9 ms·

Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?

i.e. firms using collaborative/innovative/participatory methods of organizing?

satyanash 12y ago
Zoho Corp. is also an interesting company. Their CRM is often considered a better/cheaper alternative to SalesForce. Their Zoho University concept is also an interesting attempt to solve India's problem of creating quality engineers (vs quantity).
- ZenoArrow 12y ago
  Do Zoho have a flat management structure?
  - satyanash 12y ago
    I'm not sure about a completely flat structure, but they do value the actual work done than the post of an employee. Employees are often encouraged to move between products as both of them mature. Their attrition rate is also very very low.
bane 12y ago
Gore is a widely known company that does. However, a review of their glassdoor profile shows it is not as great on the inside as the marketing makes it out to be. Here's my previous comments on it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270601
- jimmydddd 12y ago
  Nice recap. I had a friend who worked as a sales guy for Gore (his company was acquired by them). He said that he couldn't "order" anyone to do anything for him, so he had to spend all his time sucking up to people just to get any needed support.
  - sheepmullet 12y ago
    Is that a problem with the company or with your friend? A lot of people really just seem to want the power to boss others around.
    - jimmydddd 12y ago
      Good point. I think it was the organization. In a large organization, you can't do everything yourself. "Can I get last year's sales figures for client A?" "When I get around to it." "I'm meeting with them next week." "Sorry, I'm busy." See Bane's comments above for a good recap.
- sheepmullet 12y ago
  It sounds pretty similar to most large organisations. In particular: "Now instead of getting work done, people will dedicate their time to internal politics and jostling for group position" Internal politics and jostling for group position happens in every large organisation I have worked at. "unresolved because nobody could assume the role of dictator and push through needed work prioritization schedules" Again, at every large company I have worked for the "dictators" of successful projects were rarely the people with official ownership of the projects or people high up in the org chart. So I'm not sure why nobody could assume the role of dictator.
  - bane 12y ago
    One of the things that formal organizational structures provide is a set of tools you can use to fix logjams when consensus-building isn't possible. By building an organization only on de-facto group dynamics, you toss away all of those tools and you have literally no option but to play along with these informal processes. One of the few things modern management practice has identified for success is that informal processes need to be brought under some semblance of organizational control or they become incestuous and optimize for local efficiencies rather than enabling the entire organization to be successful. >Again, at every large company I have worked for the "dictators" of successful projects were rarely the people with official ownership of the projects or people high up in the org chart. So I'm not sure why nobody could assume the role of dictator. Here's how this works in flat organizations employee a: I need you to do this employee b: no and that's the end of the story. Sometimes, if the organization is setup according to some kind of flat org theory you'll get these steps also employee a: well I'm going to take this to committee employee b: ok <months pass, committee meets> employee a: I told employee b to do the thing and he said "no" employee b: employee a was acting like my boss and we're flat, I didn't feel the need to give into his demands (committee members nod in assent) committee: we've decided that employee b does not, in fact, need to do the thing and now the thing doesn't get done Here's how it works in a grown-up organization employee a: I need you do this employee b: no employee a: boss, I need b to do this for <business reasons> boss: employee b, do the thing employee b: no boss: rethink that employee b: okay, I'll do it souls are crushed, free will is diminished, but the thing gets done and the company moves on However, more importantly, many so called "flat" organizations are not, either formally or informally. Informally they'll all succumb to informal group behavior that all humans exhibit in groups of more than 1. Formally, they'll all have some kind of hierarchy, but will attempt to hide it or obfuscate it in some way. This is usually tested trivially by offering to swap a low-level employee with a high-level one and seeing if it actually happens (hint it almost never will)
ntoll 12y ago
In a similar vein, Fry-IT (http://www.fry-it.com/ http://www.fry-it.com/) are a small web-development company based in London that organise themselves around the outlook of "industrial democracy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_democracy) proposed by Ricardo Semler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler). They're also great supporters of the London Python scene (also another good indicator of a good company to work with). (Note: I used to do sub-contract work with them. The first thing that happens when you work with them is you get sent a copy of one of Semler's books on the subject.)
- ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
  cool :) did you get seven day weekend or maverick?
chimeracoder 12y ago
You didn't specify in your question - what size firm are you thinking of? There are lots of small firms (ie, ~5 people) who use this approach. Arguably, for a team of 2-5 people, it's the most natural strategy anyway. The challenge, of course, comes with scaling this to a team of 50 or 500 people. At that scale, there are far fewer examples (though the comments in this thread point out some exceptions). Assuming you ask because you're looking to find a place to work, in addition to the other names mentioned here, you may want to look at very small companies as well, because the odds are very much in your favor of finding one. Just be aware that the team dynamics may change as the company grows, which you may find you like, or which may mean it's time for you to look for your next step.
- ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
  thank you. I am not looking for a place to work actually, I am working on a research project and at the moment i am interested in everything that is out there. but of course, I am interersted in companies that actually have to do some thinking about organisation in order to get things done
joelgascoigne 12y ago
At Buffer we've started to move in this direction. I can highly recommend watching this video if you're interested in self-management and the idea of a new management paradigm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk. Frederic's book by the same name also goes into further details and shares several example companies: Buurtzorg, AES, Morning Star, FAVI, RHD and others.
- tikl1 12y ago
  Thank you for that, I loved the talk and will probably order the book. EDIT: French version of this conference(by the same author): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKqPoQiaDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKqPoQiaDE
- s3nnyy 12y ago
  This is the most eye-opening talk, I've listened to since a long time. It is sad that it was published in August this year and was only viewed 8k times. I don't think this is a big number for the applicability this has.
jackbravo 12y ago
There's gcoop (http://gcoop.coop/ http://gcoop.coop/). A software cooperative in argentina. I think they have around 20 people working on a cooperative model.
