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I'm somewhat surprised that everyone is so anti-management here. First of all, Morning Star seems like a pretty well-run place, but the whole system works beca

I'm somewhat surprised that everyone is so anti-management here. First of all, Morning Star seems like a pretty well-run place, but the whole system works because they have the luxury of hiring the right people. This is, of course, the single most important factor in any effective organization. If you don't hire the right people or play to their strengths you won't be able to pull this off. Anyway, a lot of the reasons listed in this piece look like they're sourced from companies with crappy management and I don't think they represent the reality of management, at least in a lot of places. At Facebook (the only company where I have experience as both an IC and manager) there are three important things to know about management: * It's a parallel track to IC (individual contributor aka hacker). You aren't "promoted" to manager. It's a lateral move. There are plenty of ICs making more money than managers. * All managers go through "bootcamp" (6-week engineering onboarding) and commit code. * The role of the manager is to basically do all the shitty work so ICs don't have to. I want to stress that third point. If you're anything like me, as a hacker you want to be given a well-defined problem (unless the problem is defining the problem) and go off and hack on it for a while with minimal distraction. There are a lot of crappy distractions that come with working in the real world. Here are a few: * Dealing with interpersonal issues * Onboarding new hires * Coordinating engineering efforts and priorities (aka: going to meetings so ICs don't have to) * Telling that guy in sales or that gal in product management that we can't work on their tasks right now * Dealing with medium-priority bugs during crunch time If I'm shipping a product I don't want to deal with any of this stuff as long as I'm not being micromanaged or feel like a second-class citizen to management. So what managers end up doing is being responsible for all of the shit work so their team can go do what they do best. I'm actually concerned that this whole "no management" movement is going to lead to less motivated and less coordinated teams as these companies grow.

