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Philosophically I love a lot of the ideas of self-organizing teams. In reality, they are very difficult to implement. Hierarchies work because they allow someon

Philosophically I love a lot of the ideas of self-organizing teams. In reality, they are very difficult to implement. Hierarchies work because they allow someone close to the work to take a very deep, detail-oriented view, while allowing others to operate at broader, higher layer of abstraction. Someone can think about the why, while others think about the what and how. That said, hierarchies can be soul-crushing for a lot of reasons. Still, I've found hierarchies work best when infused with a lot of the ideas behind self-organizing teams (ie as much end-to-end ownership as possible, as much autonomy as possible, etc). This only works if you have a high-functioning group of team players who all trust each other, and managers who don't act like pointy-haired bosses.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Very much agree. As someone who has been involved in something similar to "self-organizing teams" in the past, I'll take a hard pass. The primary issue is that there are usually hard external constraints on the business (e.g. client deadlines) that make self-organizing teams a recipe for chaos and inefficiency. I find a culturally-ingrained model of "servant leadership" works much better. For example, most programmers I know are happiest when they are programming. An ideal management chain would take care of all the other (often shitty) work so that the product team and programmers can just focus on building the product, and they are given the freedom to build that product in the best manner they see fit.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I have found that devs really only work well in a team using servant leadership style. Especially if the leader can't code and doesn't understand how software development is actually done. There is an interesting anti-pattern that happens where the "alpha geek"[0] is actually leading the team and the designated manager isn't in charge at all. This can go well, or it can lead to disaster, depending on the personalities involved. I suspect that a lot of success stories from "self-organising teams" are actually succeeding by removing the designated manager and allowing the "alpha geek" to lead without having to fight about it. [0] not a derogatory term, just a metaphorical take on the relatively common occurrence of developer teams creating ad-hoc hierarchies based on experience and personality.
Zaskoda 5y ago
> Hierarchies work because they allow someone close to the work to take a very deep, detail-oriented view, while allowing others to operate at broader, higher layer of abstraction. I almost never see this happen in real life. Maybe for a little while when a team first starts to establish hierarchies. But it always degrades, in my experience, until there exists an middle layer of management that only serves to slow down productivity. If you want to find out what's going wrong in any large corporate minded software studio, the managers will never give you the correct answer. Go ask the thought workers in the trenches as they typically understand why productivity drops off a cliff. When you have a brilliant visionary at the "broader, higher layer of abstraction" with the productive members of the team reporting directly, magic CAN happen. But largely, "managers" and similar roles are useless bloat. Same goes for the PM/producer type roles. I have a friend who started a game development studio a few years ago and committed to NEVER hiring a producer. It was bold. It's going really well and I think he's totally on to something. IMO, you can build better teams without those roles involved at all.
- mountainriver 5y ago
  Yes and yes, it’s amazing how the people making so many decisions are so out of touch
- urthor 5y ago
  I’ve been reading the Mythical Man Month and I think that book has a lot of good ideas. The issue I find is that often leadership of hierarchical organizations is given to nontechnical glue person. These people eventually bubble up and become “middle management,” as they amass visibility and receive credit for the products their technical team built. There is no vampire of workplace productivity like a nontechnical skip manager directing project priorities. I want instead all the nontechnical support personnel to be relegated to being assistants like in Mythical Man Month. Ultimate leadership and ultimate responsibility for delivering a software project must be embedded in a technical leader. Nontechnical product owners are a true blight on society.
  - _carbyau_ 5y ago
    To extend that: non-technical has various degrees of bad. Ask any engineer whether Marketing or Accounting should have product ownership.
rch 5y ago
You've just described a team that has naturally organized itself as a hierarchy.
bladegash 5y ago
One of the best combinations I have seen was with hierarchies that allowed for two people at the “top” of the local hierarchy. One who is more of a generalist and people manager, with the other being an experienced technical SME. I do not like arrangements I have seen with how that division works with EMs and PMs. EMs, from my experience, become too far removed from the technical work and too involved with people management. PMs many times are not necessarily good people leaders OR technical leaders. Not to say I have not met some truly great PMs and EMs, as well as teams where both people in those roles just clicked. But it was not as a matter of organization, and more because they were exceptional people who would excel in any organizational structure.
danjac 5y ago
> Someone can think about the why, while others think about the what and how. I've found it's really important everyone understands the why as well as the what and how, as knowing the reasons drives much of the decision making even at a low level.
ismail 5y ago
I actually think this is a false dichotomy, and a common misunderstanding. You do get a hierarchy in a self-organising team. The self-organisation will re-produce itself, and produce a hierarchy with components from within the system itself. This is how we view it in my company. The difference between self-organizing and traditional methods of organizing is the following: In traditional methods of organizing, the hierarchy is fixed, and embedded within a specific role. i.e a Product Owner. Usually it is also imposed from outside. With self-organization power is "fluid" , in that it shifts based on the circumstance and context. The system itself will internally produce the hierarchy. This hierarchy is emergent based on the specific context, in order to deal with the specific situation. To put it simply, a self-organising system is much more adaptable. The hierarchy and structure is emergent. Organisation is not imposed from outside, but from within. The hierarchy itself can shift from moment to moment. * YCombinator? * Edit for clarity