- jackbravo 12y ago
  In a similar vein, there is http://agaric.com/about http://agaric.com/about which is also a software cooperative (or collective? are those the same in the US?) doing Drupal work.
- mgbmtl 12y ago
  Similarly in Montreal: https://www.koumbit.org https://www.koumbit.org (legally a non-profit, run mostly by consensus)
peterjaap 12y ago
Here in the Netherlands we've got Voys (http://www.voys.nl http://www.voys.nl), they were on HN a while back too; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420802
- peterjaap 12y ago
  They have a flat management style, see http://www.voys.nl/over-voys/het-voys-model http://www.voys.nl/over-voys/het-voys-model (it's Dutch but, you know, Google Translate)
jackbravo 12y ago
Monty Widenius published the http://hackingbusinessmodel.info/ http://hackingbusinessmodel.info/ which they were using at MySQL AB (before Sun I think). I don't think they use this at MariaDB Corporation. We try to use this at http://axai.com.mx http://axai.com.mx, a small company I belong to in Mexico.
ianpenney 12y ago
I feel like this describes my present employer. The company culture emphasizes that everyone should experience maximum Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose, Transparency, Empathy and Fun in their job. Hierarchy is way less important to us than getting results. We're in Toronto and we have more about this at our website: https://nulogy.com/ https://nulogy.com/
- psycr 12y ago
  How is management structured? How are product decisions made?
  - ianpenney 12y ago
    Ah! Josh, your name was familiar to some of my coworkers! A couple of points to answer your questions: - We do centralize our product strategy and portfolio planning, but we decentralize our release and iteration planning. - We focus on building strong teams of diverse talent sets that are becoming more self managing. Teamwork is big for us, flying solo on any task is rare-r than in other places I've worked. - Our management (and everyone else) are really accessible for a medium sized company. I have faith that if I sent a calendar invite to our C*O for a 15 min chat on a free timeslot, they'd show up. Of course, respect goes both ways and I wouldn't book their time unless I really needed them specifically and it couldn't be handled asynchronously. Thanks for the questions!
    - unclesaamm 12y ago
      Well, the point is some companies don't have management. Sounds like yours does ;)
  - sobes 12y ago
    We also have/use: - TDD - pair programming - git flow - a 2-week release cycle - four dev teams
d--b 12y ago
Bunch of them in there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization
lunae 12y ago
Attlasian
- Gonzih 12y ago
  Do you have any information on how exactly Attlasian works (links to some presentations/posts would be great)? From what I know they are not even close to Github/Valve kind of flow. But I might be wrong.
  - chillax 12y ago
    Found this from 2011: http://www.managementexchange.com/story/its-culture-stupid-how-permeating-information-culture-leads-corporate-success http://www.managementexchange.com/story/its-culture-stupid-h... and of course their official pages on it: https://www.atlassian.com/company/about/values https://www.atlassian.com/company/about/values
- flavor8 12y ago
  Maybe that explains why there are 5 year old critical bugs in their products...
- lazerscience 12y ago
  Maybe you can elaborate why you are mentioning them here?
marcusf 12y ago
I'm subjective, but I think Spotify uses slightly innovative ways of organising. See: * https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/ https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-cult... * https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering-culture-part-2/ https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering-cult... Happy to answer questions.
- wdewind 12y ago
  How does accountability work at Spotify? It looks like your squads have a specific goal (and maybe a leader?) but when you get up to the tribe level it wasn't clear if one person is in charge of a tribe, or if a product, design and tech lead all share authority. If that is true, do you guys not suffer from the tyranny of structurelessness? How do you do strategic planning/coordination? How do teams that are not engineering focused get stuff done? For instance a customer support team or marketing team - would it have its own engineers and engineering management? Edit: finally, how long have you worked at Spotify with this culture?
  - marcusf 12y ago
    Sorry for late answers here but thanks for asking questions! > How does accountability work at Spotify? It looks like your squads have a specific goal (and maybe a leader?) but when you get up to the tribe level it wasn't clear if one person is in charge of a tribe, or if a product, design and tech lead all share authority. If that is true, do you guys not suffer from the tyranny of structurelessness? How do you do strategic planning/coordination? Squads don't have leaders, but they do have product owners who ultimately owns the roadmap of the product owned by that squad. A tribe is lead by a trio of engineering, product and design. Responsibility for the various facets of the tribes output is divided between the three roles. > How do teams that are not engineering focused get stuff done? For instance a customer support team or marketing team - would it have its own engineers and engineering management? Yeah, the tech/product side of that have homes in tribes as well. > Edit: finally, how long have you worked at Spotify with this culture? I've been here 2.5 years. This structure has been in place for roughly three years, maybe a bit more.
- 12y ago
jstayton 12y ago
They call it "Open Allocation". "Holacracy" is similar as well. A few other companies doing it... * Zappos — http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-titles-no-managers-no-hierarchy http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-title... * Treehouse — http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-removed-bosses-at-treehouse http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-re... * WL Gore & Associates (parts of the company) — http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/02/gore-tex-textiles-terri-kelly http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/02/gore-tex-tex...
- jstayton 12y ago
  We've been doing Open Allocation at Monk Development (http://www.monkdevelopment.com http://www.monkdevelopment.com) for about a year now, but haven't yet written anything about our experiences.
JikkuJose 12y ago
Have you checked: www.assembly.com & www.kickstarter.com
- knd775 12y ago
  I don't think that is what was meant by OP. I think they were asking about the atmosphere/organization inside of the company, rather than companies that allow people to collaborate.
  - lazerscience 12y ago
    Yes I think this is what the question is about. Some people might call it "Holocracy" or something like that...
tijs 12y ago
Springest in NL (and some other companies too) practice Holocracy http://devblog.springest.com/holacracy-at-springest-dev-team-kick-off/ http://devblog.springest.com/holacracy-at-springest-dev-team... As far as i know the only 'new' management trend that has catched on here.
- rikmatena 12y ago
  That we do! If you're interested, our founder Ruben more recently also wrote an article about the challenges of adopting holacracy: https://medium.com/@rubzie/8-challenges-to-overcome-when-adopting-holacracy-9bc38f5cbab4 https://medium.com/@rubzie/8-challenges-to-overcome-when-ado...
publicbenemy 12y ago
