3 ms·

There's still something missing in your description in that the point of having large organizations of knowledge workers is to shard the mental context across m

There's still something missing in your description in that the point of having large organizations of knowledge workers is to shard the mental context across multiple brains. As a manager of 10, unless I am hiring very stupid people, there is no way that my knowledge base is a superset of the knowledge of all 10. There's also no way that I can talk with all 3 billion users of my product or the nonexistent technical support staff - but luckily I work with a few really good PMs and data analysts that have a decent understanding of the market. My job is to have a low-fidelity representation of what's in their heads, plus enough of an understanding of the problem to understand what sort of people need to be involved, and then connect the right people and give them enough context on the goals and other folks involved that they can work out the details themselves. I can do this over zoom calls & docs & links - my team is half remote, and they continue to be productive. But it's a lot less efficient. When everybody's at the office, ICs talk amongst themselves, if they're missing context on product goals or an important change to the codebase they'll hear it from their coworkers, if management is making a bone-headed decision they'll talk amongst themselves and eventually it'll generate enough buzz that it'll get reversed. The model of "manager figures out what to do and then tells remote employees" lacks this resilience, and these feedback points. Employees are usually pretty well incentivized to not tell their manager directly when the manager is screwing up (although I actually have a couple directs that are good at this, and I listen closely to it), and when touch-points all go through the manager and people see their job as to execute on what the manager decides, that information that "hey, this plan doesn't make any sense" doesn't really have a good way to bubble up.

existencebox 3y ago
As another hybrid "TLM->EM" with a similarly sized team, over a similarly sized product, I definitely feel many of the same pain points you call out. BUT. And I say this with all respect, since I broadly find a lot of value in your comments: I strongly disagree to your assertion that remote "is less efficient." My theory to what is happening is that there are existing methodologies people are used to working in, including 'hacks' to build consensus that were developed in an in-person environment. (Namely, pulling a bunch of people into a room and arguing it out.) My perspective is that remote work makes a bunch of things that are just as critical in-person (shared documentation, good communication channels, trust and rapport, etc etc) non-optional, and your previous hacks far less effective. But I don't see this as a bad thing. If anything, it's like a strongly typed language: It forces you into a more effective pathway. (For instance, imagine how remote folks or even folks-just-not-around-at-the-moment felt in not being able to participate evenly in the "in-person-bash-it-out" sessions or hallway chats without a strong culture of proliferating knowledge and documentation?) While you may reasonably say "Ok, that's fine, people built up methodologies, why flip it on its head and disrupt a status quo that works" to which I'd emphasize the "we were relying on suboptimal ways to build consensus, and it was a local maxima." I would also propose that I believe a good manager _HAS_ to change their methodologies in some ways more disruptively than just the local/remote shift when dealing with certain styles of employee, (their own) manager, and org+busines structure/process/incentives, and as such, this should just be part and parcel with the constant process of adapting to refine your own methods and style. (As an aside, I was tempted to make this comment on your upstream comment[0] talking about "maybe I'm not actually succeeding, it feels like winning at a fucked up system" since I definitely feel you there. I got into management in large part out of a "I'm frustrated by how management is often done and how it ends up percolating down to ICs, and I want to put my money where my mouth is that there's a better approach", and while I definitely feel like I've succeeded in some respects, and continue to get "rewarded" as you say, I'm intimately aware that I'm likely still screwing things up/finding the optimal way to balance pathological incentives, and still have a ton to learn. In short, I'd not be surprised if both of us are "doing fine but still have blind spots," so please take my above just as one person's opinions/"attempt to draw the elephant" :) ) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38984369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38984369

existencebox 3y ago

As another hybrid "TLM->EM" with a similarly sized team, over a similarly sized product, I definitely feel many of the same pain points you call out. BUT. And I say this with all respect, since I broadly find a lot of value in your comments: I strongly disagree to your assertion that remote "is less efficient." My theory to what is happening is that there are existing methodologies people are used to working in, including 'hacks' to build consensus that were developed in an in-person environment. (Namely, pulling a bunch of people into a room and arguing it out.) My perspective is that remote work makes a bunch of things that are just as critical in-person (shared documentation, good communication channels, trust and rapport, etc etc) non-optional, and your previous hacks far less effective. But I don't see this as a bad thing. If anything, it's like a strongly typed language: It forces you into a more effective pathway. (For instance, imagine how remote folks or even folks-just-not-around-at-the-moment felt in not being able to participate evenly in the "in-person-bash-it-out" sessions or hallway chats without a strong culture of proliferating knowledge and documentation?) While you may reasonably say "Ok, that's fine, people built up methodologies, why flip it on its head and disrupt a status quo that works" to which I'd emphasize the "we were relying on suboptimal ways to build consensus, and it was a local maxima." I would also propose that I believe a good manager _HAS_ to change their methodologies in some ways more disruptively than just the local/remote shift when dealing with certain styles of employee, (their own) manager, and org+busines structure/process/incentives, and as such, this should just be part and parcel with the constant process of adapting to refine your own methods and style. (As an aside, I was tempted to make this comment on your upstream comment[0] talking about "maybe I'm not actually succeeding, it feels like winning at a fucked up system" since I definitely feel you there. I got into management in large part out of a "I'm frustrated by how management is often done and how it ends up percolating down to ICs, and I want to put my money where my mouth is that there's a better approach", and while I definitely feel like I've succeeded in some respects, and continue to get "rewarded" as you say, I'm intimately aware that I'm likely still screwing things up/finding the optimal way to balance pathological incentives, and still have a ton to learn. In short, I'd not be surprised if both of us are "doing fine but still have blind spots," so please take my above just as one person's opinions/"attempt to draw the elephant" :) ) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38984369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38984369