rch 13y ago
> as a hacker you want to be given a well-defined problem I think identifying and solving open problems is more of a hacker mindset.
protonfish 13y ago
The problem is that menial work (arranging meetings, organizing schedules, handling communications with colleagues and clients by phone and mail) used to be handled by secretaries. If Mad Men is to be believed, at a certain employment level you would get a personal secretary and below that you could draw from a common pool. Where did all these secretarial jobs go? Their title was changed to "manager" and they were put in charge. God help us all.
- crazygringo 13y ago
  Um, no. Secretaries were replaced with personal computers and websites. Nobody needs to take dictation anymore, after all, and information is now at everyone's fingertips. And the logistics of arranging meetings etc. are handled by office managers generally, if you're talking about who uses which room and for how long. The idea that secretaries turned into management is bizarre.
  - merrua 13y ago
    I think this is a generational gap. As far as I am aware their is a gap between what the role of secretaries was seen as (typing, filing) and what the range of roles contained within the post actually did. There was a good reason why even now, some people said that a computer, and great search hasnt caught up with an excellent secretary.
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    I know of dozens of secretaries and typists in the medical field. Voice dictation software doesn't cut it yet. Software that works sort of ok is dependent on platforms companies don't have, and humans are better at error correction, answering the phone and resolving problems. Many surgeons seem to have 2 or 3 secretaries to keep on top of the work. It might be an industry or country specific thing, but secretaries aren't going anywhere fast in my little world.
AndrewKemendo 13y ago
So what managers end up doing is being responsible for all of the shit work so their team can go do what they do best. This is the definition of management if it is being done correctly. In effect you manage inbound tasks from upper management to ensure that important tasks get completed while FUD is diverted or eliminated. This strikes at a larger point though that if you didn't get crap from above there would be little need for management. The issue is when everyone thinks their project is the most important and should have resources allocated towards it. Then you need someone with a better strategic picture to marry all of the competing requirements such that it fits into the position that your organization takes in the market for that time period. It also reinforces the fact that there are different layers of "knowledge" from strategic global markets to lines of code. If you want anything better than luck to line those two things up across dozens or hundreds of projects you will need some kind of middle management.
grecy 13y ago
Wow, those three dot points sound like dream-land compared to my current company. I think when people say "get rid of managers", they are not referring to the setup you mention, but to the old-world where managers are clueless about the work actually being done, take all the credit, and make much more money. Also, being "promoted" to management means leaving tech forever.
- kokey 13y ago
  I have found the approach like the Facebook example above to be more common in the UK, to South Africa or India. I have been wondering whether it's just my experience, or if developing countries are just simply behind and resemble an old class system. That said, in all these countries a specialist surgeon would be seen as an equal or superior to a hospital manager, almost exactly like the Facebook example. So, the issue may be down to the immaturity of the IT industry.
  - dworin 13y ago
    Management practices, on average (there are always exceptions) tend to be much better in the developed world. Here's some research from Harvard Business School that looks at it more quantitatively: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/12-052.pdf http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/12-052.pdf Here's another one, although it's less academic and more consultanty: http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/ManagementReport.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/ManagementReport.pdf Improved management is actually one of the reasons that developing countries are able to achieve such remarkable productivity gains. Here's a study that actually used Randomized Controlled Trials to show the effects of improved management practices in India: http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/DMM.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/DMM.pdf The TL/DR on that last one is that a small amount of management consulting led to pretty big productivity improvements.
  - mercer 13y ago
    I've spent much of my life in a poor, developing country, and in my experience there is a huge difference in how people perceive formal structures in general, but power dynamics in particular. People in charge tend to be more authoritarian, and people in lower positions tend to be more subservient and they do exactly as they're told and no more than that. Except for the ones who have a really obvious stake in the structure's success (owners usually), the thing people in each of these positions have in common is that they do not perceive themselves as individual, autonomous actors with responsibilities, but rather as roles to inhabit and strictly follow - and never go above and beyond. This often led to hilarious and infuriatingly inefficient results, and me and my family constantly marvelled at this, even after ten years in such an environment. Some examples: In construction, the boss would have to be on-site at all times. He'd just be standing there watching his workers work, because if he left, they would immediately slack off. And if he gave instructions, they would follow these instructions to the letter, sometimes with disastrous consequences. When asked why they did something particularly stupid, they'd shrug and explain that they were told to do this and so they just did it. It often had little to do with their abilities. When an individual worker would be promoted to a managerial position, he or she, no matter their personality, would instantly turn into a rather unpleasant bossy character, and not take any initiatives beyond 'managing'. Working alongside their underlings was unacceptable. Seeing this sudden transformation was a bit scary. A translator working for my father wasn't very familiar with computers but when tasked to translate some text using word perfect, she went ahead and started working hard. A few hours in, he checked up on her and while she said everything was fine, he noticed that she hadn't translated more than a page. After some prodding, she explained that she was rather frustrated that as she reached the end of the page, her earlier translations vanished. It turned out that she had translated a screen full of text multiple times and simply didn't understand that off-screen text was still there. At no point did she feel an urge to ask about this, despite her frustration. I could keep going, but what really struck me, again and again, was the sense of lemming-like behavior that people exhibited as soon as they were assigned a role, the huge inefficiencies of having multiple people do very specific jobs that one person could do faster and better in the same amount of time, and the complete lack of a sense of 'professional pride' in their roles. What was especially interesting about all this is that my 'home' culture (Holland) is pretty much on the extreme other end of the scale (often, not always): bosses dress down and tried to avoid any kind of pulling rank (to a fault sometimes), employees have opinions on everything, even things outside their responsibility, and they express these opinions vocally and often with little regard of rank and appropriateness. Flat power structures (polder model) are favored over big hierarchies. When children in this developing nation talked back to their parents, they'd receive punishment whether they were correct or not. When Dutch kids talk back we consider them cute and precocious. These are broad strokes, of course, but these differences were apparent time and time again. I have some theories as to why this is the case, but none that seem to fully explain these massive differences.
dworin 13y ago
>> "What managers end up doing is being responsible for all of the shit work so their team can go do what they do best" This is, in essence, a manager's most important job. It gets under valued, because when it's working it doesn't look like a manager is doing anything, it just looks like a bunch of great people working away. You notice managers when they're bad, not when they're good.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Sorry, but IC is what?
- zhte415 13y ago
  Individual Contributor i.e. someone that doesn't manage others, but contributes as an individual.

rch 13y ago

> as a hacker you want to be given a well-defined problem I think identifying and solving open problems is more of a hacker mindset.

protonfish 13y ago

The problem is that menial work (arranging meetings, organizing schedules, handling communications with colleagues and clients by phone and mail) used to be handled by secretaries. If Mad Men is to be believed, at a certain employment level you would get a personal secretary and below that you could draw from a common pool. Where did all these secretarial jobs go? Their title was changed to "manager" and they were put in charge. God help us all.

crazygringo 13y ago
Um, no. Secretaries were replaced with personal computers and websites. Nobody needs to take dictation anymore, after all, and information is now at everyone's fingertips. And the logistics of arranging meetings etc. are handled by office managers generally, if you're talking about who uses which room and for how long. The idea that secretaries turned into management is bizarre.
- merrua 13y ago
  I think this is a generational gap. As far as I am aware their is a gap between what the role of secretaries was seen as (typing, filing) and what the range of roles contained within the post actually did. There was a good reason why even now, some people said that a computer, and great search hasnt caught up with an excellent secretary.
- lostlogin 13y ago
  I know of dozens of secretaries and typists in the medical field. Voice dictation software doesn't cut it yet. Software that works sort of ok is dependent on platforms companies don't have, and humans are better at error correction, answering the phone and resolving problems. Many surgeons seem to have 2 or 3 secretaries to keep on top of the work. It might be an industry or country specific thing, but secretaries aren't going anywhere fast in my little world.

