all power, but a bunch of "circles" that have role-specific
powers.

[http://holacracy.org/constitution](http://holacracy.org/constitution)

It seems that everyone is blaming the process without following it. Not that I
claim that following it would have good results - I have no idea if it's a
good system or not.

~~~
nomade0
You got it right. I work with Holacracy and I can confirm... everything you
read Holacracy being blamed for, as in Catherine Bracy's article, is actually
not against Holacracy.

They think it's against Holacracy, because they mistakenly believe that
Holacracy simply means "flat org". Then they build an entire argument around
this error...

Since the Zappos story, people talk about "holacracy" here and there. In
reality, there are few organizations actually using Holacracy® — the system
defined in the constitution you link to. Github isn't part of them, Valve
either. Zappos and Medium are.

------
dictum
>In the wake of this, I’m starting to think all of the problems we’re seeing
with Silicon Valley these days—the ineptitude at politics, the clumsiness with
handling inequality in SF, the lack of gender and racial diversity in the
industry—are actually rooted in a systemic failure to understand how power
works

I'm completely lost here: so the way to solve the problem of people with a lot
of power oppressing people with little or no power is to replace the
oppressive people with power with _better_ powerful people?

Isn't this quite close to the idea that somewhat progressive dictators are
good?

EDIT — _Kinda ad hominem-y:_ "Until November 2012, she ran the Obama
campaign's technology office in San Francisco where she recruited technology
volunteers to build software for the campaign."

~~~
mpyne
> Isn't this quite close to the idea that somewhat progressive dictators are
> good?

No, it's quite close to the idea that progressive _power structures_ are good,
as opposed to anarchy followed by "obviously everything will end up being
progressive now that I've torn down the structure of power".

~~~
icebraining
But isn't that why the people behind the Holacracy concept have a whole
structure (with pretty pictures!) that is supposed to replace the managerial
layer?

[http://holacracy.org/how-it-works](http://holacracy.org/how-it-works)

I have no idea if holacracy is bullshit or not (it does feel like a concept
invented to sell training classes), but claiming it replaces managers with
nothing is plainly false.

~~~
mpyne
If I'm understanding the linked article correctly, she wasn't claiming
holacracy guts management, she was claiming that it introduces a power vacuum.
And from what I can tell in that pretty picture you provide, she's probably
actually right.

E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company? Who guides the
unending governance meetings to decide who the managers will be that day? Who
decides which spouses get to work on company property without pay, and which
employees are allowed to date other employees?

The way those things get resolved will show you who's really in charge.

~~~
dragonwriter
> E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company?

The circle whose focus is strategic direction.

> Who guides the unending governance meetings to decide who the managers will
> be that day?

Unending governance meetings and "decide who the managers will be that day"
both seem like signs of a circle with a poor governance process (probably, one
that is trying to force things into a non-holarchic structure.)

~~~
mpyne
> > E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company?

> The circle whose focus is strategic direction.

Sweet. Now we know who's actually in charge, it's whoever is a member of that
circle. That wasn't so hard.

~~~
dragonwriter
The idea that having focus on long-range, broad-scope problems is intimately
tied to authority is a typical assumption of traditional heirarchies, but
there's no reason it has to be true in holacracies.

~~~
mpyne
It has nothing to do with whether you call the direction "strategic", "next
quarter" or "tactical". If you have the authority to set the direction at all
you're the one (or few) in charge.

We prefer these types of direction to be long-term if only to avoid having a
business do its own random walk through the markets, but don't confuse scope
with authority.

------
dobbsbob
evil rich white men article though an evil rich woman was the power vacuum
filler.

github can keep their managerless system, they just need to adopt a shop
steward system like unions have. This is somebody who can advocate for
employees during disciplinary meetings with management, arbitrate petty
disputes that don't need heavy handed management involvement with threats of
termination, and anonymously bring problems to management if the grieving
employee doesn't want to be identified. This person is elected and wields zero
power.

