16 ms·

Building Self-Managed Teams: A Case Study from Riot Games

215 points by womitt 5y ago

Macha 5y ago
I'm not sure Riot is experience that would make me trust someone's advice on running a company, even where the contents seem reasonable. Their work culture has led to some pretty public problems.
- toaster222 5y ago
  Would you elaborate? I'm curious about public problems you mentioned.
  - sdedovic 5y ago
    Disclaimer: I am not voicing any opinions about Riot or the people mentioned in the articles below. Just compiling what I’m aware of and letting people make their own opinions. - https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483 https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-game... - https://kotaku.com/current-and-former-employees-sue-riot-games-for-gender-1830262786 https://kotaku.com/current-and-former-employees-sue-riot-gam... - https://kotaku.com/top-riot-executive-suspended-without-pay-following-inve-1831084598 https://kotaku.com/top-riot-executive-suspended-without-pay-... - https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/26686991/riot-games-employees-stage-walkout-protest-forced-arbitration https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/26686991/riot-games-... - https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8g87/league-of-legends-fake-anime-pop-star-is-sad-tweeting-about-genocide https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8g87/league-of-legends-fak... - https://www.polygon.com/2020/7/29/21347587/riot-games-saudi-arabia-neom-partnership-league-european-championship-lec https://www.polygon.com/2020/7/29/21347587/riot-games-saudi-...
    - bomdo 5y ago
      From your sources [1]: > COO, Scott Gelb [...], as a comedy bit, [...] has repeatedly touched subordinates’ balls or butt or farted in their faces. [...] his punishment—two months of unpaid leave and training. [1] From OP's interview with CTO Mike Seavers: > Every time we sat down to go through the past quarter and plan the next one at Riot Games, we came up with a leadership theme for the quarter. For example, we weren’t going to make decisions for others for a month. This put all of us on the same page, and we got everyone to think about it and talk about it. When my direct report came to me asking, “Can I do this thing?” It was easy for me to say, “I’m not going to answer that question. You know the theme of the quarter, so you need to at least think it through before I give you an opinion.” At least they are consistent. [1] https://kotaku.com/top-riot-executive-suspended-without-pay-following-inve-1831084598 https://kotaku.com/top-riot-executive-suspended-without-pay-...
      - adamors 5y ago
        Per his Linkedin he is still with the company. All these "suspensions without pay" are just for PR.
  - dafelst 5y ago
    "Toxic boys club" sums up a lot of the historical problems, but a quick Google of "riot games culture problems" will give you literally dozens of articles to read. I have work with a few ex rioters and have interviewed a few (at the time) current ones, and have heard personal confirmation of many of these problems. It's a big company though, so some departments are better or worse in this respect. But yeah, it's not really a great place to emulate if you're trying to build a healthy culture, at least IMO.
    - virtue3 5y ago
      I interviewed with them a few months ago. They are really -really- putting work into 180'ing their culture. I'm sure it's not there yet but there is a serious effort being made, even from the hiring side.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- jrm415 5y ago
  I think most HN readers are intelligent enough to be able to consider the quality of advice as something separate from its source. That is, a source need not be perfect to be worth listening to. Riot's obviously far from perfect, but this advice seems reasonable to me. Do you think following it is likely to lead to problems similar to Riot's? If there's some sort of causal link between empowering teams and failing to build an inclusive culture, I'd really find that interesting.
  - fulafel 5y ago
    Good point, and to penalise companies practicing transparency also means boosting those that work to hide problems and fake the context in these kinds of interviews.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      What transparency are they being penalised for?
      - colonwqbang 5y ago
        The implication is that many companies have the problems which Riot are notorious for. They are just better at hiding them from public view.
        user-the-name 5y ago
        Riot wasn't transparent about them either. They just failed at hiding them.
        colonwqbang 5y ago
        I think that's what I wrote?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  Even without considering the "boy's club" stuff, LoL never seemed to be very competently programmed back when I played it (admittedly I've hardly touched it since ~2012). I wouldn't really trust them for engineering and programming expertise either, except maybe from whoever manages their servers/online infra.
  - kayimbo 5y ago
    You're not wrong. Their engineering seems incredibly incompetent. I've often postulated that they have like 500 junior developers and like 12 people with more than 5 years programming experience. There is probably like 2 people who keep the game engine running and when they quit the game will fall apart.
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      I think all the Riot employees on this thread are down voting us, sorry