AndrewKemendo 13y ago

So what managers end up doing is being responsible for all of the shit work so their team can go do what they do best. This is the definition of management if it is being done correctly. In effect you manage inbound tasks from upper management to ensure that important tasks get completed while FUD is diverted or eliminated. This strikes at a larger point though that if you didn't get crap from above there would be little need for management. The issue is when everyone thinks their project is the most important and should have resources allocated towards it. Then you need someone with a better strategic picture to marry all of the competing requirements such that it fits into the position that your organization takes in the market for that time period. It also reinforces the fact that there are different layers of "knowledge" from strategic global markets to lines of code. If you want anything better than luck to line those two things up across dozens or hundreds of projects you will need some kind of middle management.

grecy 13y ago

Wow, those three dot points sound like dream-land compared to my current company. I think when people say "get rid of managers", they are not referring to the setup you mention, but to the old-world where managers are clueless about the work actually being done, take all the credit, and make much more money. Also, being "promoted" to management means leaving tech forever.

kokey 13y ago
I have found the approach like the Facebook example above to be more common in the UK, to South Africa or India. I have been wondering whether it's just my experience, or if developing countries are just simply behind and resemble an old class system. That said, in all these countries a specialist surgeon would be seen as an equal or superior to a hospital manager, almost exactly like the Facebook example. So, the issue may be down to the immaturity of the IT industry.
- dworin 13y ago
  Management practices, on average (there are always exceptions) tend to be much better in the developed world. Here's some research from Harvard Business School that looks at it more quantitatively: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/12-052.pdf http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/12-052.pdf Here's another one, although it's less academic and more consultanty: http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/ManagementReport.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/ManagementReport.pdf Improved management is actually one of the reasons that developing countries are able to achieve such remarkable productivity gains. Here's a study that actually used Randomized Controlled Trials to show the effects of improved management practices in India: http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/DMM.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/DMM.pdf The TL/DR on that last one is that a small amount of management consulting led to pretty big productivity improvements.
- mercer 13y ago
  I've spent much of my life in a poor, developing country, and in my experience there is a huge difference in how people perceive formal structures in general, but power dynamics in particular. People in charge tend to be more authoritarian, and people in lower positions tend to be more subservient and they do exactly as they're told and no more than that. Except for the ones who have a really obvious stake in the structure's success (owners usually), the thing people in each of these positions have in common is that they do not perceive themselves as individual, autonomous actors with responsibilities, but rather as roles to inhabit and strictly follow - and never go above and beyond. This often led to hilarious and infuriatingly inefficient results, and me and my family constantly marvelled at this, even after ten years in such an environment. Some examples: In construction, the boss would have to be on-site at all times. He'd just be standing there watching his workers work, because if he left, they would immediately slack off. And if he gave instructions, they would follow these instructions to the letter, sometimes with disastrous consequences. When asked why they did something particularly stupid, they'd shrug and explain that they were told to do this and so they just did it. It often had little to do with their abilities. When an individual worker would be promoted to a managerial position, he or she, no matter their personality, would instantly turn into a rather unpleasant bossy character, and not take any initiatives beyond 'managing'. Working alongside their underlings was unacceptable. Seeing this sudden transformation was a bit scary. A translator working for my father wasn't very familiar with computers but when tasked to translate some text using word perfect, she went ahead and started working hard. A few hours in, he checked up on her and while she said everything was fine, he noticed that she hadn't translated more than a page. After some prodding, she explained that she was rather frustrated that as she reached the end of the page, her earlier translations vanished. It turned out that she had translated a screen full of text multiple times and simply didn't understand that off-screen text was still there. At no point did she feel an urge to ask about this, despite her frustration. I could keep going, but what really struck me, again and again, was the sense of lemming-like behavior that people exhibited as soon as they were assigned a role, the huge inefficiencies of having multiple people do very specific jobs that one person could do faster and better in the same amount of time, and the complete lack of a sense of 'professional pride' in their roles. What was especially interesting about all this is that my 'home' culture (Holland) is pretty much on the extreme other end of the scale (often, not always): bosses dress down and tried to avoid any kind of pulling rank (to a fault sometimes), employees have opinions on everything, even things outside their responsibility, and they express these opinions vocally and often with little regard of rank and appropriateness. Flat power structures (polder model) are favored over big hierarchies. When children in this developing nation talked back to their parents, they'd receive punishment whether they were correct or not. When Dutch kids talk back we consider them cute and precocious. These are broad strokes, of course, but these differences were apparent time and time again. I have some theories as to why this is the case, but none that seem to fully explain these massive differences.

dworin 13y ago

>> "What managers end up doing is being responsible for all of the shit work so their team can go do what they do best" This is, in essence, a manager's most important job. It gets under valued, because when it's working it doesn't look like a manager is doing anything, it just looks like a bunch of great people working away. You notice managers when they're bad, not when they're good.

dredmorbius 13y ago

Sorry, but IC is what?

zhte415 13y ago
Individual Contributor i.e. someone that doesn't manage others, but contributes as an individual.