It's the only thing I remember liking from being in a union once and would
work for github. This girl could have gone to the steward, then the steward
could complain about the founder's wife harassing employees to HR without
identifying the employee to management for silent discipline, when they try to
get rid of you for complaining or whatever personal vendetta (it can happen).

------
Xdes
I was expecting the article to educate me on why holacracy is less effective
than hierarchy. However the argument that "holacracy does not work because
rich white men fill power vacuums" is fluff.

------
malandrew

        "When you allow a power vacuum to emerge someone will fill 
        it, and it’s usually the people who have traditionally 
        held power (rich white men)."
    

Why? If there is a power vacuum, exactly what forces support rich white men
filling those roles? Why can't woman or person of a different race fill the
role?

Near as I can tell, the only thing I can see that supports this likelihood is
base rates. A greater percentage of the participants in a tech holocracy are
likely to be white men (because they are well represented in tech), so when
you have 70-80 white male marbles in a bag of 100 marbles, the probably of
picking a white male marble is 70-80%. Is there some other force other than
simple statistics that increases the probability of a white man taking over
power in excess of their representation in the population in question?

~~~
tsax
Yes, but all such questions can lead to un-PC conclusions, therefore you may
want to keep quiet.

~~~
brvs
Like what?

~~~
tsax
Just game out possible trails of thought. The most 'offensive' one may be
true. That's all I'll say.

------
vezzy-fnord
_The problem with management isn’t managers, the problem with management is
bad managers._

Which you have an incentive to keep, as you do not want to immobilize your
good engineers, as per the Dilbert principle.

The problem is not holacracy itself. Plenty of companies are doing just fine
using decentralized and autonomous organizational methods, including Valve and
Flying Wild Hog.

The problem lies in having a culture of apathy and immaturity. Not having
managers doesn't mean one should not be able to forward complaints to an
appropriate person and have the situation handled.

Also, ironically, in the GitHub debacle, it was a woman who rose up and
disrupted the power balance.

------
jsmcgd
Hierarchy may be superior but I think it might be a bit early to declare
holacracy a failure. Presumably there are a multitude of successful
holacracies that we aren't hearing about because they are actually working.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Valve is a prime example of this.

Though, I'm guessing Gabe Newell has a ton of defacto power, and you hear
plenty of complaints from people that minor bugs and issues go unhandled
because they aren't sexy to work on.

~~~
sanswork
Jeri Ellsworth's accounts of working within Valve and the issues with the
structure there were pretty widely published after her firing. She mentions a
fair few more problems then just unsexy bugs being ignored it's worth a
listen.

------
asgard1024
I've always found these attempts for "holacracy" as efforts to square the
circle. There is actually a solution to this problem - it's called democracy.
Every person gets the same amount of power - one vote, and they can decide
things (or decide they don't care). This is compatible with hierarchies, both
formal and informal, but the authority is challenged all the time (which is a
good thing). Some companies work like that, they are called worker
cooperatives, but they are rare. Any eventual power cliques have hard time to
be stable in such environment, because the power is equally distributed by
default and according to a fixed, well-known rule. This actually allows
participants to focus on production rather than politics.

But this is seldom what the owners of the company (who invested capital) want.
They don't want people to run things, they want people to run things on their
behalf (and get rich from the process). And even if they were sympathetic to
this idea, it's very hard to grow such a company at all stages (in small group
it's very prone to hostile takeovers and later there is no incentive to grow,
since the power of individuals is always the same compared to number of
people).

I don't see transition to democratic workplace happening unless lots of people
give up any hope to have more power than other people. Interestingly, in
political system, this largely happened, although it's still not enough and
there is resentment from some.