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

Very much agree. As someone who has been involved in something similar to "self-organizing teams" in the past, I'll take a hard pass. The primary issue is that there are usually hard external constraints on the business (e.g. client deadlines) that make self-organizing teams a recipe for chaos and inefficiency. I find a culturally-ingrained model of "servant leadership" works much better. For example, most programmers I know are happiest when they are programming. An ideal management chain would take care of all the other (often shitty) work so that the product team and programmers can just focus on building the product, and they are given the freedom to build that product in the best manner they see fit.

marcus_holmes 5y ago
I have found that devs really only work well in a team using servant leadership style. Especially if the leader can't code and doesn't understand how software development is actually done. There is an interesting anti-pattern that happens where the "alpha geek"[0] is actually leading the team and the designated manager isn't in charge at all. This can go well, or it can lead to disaster, depending on the personalities involved. I suspect that a lot of success stories from "self-organising teams" are actually succeeding by removing the designated manager and allowing the "alpha geek" to lead without having to fight about it. [0] not a derogatory term, just a metaphorical take on the relatively common occurrence of developer teams creating ad-hoc hierarchies based on experience and personality.

Zaskoda 5y ago

> Hierarchies work because they allow someone close to the work to take a very deep, detail-oriented view, while allowing others to operate at broader, higher layer of abstraction. I almost never see this happen in real life. Maybe for a little while when a team first starts to establish hierarchies. But it always degrades, in my experience, until there exists an middle layer of management that only serves to slow down productivity. If you want to find out what's going wrong in any large corporate minded software studio, the managers will never give you the correct answer. Go ask the thought workers in the trenches as they typically understand why productivity drops off a cliff. When you have a brilliant visionary at the "broader, higher layer of abstraction" with the productive members of the team reporting directly, magic CAN happen. But largely, "managers" and similar roles are useless bloat. Same goes for the PM/producer type roles. I have a friend who started a game development studio a few years ago and committed to NEVER hiring a producer. It was bold. It's going really well and I think he's totally on to something. IMO, you can build better teams without those roles involved at all.

mountainriver 5y ago
Yes and yes, it’s amazing how the people making so many decisions are so out of touch
urthor 5y ago
I’ve been reading the Mythical Man Month and I think that book has a lot of good ideas. The issue I find is that often leadership of hierarchical organizations is given to nontechnical glue person. These people eventually bubble up and become “middle management,” as they amass visibility and receive credit for the products their technical team built. There is no vampire of workplace productivity like a nontechnical skip manager directing project priorities. I want instead all the nontechnical support personnel to be relegated to being assistants like in Mythical Man Month. Ultimate leadership and ultimate responsibility for delivering a software project must be embedded in a technical leader. Nontechnical product owners are a true blight on society.
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  To extend that: non-technical has various degrees of bad. Ask any engineer whether Marketing or Accounting should have product ownership.

rch 5y ago

You've just described a team that has naturally organized itself as a hierarchy.

bladegash 5y ago

One of the best combinations I have seen was with hierarchies that allowed for two people at the “top” of the local hierarchy. One who is more of a generalist and people manager, with the other being an experienced technical SME. I do not like arrangements I have seen with how that division works with EMs and PMs. EMs, from my experience, become too far removed from the technical work and too involved with people management. PMs many times are not necessarily good people leaders OR technical leaders. Not to say I have not met some truly great PMs and EMs, as well as teams where both people in those roles just clicked. But it was not as a matter of organization, and more because they were exceptional people who would excel in any organizational structure.

danjac 5y ago

> Someone can think about the why, while others think about the what and how. I've found it's really important everyone understands the why as well as the what and how, as knowing the reasons drives much of the decision making even at a low level.

ismail 5y ago

I actually think this is a false dichotomy, and a common misunderstanding. You do get a hierarchy in a self-organising team. The self-organisation will re-produce itself, and produce a hierarchy with components from within the system itself. This is how we view it in my company. The difference between self-organizing and traditional methods of organizing is the following: In traditional methods of organizing, the hierarchy is fixed, and embedded within a specific role. i.e a Product Owner. Usually it is also imposed from outside. With self-organization power is "fluid" , in that it shifts based on the circumstance and context. The system itself will internally produce the hierarchy. This hierarchy is emergent based on the specific context, in order to deal with the specific situation. To put it simply, a self-organising system is much more adaptable. The hierarchy and structure is emergent. Organisation is not imposed from outside, but from within. The hierarchy itself can shift from moment to moment. * YCombinator? * Edit for clarity