You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (2008)

[chmaynard]

https://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html

[rightbyte]

"Though they're statistically abnormal, startup founders seem to be working in a way that's more natural for humans."

I think it is called agency. Like, I feel that while doing projects at home. I just pull out my Master Card and buy whatever I need. No fuzz.

At work I have to go to dad, and he tells me to ask mum.

[rgavuliak → rightbyte]

Exactly and wait for 2 weeks to get the correct rights.

[DanielHB]

> What's so unnatural about working for a big company? The root of the problem is that humans weren't meant to work in such large groups.

I had this realization when I last changed jobs. What I hate is not necessarily to have a boss. It is working with a large group of people.

Large projects with a lot of devs and dedicated support people (PMs, designers, usability researchers, data analysts, etc, etc) just drain the life out of me. To get anything done and agreed becomes a nightmare, changes come from other parts of the org that you disagree and/or don't understand and/or don't see coming (and now affects your work). Lack of ownership of your own stuff and having someone else having ownership of the stuff you need to use is another huge problem.

It is not at all the size of the company (although this usually is tied hand-in-hand). It is about the size of the _project_ (including any dependencies to external systems, people or other parts of the org). Anything beyond 5 devs one designer and one PM already starts to feel soul-crushing.

Unfortunately the golden age of software is over and now anything of note eventually needs a huge team. Out of curiosity I checked Linear (the project management tool) Linkedin which I consider the apex of good, focused software. They employ 135 people, of which 40 are developers.

[perrygeo → DanielHB]

There's a real biological basis for our reluctance to engage with large groups. Dunbar pins the number at 150 and claims its limited by our brain's computational capacity. Below 150, humans seem to comfortable monitoring our relationship with everyone and able to keep trust high amongst the complexity of interrelationships. Above 150, we start "losing track" and no longer feel a tight connection to the group. More importantly, above this threshold and no one person can police for defectors or bad behavior. Individuals who don't share the same values can hide out in the group and take advantage of it. Once that trust becomes harder to establish, the group dynamic changes and game theory kicks in.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/004724...

[DanielHB → perrygeo]

> Once that trust becomes harder to establish, the group dynamic changes and game theory kicks in.

This hits hard, yes the main source of anguish in every single job I had was losing/not-having trust on people my own work depend on.

Not necessarily the people themselves, but on their capacity within the organization of delivering what I need.

[antithesizer]

You weren't meant to work a job for money either.