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I'm sorry but this just sounds like some propaganda piece. First it talks about Valve's "issues with diversity" without establishing a clear link between the fl

I'm sorry but this just sounds like some propaganda piece. First it talks about Valve's "issues with diversity" without establishing a clear link between the flat structure and that. Then the article tries to apply guilt by association, by basically saying "Theranos was bad, so flat structures are bad". It also implies a company being diverse is a mandatory thing, and non-diverse firms are somehow inherently bad or non-desirable. In the end, I don't really see any real arguments against flat hierarchies in the article, it's basically a propaganda piece made to convince those who don't read beyond buzzwords.

codeflo 3y ago
From the documentary I've watched, Theranos was a very dictatorial organization that had strictly enforced knowledge silos and spied on its employees. Their fraud wouldn't have been possible otherwise, but the article's "expert" claims the opposite. Also, quoting what Elizabeth Holmes said as evidence for anything is really beyond stupid at this point, yet it's exactly the logic of the article.
- blululu 3y ago
  The article feels like it was written on a tight deadline by sleep deprived journalist trying to get something out. Theranos is a case of a place that calls itself flat when it really isn't. If anything the moral issue presented here is more significant in hierarchies than in flat structures. In a hierarchical structure a few bad actors can do a lot without anyone even knowing about it. For this reason, more explicit hierarchies typically have a series of checks to try to curtail this issue. The lack of these checks at Theranos is less about being flat and more about the fact that it was a heirarchical org that refused to act accordingly.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    >>journalist Does the traditional media even employ journalist's anymore? Seems to be most organization are very lacking in journalistic standards
- tbrownaw 3y ago
  I think the claim is that the flatness enabled the dictatorialness. Or at least made it easier.
  - codeflo 3y ago
    I get that, but that's just stupid given how the story actually played out. When people talk about flat organizations and mean it, they also mean transparent, cross-functional teams that understand the full context. If that had been allowed at Theranos, every employee would have puzzled together the fraudulent behavior in 5 minutes. Someone would have leaked it years earlier.
Keegs 3y ago
I re-read the portion about Theranos but can’t follow his argument. Elizabeth Holmes once said her company had a flat structure, Theranos ended in scandal, therefore flat organizations are more prone to scandal? There are as many examples of successful flat companies as unsuccessful companies mentioned in the piece.
Dalewyn 3y ago
>It also implies a company being diverse is a mandatory thing, and non-diverse firms are somehow inherently bad or non-desirable. In a way, it's astonishing how much work has been done over at least the past one or two decades to renormalize racism and discrimination. And for those who don't quite get what I mean: "Diversity" at least in the political sense is a racist concept, you can't be "diverse" without explicitly considering someone's race.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  Diversity isn't specifically about race.
  - Pannoniae 3y ago
    Sure, but whenever someone says "diversity" they definitely do not mean the diversity of thought. They mean diversity in immutable attributes (sex, gender, race, nationality, etc.) The original point of increasing diversity was to improve decision-making by not having basically an opinion bubble where everyone thinks the same way. So, companies tried to have non-traditional hires which would think differently than the existing employees. It only warped to what we know as "diversity" today later.
    - Dalewyn 3y ago
      Yup, this is it. Diversity in the sense that people from various walks of life provide diverse(!) opinions is a very good thing. Getting stuck in thought bubbles is a very easy mistake to get into. "Diversity" in the sense that people explicitly of a given race or sex be placed in a given seat to satisfy some "diversity" quota is not a show of diversity, it's just plain old discrimination.
      - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
        That's an old argument that doesn't hold water. Sure if you misconstrue everything the worst way, you can convince yourself. To pursue minority candidates who are qualified, is in no way discrimination. Unless you assume they are less deserving intrinsically, then it's fair to include them in a search. Why would those candidates be excluded? Because white guys might suffer? That's a bankrupt argument at the core. Fairness, the the privileged, looks like discrimination every time.
tbrownaw 3y ago
> First it talks about Valve's "issues with diversity" without establishing a clear link between the flat structure and that. It quotes some professor who says it's related because “you’ve still got middle-aged, privileged white men making decisions at the top” due to a lack of safeguards. > Then the article tries to apply guilt by association, by basically saying "Theranos was bad, so flat structures are bad". It quotes another professor who says that the lack of structure is what allowed theranos to avoid having controls that would catch things. > It also implies a company being diverse is a mandatory thing, and non-diverse firms are somehow inherently bad or non-desirable. Not so much implies as takes as a given, I think. That's been pushed hard for several years now, to the point I often see it treated as axiomatic.
- Pannoniae 3y ago
  > It quotes some professor who says it's related because “you’ve still got middle-aged, privileged white men making decisions at the top” due to a lack of safeguards. Sure, but that's not sound logic. It doesn't actually prove it, it just tries to extrapolate bad behaviour from race and gender (which is what racism and sexism is) > It quotes another professor who says that the lack of structure is what allowed theranos to avoid having controls that would catch things. How is that exclusive to flat organisations? This logic can be used almost verbatim to hierarchical organisations as well - a strong hierarchy is what allowed Company X to avoid having controls that would catch things. (Because no one dared to say anything to the leadership) > Not so much implies as takes as a given, I think. That's been pushed hard for several years now, to the point I often see it treated as axiomatic. This is either propaganda or plain misinformation. I don't accept it in any way, it's definitely not an axiom.
  - tbrownaw 3y ago
    It's a news article, not a research paper. It's kind of expected that they'd find (friendly) experts to rely on for appeal-to-authority and not be picky about questioning "common knowledge" (that the article isn't specifically written to question). It doesn't seem particularly worse than I'd expect a minor news article to be. Also, have you heard of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect?
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
The thing that I think was pretty stunning about this article is that it pretty much lays bare that, in some people's eyes, "diversity" is the only goal. That is, the title says that "Flat hierarchies rarely work", yet its only argument really for "not working" is that these companies aren't diverse. Nothing about business results, employee satisfaction, nada. Just "it's not diverse", and even then it doesn't really add much concrete evidence for its point, just some anecdotes from some people that "it felt like high school". The inclusion of Theranos is just flat out dumb: to attempt to try link Theranos' collapse to their org structure (as opposed to, say, their outright fraud and the fact that their tech never worked and was physically impossible) is laughable. I honestly wonder if a story like this, which basically consists solely of conjecture and the author's point they want to make, would ever have been greenlit at the NYT if it wasn't specifically pushing this "approved" narrative.
- nine_k 3y ago
  If you want diversity of opinion, NYT is not a suitable source. (Something like The Atlantic works much better.)
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  Even with in "diversity" the goal is only 2 metrics of diversity, race and sex... Nothing about political, socio-economic, geographic, cultural, educational, or 100's of other factors.
- tbrownaw 3y ago
  > yet its only argument really for "not working" is that these companies aren't diverse. I don't think diversity is the main reason they brought up theranos.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Hence my point literally 2 sentences down that including Theranos in an attempt to link org structure to business performance/propensity for scandal is ridiculously stupid.
- 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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codeflo 3y ago

