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Whenever someone wistfully posts about how great it would be if their > 100 (heck, even > 10) employee company had a flat structure like Valve, I can't help but
by mwfunk 10y ago
Whenever someone wistfully posts about how great it would be if their > 100 (heck, even > 10) employee company had a flat structure like Valve, I can't help but cringe a little. If you don't have an explicit organizational structure, how is it not inevitable (if not present from the outset) that you end up with an implicit organizational structure, one that's even more based on socializing, old boy networks, etc.
IMO whenever someone speaks longingly for such a thing, they imagine a meritocracy in which they are somehow more valued/important/influential than they are at their current job. I don't think anyone would advocate a structure in which they themselves would be less valued than they are currently, that's for sure.
It's hard not to see calls for flat orgs as being much more than an unconscious expression of professional narcissism- "I know better than my stupid manager, if only I could do things exactly how I wanted to, on my own schedule, everyone would be better off!". I've got to think that that statement might be true in some cases, but for every valid case there are 100 or 1000 people who are thinking the exact same thing simply because they overvalue the things that they care about, undervalue the things that other people care about, and in general don't know what they don't know. Even dumber would be those who assume that they would end up at or near the top of the magical, Utopian meritocracy that would emerge from such an arrangement.
- Joof 10y agoOr maybe it would validate the manager's value in the eyes of people who fit in the organization. Instead of having current managers / CEOs or whoever being the validating authority. Different values would grow; valve has a more engineering / artist minded culture than most other companies do. Converting a regular organization to a flat one does sound particularly bad though.
- coldtea 10y ago>I don't think anyone would advocate a structure in which they themselves would be less valued than they are currently, that's for sure. Except if they genuinely believe in equality and hate being above/managing other people, but rather be equal part of a team, even if that means losing their managing privileges... It's not like there are no people who didn't dislike management and wanted (and some did) get back to plain programmer.
- aninhumer 10y agoExcept you probably can give up management if you really want to, but you'll probably have to take a pay cut. Which is kind of the OP's point. It's not that you want to be less valued as a manager, it's that you want to be more valued as a programmer.
- coldtea 10y ago>Except you probably can give up management if you really want to, but you'll probably have to take a pay cut. Which is kind of the OP's point. And I've seen people do that too, why the disbelief? Turn down more highly paid managerial positions, because they'd rather not be leading people.
- aninhumer 10y agoSure, but if they're fully satisfied by that then they're not the ones advocating structural change, so they're not counterexamples to the OP's claim. (Arguably changing an individual's role is still restructuring, but I think the OP was talking about more comprehensive restructuring suggestions.)