Gore always gets named in this context: http://www.gore.com/de_de/aboutus/culture/corporate_culture.html http://www.gore.com/de_de/aboutus/culture/corporate_culture.... Atlassian seem to be doing things differently. Umantis in Switzerland democratically elect their CEO: http://www.umantis.com/en/press/haufe-umantis-ag-employees-elect-marc-stoffel-as-chief-executive-1/ http://www.umantis.com/en/press/haufe-umantis-ag-employees-e... I'm very interested in this question as well, especially companies in Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg and Copenhagen. Anyone else know of companies doing things differently?
- flyingfsck 12y ago
  As an end user of Atlassian products - their support leaves a lot to be desired. Not sure if that ties in to "doing things differently" but there you go.
- ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
  do you have a scientific or an "i want to work for a company like this" interest?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
bdimcheff 12y ago
We do this at Olark to a large extent, but I don't think anybody has written about it in any detail yet. We have a peer-driven project proposal process that allows anybody to propose a project, and then "vote with your feet" to get it done. It's still pretty new, but I'd guess we'll write about it once we have a little more experience with it.
ceejayoz 12y ago
https://www.balancedpayments.com/open https://www.balancedpayments.com/open
lazyant 12y ago
Semco. You may want to read Ricardo Semler's book http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workplace/dp/0446670553/ http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workpl... it's 20 years old but for some reason it's not a classic in startups or US business environments (edit: oh I see someone mentioned it). He wrote a more recent book I haven't read: http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works-ebook/dp/B000PDYVXE/ http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works-... anyone with comments on this one?
sciurus 12y ago
Can anyone confirm that Github still operates this way?
- codahale 12y ago
  Some LinkedIn job titles from current GitHub employees: * VP, Business Development & Services * Head of Technology Partnerships * CIO * VP, HR * Vice President, Strategy * Vice President, Marketing * VP Communications * Director of Outreach * Director of Sales
  - to3m 12y ago
    See also: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/technology/valve-a-video-game-maker-with-few-rules.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/technology/valve-a-video-g... - "The few employees who’ve put titles on business cards do so to satisfy outsiders apprehensive about working with people without labels. The same applies to Gabe Newell, one of Valve’s founders." (no idea whether this is the case here...) One of my former colleagues had this sort of experience at one job, where his job title was "programmer" (you got this title if you were a programmer; there weren't any others available). He was finding it sometimes difficult to get people to return emails, presumably because he didn't sound important enough. Apparently the last straw was being roundly ignored in a particular meeting with one external company! A swift title upgrade (no changes in responsibility...) fixed all of this.
- bnferguson 12y ago
  I'm not sure what others experiences are but for me it's mostly the same but also different in some ways than in the past. The biggest change is that there's more structure in some key places. For instance there are a few PMs now for very involved projects, and we have engineering managers to make sure we're getting along ok and not falling between the cracks (turns out 100+ people reporting to one person can be tricky), but still remains enormously open. Most decisions are made in the open (if they legally can be), there's almost always a Pull Request with discussion around it if you want to either take part or just see how that decision came around. The culture is pretty allergic to anything closed. People frequently ask for a URL if they're curious how a decision was made. This makes it much easier to not feel left out as a remote employee (which something like 60% are). As an engineer I can largely still choose what I work on much in the same way as before: if there's a project spinning up and I want to work on that project and that team wants me and my team is cool with me going I can totally go work on it. I've actually been encouraged to work on other things lately to get more perspective on the product and work with new people. I don't feel pigeonholed like I have in some other places. Teams mostly self organize into structures that best work for them. Some teams look fairly traditional. Some use scrum. Some use some other agile methods. Some use nothing. Some work closely with a PM. etc. Use what makes you happy and what makes you productive. Different projects have different needs. Things may shift around as growth happens (and they have), but largely I feel like the principles have stayed intact. Still the best place I've ever worked.
znq 12y ago
Not sure if it's in the same bucket as Valve or GitHub: at Mobile Jazz http://mobilejazz.com http://mobilejazz.com we're only 20 people (and that makes things a lot easier), but we've quite a different way of working compared to traditional companies: * We pay fair salaries. For most people in our team it's way more than what they've earned before. * We pay everyone the same (base) salary. Regardless of their role or title. * We pay quarterly bonuses based on pro-activity, responsibility and other performance indicators. * Everyone can work from wherever they like, still many people choose to work from our main office in Barcelona. (For example I work many weeks out of my camper van with 3G/4G connection from beautiful surf locations) * In theory, everyone can choose how much or how little they want. Not always possible, but we try to make it possible as much as we can. * We have managers, but they don't demand things. They are responsible that certain things happen, but decisions are being made collaboratively. * All managers are either engineers or designers. No bullshit managers. * We don't have a dedicated sales person. All work we get is from word-of-mouth and the first person a new client speaks to is either an engineer or designer (or both). * We play Mario Kart / StarCraft after lunch ;-) * We do a lot of sports activities together * We have a lot of BBQs on our terrace * We use some of the profits for fun internal experiments (small projects without an expected outcome other than having fun & learning). However, some of them are now actually turning into actual products: http://bugfender.com/ http://bugfender.com/ * MJ University: we take online classes together as a group * MJ Talk: weekly presentation about an interesting topic (not necessarily tech related). For example we had talks about personal finance (investing), achieving happiness, etc. * We encourage pair programming where it makes sense * MJ Weekend: once or twice every year we fly everyone to Spain, rent a nice villa with pool and have a good time together. Some pics: http://blog.mobilejazz.cat/work-life-balance-at-mobile-jazz/ http://blog.mobilejazz.cat/work-life-balance-at-mobile-jazz/ * MJ Retreats: we're going to remote places and work there together. At the moment six of us are on an island in Thailand. In February we go skiing in Austria. * We put a lot of effort in hearing everyone's opinion and feedback and try to put it into action With all that we've managed to attract and retain incredible talent, but most importantly we have a very pleasant time together. That said, we're a company optimizing on lifestyle and happiness, rather than profit. So this way of running a business is probably not applicable everywhere. (Edit: formatting, typos and a few additions)