------
cbracy
I added an edit here, pointing out that GitHub wasn't actually employing
holacracy. That was my (pre-breakfast) sloppiness. My main point still stands,
though. And Tom Preston-Werner describes his "management" structure here in
pretty great detail so we do have some insight into what was actually going on
inside GitHub:
[http://www.oscon.com/oscon2013/public/schedule/detail/29555](http://www.oscon.com/oscon2013/public/schedule/detail/29555)

~~~
nomade0
Catherine, you are confusing "Holacracy" for a generic term that means "flat
organizations" and "lack of structure".

Holacracy® is a specific system with clear rules (available here:
[http://holacracy.org/constitution](http://holacracy.org/constitution) ), and
is far more structured than what you describe in your article. See for example
the structure of my organization running with Holacracy:
[https://glassfrog.holacracy.org/organizations/5](https://glassfrog.holacracy.org/organizations/5)

It's mistake to associate Holacracy to flat organizations — Holacracy is
actually FARTHER AWAY from a flat organization than it is from a conventional
hierarchy. It pushes very strongly about the looseness and lack of clarity
around accountabilities in a structure-less org. It even pushes against the
lack of clarity in conventional hierarchies as well. Overall, Holacracy
instills _more_ structure in an organization, not less.

Ev Williams, who uses it at Medium, puts it this way:

"Holacracy is the opposite of the cliché way to run a startup. People think
"freedom, no job description, everybody does everything, it's totally flat,
and that's cool because we're all down with those rules". But actually that
creates tons of anxiety and inefficiency, and various modes of dysfunction,
whether we have to build consensus around every decision, or I'm gonna do a
land grab for power... People romanticize startup cultures, but I know it's
fairly rare that people in startups say "this is it, it is amazing and
everybody is super-productive and going along". So in Holacracy, one of the
principles is to make the implicit explicit — tons of it is about creating
clarity: who is in charge of what, who is taking what kind of decision — and
there is also a system for defining that, and changing that, so it's very
flexible at the same time." (source:
[https://medium.com/p/89fb713a8786](https://medium.com/p/89fb713a8786) )

So... I'm afraid your assessment of Holacracy is really backward. I'm not
saying Holacracy is perfect, but it's certainly not flawed in the ways you
describe.

@oliviercp

~~~
nomade0
I've explained the difference further in a blog post: "Holacracy vs. Hierarchy
vs. Flat Orgs" [https://medium.com/holacracyone-
blog/d1545d5dffa7](https://medium.com/holacracyone-blog/d1545d5dffa7)

------
Zigurd
The problem at Github isn't a good example of the supposed deficiency of
holacratic enterprises.

In the first place, the problem became as serious as it did because it
involved Github's management, such as it was. Secondly, the founder involved
in the incident was put on leave, and an apology was promptly and unreservedly
issued. It is easy to imagine a more hierarchical organization circling the
wagons, instead. In the end, Github may be an example of serious problem with
a founder that was handled as well as possible.

There are a lot of ways software development does not fit within traditional
management structures. For example, if you take traditional project management
tools and try to predict a non-trivial software development schedule with them
you are going to have a bad time. So we invent new, usually less-structured
tools.

You can't do entirely without those structures, but minimization of hierarchy
is the logical way to adapt management to the challenge of keeping software
development orderly and making a business out of it, if that's your aim. If
there is a deeper problem at Github it is likely that they didn't follow some
of the other rules of thumb for software development organizations, like
"don't hire jerks."

------
rjknight
_The problem with management isn’t managers, the problem with management is
bad managers._

So, on the one hand, we have what we might call the _Lord of the Flies_
narrative - that Github's pseudo-anarchic non-management just enables people's
worst traits to come to the surface; it doesn't remove power imbalances, it
just hides them and makes it harder to challenge illegitimate use of that
power because it's harder to identify.

On the flip side, we have what we might call the _Milgram Experiment_
narrative - that authority positions are naturally corrupting, making belief
in good management seem utopian; sure, we'd all like to be managed by someone
that we respect, admire and trust, but we're just as _likely_ to be managed by
someone that we fear, pity or loathe, and the explicit hierarchy turns out to
be just as hard to challenge as the implicit one and often even more so.

