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I disagree that it's "dying". People management is important, and although bad managers deserve all the scorn heaped upon them, we actually would do better if t

I disagree that it's "dying". People management is important, and although bad managers deserve all the scorn heaped upon them, we actually would do better if there were more managers. The "flat" organizational model seems like a good thing, until you realize that what it actually means is that there's a high managerial branching factor-- sometimes 25 or higher-- which spreads managers way too thin. The problem is that this is unstable. Any manager with 25 reports is not going to be able to be fair. A subset of these reports (let's say 4-5) is going to win the boss's favor. They become de facto bosses off the other 20, but are also direct competitors with them. Now you have all the disadvantages of a 5-tree (instead of 25) but none of the advantages. Most "flat" organizations aren't egalitarian-- just lazy when it comes to figuring out a structure. Instead, they've traded official organizational hierarchy for unofficial, unstable arrangements that are actually more problematic. In a stable arrangement, your boss is your boss and you are not his competition. In an unstable and informal environment, these "de facto" bosses are also direct competition. That never works well. People management is still necessary, and good people management is extremely valuable (and, sadly, somewhat rare in many organizations). At one time, I thought otherwise, and that it was the engineers only who actually mattered to the health of an organization, but I was wrong. What has proven ineffective and wrong is the world in which people managers were given prima facie higher status, creating organizations in which the only way to progress is to move into a management role. That proved not to work, and it does seem to be on its way out.

andrewcooke 14y ago
you say you disagree, but then confirm what the original post said. it wasn't arguing that managers were not useful. it was saying they are decreasing in number.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Good point. I guess I agree with the OP. I disagree that it deserves to die, or that it's a good thing that it's dying. For an example, Google has a supposedly "lightweight" system that, in practice, works quite poorly. A more traditional management structure, at a place like Google, would be an improvement. (I have no idea how Github and Valve work. Their structures might work extremely well.)
  - grandpa 14y ago
    On Github, here's an article by Ryan Tomayko, the director of engineering: http://tomayko.com/writings/management-style http://tomayko.com/writings/management-style
    - benforeva 14y ago
      Enlightening.
  - nostrademons 14y ago
    FWIW, I'm in Search Quality and I find that the "lightweight" system works quite well for myself and for many of my peers. YMMV.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      Google's a huge company and some sectors of it work very well, and it's a great place to work if you land in the right place. I think where Google screwed up is that it instituted a bicameral performance review system without understanding how to implement one. You can have a peer-review system or a manager-driven system. If you're doing things right, you have both and an OR-gate between them. People whose peers think they're doing great but whose managers don't recommend them can still advance, and vice versa. Conversely, to be demoted or fired, people have to fail both. The OR-gate system removes the career SPOFs that lead to degenerate behavior: managers can't exploit their position because people with strong peer support can still succeed at the company, and people don't avoid or shirk low-visibility but important projects The problem with Google's system is that it has an AND-gate for promotions and an OR-game for demotions and firings, and that's a disaster. At Google, you need strong peer reviews (which largely comes down to visibility) to get promoted, but you also need to do well on a "calibration score" stack-ranking system (i.e. Jack Welch vomited, someone put a candle in it and called it a birthday cake) that is strictly manager-driven, extremely opaque, and often deeply unfair. (Google has historically had a problem of managers who abuse the calibration score opacity, giving low ratings to make it impossible for their reports to transfer.) The downside of a manager-driven system is that managers can exploit the power, being career SPOFs. The downside of a peer review system is that people jockey for visibility and work that is important but not visible or "sexy" gets neglected. Google's AND-gate system delivers the negatives of both, but none of the advantages. Google has some really great people, and in many ways, it's a really good company, but their abortion of a "Perf" (look, even the name is imbecilic) system is not one of their strong points.
woodchuck64 14y ago
> People management is still necessary, and good people management is extremely valuable People management is necessary to mitigate the corrosive affects of the one or two bad people in the group. Valve's idea is to recruit only good people.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  People management is necessary to mitigate the corrosive affects of the one or two bad people in the group. Communication problems don't require "bad people", though. Sometimes you have good people who just don't work well together, or who could be assets to the company but aren't communicating well. These things become common at scale. I actually find "performance" rhetoric to be insulting and imbecilic, so I think it's better to discuss impact... but if you have 100 good people, at least a couple are going to fall below an acceptable level of impact, even if they're capable people working hard and in good faith. This is one of the problems with typical HR mediation practices. In most companies, HR is worthless. That comes from the implicit assumption that one party or the other is "bad people" and that they have to assign fault: if an employee gets a bad review, for example, they have to conclude either (a) that the manager gave an unfair review, making him look bad at this job, or (b) that the employee actually sucks. There's no alternative. This rarely works well, because unless there is a legal reason (e.g. a sexual harassment complication) that impels them to side with the employee, they'll side with the manager every time. This is one of the biggest problems with performance reviews. They force the manager to take a definitive stance on each employee, and because to disagree with a review is openly to call that manager incompetent, people are afraid to do so even when, by rights, they should.
  - woodchuck64 14y ago
    > Sometimes you have good people who just don't work well together, I get the strong impression from Valve's handbook that being a good person is defined as working well together. The idea that social incompetence is okay as long as a person can do good work may actually be harmful to company productivity, in their view. Of course, this could just be a conspiracy to put all the Aspergers out of work.
einhverfr 14y ago
First my business is looking at a flat model. We have a very specific approach in mind. >The "flat" organizational model seems like a good thing, until you realize that what it actually means is that there's a high managerial branching factor-- sometimes 25 or higher-- which spreads managers way too thin. In most cases the goal is to get rid of management altogether, and distribute management functions to the teams themselves. You are assuming a direct command and control structure, a flat organization that works is something a little different. I will talk about this below. >Most "flat" organizations aren't egalitarian-- just lazy when it comes to figuring out a structure. 100% correct there, but wrong when you say: >Instead, they've traded official organizational hierarchy for unofficial, unstable arrangements that are actually more problematic. In a stable arrangement, your boss is your boss and you are not his competition. In an unstable and informal environment, these "de facto" bosses are also direct competition. That never works well. Again, this entirely suggests an idea of command and control rather than something else..... > People management is still necessary, and good people management is extremely valuable (and, sadly, somewhat rare in many organizations). At one time, I thought otherwise, and that it was the engineers only who actually mattered to the health of an organization, but I was wrong. The problem is though that managers inherently filter communication and this leads to high costs as well. Again, if you want to make sure that specific things get done with appropriate accountability then you want to have this structure, but it isn't the only option. You are probably wondering by now what the alternative is. The alternative is to have a company based on openness, collaboration, communication, collegiality, and entrepreneurship. This sort of culture is very hard to build and maintain. It means that the executives have to cultivate a well-earned reputation of listening to the folks on the job floor, mentoring them, and only taking action when necessary. We aren't talking egalitarian here. Rather leadership is distributed and people can lead --- or follow --- based on their ability to convince other people that given approaches are good for the company. The way we run the LedgerSMB (http://www.ledgersmb.org http://www.ledgersmb.org) development community is as follows: 1) There is a core committee of three of us, though one is pretty in-active and may not last so much longer. we have the power to ban people, but mostly we just help out folks, do development, and so forth. We are the primary developers in addition to managing the community. 2) Everyone else can contribute but is expected to collaborate on their contributions with the rest of the community. Then they can find a committer to commit. Committers are expected to mentor non-committers. I think this can work as a business management structure. You can have executives who handle planning, organizational goals, etc. But they do this in collaboration with others in the company in whatever position want to be involved. The big limiting factor though is this. If the executives can't get a well-earned reputation for openness, the whole thing falls apart and you have to go to a de facto or official command and control structure.
DanielRibeiro 14y ago
Intersting. I'd like to see how you'd contrast it with Github's Ryan Tomayko's style: http://tomayko.com/writings/management-style http://tomayko.com/writings/management-style
ljw1001 14y ago
Very flat structures work better in some places than others, and no approach is perfect for every situation. I've seen situations where engineers take the lead very successfully and some situations where more management has helped, but overall I think the long-term trend is toward fewer managers.