- 12y ago
rscott 12y ago
Not sure if this fits the bill, but I've always found the openness of Thoughtbot quite impressive. They have an open "playbook" describing how they operate and develop. http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/ http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/
- ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
  thanks, thats fascinating
hacknat 12y ago
I love this model of working, but I think it's a lot more common in engineering teams than people realize. My company isn't anything special, and certainly most of the rest of the company doesn't work open allocation, but the engineering team pretty much does. You work on what you want, and you tell people what you're doing. Does anyone else feel this way?
- erikschoster 12y ago
  It's not formalized in any way, but we have a small team that works this way. I would imagine it would be hard to scale, and takes the right sort of people, but it's a really great environment to work in. We are constantly experimenting and everyone is welcome where they feel they can be helpful - our video production team is deeply involved with the devops side of our streaming server for example...
- thearn4 12y ago
  There's definitely pockets like this where I work (Gov't agency), but these pockets are still floating in a sea of the expected waterfall bureaucracy. It's basically up to team leads/PMs to decide if they're going to act as a buffer against that or not.
- zerr 12y ago
  Exactly. I've worked in several small companies and it used to be a case always... I guess the challenge is to have a similar structure in relative big organizations (e.g. 200+ engineers).
jedberg 12y ago
Ok this is a little off topic but maybe someone can tell me. These orgs make a huge deal about how salary is selected by your peers. How does that actually work though? Like the detailed logistics of it? Who exactly picks what you'll get? How is the final decision made?
beautybasics 12y ago
Bridgewater Associates
guijemont 12y ago
At Igalia (http://www.igalia.com/ http://www.igalia.com/), we are a worker-owned free software consultancy. There's a generic presentation of how we work spread among the various sections of http://www.igalia.com/about-us/ http://www.igalia.com/about-us/, but one of us also wrote a series of blog posts that explains us pretty well: http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/05/no-master http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/05/no-master http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/13/but-that-would-be-anarchy http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/13/but-that-would-be-an... http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money In a nutshell: people who work for Igalia own it (with equal amount of shares, usually after three years in the company) and participate in the assembly (usually after 6 months-a year in the company). From that premise, our decisions and ways of working are generally very flexible towards employees. Having the same salary (with more for people who live in more expensive countries) or being able to work from wherever you want is just the tip of the iceberg.
- ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
  igalia sounds amazing. congrats on your company. can you tell me how many people are worker-owners? are there also freelancers working yor you?
  - guijemont 12y ago
    Thanks! Basically, everybody who's been here for more than 3 years is a co-owner. I just did a quick count (I might be off by one or two), and I think we're 36 owners out of 41 people. Our explicit goal when we hire someone is to keep them long term and have them become co-owner. Our workers (including owners) who live outside of Spain (where the company is based) typically have an official status of freelancers, though they have only one client and are as involved in the company as the ones who have a status of employee in Spain.
elihu 12y ago
Galois has a pretty flat structure, and employees can choose what they work on among the currently funded projects (they do mostly grant-funded research). https://galois.com/ https://galois.com/
balsamiq 12y ago
Here's a subreddit full of resources about this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/flatmanagement http://www.reddit.com/r/flatmanagement I'm a mod of it...we're pretty flat at Balsamiq, too.
- zerr 12y ago
  But you never had an opening for an engineer (during last several years, I believe) ;)
- ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
  wow thank you!
rohamg 12y ago
There are lots of tiny companies (2-20 people) that can "wing it", but it's difficult to make decentralized or distributed decision-making work at scale. We're a slightly larger team (almost 50 peeps) at Axiom Zen (https://axiomzen.co https://axiomzen.co). Our entire raison d'etre is predicated on coming up with interesting, high-risk ideas and carrying them through the various stages of market validation, prototyping, iteration, and growth. Because of this, we are working really hard to become and remain the best place for brilliant people to build awesome things. We try to clearly define our values (just like Valve/GitHub), build them into our products, and use them as a heavy filter for hiring. We also go out of our way to ensure total transparency in the team, using GitHub for everything from sales to hiring so that everyone can see the stage everything is at, decisions leading up to a particular status quo, etc. Also everyone has an equal voice in jumping in to suggest / push forward changes. For a bit on our workflow, take a look at this blog post: https://www.zenhub.io/blog/beyond-code-use-github-zenhub-for-all-company-workflows/ https://www.zenhub.io/blog/beyond-code-use-github-zenhub-for... We'll eventually polish up and publish our company handbook which dives into the `how` and `why` much more thoroughly than I ever could here.
sbarg 12y ago
I remember two firms from previous HN posts that stuck with me, Fog Creek and Balsamiq. Joel's methodology might be a little complex, but it makes sense. http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/ http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/ http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html
fiatjaf 12y ago
Morning Star is the best I've heard: https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers/ar/1 https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers/ar/...
vide0star 12y ago
We have a flat structure with no technical managers at Smarkets (London). Engineers self-organise into projects. Projects are self-directed and members of the project appoint a lead and have quantitative goals. Salaries will be set from anonymous peer review. We're a team of 11 engineers.
lavamantis 12y ago
If the organizing method at Valve is so great, where the hell is the third episode of the Half-Life 2 trilogy? I've been waiting 7 years for god's sake.
yuhong 12y ago
I still remember michaelochurch suggesting that Google should use open allocation.
dajbelshaw 12y ago
You might find this from Laura Thomson (Director of Engineering Operations at Mozilla) useful: https://speakerdeck.com/lauraxt/minimum-viable-bureaucracy https://speakerdeck.com/lauraxt/minimum-viable-bureaucracy
mereghost 12y ago
Not sure how we compare to those but here @ VAGAS.com we have a radically horizontal management model. Everything, from strategic planning to everyday decisions, are open to anyone participate, but well... our founder can explain this way better than me, so here it goes: http://www.managementexchange.com/story/horizontal-management-vagascom http://www.managementexchange.com/story/horizontal-managemen...