Lots of people seem to have decided that one of the above is the greater evil,
and are willing to risk the other. Github is in the minority of companies that
(hitherto) has seen the latter as the greater evil, or at least that is how
the company has presented itself (I don't work there and don't personally know
anyone who does, so I really can't comment on anything other than the
rhetoric).

What we need is, boring though this may seem, some kind of balance between the
two. In an anarchic company, people are going to over-step the boundaries
(e.g. by reverting a co-workers commits due to a personal dispute). Some
authority needs to police this. However, that authority only really needs to
be reactive - it should punish wrongdoers rather than order people around on a
daily basis. Most of the time, people do the right thing and can be left to
get on with it, and hassling them while they do it is harmful.

To get overly philosophical, I think we can have the best of both worlds by
borrowing the concept of 'complex equality'[1], which comes from the book
_Spheres of Justice_ by Michael Walzer[2]. In a nutshell, he suggests that we
can avoid power imbalances by ensuring that natural and legitimate imbalances
within different 'spheres' do not spill over into other ones. In the context
of tech companies, we might have, say, a 'discipline' sphere where managers
are in charge, a 'technical' sphere where engineers are in charge, a 'design'
sphere with designers in charge, and so on. Being the top engineer doesn't
give you the right to overrule a designer on a design question, and being a
top manager doesn't give you the right to overrule an engineer on a technical
question. If we're dealing with a personal conflict, this falls under the
jurisdiction of management, and they should have full authority to resolve it.
If we're dealing with a technical debate, that should be resolved by
engineers. Resource allocation should be handled as democratically as
possible.

Once you think in this way, it becomes obvious why some companies and projects
fail: managers demanding authority over technical matters (e.g. estimates,
software development workflow), engineers demanding authority over design (I'm
sure we can all think of examples), or anyone demanding authority over
management practices. These are all likely to lead to abuse and mismanagement;
in any case they are unlikely to be optimal. What companies need _is_ formal
structure, but structure that _constrains_ authority rather than simply
entrusting it to managers and thereafter hoping that they turn out to be,
against the odds, good ones.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_equality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_equality)
[2] I am _dimly_ aware that Walzer is controversial in some circles. I know
nothing about him apart from the book, so please do not take anything I say as
an endorsement or condemnation of any of his other views, which are beside the
point here.

~~~
patrickmay
> In a nutshell, he suggests that we can avoid power imbalances by ensuring
> that natural and legitimate imbalances within different 'spheres' do not
> spill over into other ones. In the context of tech companies, we might have,
> say, a 'discipline' sphere where managers are in charge, a 'technical'
> sphere where engineers are in charge, a 'design' sphere with designers in
> charge, and so on. Being the top engineer doesn't give you the right to
> overrule a designer on a design question, and being a top manager doesn't
> give you the right to overrule an engineer on a technical question. If we're
> dealing with a personal conflict, this falls under the jurisdiction of
> management, and they should have full authority to resolve it. If we're
> dealing with a technical debate, that should be resolved by engineers

I don't disagree with the theory, but in practice power would come down to who
gets to decide which sphere applies.

~~~
pron
That's what the CEO is for, and hopefully clear and helpful rules.

------
kabuks
I don't know how Github runs, but it sounds nothing like Holacracy. The author
is confused (as are many people on this thread).

Six months ago, I switched my company (over 50 full time employees in 3
cities) to Holacracy.

I'm here to tell you that I'm 100% convinced that it's a huge step forward in
terms of any organizational system I've come across.

There's nothing 'flat' or 'manager-less' about it. It's a complex and
intricate system that leads to greater clarity, less politics, and better
distributed decision making.

Accountabilities are clearer, meetings are more efficient, and more voices are
heard. Holacracy explicitly avoids design/decide by committee.

If you're running a company with more than 10 employees, I highly recommend
you take a serious look at Holacracy. It's the best decision I've made by far,
and I'm never going to work for, or start another company without running it
this way.