andrewcooke 14y ago

you say you disagree, but then confirm what the original post said. it wasn't arguing that managers were not useful. it was saying they are decreasing in number.

michaelochurch 14y ago
Good point. I guess I agree with the OP. I disagree that it deserves to die, or that it's a good thing that it's dying. For an example, Google has a supposedly "lightweight" system that, in practice, works quite poorly. A more traditional management structure, at a place like Google, would be an improvement. (I have no idea how Github and Valve work. Their structures might work extremely well.)
- grandpa 14y ago
  On Github, here's an article by Ryan Tomayko, the director of engineering: http://tomayko.com/writings/management-style http://tomayko.com/writings/management-style
  - benforeva 14y ago
    Enlightening.
- nostrademons 14y ago
  FWIW, I'm in Search Quality and I find that the "lightweight" system works quite well for myself and for many of my peers. YMMV.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    Google's a huge company and some sectors of it work very well, and it's a great place to work if you land in the right place. I think where Google screwed up is that it instituted a bicameral performance review system without understanding how to implement one. You can have a peer-review system or a manager-driven system. If you're doing things right, you have both and an OR-gate between them. People whose peers think they're doing great but whose managers don't recommend them can still advance, and vice versa. Conversely, to be demoted or fired, people have to fail both. The OR-gate system removes the career SPOFs that lead to degenerate behavior: managers can't exploit their position because people with strong peer support can still succeed at the company, and people don't avoid or shirk low-visibility but important projects The problem with Google's system is that it has an AND-gate for promotions and an OR-game for demotions and firings, and that's a disaster. At Google, you need strong peer reviews (which largely comes down to visibility) to get promoted, but you also need to do well on a "calibration score" stack-ranking system (i.e. Jack Welch vomited, someone put a candle in it and called it a birthday cake) that is strictly manager-driven, extremely opaque, and often deeply unfair. (Google has historically had a problem of managers who abuse the calibration score opacity, giving low ratings to make it impossible for their reports to transfer.) The downside of a manager-driven system is that managers can exploit the power, being career SPOFs. The downside of a peer review system is that people jockey for visibility and work that is important but not visible or "sexy" gets neglected. Google's AND-gate system delivers the negatives of both, but none of the advantages. Google has some really great people, and in many ways, it's a really good company, but their abortion of a "Perf" (look, even the name is imbecilic) system is not one of their strong points.