i.e. firms using collaborative/innovative/participatory methods of organizing?

Zoho Corp. is also an interesting company. Their CRM is often considered a better/cheaper alternative to SalesForce. Their Zoho University concept is also an interesting attempt to solve India's problem of creating quality engineers (vs quantity).

ZenoArrow 12y ago
Do Zoho have a flat management structure?
- satyanash 12y ago
  I'm not sure about a completely flat structure, but they do value the actual work done than the post of an employee. Employees are often encouraged to move between products as both of them mature. Their attrition rate is also very very low.

bane 12y ago

Gore is a widely known company that does. However, a review of their glassdoor profile shows it is not as great on the inside as the marketing makes it out to be. Here's my previous comments on it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270601

jimmydddd 12y ago
Nice recap. I had a friend who worked as a sales guy for Gore (his company was acquired by them). He said that he couldn't "order" anyone to do anything for him, so he had to spend all his time sucking up to people just to get any needed support.
- sheepmullet 12y ago
  Is that a problem with the company or with your friend? A lot of people really just seem to want the power to boss others around.
  - jimmydddd 12y ago
    Good point. I think it was the organization. In a large organization, you can't do everything yourself. "Can I get last year's sales figures for client A?" "When I get around to it." "I'm meeting with them next week." "Sorry, I'm busy." See Bane's comments above for a good recap.
sheepmullet 12y ago
It sounds pretty similar to most large organisations. In particular: "Now instead of getting work done, people will dedicate their time to internal politics and jostling for group position" Internal politics and jostling for group position happens in every large organisation I have worked at. "unresolved because nobody could assume the role of dictator and push through needed work prioritization schedules" Again, at every large company I have worked for the "dictators" of successful projects were rarely the people with official ownership of the projects or people high up in the org chart. So I'm not sure why nobody could assume the role of dictator.
- bane 12y ago
  One of the things that formal organizational structures provide is a set of tools you can use to fix logjams when consensus-building isn't possible. By building an organization only on de-facto group dynamics, you toss away all of those tools and you have literally no option but to play along with these informal processes. One of the few things modern management practice has identified for success is that informal processes need to be brought under some semblance of organizational control or they become incestuous and optimize for local efficiencies rather than enabling the entire organization to be successful. >Again, at every large company I have worked for the "dictators" of successful projects were rarely the people with official ownership of the projects or people high up in the org chart. So I'm not sure why nobody could assume the role of dictator. Here's how this works in flat organizations employee a: I need you to do this employee b: no and that's the end of the story. Sometimes, if the organization is setup according to some kind of flat org theory you'll get these steps also employee a: well I'm going to take this to committee employee b: ok <months pass, committee meets> employee a: I told employee b to do the thing and he said "no" employee b: employee a was acting like my boss and we're flat, I didn't feel the need to give into his demands (committee members nod in assent) committee: we've decided that employee b does not, in fact, need to do the thing and now the thing doesn't get done Here's how it works in a grown-up organization employee a: I need you do this employee b: no employee a: boss, I need b to do this for <business reasons> boss: employee b, do the thing employee b: no boss: rethink that employee b: okay, I'll do it souls are crushed, free will is diminished, but the thing gets done and the company moves on However, more importantly, many so called "flat" organizations are not, either formally or informally. Informally they'll all succumb to informal group behavior that all humans exhibit in groups of more than 1. Formally, they'll all have some kind of hierarchy, but will attempt to hide it or obfuscate it in some way. This is usually tested trivially by offering to swap a low-level employee with a high-level one and seeing if it actually happens (hint it almost never will)

ntoll 12y ago

In a similar vein, Fry-IT (http://www.fry-it.com/ http://www.fry-it.com/) are a small web-development company based in London that organise themselves around the outlook of "industrial democracy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_democracy) proposed by Ricardo Semler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler). They're also great supporters of the London Python scene (also another good indicator of a good company to work with). (Note: I used to do sub-contract work with them. The first thing that happens when you work with them is you get sent a copy of one of Semler's books on the subject.)

ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
cool :) did you get seven day weekend or maverick?

chimeracoder 12y ago

You didn't specify in your question - what size firm are you thinking of? There are lots of small firms (ie, ~5 people) who use this approach. Arguably, for a team of 2-5 people, it's the most natural strategy anyway. The challenge, of course, comes with scaling this to a team of 50 or 500 people. At that scale, there are far fewer examples (though the comments in this thread point out some exceptions). Assuming you ask because you're looking to find a place to work, in addition to the other names mentioned here, you may want to look at very small companies as well, because the odds are very much in your favor of finding one. Just be aware that the team dynamics may change as the company grows, which you may find you like, or which may mean it's time for you to look for your next step.

ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
thank you. I am not looking for a place to work actually, I am working on a research project and at the moment i am interested in everything that is out there. but of course, I am interersted in companies that actually have to do some thinking about organisation in order to get things done

joelgascoigne 12y ago

At Buffer we've started to move in this direction. I can highly recommend watching this video if you're interested in self-management and the idea of a new management paradigm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk. Frederic's book by the same name also goes into further details and shares several example companies: Buurtzorg, AES, Morning Star, FAVI, RHD and others.

tikl1 12y ago
Thank you for that, I loved the talk and will probably order the book. EDIT: French version of this conference(by the same author): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKqPoQiaDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKqPoQiaDE
s3nnyy 12y ago
This is the most eye-opening talk, I've listened to since a long time. It is sad that it was published in August this year and was only viewed 8k times. I don't think this is a big number for the applicability this has.

jackbravo 12y ago

There's gcoop (http://gcoop.coop/ http://gcoop.coop/). A software cooperative in argentina. I think they have around 20 people working on a cooperative model.

