
Democratized management could become a major recruiting advantage - snowmaker
http://blog.jaredfriedman.com/2015/07/18/how-the-no-management-trend-could-disrupt-everything/
======
bkraz
It's very easy to verify that a company provides free lunches. It could take
months or years of employment to determine that a company's "flat management"
structure actually exists in a form that agrees with employees expectations of
the designation. They are not the same kind of perk, at all. Flat management
may not even be a perk! _Good_ management is a perk.

I worked at Valve for several years, and my experience was quite different
from what the popular handbook described. It wasn't an especially bad
experience, but it wasn't nearly as good as the lore makes it out to be. As
you might expect, without written rules or hierarchy, the scene is dominated
by social forces. If you put a bunch of people in a room, tell them that there
is no hierarchy, then compel them to complete a difficult task, natural human
interaction will create a pecking order among other very ugly control systems.
Without some rational thought (ie written and mutually-agreed rules and laws),
things can turn into Lord of the Flies pretty quickly. It's true that no one
tells anyone else what to do at Valve. It's also true that people get fired
without warning. Think of it more like the wild west than anything else. Sure,
you can be very successful there, but the chaos level might be too high for
some folks (me). Check out glassdoor for other anecdotes.

~~~
lk145
Yep, when I see "flat management" I really hesitate to apply. Especially as a
minority in tech, I would rather find a hierarchical place with good managers
who value good arguments than trust the herd.

Unless you have a team of unusually conscientious engineers, "democratic" or
"flat" decision-making often translates to who shouts the loudest.

Not to mention engineers often want to complete the project in the most
technically exciting way possible, rather than the way that will most benefit
the product. Flat structure + too many engineers like that and you end up with
this [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2597](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/?id=2597), written in Haskell.

~~~
codygman
> Yep, when I see "flat management" I really hesitate to apply. Especially as
> a minority in tech, I would rather find a hierarchical place with good
> managers who value good arguments than trust the herd.

If I were a minority or worse at getting along with others I'd definitely
avoid flat management schemes as well.

> Agreed

Unless you have a team of unusually conscientious engineers, "democratic" or
"flat" decision-making often translates to who shouts the loudest.

> Not to mention engineers often want to complete the project in the most
> technically exciting way possible, rather than the way that will most
> benefit the product.

Also sadly true and even has a name: Resume Driven Development

> Flat structure + too many engineers like that and you end up with this
> [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2597](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2597),
> written in Haskell.

Aww, why pick on Haskell here? You know Bump[0] used Haskell. Point being that
Haskell can be a choice which is a choice that most benefits the product. I
recently had experience writing an app to deal with medical data sets that
_really_ benefited from correct by construction or wholemeal[1] programming.

0: [https://www.fpcomplete.com/wp-content/uploads/Bump-case-
stud...](https://www.fpcomplete.com/wp-content/uploads/Bump-case-study.pdf) 1:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6957270/what-is-
wholemeal...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6957270/what-is-wholemeal-in-
functional-programming)

Noted as a good example in the stack overflow answer:

