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It's probably more work to run an organisation with a flat structure, but it seems to be more successful if you get it right. Define "more successful"? Valve h

It's probably more work to run an organisation with a flat structure, but it seems to be more successful if you get it right. Define "more successful"? Valve has 250 employees, github 140. Are you saying that these are "more successful" than more traditionally managed/structured companies like Wal-Mart -- the world's largest retail company with $450 billion in revenue/year?

noelwelsh 14y ago
Yes, I am. I wager: - The founder have enough money that they never need care about it again. - Employees are significantly happier on average than Walmart employees. Those are the only metrics I care about.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  I regret that I have but one upvote to give that post, good sir.
- zaidf 14y ago
  Unfortunately you are using a definition that is not shared by most people when judging business success in the long haul. It is okay to have your own metrics but it is disingenuous to suggest that your metrics are also the metrics generally considered by the majority of industry experts. Why do you feel that profits, market cap etc. are poorer metrics to judge a business success than your metrics? You should write about that.
- rgbrenner 14y ago
  Google is not flat, and was the best company to work for in 2012 [0] because of how happy their employees are. In addition to meeting your made up measurements, significantly more people associated with Google have become richer than at GitHub; Google has made billions more money than GitHub; Employs more people; has more products; etc; etc; etc. Flat works in small companies. It is impossible once they get above a certain size. They cannot be "more successful".. because they will eventually need to restructure as they grow larger. [0] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/snapshots/1.html http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/s...
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    You don't need to be "flat" for people to be happy, but you do need a decent amount of employee autonomy. You probably need some big-picture direction at 1000+ employees, but you don't need the closed-allocation "you work on this project, or you pack your bags" extortion of most companies. Some Googlers have autonomy, some don't. I don't care to get into this discussion because for all my criticism of it, I really admire Google (the engineers and the vision, if not the middle management and HR) but I'll just say that the Googlers who've established a basic autonomy are very happy. They pick their projects and have little interest in leaving, unless to do their own startup. However, there's an underclass who face manager-as-SPOF and live or die by their "calibration scores". For them, Google is a closed-allocation company and these people are not happy. You don't need "flat" structure outright, but open allocation is non-negotiable in technology in 2013.
michaelochurch 14y ago
It depends on whether the work is concave or convex. Concave means that the difference between excellence and mediocrity is smaller than that between mediocrity and failure. It applies to commodity work where the best performers might be 1.2-1.4 times as effective as average ones. There's no such thing as a "10x factory worker". Convex work is where the difference between excellence and mediocrity is huge, but mediocrity and failure aren't far apart. If you're doing concave work, command-and-control works. Reduce defects in your factory process, fire the slackers, reduce risk. If you're doing convex work, then you need the Valve/Github approach because traditional management will drive excellence away. Wal-Mart excels in a commodity domain. Valve and Github are in software, and software is convex. More on concave vs. convex: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-management/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-ma...
- rgbrenner 14y ago
  Nice try at explaining it. But Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, HP, Intel, AMD, Nvidia -- not a single one of these is flat. Valve and GitHub are TINY companies in comparison.
  - yuhong 14y ago
    This does not mean they should be, though some of them are hardware companies too.
    - rgbrenner 14y ago
      Flat works at the small size of GitHub and Valve. But I can't think of a single large company that is flat. Where is the evidence that a flat structure even works at the size of these companies? Just so the comparison is clear: Microsoft: 94000 employees [0] GitHub: 140 [1] In other words, Microsoft is 670x larger. Or GitHub is 0.15% of MS's size. [0] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx [1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/github-has-big-dreams-for-open-source-software-and-more/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/github-has-big-drea...

noelwelsh 14y ago

Yes, I am. I wager: - The founder have enough money that they never need care about it again. - Employees are significantly happier on average than Walmart employees. Those are the only metrics I care about.

michaelochurch 14y ago
I regret that I have but one upvote to give that post, good sir.
zaidf 14y ago
Unfortunately you are using a definition that is not shared by most people when judging business success in the long haul. It is okay to have your own metrics but it is disingenuous to suggest that your metrics are also the metrics generally considered by the majority of industry experts. Why do you feel that profits, market cap etc. are poorer metrics to judge a business success than your metrics? You should write about that.
rgbrenner 14y ago
Google is not flat, and was the best company to work for in 2012 [0] because of how happy their employees are. In addition to meeting your made up measurements, significantly more people associated with Google have become richer than at GitHub; Google has made billions more money than GitHub; Employs more people; has more products; etc; etc; etc. Flat works in small companies. It is impossible once they get above a certain size. They cannot be "more successful".. because they will eventually need to restructure as they grow larger. [0] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/snapshots/1.html http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/s...
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  You don't need to be "flat" for people to be happy, but you do need a decent amount of employee autonomy. You probably need some big-picture direction at 1000+ employees, but you don't need the closed-allocation "you work on this project, or you pack your bags" extortion of most companies. Some Googlers have autonomy, some don't. I don't care to get into this discussion because for all my criticism of it, I really admire Google (the engineers and the vision, if not the middle management and HR) but I'll just say that the Googlers who've established a basic autonomy are very happy. They pick their projects and have little interest in leaving, unless to do their own startup. However, there's an underclass who face manager-as-SPOF and live or die by their "calibration scores". For them, Google is a closed-allocation company and these people are not happy. You don't need "flat" structure outright, but open allocation is non-negotiable in technology in 2013.

michaelochurch 14y ago

It depends on whether the work is concave or convex. Concave means that the difference between excellence and mediocrity is smaller than that between mediocrity and failure. It applies to commodity work where the best performers might be 1.2-1.4 times as effective as average ones. There's no such thing as a "10x factory worker". Convex work is where the difference between excellence and mediocrity is huge, but mediocrity and failure aren't far apart. If you're doing concave work, command-and-control works. Reduce defects in your factory process, fire the slackers, reduce risk. If you're doing convex work, then you need the Valve/Github approach because traditional management will drive excellence away. Wal-Mart excels in a commodity domain. Valve and Github are in software, and software is convex. More on concave vs. convex: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-management/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-ma...

rgbrenner 14y ago
Nice try at explaining it. But Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, HP, Intel, AMD, Nvidia -- not a single one of these is flat. Valve and GitHub are TINY companies in comparison.
- yuhong 14y ago
  This does not mean they should be, though some of them are hardware companies too.
  - rgbrenner 14y ago
    Flat works at the small size of GitHub and Valve. But I can't think of a single large company that is flat. Where is the evidence that a flat structure even works at the size of these companies? Just so the comparison is clear: Microsoft: 94000 employees [0] GitHub: 140 [1] In other words, Microsoft is 670x larger. Or GitHub is 0.15% of MS's size. [0] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx [1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/github-has-big-dreams-for-open-source-software-and-more/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/github-has-big-drea...