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I have trouble with the premise. Organizational problems are not the hardest problems a company faces, not by a long shot. Rather, organizational problems are a

I have trouble with the premise. Organizational problems are not the hardest problems a company faces, not by a long shot. Rather, organizational problems are a manifestation of leadership dysfunction, and by leadership I mean senior leadership (board of directors, CEO and down). They are easy to fix when the right-minded people are in charge and impossible to fix when they're not. Unless engineering managers are promoted to the board, it's unlikely they can make any change possible. Since the article doesn't mention that, it's just marketing fluff.

jmole 4y ago
Tell me you’ve never worked at a large company without telling me you’ve never worked at a large company
majormajor 4y ago
This feels like a circular - but also not fully correct - claim to me. Leadership issues and organization issues can feed on each other in a vicious cycle, but they can also exist separately. The CEO may not know how to effectively organize an [engineering,marketing,sales,whatever] team. That doesn't mean any company with a team that's adrift due to poor organization suffers from leadership dysfunction at the CEO level. Yes, it's the CEO's responsibility to fix that, but in many cases they don't have the direct ability to fix outside of hiring and delegating to the right people. Organizational problems are also fractal: a data org of 100 people may not be working in the best way with an infrastructure org of 50 people. But within the data org things might also be bogged down because a team of 5 people is not working well with another team of 10 people. And within that, two people on that team of 10 may be in totally the wrong role for their skillets and preferences. (And conversely, sometimes you have well-organized, smooth-running teams let down by capricious management.) And most ironically, if your company is doing a reorg every 6 to 12 months... your organizational issues probably aren't getting fixed any time soon. Organizational issues that affect execution and delivery are too complex to be fixed by moving some lines around on a singular hierarchical org chart.
HelloMcFly 4y ago
> They are easy to fix when the right-minded people are in charge and impossible to fix when they're not. Sorry, no. I don't know your story but it feels unlikely you have real experience with this. Even with right-minded people there can be many, many reasons and dynamics that an organizational problem is difficult to solve. Good intentions - even from the most senior leadership - can be slow to manifest in real change based on market forces, client forces, cultural dynamics, norms (especially the unspoken ways things "just get done") and capability (e.g., making the wrong decision on a change management strategy which sets the whole change effort back years). There are a near infinite number of contextual considerations, and they are not all rendered null because the executive committee wants to do the right thing. Unexpected second-order effects may be likely given what is being changed, bringing great risk on its own.

jmole 4y ago

Tell me you’ve never worked at a large company without telling me you’ve never worked at a large company

majormajor 4y ago

This feels like a circular - but also not fully correct - claim to me. Leadership issues and organization issues can feed on each other in a vicious cycle, but they can also exist separately. The CEO may not know how to effectively organize an [engineering,marketing,sales,whatever] team. That doesn't mean any company with a team that's adrift due to poor organization suffers from leadership dysfunction at the CEO level. Yes, it's the CEO's responsibility to fix that, but in many cases they don't have the direct ability to fix outside of hiring and delegating to the right people. Organizational problems are also fractal: a data org of 100 people may not be working in the best way with an infrastructure org of 50 people. But within the data org things might also be bogged down because a team of 5 people is not working well with another team of 10 people. And within that, two people on that team of 10 may be in totally the wrong role for their skillets and preferences. (And conversely, sometimes you have well-organized, smooth-running teams let down by capricious management.) And most ironically, if your company is doing a reorg every 6 to 12 months... your organizational issues probably aren't getting fixed any time soon. Organizational issues that affect execution and delivery are too complex to be fixed by moving some lines around on a singular hierarchical org chart.

HelloMcFly 4y ago

> They are easy to fix when the right-minded people are in charge and impossible to fix when they're not. Sorry, no. I don't know your story but it feels unlikely you have real experience with this. Even with right-minded people there can be many, many reasons and dynamics that an organizational problem is difficult to solve. Good intentions - even from the most senior leadership - can be slow to manifest in real change based on market forces, client forces, cultural dynamics, norms (especially the unspoken ways things "just get done") and capability (e.g., making the wrong decision on a change management strategy which sets the whole change effort back years). There are a near infinite number of contextual considerations, and they are not all rendered null because the executive committee wants to do the right thing. Unexpected second-order effects may be likely given what is being changed, bringing great risk on its own.