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>Many business failures i've witnessed happened ultimately because nobody had the energy to cut down the bullshit forest that constantly regrows around a compan

>Many business failures i've witnessed happened ultimately because nobody had the energy to cut down the bullshit forest that constantly regrows around a company. I've worked at a company that had 20 people and a company that's had 5000 and some ones in between. Going from 2-3 people to 20 is pretty manageable. Everyone knows each other, work gets done, you can call people out on their bullshit, stuff is fixed, because everyone feels responsible and accountable. Then you go to 100 people and a few of the original 20 leave and the whole culture changes. 1000's of people? Totally different ball game. Incompetence will slip through, no single person has a full grasp on everything, meetings and more meetings and more managers playing broken telephone all day and you got people in different cities and time zones and countries who've never seen each other face-to-face and it's just a nightmare to manage that. It can be done, but that's when you really need competent managers, and those are extremely hard to come by. I'm sure there are teams and divisions within Intel that are extremely competent, people at the top of their game who are looking at this debacle and just shaking their heads just as much as Linus.

otakucode 9y ago
I'd argue that it could be done, but no longer can. In the past, all of the failings of corporate structures were more than made up for by the value they brought. They solved the problem of distribution, both distributing work to workers and end product to consumers. This was outrageously valuable for a century. Now, however, it's nearly worthless. Anyone can do distribution, both of work and of end products, with very little effort thanks to computers and the Internet. Now, the limitations of those corporate structures are starting to cut deeper and not be compensated for. Their assumption of all of the tremendous failings of in-person human communication (that 'broken telephone' you mention is only part of it, there's also the inherent prejudices and irrational means of influence at play which are inescapable) in combination with both voluntarily abandoning essentially every single benefit they ever offered to employees and the inherent limitations in such a centralized structure will result in them falling apart. I mean, if the market has anything to say about it. Back when factories got big people accepted things like limitations in variety of goods, limited to nil personalization, etc because supporting those things was difficult for factories. Such is still difficult for large companies. They have executives who want to impress 'grand visions' upon the company so that they have some excuse (both personal and professional) to collect such absurdly overlarge compensation. The human brain, by the way, is limited to keeping around 150 people in mind and maintaining stable relationships with them. It's called 'Dunbar's Number' and while there's certainly variation amongst different people with regard to it, I think we can safely presume there is no one with the ability to maintain and consider 1000+ stable relationships. That this is not reflected in our social structures is probably an error.

otakucode 9y ago

I'd argue that it could be done, but no longer can. In the past, all of the failings of corporate structures were more than made up for by the value they brought. They solved the problem of distribution, both distributing work to workers and end product to consumers. This was outrageously valuable for a century. Now, however, it's nearly worthless. Anyone can do distribution, both of work and of end products, with very little effort thanks to computers and the Internet. Now, the limitations of those corporate structures are starting to cut deeper and not be compensated for. Their assumption of all of the tremendous failings of in-person human communication (that 'broken telephone' you mention is only part of it, there's also the inherent prejudices and irrational means of influence at play which are inescapable) in combination with both voluntarily abandoning essentially every single benefit they ever offered to employees and the inherent limitations in such a centralized structure will result in them falling apart. I mean, if the market has anything to say about it. Back when factories got big people accepted things like limitations in variety of goods, limited to nil personalization, etc because supporting those things was difficult for factories. Such is still difficult for large companies. They have executives who want to impress 'grand visions' upon the company so that they have some excuse (both personal and professional) to collect such absurdly overlarge compensation. The human brain, by the way, is limited to keeping around 150 people in mind and maintaining stable relationships with them. It's called 'Dunbar's Number' and while there's certainly variation amongst different people with regard to it, I think we can safely presume there is no one with the ability to maintain and consider 1000+ stable relationships. That this is not reflected in our social structures is probably an error.