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

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

#71

Post by rhizome »

roc wrote: post #49
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…

> "what's the role of the future manager?" Personally I've always seen the organizational structure of film and TV units as being a natural model for software development [1]. They've been doing the somewhat-controlled production of fundamentally creative product by small, focused and often-times transient teams for quite some time. And in that model, the current manager type is less like the director [2] and more li…

This sounds like the studio model that the AAA video game publishers have been using for some years now. While they have in-house production and coding for many packages, more and more the big-name titles are implemented by small remote teams that focus on the meat-n-potatoes while marketing and distribution and project management is handled by the parent company.

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

#72

Post by rhizome »

blinkingled wrote: post #35
mikeryan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Likely not but it still makes sense to give a chance to all the few talented people however many there are to actually create something instead of manage other less talented souls. Better for productivity and happiness IMHO!

This sounds like a rationale for implementing the Peter Principle.

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

#73

Post by maxxxxx »

jdp23 wrote: post #68
GoldenMonkey wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

And look how well it's worked for them ...

It worked for them well for a long time. From what I hear managers there finally have managed to take over.

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

#74

Post by rahoulb »

orblivion wrote: post #34
wh-uws wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They're clever people. You'd think they could come up with a clever way to solve their customer service problem. Maybe it would have to be clever for them to want to bother with it.

I suspect seeing customer service as a problem is the root of it. there's no algorithm for it, just people.

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

#75

Post by segabach »

cpeterso wrote: post #29
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,…

The scrum teams don't own the means of production. Individual contributors are human capital. The means of production are owned by the people in control of the finances and business model. If the company were to shift direction and your product discontinued, it's possible the scrum team would be disbanded and the resources that were being used to support them would be reallocated by the "owners" to a new team that aligned with their decision to shift strategy.

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

#76

Post by mcherm »

orblivion wrote: post #34
wh-uws wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They're clever people. You'd think they could come up with a clever way to solve their customer service problem. Maybe it would have to be clever for them to want to bother with it.

Here's an approach.

Suppose that Google picked 4-10 different startup-sized groups and anointed them as "customer support organizations". The companies could provide customer support for Google applications to the public (and could charge the public as much or as little as they wished for the service).

For it to work, Google would have to be willing to be more open with these support companies (hence the anointing of a few). The companies could provide care and hand-holding for customers, but eventually some percentage would need to result in actual bug reports and actual technical troubleshooting that could only be done by Google. Today, no one can offer this service because there's no way to open a support ticket with Google -- they're too closed. If they would open up slightly, even for just a hand-picked few, then this might be a way for Google to offer excellent customer service without doing it themselves. The customer support organizations would compete with each other on customer service and would also compete with each other on how easy-to-work-with they are for Google engineers: perhaps Google should even charge them varying amounts depending on how well they do this ($10 for a well-researched bug report; $150 for a poorly researched one).

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

#78

Post by gscott »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #4

This is a big story. I'm both an engineer and a manager (to which engineers will say "management!" and managers will say "developer!"), and I haven't seen this pendulum swing back and forth so much as be ripped in half and pulled in opposite directions. Google's obviously got very smart folks in both engineering and management, so it's going to be very interesting to see how this is handled. I can't imagine a Microso…

I could see something happening like at Yahoo where different groups of people end up developing the same thing, both with different benefits, and have to kill one off.

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

#79

Post by nostrademons »

rhizome wrote: post #70
wh-uws wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This sounds to me like a Home Depot -> Lowe's relationship. I guess you'd have to master "being Google" first, so since G's business model is much much less settled than Home Depot's it will probably be a while. After all, there's still no "Fry's with good service," so maybe it's the B2C tech industry itself that precludes (good) customer service in general. This is complicated by the existence of customer-focussed c…

The central problem of B2C tech companies is that their value proposition is to make complex things simple enough that the everyman can have them. When things go wrong, they can go wrong in literally millions of ways, because there are literally millions of everymen. Fixing those one-off problems is not a scalable business proposition.

Companies like 37signals and Craigslist manage to keep a good rep for customer service by ruthlessly pruning what's expected of them. 37signals wants only a certain type of customer, usually a fairly technically savvy small business. If your needs differ from that, 37signals' customer service sucks as well, but they just say "We don't want you as a customer" and that's that.

Craiglist works by managing expectations - they're a classified ad service, no more, and no less. If the hooker you paid for turns out to be an FBI agent, that's your problem. If the contractor you found turns out to suck, that's your problem. There's no expectation that Craigslist will fix it, while there is a widespread expectation throughout the general population that Google is the Internet, and if the Internet sucks, it's Google's problem.

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

#80

Post by tomjen3 »

cpeterso wrote: post #46
tomjen3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of management is essentially the same as the goal for any kind of political structure: remove issues which couldn't have been dealt with in a cheaper way.

And self-preservation of the management political class. How often does a corporate reorg reduce the number of managers?

No thats what it becomes, not what it should be.
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