Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge • Hacker News Board

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#21

Post by GoldenMonkey » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:02 PM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

Microsoft has done this all along. Managers are programmers, they divide their time between programming and managing. The feeling within Microsoft, was how can someone who is not a programmer, manage programmers?

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#22

Post by mikeryan » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

But in a world where people ..., have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and look after the org's interests) - what's the role of the future manager?

I don't know if there's as many people who have these abilities as you think there are.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#23

Post by dman » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #19

kenjackson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). Even at places like IBM and Intel you generally have engineers running the show at every level of the engineering org. I think what Google will see is that the real problem is the board and shareholder accountability. This creates a special type of short-term malfunction in organizations which often looks like a management problem, but…

> In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). The thing is, in a lot of larger tech companies, I suspect it's the other way around: management is under-rated because the engineers have taken over the asylum. It's easy to point to huge, successful companies with a very pro-engineering culture like Facebook and connect the culture with the success, but how do we know they succeede…

Management is great at extracting maximum value from a problem whose structure is known. For new problem spaces where the product is ill defined, management might just slow things down. It might be worth noting that as the world is moving into more uncharted territory (of shorter product cycles) industry is beginning to resemble academia to a greater extent.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#24

Post by joebadmo » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #19

kenjackson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). Even at places like IBM and Intel you generally have engineers running the show at every level of the engineering org. I think what Google will see is that the real problem is the board and shareholder accountability. This creates a special type of short-term malfunction in organizations which often looks like a management problem, but…

> In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). The thing is, in a lot of larger tech companies, I suspect it's the other way around: management is under-rated because the engineers have taken over the asylum. It's easy to point to huge, successful companies with a very pro-engineering culture like Facebook and connect the culture with the success, but how do we know they succeede…

You point to recent Google failures, but isn't their culture of allowing (even high profile) failures not only to get implemented, but then to get shut down part of why Google's successful? Which (the culture of allowing failure) seems like an engineering approach, and not a managerial (which to me has always struck me as fear-of-failure/CYA) one.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#25

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:17 PM UTC

gms wrote: post #3

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #2

I'm really interested in seeing how companies grow; I hadn't realized quite how large of a role non-engineers played in Google's structure. Glad to see it's moving in the right direction.

It's yet to be determined whether that is the right direction or not.

[deleted]

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#26

Post by hobb0001 » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

FTA:

  That jibes well with Page’s push to whittle down Google’s
  manager bureaucracy, eliminate politicking and rekindle its
  start-up spirit.

I first read that as "pot-licking" and thought, WTF is that? A new managerial term like dogfooding?

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#27

Post by SoftwareMaven » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

I question the title. It doesn't sound like engineers are in charge, instead, it sounds like smaller operating units will be in charge. That is a very different thing from having the inmates running the asylum.

I have yet to see a large company that successfully treats software as a creative endeavor instead of a production line that still manages to be able to focus on solving customer problems. I really hope that Larry figures this out because, if he does, that will (IMO) be his greatest legacy.

What I think will happen, though, is Google will focus even more on technology and care even less about actual users.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#28

Post by SoftwareMaven » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:30 PM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

I don't know of many engineers who would want to double up. I do agree that a well managed company could get by with far less management than most currently have, but don't think that just having really smart people in place will solve the problem magically. I've worked at a company full of incredibly smart people who couldn't get anything useful done because they were all so busy proving how smart they were, often at odds with others in the group.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#29

Post by cpeterso » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:32 PM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

I think many (middle) managers are afraid of Scrum and other agile development because their role is sidelined. As "individual contributors", engineers are generating actual business value. Engineers can self-organize in "quasi-communist" Scrum teams (as they own the means of production ;) and collaborate with product management who work with customers to derive and prioritize product requirements.

In this scenario, what is a "people manager" supposed to do?

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#30

Post by wh-uws » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:37 PM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #27

I question the title. It doesn't sound like engineers are in charge, instead, it sounds like smaller operating units will be in charge. That is a very different thing from having the inmates running the asylum. I have yet to see a large company that successfully treats software as a creative endeavor instead of a production line that still manages to be able to focus on solving customer problems. I really hope that L…

Whomever figures out how build a company with the technical prowess and product aptitude of Google

and have a comparative level of custom service

will have created something truly great