If you're earnestly curious, drop me a note and I'll be happy to talk about it
more with you.

------
saosebastiao
_The problem with management isn’t managers, the problem with management is
bad managers_

I agree with this. However, in my experience, bad managers are really good at
politics, and their aptitude with politics biases many organizations towards
bad management. Holocracy isn't so much a knee-jerk reaction to bad managers,
it is a knee-jerk reaction to bad politics. I would posit that if bad managers
were never promoted, people wouldn't have the same holocratic ideals. They
would just switch teams or switch companies, and be done with it. They can't
do that, because sooner or later, Bad Manager Bob comes back as Bad Director
Bob.

~~~
glesica
But I think the point the article is trying to make is that people who are
good at politics will end up with power whether you officially have a flat
structure or not. So then management needs to be used as a way to keep the
whole thing in check. I'm not sure how best to do it, but I think it's a good
point.

------
3pt14159
Actually, if you look at the situation, it was the very nature of having a
_Founder_ involved. If there were no _Founders_ or other powerful people, then
that wife's all edged bullshit never would have taken off.

Holacracy is not Bullshit.

~~~
hapless
In other words, holacracy as a concept is incompatible with a startup's
typical ownership structure?

~~~
dragonwriter
I don't think so; operational/management structure and ownership structure
don't have to interact the way they did here. OTOH, without formal rules and
control mechanism to assure that those rules are respected, the ownership
structure is naturally going to impact the operational/management structure,
which will make holarchy unlikely with any ownership structure (other than
ownership through an identical fractal network of teams as the intended
operational structure.)

------
debacle
I think that a "no managers" system can work either with a very small number
of employees (<15) or in a company of very, very talented people, but if you
need to hire fast, you're going to sacrifice hiring quality, and wind up with
people who may not be the best.

The "GitHub Debacle" seems to be more an issue of a lack of professionalism
and an unwillingness to confront serious problems (a bully non-employee spouse
in the office creating trouble for what sounds like a good employee) before
they came to a head.

~~~
glesica

      > ...very, very talented people...
    

But what does that mean? People who are very, very good at building software
aren't necessarily good at interacting with others or following basic social
rules. Same goes for any field (replace "building software" with "practicing
law", for instance).

Tricky to hire only people who are very, very good at _everything_ necessary
for a healthy culture.

~~~
debacle
But if you aren't in the kind of bind that a company like GitHub is in, or any
company that needs to grow quite fast, you can hire and fire at your leisure,
creating the team that you need.

~~~
eterm
> you can hire and fire at your leisure

That's very US centric advice, in many countries you absolutely cannot fire
someone "at your leisure".

------
carlosdp
They definitely need to work on things, but I don't think that this debacle
means GitHub's decentralized model is invalid. They experienced rapid growth
and there are bound to be some aspects that slip through the cracks, doesn't
mean they should give up trying to retain a flatter hierarchy as they expand.
I hope they don't anyways, it's a core reason GitHub is one of my favorite
tech companies.

------
xrd
This public spat is good for the investors (a16z) at GitHub. Investors want
structure and accountability, and holacracies don't have that. They may get
better results (I'm on the fence) so GitHub is probably on a long leash, but
this will be a topic when Ben Horowitz and the executives at GitHub sit down
for their quarterlies. Wait, holacracies don't have executives...

------
StavrosK
Oh God, "holacracy"? It's too late to change that, isn't it? It should be
"holocracy"...

------
stantona
I wonder if the frat house culture, the opulent office, the drink up
debauchery and the "holacracy" may create a delusional sense of grandiosity
that permeates from the company level to the employee? Just a thought.

------
hoodq19
Waaaaay too soon to be writing off holacracy. Fad or not, it's at the crawl
stage (crawl-walk-run). And to compare it to business-as-usual running-- when
it's as broken as it is-- is premature.

------
neom
Manager != leader.

Managers can = leaders, but the two are not mutually exclusive.

