GOOG is 3% down today (while market overall is about the same).
I personally like Larry's change, but average investor seems to be skeptical.
Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge
81–90 of 163 posts
Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge
#82This 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 job of a people manager at Google is generally to keep the engineers happy and make them want to continue working for Google. Somebody has to be the point person for general career-development issues, so that if you get bored and frustrated with your current position, they can say "Here, check out this other group over in this other area of the company, you might enjoy working with them" instead of quitting abruptly. Somebody needs to make the high performers feel valued, and let the low performers know that they need to improve. Somebody needs to be the point person to handle things if a family emergency comes up and you need to take several weeks off, making sure that your responsibilities are covered by other people and all the administrative stuff is done.
The good managers are really good at this. The bad managers...well, I don't work in that part of the company.
Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge
#83I hope this doesn't create a Microsoft like situation where its very difficult for departments to work together.
Good point ! Balance is key in everything. There is no one right way, and this is exactly why those in management should have a mature outlook in handling the allocated power. A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to infighting with Windows 7.
> A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to infighting with Windows 7.
Care to elaborate on that?
edit: after 5 seconds of googling:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/02/microsofts.lee...
http://www.windows7news.com/2010/06/30/the-life-and-death-of...
Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge
#84Wrong...you must hire MORE MANAGERS...ask Honeywell, because they have more managers than I've ever seen anywhere else. They could cut 3/4 of the managers and it would NOT hurt anything being shipped.
Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question is whether those flops should have ever happened. I admire Google that they will kill unsuccessful products, but I question how well they understand the market when they have so many products to kill.
Lots of failures is "working as intended". The only way to understand the market is to try out lots of things and see how the market reacts. Remember, the point of innovation is to solve unmet consumer needs - if people understood them, they wouldn't be unmet.
I think that is one way, but not the only way. Apple is able to release products that are generally well received by the market. In fact Apple understands the market for their individual products extremely well, even if the product isn't released yet. Google's approach seems to be more of a shotgun/spaghetti see if something sticks, without actually stopping to think things through first.
Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge
#86Earlier 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 ...
The problems started when they forgot this rule for senior management and made the CEO a sales guy instead of an engineer.
Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge
#87This 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…
One of my ex managers said that his role was to attend the meetings,shield the developers from the politics of getting projects approved and other institutional overhead so that we could focus on delivering product.
> shield the developers from the politics of getting projects approved and other institutional overhead so that we could focus on delivering product.
This. This is very true from my perspective. I got a few glimpses of the amount of bull our boss is shielding us from, and boy I don't want her job!
Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge
#88This 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…
Actually AFAIK Microsoft is organized in business units (Windows, XBox, etc.)
Right, but even the Windows unit itself is probably at least 7 or 8 layers deep, due to the sheer number of people working on it. With such a massive product, I'm amazed they release it as often as they do, let alone at all.
Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 job of a people manager at Google is generally to keep the engineers happy and make them want to continue working for Google. Somebody has to be the point person for general career-development issues, so that if you get bored and frustrated with your current position, they can say "Here, check out this other group over in this other area of the company, you might enjoy working with them" instead of quitting abrup…
But aren't those manager doing engineering work as well?
Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
The job of a people manager at Google is generally to keep the engineers happy and make them want to continue working for Google. Somebody has to be the point person for general career-development issues, so that if you get bored and frustrated with your current position, they can say "Here, check out this other group over in this other area of the company, you might enjoy working with them" instead of quitting abrup…
But aren't those manager doing engineering work as well?
People managers rarely do engineering work as well - it's very hard to both manage people well and contribute significantly to the code for a project. It also sets up a sort of perverse incentive where you want to look good as a coder by taking on the glamorous, high-profile programming tasks, but this can actually demotivate your teammates because they're left with the drudge work. You don't want to be in competition with your reportees.
They're often drawn from the pool of former high-ranking engineers, or at least the good ones are. It's a very different skillset though; part of being a good manager is knowing when to step back and let your reports handle things, and the worst managers are those that haven't managed to separate their engineering ego from their team building ego.