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There’s a decent chance this centuries old authoritarian method, which is more like millennia old, is actually the best way of dealing with it. Humans are more

by SllX 7y ago

There’s a decent chance this centuries old authoritarian method, which is more like millennia old, is actually the best way of dealing with it. Humans are more or less the same as a few millennia ago. Our technology is more advanced, we’ve more or less covered every corner of the planet, we have birthed billions of humans and built millions of organizations of every stripe, and dealt with as many management issues as there were and are people. We haven’t significantly advanced in our cognitive capabilities, we’ve just learned how to outsource more to experts and computers. If there’s one difference between us and us a few millennia ago, it would be that there are so many more humans on the planet that we probably don’t have a role in society for everyone. Under, e.g. a feudal System, every person had a functional role, and those that didn’t could at least point a spear in more or less the correct orientation. Vagrants of course were prosecuted and often pressed into service doing something somewhere for somebody. In 2018, Google had ~99K full time employees. That’s larger than most cities, and historically, most countries. At that scale, you eventually need to tell most of them sit down, shut up and fall in line. Check their problems at the door, and if they really really need to fight about something, do it off premises on their off time without company resources, just to keep the peace.

ChuckMcM 7y ago
I don't disagree, but I will contrast that with my later experience at IBM (when they bought Blekko). IBM had at the time 400,000+ employees, so more than four times the employee base of Google. IBM is over a hundred years old at this point so have been doing this about five times longer than Google has. In IBM's case they came at it from the opposite direction. Fifty years ago there was practically zero horizontal communication in the ranks and they were interested in increasing that to get better dispersal of thoughts and ideas throughout the company. As a result they were deploying and encouraging a sort of internal social network to improve cross flow and get more things out.
- SllX 7y ago
  You raise an excellent point, and going over-totalitarian is just as likely to crush innovation as anything else. However, I think taking an authoritarian stance on politics, religion and so on in the workplace, so long as it is done in a respectful manner and puts everyone on the same level, is completely appropriate. When you are a group of ten, and that’s your entire company, you can get away with a lot. Everyone is going to know each other, maybe a little more intimately than some of them would prefer. Your CEO might also be your drinking buddy and a good wingman. That’s the nature of a small organization. At 2K, things don’t have to be quite so intimate, you don’t have to know everyone by face and name, just get along with them well enough to do your jobs. I’m not going to try and guess where the tipping point is, but at 99K or 400K, there isn’t a lot of difference between the organization ability you need. Everyone has their own ideas about Life, the Universe and Everything, some teams might get along better than others, but politics and religion and the like have led to actual wars between smaller masses of people. If you have 99K on your payroll, not all of them are going to like and respect each other. Not every team is going to have perfect cohesion with every other team. You still want civility. Every one of those 99K or 400K people has their own ambitions and dreams and reasons for getting out of bed at whatever time of day they crawl out of bed. But there is a time and a place for it, a whole wide world and life outside that of your employer’s little world, where not everyone is necessarily on the same payroll. Absolutely if you can build an internal social network for your workers, that’s great! If they want to debate politics outside of work, that’s great too! It is still entirely appropriate to moderate that network, and draw a few hard lines where you think it is appropriate.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    Typically, bureaucracy and internal policies are what kills innovation in large established companies, not lack of political debate. It takes so much energy and internal politics to make the smallest changes that an organisation constituted of otherwise smart knowledgeable people will only produce mediocrity.

by SllX 7y ago

ChuckMcM 7y ago

I don't disagree, but I will contrast that with my later experience at IBM (when they bought Blekko). IBM had at the time 400,000+ employees, so more than four times the employee base of Google. IBM is over a hundred years old at this point so have been doing this about five times longer than Google has. In IBM's case they came at it from the opposite direction. Fifty years ago there was practically zero horizontal communication in the ranks and they were interested in increasing that to get better dispersal of thoughts and ideas throughout the company. As a result they were deploying and encouraging a sort of internal social network to improve cross flow and get more things out.

SllX 7y ago
You raise an excellent point, and going over-totalitarian is just as likely to crush innovation as anything else. However, I think taking an authoritarian stance on politics, religion and so on in the workplace, so long as it is done in a respectful manner and puts everyone on the same level, is completely appropriate. When you are a group of ten, and that’s your entire company, you can get away with a lot. Everyone is going to know each other, maybe a little more intimately than some of them would prefer. Your CEO might also be your drinking buddy and a good wingman. That’s the nature of a small organization. At 2K, things don’t have to be quite so intimate, you don’t have to know everyone by face and name, just get along with them well enough to do your jobs. I’m not going to try and guess where the tipping point is, but at 99K or 400K, there isn’t a lot of difference between the organization ability you need. Everyone has their own ideas about Life, the Universe and Everything, some teams might get along better than others, but politics and religion and the like have led to actual wars between smaller masses of people. If you have 99K on your payroll, not all of them are going to like and respect each other. Not every team is going to have perfect cohesion with every other team. You still want civility. Every one of those 99K or 400K people has their own ambitions and dreams and reasons for getting out of bed at whatever time of day they crawl out of bed. But there is a time and a place for it, a whole wide world and life outside that of your employer’s little world, where not everyone is necessarily on the same payroll. Absolutely if you can build an internal social network for your workers, that’s great! If they want to debate politics outside of work, that’s great too! It is still entirely appropriate to moderate that network, and draw a few hard lines where you think it is appropriate.
- cm2187 7y ago
  Typically, bureaucracy and internal policies are what kills innovation in large established companies, not lack of political debate. It takes so much energy and internal politics to make the smallest changes that an organisation constituted of otherwise smart knowledgeable people will only produce mediocrity.