      - elithrar 5y ago
        No, I down-voted each of you because your comments are anecdotal at best and don’t add to the discussion at all. Saying the game doesn’t appear to be “competently programmed” is analogous to the “coded badly” that gets thrown around, not taking into account that all successful consumer software has tech debt and inefficiencies. (I don’t work for Riot and have no affiliation with them)
    - Kihashi 5y ago
      You should look at some of their dev blogs. Their engineering team has done some pretty remarkable things, like re-writing the game server to be deterministic so they could better deal with problems that occur in pro play[1]. They've also talked a bit about the past and future of the game engine specifically [2]. They also have blogs talking about operations- taking the game from something written by 2 dudes in a dorm room to being one of the most played games in the world- how their stack has changed, how they're set up to do patches and rollbacks, how they do their internal testing and playtesting, etc. [1]: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/determinism-league-legends-introduction https://technology.riotgames.com/news/determinism-league-leg... [2]: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/future-leagues-engine https://technology.riotgames.com/news/future-leagues-engine
- esyir 5y ago
  Whatever their problems, their results are pretty damn consistent. League of Legends remains the premier e-sport, dethroning all competitors in viewership rates and numbers. Valorant is rapidly rising, and threatens the long-incumbent direct rival Counter-Strike Teamfight Tactics, while not an e-sport, still remains in the top 10 streamed games on twitch. 3 releases, all (at least by twitch streams) major successes. From the product point of view, they're clearly doing something right, and whatever work culture issues they're claimed to have, they're certainly outperforming. Note: As most of riot's releases target the e-sport crowd, I'm using twitch viewership numbers as an analogue for success. Sports, after all, are judged by popularity amongst viewers above all.
  - dafelst 5y ago
    Success isn't everything. It is very possible (and arguably more likely) to be a successful company and still have a shitty culture and/or work environment. Riot is a prime example of this, but unfortunately they are hardly the exception - it is a fairly common pattern amongst the AAA game companies and publishers. The specifics are not the same from company to company, but arguably the end result is. People are unfortunately willing to endure a lot just to get into their "dream industry".
  - zapnuk 5y ago
    That's debatable League of Legends is a premier e-sport more so because of marketing than game design or engineering. In fact, their game client remains worse than dota 2's in every way. It's actually pretty hard to take them seriously considering their client is still such a buggy mess after about 10 years. While the viewership of casual Valorant is greater than CS-GO, it's also not "rapidly rising" - https://sullygnome.com/game/Valorant/365/summary https://sullygnome.com/game/Valorant/365/summary And the esport viewership of CS-GO is much larger compared to Valorant. And while Teamfight Tactics was an success, Legends of Runeterra wasn't. So they are 3/4... which is still pretty good - but can also be explained by good marketing and IP handling. Similar to the new Activision-Blizzard.
    - tester34 5y ago
      >League of Legends is a premier e-sport more so because of marketing than game design or engineering. Indeed, it's debatable because it sounds weird I don't play LoL for close to decade due to their marketing (is it even marketing? or actually their Esport stuff?) For me LoL is great game because it changes often, so you don't get bored fast, also it's highly competitive with decent ways to express your skill
- ehnto 5y ago
  As a counterpoint, they have had those lessons and so could have learned from them if they were perceptive.
- mtnygard 5y ago
  Not to mention they've had money flowing like water. When you don't have to worry about being financially efficient a lot of management structures and unstructures seem like they "work". It's when the money dries up that cracks in the foundation are evident.
gfody 5y ago
DOTA is such an amazing game that even a blatant low quality ripoff could launch a company like Riot into success. it really is a testament to Kyle Sommer - what a visionary!
- void_mint 5y ago
  Dota 2 came out 4 years after LoL Unless you mean the original DOTA mod for warcraft 3, in which case, yeah I mean why wouldn't you make a full game out of a mod that people loved?
  - gfody 5y ago
    of course I mean the original. I agree making it into a standalone was a great idea and Heroes of Newerth was amazing. LoL remains a blatant low quality ripoff whose success is due entirely to the novelty of the genre.
    - gamblor956 5y ago
      Literally millions of people disagree with you. LoL is still one of the most popular online games now than a decade after launch. HoN was a critical and commercial failure at launch.
      - Bigpet 5y ago
        Next you're going to tell me all the mobile free-to-play games are clearly the best games ever because they're "popular". Popularity and quality have a very tentative relationship at the best of times. When differences in barriers to entry and network effects come in, then quality has to at most just clear a watermark. So I'd say it's probably more likely "not bad enough to lose popularity" than it is "so popular because it's so high-quality"
      - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        So Solitair is the best game of all time? Cigarettes are more popular than cuban cigars and McDonalds is more popular that a Michelin star restaraunt.
whoisjuan 5y ago
"Everybody in the team needs to understand how winning looks like"... my favorite quote from this podcast. So simple and so true. It's insane how many companies hire and build teams around visions their teams don't understand well at all. That's certainly where most killer companies win. Their force doesn't need to be extremely proficient and efficient to move the needle because everyone understands what moving the needle means and has a clear path to take small decisions without looking at a spec or consulting another party. The best managers are certainly the ones that make an effort to enable learning around what is being build and why. That allows people to build agency and criteria to make decisions that are in the best interest of the company.
- bloqs 5y ago
  How winning looks like may be a typo
- vosper 5y ago
  > It's insane how many companies hire and build teams around visions their teams don't understand well at all Conversely, it’s also insane how many companies hire and build teans around visions the teams know won’t work. The knowledge is there (perhaps distributed), but it never congeals, and everyone just plows ahead.
  - twh270 5y ago
    Hah, this is me right now. Architects sold the business on a pie-in-the-sky grand vision, and teams are now busy implementing it even though its value is almost certainly a net negative. (Replacing something currently working with a highly over-engineered "platform" solution-for-all that will end up requiring heavy customization for each client.) On the plus side, it keeps me employed.
    - uglygoblin 5y ago
      We are either all on the same project or this is a common outcome ;)
royletron 5y ago
Wow it's like he's talking directly to me. There is so much here that I am currently struggling with in running a team. How to manage the decision making when I have deadlines, I do tend to just give the answers because it's quicker, but it's short term gain very long term pain. This is a really excellent resource for any engineering managers out there.
vincewolff 5y ago
There are a ton of streamers and players that complain about the lack of awareness of the development and balance teams towards the product. I’m not sure what their vision is, but product wise there is a big discrepancy between their customers and the company.
- fbr 5y ago
  and still a very successful game [1]. > 1.9 million people played LoL in April 2021. > LoL is the third most watched game on Twitch. > In March 2021, 117 million hours of LoL gameplay were watched on Twitch. > LoL is the second most popular eSports in the world. [1] https://techacake.com/league-of-legends-player-count/ https://techacake.com/league-of-legends-player-count/
chris_wot 5y ago
Isn’t Riot Games the company where programmers walked out due to enforced arbitration?
- ufo 5y ago
  Isn't it also notorious for being a toxic workplace? https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483 https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-game...
Oddskar 5y ago
Some good insights in this interview. I especially liked the comments and the closing statement regarding that "Self-managing teams isn't for everyone". It's easy to get caught up in the idea that self-management is some sort of "end game" for everyone when for some contexts and for some people it just doesn't work. I think culture plays into this quite a bit. E.g. it's probably a lot easier to build these kind of teams within a Scandinavian culture, due to extremely strong belief in egalitarianism. It kind of begs the question; how does one hire for this?
- colemanron 5y ago
  Mike did mention this topic could be a full other podcast episode, so maybe that'll happen at some point too.
- watwut 5y ago
  You just say that the teams are self-managed. I worked in self-managed teams and dont want to do that anymore. I will self-select myself out, because I hated the politics and toxicity it brought in.
gverrilla 5y ago
It seems "high performance" is really profit in short term. And because of this Valorant will completely fail long term.
tedmcory77 5y ago
We had a term in the Airborne community called "Little Groups of Paratroopers"; frequently you'd be split up from your direct team but would find small groups of others scattered across the drop zone. We'd work off of "Commanders Intent" which was the goal or mission that needed to be done. There would be a plan to accomplish that goal, but it was pragmatic in that if we knew what good looked like, constant management wasn't needed for motivated troops. You see a similar thing in Pragmatic Marketing's "Enlightened Teams" and other frameworks. I dont have empirical data to back it up, but I believe that you get the results because of all the small things that teams take to get to good because of that higher level objective. I think Ben Horowitz's talk about these small here is golden: https://a16z.com/2011/11/13/lead-bullets/ https://a16z.com/2011/11/13/lead-bullets/
andrekandre 5y ago
How can managers hold back to allow their employees to turn into self-managed teams? honest question, but what justifies having a manager if your going to have "self-managed teams"? what justifies keeping the (now redundant) position around?