jackbravo 12y ago
In a similar vein, there is http://agaric.com/about http://agaric.com/about which is also a software cooperative (or collective? are those the same in the US?) doing Drupal work.
mgbmtl 12y ago
Similarly in Montreal: https://www.koumbit.org https://www.koumbit.org (legally a non-profit, run mostly by consensus)

peterjaap 12y ago

Here in the Netherlands we've got Voys (http://www.voys.nl http://www.voys.nl), they were on HN a while back too; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420802

peterjaap 12y ago
They have a flat management style, see http://www.voys.nl/over-voys/het-voys-model http://www.voys.nl/over-voys/het-voys-model (it's Dutch but, you know, Google Translate)

jackbravo 12y ago

Monty Widenius published the http://hackingbusinessmodel.info/ http://hackingbusinessmodel.info/ which they were using at MySQL AB (before Sun I think). I don't think they use this at MariaDB Corporation. We try to use this at http://axai.com.mx http://axai.com.mx, a small company I belong to in Mexico.

ianpenney 12y ago

I feel like this describes my present employer. The company culture emphasizes that everyone should experience maximum Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose, Transparency, Empathy and Fun in their job. Hierarchy is way less important to us than getting results. We're in Toronto and we have more about this at our website: https://nulogy.com/ https://nulogy.com/

psycr 12y ago
How is management structured? How are product decisions made?
- ianpenney 12y ago
  Ah! Josh, your name was familiar to some of my coworkers! A couple of points to answer your questions: - We do centralize our product strategy and portfolio planning, but we decentralize our release and iteration planning. - We focus on building strong teams of diverse talent sets that are becoming more self managing. Teamwork is big for us, flying solo on any task is rare-r than in other places I've worked. - Our management (and everyone else) are really accessible for a medium sized company. I have faith that if I sent a calendar invite to our C*O for a 15 min chat on a free timeslot, they'd show up. Of course, respect goes both ways and I wouldn't book their time unless I really needed them specifically and it couldn't be handled asynchronously. Thanks for the questions!
  - unclesaamm 12y ago
    Well, the point is some companies don't have management. Sounds like yours does ;)
- sobes 12y ago
  We also have/use: - TDD - pair programming - git flow - a 2-week release cycle - four dev teams

d--b 12y ago

Bunch of them in there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization

lunae 12y ago

Attlasian

Gonzih 12y ago
Do you have any information on how exactly Attlasian works (links to some presentations/posts would be great)? From what I know they are not even close to Github/Valve kind of flow. But I might be wrong.
- chillax 12y ago
  Found this from 2011: http://www.managementexchange.com/story/its-culture-stupid-how-permeating-information-culture-leads-corporate-success http://www.managementexchange.com/story/its-culture-stupid-h... and of course their official pages on it: https://www.atlassian.com/company/about/values https://www.atlassian.com/company/about/values
flavor8 12y ago
Maybe that explains why there are 5 year old critical bugs in their products...
lazerscience 12y ago
Maybe you can elaborate why you are mentioning them here?

marcusf 12y ago

I'm subjective, but I think Spotify uses slightly innovative ways of organising. See: * https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/ https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-cult... * https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering-culture-part-2/ https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering-cult... Happy to answer questions.

wdewind 12y ago
How does accountability work at Spotify? It looks like your squads have a specific goal (and maybe a leader?) but when you get up to the tribe level it wasn't clear if one person is in charge of a tribe, or if a product, design and tech lead all share authority. If that is true, do you guys not suffer from the tyranny of structurelessness? How do you do strategic planning/coordination? How do teams that are not engineering focused get stuff done? For instance a customer support team or marketing team - would it have its own engineers and engineering management? Edit: finally, how long have you worked at Spotify with this culture?
- marcusf 12y ago
  Sorry for late answers here but thanks for asking questions! > How does accountability work at Spotify? It looks like your squads have a specific goal (and maybe a leader?) but when you get up to the tribe level it wasn't clear if one person is in charge of a tribe, or if a product, design and tech lead all share authority. If that is true, do you guys not suffer from the tyranny of structurelessness? How do you do strategic planning/coordination? Squads don't have leaders, but they do have product owners who ultimately owns the roadmap of the product owned by that squad. A tribe is lead by a trio of engineering, product and design. Responsibility for the various facets of the tribes output is divided between the three roles. > How do teams that are not engineering focused get stuff done? For instance a customer support team or marketing team - would it have its own engineers and engineering management? Yeah, the tech/product side of that have homes in tribes as well. > Edit: finally, how long have you worked at Spotify with this culture? I've been here 2.5 years. This structure has been in place for roughly three years, maybe a bit more.
12y ago

jstayton 12y ago

They call it "Open Allocation". "Holacracy" is similar as well. A few other companies doing it... * Zappos — http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-titles-no-managers-no-hierarchy http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-title... * Treehouse — http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-removed-bosses-at-treehouse http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-re... * WL Gore & Associates (parts of the company) — http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/02/gore-tex-textiles-terri-kelly http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/02/gore-tex-tex...

jstayton 12y ago
We've been doing Open Allocation at Monk Development (http://www.monkdevelopment.com http://www.monkdevelopment.com) for about a year now, but haven't yet written anything about our experiences.

JikkuJose 12y ago

Have you checked: www.assembly.com & www.kickstarter.com

knd775 12y ago
I don't think that is what was meant by OP. I think they were asking about the atmosphere/organization inside of the company, rather than companies that allow people to collaborate.
- lazerscience 12y ago
  Yes I think this is what the question is about. Some people might call it "Holocracy" or something like that...

tijs 12y ago

Springest in NL (and some other companies too) practice Holocracy http://devblog.springest.com/holacracy-at-springest-dev-team-kick-off/ http://devblog.springest.com/holacracy-at-springest-dev-team... As far as i know the only 'new' management trend that has catched on here.

rikmatena 12y ago
That we do! If you're interested, our founder Ruben more recently also wrote an article about the challenges of adopting holacracy: https://medium.com/@rubzie/8-challenges-to-overcome-when-adopting-holacracy-9bc38f5cbab4 https://medium.com/@rubzie/8-challenges-to-overcome-when-ado...