woodchuck64 14y ago

> People management is still necessary, and good people management is extremely valuable People management is necessary to mitigate the corrosive affects of the one or two bad people in the group. Valve's idea is to recruit only good people.

michaelochurch 14y ago
People management is necessary to mitigate the corrosive affects of the one or two bad people in the group. Communication problems don't require "bad people", though. Sometimes you have good people who just don't work well together, or who could be assets to the company but aren't communicating well. These things become common at scale. I actually find "performance" rhetoric to be insulting and imbecilic, so I think it's better to discuss impact... but if you have 100 good people, at least a couple are going to fall below an acceptable level of impact, even if they're capable people working hard and in good faith. This is one of the problems with typical HR mediation practices. In most companies, HR is worthless. That comes from the implicit assumption that one party or the other is "bad people" and that they have to assign fault: if an employee gets a bad review, for example, they have to conclude either (a) that the manager gave an unfair review, making him look bad at this job, or (b) that the employee actually sucks. There's no alternative. This rarely works well, because unless there is a legal reason (e.g. a sexual harassment complication) that impels them to side with the employee, they'll side with the manager every time. This is one of the biggest problems with performance reviews. They force the manager to take a definitive stance on each employee, and because to disagree with a review is openly to call that manager incompetent, people are afraid to do so even when, by rights, they should.
- woodchuck64 14y ago
  > Sometimes you have good people who just don't work well together, I get the strong impression from Valve's handbook that being a good person is defined as working well together. The idea that social incompetence is okay as long as a person can do good work may actually be harmful to company productivity, in their view. Of course, this could just be a conspiracy to put all the Aspergers out of work.

einhverfr 14y ago

First my business is looking at a flat model. We have a very specific approach in mind. >The "flat" organizational model seems like a good thing, until you realize that what it actually means is that there's a high managerial branching factor-- sometimes 25 or higher-- which spreads managers way too thin. In most cases the goal is to get rid of management altogether, and distribute management functions to the teams themselves. You are assuming a direct command and control structure, a flat organization that works is something a little different. I will talk about this below. >Most "flat" organizations aren't egalitarian-- just lazy when it comes to figuring out a structure. 100% correct there, but wrong when you say: >Instead, they've traded official organizational hierarchy for unofficial, unstable arrangements that are actually more problematic. In a stable arrangement, your boss is your boss and you are not his competition. In an unstable and informal environment, these "de facto" bosses are also direct competition. That never works well. Again, this entirely suggests an idea of command and control rather than something else..... > People management is still necessary, and good people management is extremely valuable (and, sadly, somewhat rare in many organizations). At one time, I thought otherwise, and that it was the engineers only who actually mattered to the health of an organization, but I was wrong. The problem is though that managers inherently filter communication and this leads to high costs as well. Again, if you want to make sure that specific things get done with appropriate accountability then you want to have this structure, but it isn't the only option. You are probably wondering by now what the alternative is. The alternative is to have a company based on openness, collaboration, communication, collegiality, and entrepreneurship. This sort of culture is very hard to build and maintain. It means that the executives have to cultivate a well-earned reputation of listening to the folks on the job floor, mentoring them, and only taking action when necessary. We aren't talking egalitarian here. Rather leadership is distributed and people can lead --- or follow --- based on their ability to convince other people that given approaches are good for the company. The way we run the LedgerSMB (http://www.ledgersmb.org http://www.ledgersmb.org) development community is as follows: 1) There is a core committee of three of us, though one is pretty in-active and may not last so much longer. we have the power to ban people, but mostly we just help out folks, do development, and so forth. We are the primary developers in addition to managing the community. 2) Everyone else can contribute but is expected to collaborate on their contributions with the rest of the community. Then they can find a committer to commit. Committers are expected to mentor non-committers. I think this can work as a business management structure. You can have executives who handle planning, organizational goals, etc. But they do this in collaboration with others in the company in whatever position want to be involved. The big limiting factor though is this. If the executives can't get a well-earned reputation for openness, the whole thing falls apart and you have to go to a de facto or official command and control structure.

DanielRibeiro 14y ago

Intersting. I'd like to see how you'd contrast it with Github's Ryan Tomayko's style: http://tomayko.com/writings/management-style http://tomayko.com/writings/management-style

ljw1001 14y ago

Very flat structures work better in some places than others, and no approach is perfect for every situation. I've seen situations where engineers take the lead very successfully and some situations where more management has helped, but overall I think the long-term trend is toward fewer managers.