215 points by womitt 5y ago

I'm not sure Riot is experience that would make me trust someone's advice on running a company, even where the contents seem reasonable. Their work culture has led to some pretty public problems.

toaster222 5y ago
Would you elaborate? I'm curious about public problems you mentioned.
- sdedovic 5y ago
  Disclaimer: I am not voicing any opinions about Riot or the people mentioned in the articles below. Just compiling what I’m aware of and letting people make their own opinions. - https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483 https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-game... - https://kotaku.com/current-and-former-employees-sue-riot-games-for-gender-1830262786 https://kotaku.com/current-and-former-employees-sue-riot-gam... - https://kotaku.com/top-riot-executive-suspended-without-pay-following-inve-1831084598 https://kotaku.com/top-riot-executive-suspended-without-pay-... - https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/26686991/riot-games-employees-stage-walkout-protest-forced-arbitration https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/26686991/riot-games-... - https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8g87/league-of-legends-fake-anime-pop-star-is-sad-tweeting-about-genocide https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8g87/league-of-legends-fak... - https://www.polygon.com/2020/7/29/21347587/riot-games-saudi-arabia-neom-partnership-league-european-championship-lec https://www.polygon.com/2020/7/29/21347587/riot-games-saudi-...
  - bomdo 5y ago
    From your sources [1]: > COO, Scott Gelb [...], as a comedy bit, [...] has repeatedly touched subordinates’ balls or butt or farted in their faces. [...] his punishment—two months of unpaid leave and training. [1] From OP's interview with CTO Mike Seavers: > Every time we sat down to go through the past quarter and plan the next one at Riot Games, we came up with a leadership theme for the quarter. For example, we weren’t going to make decisions for others for a month. This put all of us on the same page, and we got everyone to think about it and talk about it. When my direct report came to me asking, “Can I do this thing?” It was easy for me to say, “I’m not going to answer that question. You know the theme of the quarter, so you need to at least think it through before I give you an opinion.” At least they are consistent. [1] https://kotaku.com/top-riot-executive-suspended-without-pay-following-inve-1831084598 https://kotaku.com/top-riot-executive-suspended-without-pay-...
    - adamors 5y ago
      Per his Linkedin he is still with the company. All these "suspensions without pay" are just for PR.
- dafelst 5y ago
  "Toxic boys club" sums up a lot of the historical problems, but a quick Google of "riot games culture problems" will give you literally dozens of articles to read. I have work with a few ex rioters and have interviewed a few (at the time) current ones, and have heard personal confirmation of many of these problems. It's a big company though, so some departments are better or worse in this respect. But yeah, it's not really a great place to emulate if you're trying to build a healthy culture, at least IMO.
  - virtue3 5y ago
    I interviewed with them a few months ago. They are really -really- putting work into 180'ing their culture. I'm sure it's not there yet but there is a serious effort being made, even from the hiring side.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
jrm415 5y ago
I think most HN readers are intelligent enough to be able to consider the quality of advice as something separate from its source. That is, a source need not be perfect to be worth listening to. Riot's obviously far from perfect, but this advice seems reasonable to me. Do you think following it is likely to lead to problems similar to Riot's? If there's some sort of causal link between empowering teams and failing to build an inclusive culture, I'd really find that interesting.
- fulafel 5y ago
  Good point, and to penalise companies practicing transparency also means boosting those that work to hide problems and fake the context in these kinds of interviews.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    What transparency are they being penalised for?
    - colonwqbang 5y ago
      The implication is that many companies have the problems which Riot are notorious for. They are just better at hiding them from public view.
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        Riot wasn't transparent about them either. They just failed at hiding them.
        colonwqbang 5y ago
        I think that's what I wrote?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
HideousKojima 5y ago
Even without considering the "boy's club" stuff, LoL never seemed to be very competently programmed back when I played it (admittedly I've hardly touched it since ~2012). I wouldn't really trust them for engineering and programming expertise either, except maybe from whoever manages their servers/online infra.