publicbenemy 12y ago

Gore always gets named in this context: http://www.gore.com/de_de/aboutus/culture/corporate_culture.html http://www.gore.com/de_de/aboutus/culture/corporate_culture.... Atlassian seem to be doing things differently. Umantis in Switzerland democratically elect their CEO: http://www.umantis.com/en/press/haufe-umantis-ag-employees-elect-marc-stoffel-as-chief-executive-1/ http://www.umantis.com/en/press/haufe-umantis-ag-employees-e... I'm very interested in this question as well, especially companies in Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg and Copenhagen. Anyone else know of companies doing things differently?

flyingfsck 12y ago
As an end user of Atlassian products - their support leaves a lot to be desired. Not sure if that ties in to "doing things differently" but there you go.
ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
do you have a scientific or an "i want to work for a company like this" interest?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

bdimcheff 12y ago

We do this at Olark to a large extent, but I don't think anybody has written about it in any detail yet. We have a peer-driven project proposal process that allows anybody to propose a project, and then "vote with your feet" to get it done. It's still pretty new, but I'd guess we'll write about it once we have a little more experience with it.

ceejayoz 12y ago

https://www.balancedpayments.com/open https://www.balancedpayments.com/open

lazyant 12y ago

Semco. You may want to read Ricardo Semler's book http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workplace/dp/0446670553/ http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workpl... it's 20 years old but for some reason it's not a classic in startups or US business environments (edit: oh I see someone mentioned it). He wrote a more recent book I haven't read: http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works-ebook/dp/B000PDYVXE/ http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works-... anyone with comments on this one?

sciurus 12y ago

Can anyone confirm that Github still operates this way?

codahale 12y ago
Some LinkedIn job titles from current GitHub employees: * VP, Business Development & Services * Head of Technology Partnerships * CIO * VP, HR * Vice President, Strategy * Vice President, Marketing * VP Communications * Director of Outreach * Director of Sales
- to3m 12y ago
  See also: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/technology/valve-a-video-game-maker-with-few-rules.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/technology/valve-a-video-g... - "The few employees who’ve put titles on business cards do so to satisfy outsiders apprehensive about working with people without labels. The same applies to Gabe Newell, one of Valve’s founders." (no idea whether this is the case here...) One of my former colleagues had this sort of experience at one job, where his job title was "programmer" (you got this title if you were a programmer; there weren't any others available). He was finding it sometimes difficult to get people to return emails, presumably because he didn't sound important enough. Apparently the last straw was being roundly ignored in a particular meeting with one external company! A swift title upgrade (no changes in responsibility...) fixed all of this.
bnferguson 12y ago
I'm not sure what others experiences are but for me it's mostly the same but also different in some ways than in the past. The biggest change is that there's more structure in some key places. For instance there are a few PMs now for very involved projects, and we have engineering managers to make sure we're getting along ok and not falling between the cracks (turns out 100+ people reporting to one person can be tricky), but still remains enormously open. Most decisions are made in the open (if they legally can be), there's almost always a Pull Request with discussion around it if you want to either take part or just see how that decision came around. The culture is pretty allergic to anything closed. People frequently ask for a URL if they're curious how a decision was made. This makes it much easier to not feel left out as a remote employee (which something like 60% are). As an engineer I can largely still choose what I work on much in the same way as before: if there's a project spinning up and I want to work on that project and that team wants me and my team is cool with me going I can totally go work on it. I've actually been encouraged to work on other things lately to get more perspective on the product and work with new people. I don't feel pigeonholed like I have in some other places. Teams mostly self organize into structures that best work for them. Some teams look fairly traditional. Some use scrum. Some use some other agile methods. Some use nothing. Some work closely with a PM. etc. Use what makes you happy and what makes you productive. Different projects have different needs. Things may shift around as growth happens (and they have), but largely I feel like the principles have stayed intact. Still the best place I've ever worked.

znq 12y ago

Not sure if it's in the same bucket as Valve or GitHub: at Mobile Jazz http://mobilejazz.com http://mobilejazz.com we're only 20 people (and that makes things a lot easier), but we've quite a different way of working compared to traditional companies: * We pay fair salaries. For most people in our team it's way more than what they've earned before. * We pay everyone the same (base) salary. Regardless of their role or title. * We pay quarterly bonuses based on pro-activity, responsibility and other performance indicators. * Everyone can work from wherever they like, still many people choose to work from our main office in Barcelona. (For example I work many weeks out of my camper van with 3G/4G connection from beautiful surf locations) * In theory, everyone can choose how much or how little they want. Not always possible, but we try to make it possible as much as we can. * We have managers, but they don't demand things. They are responsible that certain things happen, but decisions are being made collaboratively. * All managers are either engineers or designers. No bullshit managers. * We don't have a dedicated sales person. All work we get is from word-of-mouth and the first person a new client speaks to is either an engineer or designer (or both). * We play Mario Kart / StarCraft after lunch ;-) * We do a lot of sports activities together * We have a lot of BBQs on our terrace * We use some of the profits for fun internal experiments (small projects without an expected outcome other than having fun & learning). However, some of them are now actually turning into actual products: http://bugfender.com/ http://bugfender.com/ * MJ University: we take online classes together as a group * MJ Talk: weekly presentation about an interesting topic (not necessarily tech related). For example we had talks about personal finance (investing), achieving happiness, etc. * We encourage pair programming where it makes sense * MJ Weekend: once or twice every year we fly everyone to Spain, rent a nice villa with pool and have a good time together. Some pics: http://blog.mobilejazz.cat/work-life-balance-at-mobile-jazz/ http://blog.mobilejazz.cat/work-life-balance-at-mobile-jazz/ * MJ Retreats: we're going to remote places and work there together. At the moment six of us are on an island in Thailand. In February we go skiing in Austria. * We put a lot of effort in hearing everyone's opinion and feedback and try to put it into action With all that we've managed to attract and retain incredible talent, but most importantly we have a very pleasant time together. That said, we're a company optimizing on lifestyle and happiness, rather than profit. So this way of running a business is probably not applicable everywhere. (Edit: formatting, typos and a few additions)

