Morning Star is the best I've heard: https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers/ar/...
Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
81–90 of 116 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
#82We 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.
Re: Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
#83Gore 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
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…
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
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
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)
Re: Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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 pr…
Ok then, the 'flat' organization devolves into a hierarchical one where you have to ferret out the real structure (or guess). So that a/b scenario never happens, even in the flat company.
Re: Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
#85If 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.
Re: Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 pr…
Ok then, the 'flat' organization devolves into a hierarchical one where you have to ferret out the real structure (or guess). So that a/b scenario never happens, even in the flat company.
Except the structure in a flat organization is all ad-hoc, there's no teeth behind it. Just because Joe in accounting talks loud and operates with charisma doesn't give him dictatorial powers backed by "do it or you're fired" powers.
It also means that when shit goes wrong, there's no "buck stops here" person who's ultimately responsible. Joe can always argue that he's just a member of a committee and defer responsibility to everybody else, and use his charisma (and probably a backlog of favor trading) to scapegoat somebody else.
The most important thing is that all this is a distraction from the business of the company. All this time that Joe has to invest in gathering and cultivating meaningless power that he shouldn't have, and putting in place an invisible power structure that everybody around him has to navigate...could better be spent doing, I dunno, accounting perhaps?
Flat structures tend to work only when organizations are very small, or can be compartmentalized into very small groups, but there's tacit acknowledgement that even in those cases there needs to be a formal dictator to make sure the ball is moving forward and people aren't wasting time in power brokering exercises. When the organizations get large, it becomes a necessity.
Peer groups define fashion, not progress.
Re: Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest, we haven't put too much thought into the business side of things. We've been growing organically from two people (the two founders, I'm one of them) to now 20 people and things always somehow worked out. We're still learning ourselves, though. Pretty much every day. Revenue and expenses are relatively stable. We've some really good quarters, and some not so good ones. But overall we're profitable. Somet…
From past experience, there are two danger points when growing: 25 employees and 50 employees. At 25, you stop meeting everyone every week. i.e. Random encounters no longer guarantee that every person in the company keeps good contact with everyone else. At 50 pax, you stop knowing everyone. i.e. You may know the list of employees by heart, but you don't really befriend them anymore. Of course, these are soft trigger…
Thanks for that. That's the way we feel as well. We don't have the need to be a huge company. We're quite happy with 20 people and grow slowly now with the right people.
Re: Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
#89Not sure if it's in the same bucket as Valve or GitHub: at Mobile Jazz 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 quart…
Sounds amazing :-) However, sometimes we might think that taking the whole company to these great places is the best thing to do, but people tend to end up marrying, having children and getting tired of going to a beautiful island with their workmates when they could just stay at home with their family. Work/life balance is not imposing our view of a great life to our coworkers. I'm sure you guys are cool with that a…
We make those things optional. We're at the moment on Koh Samui with 6 people, while the majority of the team is still in Barcelona and a few others at random other places.
Everyone should do what they think is right for them in their current situation. We just want to give options :-)
Re: Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
#90Not sure if it's in the same bucket as Valve or GitHub: at Mobile Jazz 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 quart…
Can you explain what your development process looks like? Do you practice Agile? SCRUM/Kanban?
Depends on the project. We've clients ranging from tiny startups up to huge multinational companies. So we usually adapt to their preferred processes with some recommendations from our side.