- kayimbo 5y ago
  You're not wrong. Their engineering seems incredibly incompetent. I've often postulated that they have like 500 junior developers and like 12 people with more than 5 years programming experience. There is probably like 2 people who keep the game engine running and when they quit the game will fall apart.
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    I think all the Riot employees on this thread are down voting us, sorry
    - elithrar 5y ago
      No, I down-voted each of you because your comments are anecdotal at best and don’t add to the discussion at all. Saying the game doesn’t appear to be “competently programmed” is analogous to the “coded badly” that gets thrown around, not taking into account that all successful consumer software has tech debt and inefficiencies. (I don’t work for Riot and have no affiliation with them)
  - Kihashi 5y ago
    You should look at some of their dev blogs. Their engineering team has done some pretty remarkable things, like re-writing the game server to be deterministic so they could better deal with problems that occur in pro play[1]. They've also talked a bit about the past and future of the game engine specifically [2]. They also have blogs talking about operations- taking the game from something written by 2 dudes in a dorm room to being one of the most played games in the world- how their stack has changed, how they're set up to do patches and rollbacks, how they do their internal testing and playtesting, etc. [1]: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/determinism-league-legends-introduction https://technology.riotgames.com/news/determinism-league-leg... [2]: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/future-leagues-engine https://technology.riotgames.com/news/future-leagues-engine
esyir 5y ago
Whatever their problems, their results are pretty damn consistent. League of Legends remains the premier e-sport, dethroning all competitors in viewership rates and numbers. Valorant is rapidly rising, and threatens the long-incumbent direct rival Counter-Strike Teamfight Tactics, while not an e-sport, still remains in the top 10 streamed games on twitch. 3 releases, all (at least by twitch streams) major successes. From the product point of view, they're clearly doing something right, and whatever work culture issues they're claimed to have, they're certainly outperforming. Note: As most of riot's releases target the e-sport crowd, I'm using twitch viewership numbers as an analogue for success. Sports, after all, are judged by popularity amongst viewers above all.
- dafelst 5y ago
  Success isn't everything. It is very possible (and arguably more likely) to be a successful company and still have a shitty culture and/or work environment. Riot is a prime example of this, but unfortunately they are hardly the exception - it is a fairly common pattern amongst the AAA game companies and publishers. The specifics are not the same from company to company, but arguably the end result is. People are unfortunately willing to endure a lot just to get into their "dream industry".
- zapnuk 5y ago
  That's debatable League of Legends is a premier e-sport more so because of marketing than game design or engineering. In fact, their game client remains worse than dota 2's in every way. It's actually pretty hard to take them seriously considering their client is still such a buggy mess after about 10 years. While the viewership of casual Valorant is greater than CS-GO, it's also not "rapidly rising" - https://sullygnome.com/game/Valorant/365/summary https://sullygnome.com/game/Valorant/365/summary And the esport viewership of CS-GO is much larger compared to Valorant. And while Teamfight Tactics was an success, Legends of Runeterra wasn't. So they are 3/4... which is still pretty good - but can also be explained by good marketing and IP handling. Similar to the new Activision-Blizzard.
  - tester34 5y ago
    >League of Legends is a premier e-sport more so because of marketing than game design or engineering. Indeed, it's debatable because it sounds weird I don't play LoL for close to decade due to their marketing (is it even marketing? or actually their Esport stuff?) For me LoL is great game because it changes often, so you don't get bored fast, also it's highly competitive with decent ways to express your skill
ehnto 5y ago
As a counterpoint, they have had those lessons and so could have learned from them if they were perceptive.
mtnygard 5y ago
Not to mention they've had money flowing like water. When you don't have to worry about being financially efficient a lot of management structures and unstructures seem like they "work". It's when the money dries up that cracks in the foundation are evident.

