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You weren't meant to have a boss

paulgraham.com

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Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#81

Post by omouse »

ken wrote: post #80
uuilly wrote: post #19

I used to work for a defense company that eventually got bought by a mega defense company. It was ~3000 people in various parts of the country and it was started by a man who deeply believed in the power of the entrepreneurial spirit. It had that free for all structure that PG says he'd never seen in a tech company. It was the wild west. We had different groups competing for the same government contracts. Managers an…

I've heard some Amazon employees say something similar (but maybe not as enthusiastically) about Amazon. One person described their structure to me as "like terrorist cells": it's understood (and encouraged) that 3 different teams are all trying to implement the same thing, in completely different languages and with completely different interfaces. They might not even know the others exist, until they ship. Hopefully…

That actually sounds like fun. Friendly competition indeed :D

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#82

Post by DanielLee »

Great observation and well presented.

Try this if you want to get to the source (even though it will most likely make no sense to you on first blush)

"The desire for guilt produces the fear of love"

or to say the same thing in Ken Kessy's words

"The desire for the mystery is greater than the desire for the answer"

TheD

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#84

Post by neilk »

prakash wrote: post #7

"Mediocre hires hurt you twice: they get less done, but they also make you big, because you need more of them to solve a given problem." I would say Mediocre hires hurt you THRICE . Twice for the reasons you mention, and the third one is all the good folks leaving since they can't stand mediocre people. One big company that seems to do well, at least from the outside is Semco in Brazil. Watch Ricardo Semler's "Leadin…

One of my favorite books.

And note, this company (originally) had nothing to do with hacking or technology. If it works for a manufacturer of heavy equipment, in a unionized shop, how much better can it work in software?

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#87

Post by wumi »

krishna2 wrote: post #69
wumi wrote: post #26

Has anyone else been to a Safari or seen wild life (read: Lions or Cheetahs) in their natural habitat? If you have, that metaphor of a caged Lion vs. a wild Lion is (almost) all you need to extract out of this essay.

I have been on African Safari as well and that point instantly resonated with me. The 100s of 1000s of miles were theirs to freely roam around and do what they wanted - and the humans who came to see them are the ones in the cages (except that the cages moved around - in the form of a jeep with a guide). I also used to wonder what is going on in the Lion's mind - some 10 jeeps surrounding it while it is resting in th…

I'll just say this.

When i was on the safari, our vehicle got stuck in the mud. There was a pride of lions within 50 meters of our jeep. We had to get outside and push. One member of our party was the look-out, and at one point yelled "the lion is coming" at which point we all moved as fast as we had ever in our lives.

All the lioness did was get up and start pacing.

While I was at the zoo, there was a 3-year-old boy taunting the Lion in his 15 by 45 foot cage.

See the difference?

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#88

Post by [deleted] »

byrneseyeview wrote: post #35

Bridgewater Associates is a large (~400 employees, $36 billion assets) hedge fund that tries to avoid hierarchy: http://www.bwater.com/home/philosophy.aspx "Conflict in the pursuit of excellence is a terrific thing and is strongly encouraged, in fact demanded. There should be no (or as little as possible) hierarchy. Certainly there are organizational "superior-subordinate" relationships; however, every "subordinate"…

[deleted]

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#89

Post by daniel-cussen »

dpapathanasiou wrote: post #5
dfranke wrote: post #3

If I had to structure an organization of 1,000 people, here's how I'd do it: rather than tiers of management on the order of 1, 10, 100, and 1000, I'd just have two levels. At the top would be a small committee that controls allocation of money and from time to time publishes non-specific guidelines about where they'd like the company to go. One person on the committee is in charge of hiring salesmen, who once hired…

If I had to structure an organization of 1,000 people You might also want to read this: http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Ricardo-Semler/dp/0712678867

Semco sounds just like Nucor and Gore (of Gore-tex fame). There's probably a few companies like this around.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#90

Post by vlad »

dfranke wrote: post #3

If I had to structure an organization of 1,000 people, here's how I'd do it: rather than tiers of management on the order of 1, 10, 100, and 1000, I'd just have two levels. At the top would be a small committee that controls allocation of money and from time to time publishes non-specific guidelines about where they'd like the company to go. One person on the committee is in charge of hiring salesmen, who once hired…

I know of one huge company that does exactly this. Except instead of outsourcing "all functions other than sales and engineering", they outsource nothing but sales and engineering. :)
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