12y ago

rscott 12y ago

Not sure if this fits the bill, but I've always found the openness of Thoughtbot quite impressive. They have an open "playbook" describing how they operate and develop. http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/ http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/

ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
thanks, thats fascinating

hacknat 12y ago

I love this model of working, but I think it's a lot more common in engineering teams than people realize. My company isn't anything special, and certainly most of the rest of the company doesn't work open allocation, but the engineering team pretty much does. You work on what you want, and you tell people what you're doing. Does anyone else feel this way?

erikschoster 12y ago
It's not formalized in any way, but we have a small team that works this way. I would imagine it would be hard to scale, and takes the right sort of people, but it's a really great environment to work in. We are constantly experimenting and everyone is welcome where they feel they can be helpful - our video production team is deeply involved with the devops side of our streaming server for example...
thearn4 12y ago
There's definitely pockets like this where I work (Gov't agency), but these pockets are still floating in a sea of the expected waterfall bureaucracy. It's basically up to team leads/PMs to decide if they're going to act as a buffer against that or not.
zerr 12y ago
Exactly. I've worked in several small companies and it used to be a case always... I guess the challenge is to have a similar structure in relative big organizations (e.g. 200+ engineers).

jedberg 12y ago

Ok this is a little off topic but maybe someone can tell me. These orgs make a huge deal about how salary is selected by your peers. How does that actually work though? Like the detailed logistics of it? Who exactly picks what you'll get? How is the final decision made?

beautybasics 12y ago

Bridgewater Associates

guijemont 12y ago

At Igalia (http://www.igalia.com/ http://www.igalia.com/), we are a worker-owned free software consultancy. There's a generic presentation of how we work spread among the various sections of http://www.igalia.com/about-us/ http://www.igalia.com/about-us/, but one of us also wrote a series of blog posts that explains us pretty well: http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/05/no-master http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/05/no-master http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/13/but-that-would-be-anarchy http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/13/but-that-would-be-an... http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money In a nutshell: people who work for Igalia own it (with equal amount of shares, usually after three years in the company) and participate in the assembly (usually after 6 months-a year in the company). From that premise, our decisions and ways of working are generally very flexible towards employees. Having the same salary (with more for people who live in more expensive countries) or being able to work from wherever you want is just the tip of the iceberg.

ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
igalia sounds amazing. congrats on your company. can you tell me how many people are worker-owners? are there also freelancers working yor you?
- guijemont 12y ago
  Thanks! Basically, everybody who's been here for more than 3 years is a co-owner. I just did a quick count (I might be off by one or two), and I think we're 36 owners out of 41 people. Our explicit goal when we hire someone is to keep them long term and have them become co-owner. Our workers (including owners) who live outside of Spain (where the company is based) typically have an official status of freelancers, though they have only one client and are as involved in the company as the ones who have a status of employee in Spain.

elihu 12y ago

Galois has a pretty flat structure, and employees can choose what they work on among the currently funded projects (they do mostly grant-funded research). https://galois.com/ https://galois.com/

balsamiq 12y ago

Here's a subreddit full of resources about this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/flatmanagement http://www.reddit.com/r/flatmanagement I'm a mod of it...we're pretty flat at Balsamiq, too.

zerr 12y ago
But you never had an opening for an engineer (during last several years, I believe) ;)
ninamiriamjnana 12y ago
wow thank you!

rohamg 12y ago

There are lots of tiny companies (2-20 people) that can "wing it", but it's difficult to make decentralized or distributed decision-making work at scale. We're a slightly larger team (almost 50 peeps) at Axiom Zen (https://axiomzen.co https://axiomzen.co). Our entire raison d'etre is predicated on coming up with interesting, high-risk ideas and carrying them through the various stages of market validation, prototyping, iteration, and growth. Because of this, we are working really hard to become and remain the best place for brilliant people to build awesome things. We try to clearly define our values (just like Valve/GitHub), build them into our products, and use them as a heavy filter for hiring. We also go out of our way to ensure total transparency in the team, using GitHub for everything from sales to hiring so that everyone can see the stage everything is at, decisions leading up to a particular status quo, etc. Also everyone has an equal voice in jumping in to suggest / push forward changes. For a bit on our workflow, take a look at this blog post: https://www.zenhub.io/blog/beyond-code-use-github-zenhub-for-all-company-workflows/ https://www.zenhub.io/blog/beyond-code-use-github-zenhub-for... We'll eventually polish up and publish our company handbook which dives into the `how` and `why` much more thoroughly than I ever could here.

sbarg 12y ago

I remember two firms from previous HN posts that stuck with me, Fog Creek and Balsamiq. Joel's methodology might be a little complex, but it makes sense. http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/ http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/ http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html

fiatjaf 12y ago

Morning Star is the best I've heard: https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers/ar/1 https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers/ar/...

vide0star 12y ago

We have a flat structure with no technical managers at Smarkets (London). Engineers self-organise into projects. Projects are self-directed and members of the project appoint a lead and have quantitative goals. Salaries will be set from anonymous peer review. We're a team of 11 engineers.

lavamantis 12y ago

If the organizing method at Valve is so great, where the hell is the third episode of the Half-Life 2 trilogy? I've been waiting 7 years for god's sake.

yuhong 12y ago

I still remember michaelochurch suggesting that Google should use open allocation.

dajbelshaw 12y ago

You might find this from Laura Thomson (Director of Engineering Operations at Mozilla) useful: https://speakerdeck.com/lauraxt/minimum-viable-bureaucracy https://speakerdeck.com/lauraxt/minimum-viable-bureaucracy

mereghost 12y ago

Not sure how we compare to those but here @ VAGAS.com we have a radically horizontal management model. Everything, from strategic planning to everyday decisions, are open to anyone participate, but well... our founder can explain this way better than me, so here it goes: http://www.managementexchange.com/story/horizontal-management-vagascom http://www.managementexchange.com/story/horizontal-managemen...