gfody 5y ago

DOTA is such an amazing game that even a blatant low quality ripoff could launch a company like Riot into success. it really is a testament to Kyle Sommer - what a visionary!

void_mint 5y ago
Dota 2 came out 4 years after LoL Unless you mean the original DOTA mod for warcraft 3, in which case, yeah I mean why wouldn't you make a full game out of a mod that people loved?
- gfody 5y ago
  of course I mean the original. I agree making it into a standalone was a great idea and Heroes of Newerth was amazing. LoL remains a blatant low quality ripoff whose success is due entirely to the novelty of the genre.
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    Literally millions of people disagree with you. LoL is still one of the most popular online games now than a decade after launch. HoN was a critical and commercial failure at launch.
    - Bigpet 5y ago
      Next you're going to tell me all the mobile free-to-play games are clearly the best games ever because they're "popular". Popularity and quality have a very tentative relationship at the best of times. When differences in barriers to entry and network effects come in, then quality has to at most just clear a watermark. So I'd say it's probably more likely "not bad enough to lose popularity" than it is "so popular because it's so high-quality"
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      So Solitair is the best game of all time? Cigarettes are more popular than cuban cigars and McDonalds is more popular that a Michelin star restaraunt.

whoisjuan 5y ago

"Everybody in the team needs to understand how winning looks like"... my favorite quote from this podcast. So simple and so true. It's insane how many companies hire and build teams around visions their teams don't understand well at all. That's certainly where most killer companies win. Their force doesn't need to be extremely proficient and efficient to move the needle because everyone understands what moving the needle means and has a clear path to take small decisions without looking at a spec or consulting another party. The best managers are certainly the ones that make an effort to enable learning around what is being build and why. That allows people to build agency and criteria to make decisions that are in the best interest of the company.

bloqs 5y ago
How winning looks like may be a typo
vosper 5y ago
> It's insane how many companies hire and build teams around visions their teams don't understand well at all Conversely, it’s also insane how many companies hire and build teans around visions the teams know won’t work. The knowledge is there (perhaps distributed), but it never congeals, and everyone just plows ahead.
- twh270 5y ago
  Hah, this is me right now. Architects sold the business on a pie-in-the-sky grand vision, and teams are now busy implementing it even though its value is almost certainly a net negative. (Replacing something currently working with a highly over-engineered "platform" solution-for-all that will end up requiring heavy customization for each client.) On the plus side, it keeps me employed.
  - uglygoblin 5y ago
    We are either all on the same project or this is a common outcome ;)

royletron 5y ago

Wow it's like he's talking directly to me. There is so much here that I am currently struggling with in running a team. How to manage the decision making when I have deadlines, I do tend to just give the answers because it's quicker, but it's short term gain very long term pain. This is a really excellent resource for any engineering managers out there.

vincewolff 5y ago

There are a ton of streamers and players that complain about the lack of awareness of the development and balance teams towards the product. I’m not sure what their vision is, but product wise there is a big discrepancy between their customers and the company.

fbr 5y ago
and still a very successful game [1]. > 1.9 million people played LoL in April 2021. > LoL is the third most watched game on Twitch. > In March 2021, 117 million hours of LoL gameplay were watched on Twitch. > LoL is the second most popular eSports in the world. [1] https://techacake.com/league-of-legends-player-count/ https://techacake.com/league-of-legends-player-count/

chris_wot 5y ago

Isn’t Riot Games the company where programmers walked out due to enforced arbitration?

ufo 5y ago
Isn't it also notorious for being a toxic workplace? https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483 https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-game...

Oddskar 5y ago

Some good insights in this interview. I especially liked the comments and the closing statement regarding that "Self-managing teams isn't for everyone". It's easy to get caught up in the idea that self-management is some sort of "end game" for everyone when for some contexts and for some people it just doesn't work. I think culture plays into this quite a bit. E.g. it's probably a lot easier to build these kind of teams within a Scandinavian culture, due to extremely strong belief in egalitarianism. It kind of begs the question; how does one hire for this?

colemanron 5y ago
Mike did mention this topic could be a full other podcast episode, so maybe that'll happen at some point too.
watwut 5y ago
You just say that the teams are self-managed. I worked in self-managed teams and dont want to do that anymore. I will self-select myself out, because I hated the politics and toxicity it brought in.

gverrilla 5y ago

It seems "high performance" is really profit in short term. And because of this Valorant will completely fail long term.

tedmcory77 5y ago

We had a term in the Airborne community called "Little Groups of Paratroopers"; frequently you'd be split up from your direct team but would find small groups of others scattered across the drop zone. We'd work off of "Commanders Intent" which was the goal or mission that needed to be done. There would be a plan to accomplish that goal, but it was pragmatic in that if we knew what good looked like, constant management wasn't needed for motivated troops. You see a similar thing in Pragmatic Marketing's "Enlightened Teams" and other frameworks. I dont have empirical data to back it up, but I believe that you get the results because of all the small things that teams take to get to good because of that higher level objective. I think Ben Horowitz's talk about these small here is golden: https://a16z.com/2011/11/13/lead-bullets/ https://a16z.com/2011/11/13/lead-bullets/

andrekandre 5y ago

How can managers hold back to allow their employees to turn into self-managed teams? honest question, but what justifies having a manager if your going to have "self-managed teams"? what justifies keeping the (now redundant) position around?