> I always found the Hutton/Bird Sudoku solver a good example of wholemeal
> programming:
> [http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/sudoku.lhs](http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/sudoku.lhs)

~~~
lk145
Yeah the Haskell part is mostly tongue and cheek :P I wouldn't use it for any
old project but I could see how the benefits of Haskell could outweigh its
difficulties in some scenarios. Personally, I like functional programming, but
I'm not sure it's suitable for the masses (perhaps some day?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYk8CKH7OhE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYk8CKH7OhE)).

------
skewart
It's not quite accurate to equate 'democratized management' with 'no
management'. Anarchized management might be a better term for the kind of wild
west bossless system at Valve. (I mean anarchy as an organizational system,
not a casual pejorative term).

The author does make a good point that organizational structure and decision-
making is an area ripe for innovation and improvement. And it does indeed seem
to be one where new companies have a distinct advantage over existing ones.

A lot of the things people dislike in traditional management hierarchies are
also things that are ultimately bad for the company overall and its
shareholders - excessive politics, slow decision-making, etc.

------
kabdib
Free food is easy. It's "just money". Low on money? Cut back to soda and
snacks from Costco.

A flat organization is something else entirely. The Valve way is simple, but
not easy. You need to be able to put a huge amount of trust in people. You
can't be shy about getting rid of people who aren't working out. It's not
"managerless nirvana," it's _different_ , and it's unclear if it's really what
you want in a focused company like a start-up, where you have a financial fuse
and little luxury to experiment.

(I read the Zappos manifesto. It was full bull-goose batshit crazy; basically
unreadable psychobabble power-blended with scientology-class buzzwords. It
looked like they didn't want employees, they wanted bio-robots capable of
running some funky version of Python. Hoo boy).

------
jacques_chester
> _The things is: engineers don’t like bosses._

I don't like being told _how_ to do my job.

But I don't want to do everyone else's, either.

On an engagement I don't have to think about what feature to develop next.
That's up to my product manager, working with a designer. I sometimes venture
an opinion, but it's just, like, my opinion man.

And they don't have to worry about the minutiae of code. That's my job as an
engineer. They can ask questions and make suggestions, but it's up to my peers
and I to decide the engineering questions.

The problem isn't with clearcut roles. Clear separation of responsibility is
great. The problem is _trust_.

And trust problems are not solved by throwing everyone into the same deep end.

------
dbg31415
MANY people in a company aren't good at leading. Not really sure why anyone
would think democracy was a good way to run a company.

Find people who are GOOD at leading, make them leaders. If you have bad
leaders, of course that's a bad thing, but "WE DON'T LIKE BOSSES" is a
horrible way to tell if someone is good or bad at leading, it's just teenage
angst.

~~~
tajen
I've never understood why people equate management to leadership. For me
leadership is that you're so awed by the excellence and ideas of your manager
that you follow him. But whereever I see a manager act, I see authority and no
leadership. What did I miss?

I reckon there is leadership when a boss is driving a corporate all-hands. But
when you're in a 1-on-1 with your team lead, and he tells you that your
performance is too low, there is no leadership involved. It's only driving and
authority. No convincing, no leadership. The TL is here to review the tasks,
the sprint backlog, remove hurdles for you, potentially check everyone's
preferences or career advancement.

Can someone point me to a situation where a team lead isn't acting using
authority but using leadership? Is there any time I could choose that he's
wrong and do something else than he says?

~~~
dbg31415
If your team lead is telling you that your performance is low... one of a few
things is happening:

* You aren't a team player, and he doesn't like you. He doesn't like spending time with you, he wants you to quit. This is a personality issue. Possibly he's at fault, but more than likely you are. Ask yourself, "Do I make the jobs of other people easier or harder? Do I make my team lead's job easier or harder?" Be honest. Remember, missing a deadline is often something he can smooth over. If you were really irreplaceable you wouldn't be having reviews with your team lead -- watch your attitude. (I'm putting this first because it's a hot market and so many devs have attitude problems / entitlement problems as a result.) Personality is 85% of your success, technical skills the other 15%.

* He has to give someone a bad rating (and he doesn't like you / you are the low man). Stack ranking sucks, but it's very real. You are being graded on a curve at work, even if you're a solid performer you're being compared to the others on your team. Always do what you can to show your worth. Never let others speak or you, or present your ideas. Get the credit for what you do.

* You deserve it. Be honest.

* He's a douche. But chances are he is a douche because he doesn't have insight (because you didn't do your work in a way he could see it, or your attitude sucks). It's rare for team leads to want people off their team, they usually aren't promoted because they were bad at their job / not ambitious. As long as you know what his ambitions are... and align yourself with them... you can have a great relationship with your boss. Don't jump to the conclusion that your boss is a douche. Do your best, and try to understand what's going on here. 99% of the time your boss wants you to succeed and you're your own worst enemy in the workplace.