From the documentary I've watched, Theranos was a very dictatorial organization that had strictly enforced knowledge silos and spied on its employees. Their fraud wouldn't have been possible otherwise, but the article's "expert" claims the opposite. Also, quoting what Elizabeth Holmes said as evidence for anything is really beyond stupid at this point, yet it's exactly the logic of the article.

blululu 3y ago
The article feels like it was written on a tight deadline by sleep deprived journalist trying to get something out. Theranos is a case of a place that calls itself flat when it really isn't. If anything the moral issue presented here is more significant in hierarchies than in flat structures. In a hierarchical structure a few bad actors can do a lot without anyone even knowing about it. For this reason, more explicit hierarchies typically have a series of checks to try to curtail this issue. The lack of these checks at Theranos is less about being flat and more about the fact that it was a heirarchical org that refused to act accordingly.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>journalist Does the traditional media even employ journalist's anymore? Seems to be most organization are very lacking in journalistic standards
tbrownaw 3y ago
I think the claim is that the flatness enabled the dictatorialness. Or at least made it easier.
- codeflo 3y ago
  I get that, but that's just stupid given how the story actually played out. When people talk about flat organizations and mean it, they also mean transparent, cross-functional teams that understand the full context. If that had been allowed at Theranos, every employee would have puzzled together the fraudulent behavior in 5 minutes. Someone would have leaked it years earlier.

Keegs 3y ago

I re-read the portion about Theranos but can’t follow his argument. Elizabeth Holmes once said her company had a flat structure, Theranos ended in scandal, therefore flat organizations are more prone to scandal? There are as many examples of successful flat companies as unsuccessful companies mentioned in the piece.