~~~
tajen
The team was excellent and I admit that I probably deserved it. I didn't have
friends in that city and I was a work addict, which is a very bad situation to
perform well and get recognition. A few things could have been done and I'm
certainly disappointed he didn't do them. I've left that company two years
ago, came back to my home country and created my own company. He takes news
often, like other colleagues, but he never admitted that he preferred me out,
so I wonder what he really expected. I believe I've mitigated the bad
situation by leaving.

But I was really asking about the team lead. Even for others, you drive a team
by prioritizing a backlog and communicating. But if you do things your
employees don't like, it's the same story, they still have to work hard and
perform best.

At what moment is leadership involved in being a manager, rather than natural
subordination from the employees?

~~~
dbg31415
This is hard. Best case, your manager was someone who was good at what the
team he managed did... and wanted to stop being good at that and waste all his
time in meetings. Ha.

You have a valid point... and that is to say that leadership doesn't have to
be from the managers only. But often they're the only ones who (because of all
the damn meetings) have a full view of what's going on with the company, their
competitors, and with the market as a whole.

The amount of time I devote to not coding... it makes me good at things that
aren't coding. The amount of time my trusted tech lead puts into coding and
helping train junior devs (so they'll hit me up for raises) is also
staggering.

I miss having a hands-on job, but it's sort of a question of "who are you
doing it for?" He's doing it for the staff, and I guess indirectly the
company. But I would say I do it for the company, and when the company is
healthy that indirectly helps the staff.

You're going to need both kinds of leadership.

------
CamTin
Comparing "no management", "flat structure", "holocracy" to the trend for the
tech elite to get free food from the cafeteria is really misleading. Food
actually can be provided to someone at zero cost (though of course Google
isn't feeding everybody just to be nice). Management can't be just done away
with.

Did somebody hire you? He's your boss. Can somebody fire you? He's your boss.
Can they tell you to show up at work at certain times, or prevent you from
taking the afternoon off to take your kid to the doctor? He's your boss. Can
someone control whether or not you get a raise? They're your boss.

Most importantly:

Does somebody extract the excess value from the of the labor you provide, and
claim the right to do so by more efficiently organizing the workplace so as to
produce value most efficiently? That's what management _is_.

These functions don't have to be performed by specific people with C _O
titles, but they do need to be done. A cooperative can perform them in a
slightly different way, a partnership by slightly different rules, a
privately-held VC-backed corporation by others, and publicly-traded
multinationals by yet others.

I have a hard time believing that Silicon Valley is about to see a wave of
startups organized in a cooperative structure. The entire culture and
infrastructure is built like a factory farm to raise little companies into
behemoths by pumping them full of steroids, hormones, and venture capital. I
doubt most worker-run companies would make the same kinds of ethical and
business decisions that VCs do, and I _really* don't see VCs changing the MO
to one where they just sign checks and then let the workers decide what to do
with them democratically.

That said, if tech talent remains scarce, and therefore in a position to
continue demanding the kind of humane treatment all workers would like, that
talent may just be able to drive a change--but it won't happen in California.
My guess would be that this may drive engineers to the Midwest, with its lower
cost of real estate and already-entrenched culture of cooperatives (in
agriculture and some industries) and worker-led structures like labor unions.
Places like Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, or maybe even college towns like
Madison and Ann Arbor (where housing cooperatives are very prevalent and
widely-accepted) would be where I would look for this kind of change first.
Current "'Silicon $foo' where $foo != 'Valley'" type cities (St. Louis,
Austin, etc) may be a good bet too.

In short, Dylan was right, and ultimately, you gotta serve somebody.

~~~
solve
> Did somebody hire you? He's your boss. Can somebody fire you? He's your
> boss. Can they tell you to show up at work at certain times, or prevent you
> from taking the afternoon off to take your kid to the doctor? He's your
> boss. Can someone control whether or not you get a raise? They're your boss.

What are you talking about? In the flat-managed places I've worked in, a group
a peers periodically voted on everyone else's performance. If you had to leave
the office for something, you announced it (but never asked permission for it
) on the group mailing list.

> Does somebody extract the excess value from the of the labor you provide,
> and claim the right to do so by more efficiently organizing the workplace so
> as to produce value most efficiently?

The one I'm talking about was a publicly traded company, so no. The technical
"owner" of the company had little to no say in the management. Maybe this
place was not the typical employer. It was in a field where talent is
extremely valued. The employees ruled.

If you ask me, it's quite a bit harder to brown-nose 20 of your peers, than
just one boss. The dynamics were vastly different than a non-flat, 1-boss
system.

~~~
pjc50
>> Does somebody extract the excess value from the of the labor you provide,

> publicly traded company, so no.

Er, yes. The shareholders get your excess value and are ultimately in control.
Ford v. Dodge is your constraint. I'm sure they take no active part so long as
you're successful, but when you're not, what happens then?

~~~
solve
You've cut off the part of the sentence that I was replying to.

~~~
pjc50
That would be _claim the right to do so by more efficiently organizing the
workplace so as to produce value most efficiently_?

The self-organisation described is not pure mutuality, it's just delegation
from the shareholders, who currently trust that the organisation's self-
organising will most likely give them the best return. Ultimately they have
the right to reorganise you.

------
Sebguer
This article's a good counterpoint: [https://pando.com/2015/07/03/holacracy-
dunces/](https://pando.com/2015/07/03/holacracy-dunces/)

~~~
darknomad23
Any easy way to read pando articles without subscribing?

------
lordnacho
One thing that needs to be thought about is ownership. Long story, but
currently we have an equity culture where the owners appoint a board, who
appoint management. You have some variation between Anglo and Germanic types
but pretty similar, still with roots in the industrial system with factories
and machines and mostly commodity human capital.

Now of course there are companies who have adapted this to fit modern labour
types in various ways. But is there a better way?

------
codewithcheese
Comparing free food as a recruiting advantage to democratized management is a
huge stretch. Everyone likes free food... not everyone likes arriving at a new
company and being told to look around and go do something useful.

~~~
snowmaker
Interestingly, not everyone likes free food! At least, in the company-provided
sense.

I've had _many_ engineers tell me that they find the emphasis on free food
these days to be patronizing, as if engineers were not capable of obtaining
their own food. Some of the disadvantages of free food:

\- You are pressured to eat whatever the company provides. What if you prefer
something else?

\- You are socially pressured to eat with your coworkers every single day

\- It's a transparent attempt to get people to spend more hours in the office,
in return for food that is worth only a few dollars; not nearly as much as
their time.

\- It removes the natural opportunity for a break around lunchtime to go
outside and get something to eat.

Anyway, your point is still valid that free food is less controversial than
democratized management ... by a long shot :). But I thought that it was
interesting how the culture around company-provided food is changing.

~~~
CHY872
Remember that free food is not seen as a fringe benefit, so it can increase
compensation by a fair amount due to the reduced tax burden.

That's one of the reasons why it's so offered - it's a very cost effective way
to increase compensation.

~~~
walshemj
Until the IRS clamps down a tax break for well paid upper middle class is an
easy target.

------
dang
> What are you talking about?

Please don't degrade HN threads with uncivil jabs.

Apart from that sour note, this comment is excellent, and I hope you post more
about that experience.

Edit: detached from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9908463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9908463)
and marked off-topic.

~~~
solve
I'm genuinely confused as to what experience he's talking about, as it sounds
like the complete opposite from what I've experienced. I do know that
different companies may have implemented their flat structure in completely
different ways though, so that's why I ask.

The question was actually not a rhetorical jab :) But thanks, I'll keep that
in mind.

~~~
dang
Thanks. It's hard to read intent, but that's partly why phrases that typically
carry an acerbic or sarcastic payload are best avoided here.

I feel bad for taking a substantive subthread off-topic so I will detach this
digression from its parent and demote it.