Dalewyn 3y ago

>It also implies a company being diverse is a mandatory thing, and non-diverse firms are somehow inherently bad or non-desirable. In a way, it's astonishing how much work has been done over at least the past one or two decades to renormalize racism and discrimination. And for those who don't quite get what I mean: "Diversity" at least in the political sense is a racist concept, you can't be "diverse" without explicitly considering someone's race.

kevingadd 3y ago
Diversity isn't specifically about race.
- Pannoniae 3y ago
  Sure, but whenever someone says "diversity" they definitely do not mean the diversity of thought. They mean diversity in immutable attributes (sex, gender, race, nationality, etc.) The original point of increasing diversity was to improve decision-making by not having basically an opinion bubble where everyone thinks the same way. So, companies tried to have non-traditional hires which would think differently than the existing employees. It only warped to what we know as "diversity" today later.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    Yup, this is it. Diversity in the sense that people from various walks of life provide diverse(!) opinions is a very good thing. Getting stuck in thought bubbles is a very easy mistake to get into. "Diversity" in the sense that people explicitly of a given race or sex be placed in a given seat to satisfy some "diversity" quota is not a show of diversity, it's just plain old discrimination.
    - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
      That's an old argument that doesn't hold water. Sure if you misconstrue everything the worst way, you can convince yourself. To pursue minority candidates who are qualified, is in no way discrimination. Unless you assume they are less deserving intrinsically, then it's fair to include them in a search. Why would those candidates be excluded? Because white guys might suffer? That's a bankrupt argument at the core. Fairness, the the privileged, looks like discrimination every time.

tbrownaw 3y ago

> First it talks about Valve's "issues with diversity" without establishing a clear link between the flat structure and that. It quotes some professor who says it's related because “you’ve still got middle-aged, privileged white men making decisions at the top” due to a lack of safeguards. > Then the article tries to apply guilt by association, by basically saying "Theranos was bad, so flat structures are bad". It quotes another professor who says that the lack of structure is what allowed theranos to avoid having controls that would catch things. > It also implies a company being diverse is a mandatory thing, and non-diverse firms are somehow inherently bad or non-desirable. Not so much implies as takes as a given, I think. That's been pushed hard for several years now, to the point I often see it treated as axiomatic.

Pannoniae 3y ago
> It quotes some professor who says it's related because “you’ve still got middle-aged, privileged white men making decisions at the top” due to a lack of safeguards. Sure, but that's not sound logic. It doesn't actually prove it, it just tries to extrapolate bad behaviour from race and gender (which is what racism and sexism is) > It quotes another professor who says that the lack of structure is what allowed theranos to avoid having controls that would catch things. How is that exclusive to flat organisations? This logic can be used almost verbatim to hierarchical organisations as well - a strong hierarchy is what allowed Company X to avoid having controls that would catch things. (Because no one dared to say anything to the leadership) > Not so much implies as takes as a given, I think. That's been pushed hard for several years now, to the point I often see it treated as axiomatic. This is either propaganda or plain misinformation. I don't accept it in any way, it's definitely not an axiom.
- tbrownaw 3y ago
  It's a news article, not a research paper. It's kind of expected that they'd find (friendly) experts to rely on for appeal-to-authority and not be picky about questioning "common knowledge" (that the article isn't specifically written to question). It doesn't seem particularly worse than I'd expect a minor news article to be. Also, have you heard of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect?

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

The thing that I think was pretty stunning about this article is that it pretty much lays bare that, in some people's eyes, "diversity" is the only goal. That is, the title says that "Flat hierarchies rarely work", yet its only argument really for "not working" is that these companies aren't diverse. Nothing about business results, employee satisfaction, nada. Just "it's not diverse", and even then it doesn't really add much concrete evidence for its point, just some anecdotes from some people that "it felt like high school". The inclusion of Theranos is just flat out dumb: to attempt to try link Theranos' collapse to their org structure (as opposed to, say, their outright fraud and the fact that their tech never worked and was physically impossible) is laughable. I honestly wonder if a story like this, which basically consists solely of conjecture and the author's point they want to make, would ever have been greenlit at the NYT if it wasn't specifically pushing this "approved" narrative.

nine_k 3y ago
If you want diversity of opinion, NYT is not a suitable source. (Something like The Atlantic works much better.)
phpisthebest 3y ago
Even with in "diversity" the goal is only 2 metrics of diversity, race and sex... Nothing about political, socio-economic, geographic, cultural, educational, or 100's of other factors.
tbrownaw 3y ago
> yet its only argument really for "not working" is that these companies aren't diverse. I don't think diversity is the main reason they brought up theranos.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Hence my point literally 2 sentences down that including Theranos in an attempt to link org structure to business performance/propensity for scandal is ridiculously stupid.
3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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