didn't the prehistoric groups of our ancestors probably have some kind of leader or hierarchy?
You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
61–70 of 90 posts
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans also weren't meant to build pyramids, send men to the moon, or write operating systems. Big organizations are needed for big problems. But I do generally agree with the article that big organizations are not the best place to develop as a programmer.
"Big organizations are needed for big problems" - Not necessarily true. Most of the big problems till date have either been solved by a small group of people, or in some case just by individuals.
Perhaps "big projects" would be better than "big problems" here (since the examples were pyramids and operating systems).
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#63The food analogy is ingenious. Like junk food kills my real hunger and makes me a less active hunter/farmer, so the "junk" job makes me want to learn less and keeps me with safe choices. Both in the not so long term destroy me as a competitive creature.
Hmm. I don't know, I started some of my own projects precisely because what I did at work was not intellectually satisfying. The boredom of working on mundane things made me want to do something new and innovative (well, at least new and innovative to me) in my spare time. So I'd say it really depends on a person rather than a job. If you want to learn you'll learn.
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#64This is article is really not so much against bosses per se as it is against large companies. But it seems to me that even small startups, if they are successful, grow into large companies with strongly defined structure and teams, and team leaders (or bosses, if you prefer that term).. and there's really not much that can be done about it. It's just natural - if you grow, you need to change your organizational structure. If there's 500 people in your company you can't pretend to be a small startup consisting of 5. You need to accept the fact that you've grown large and act accordingly. That means having a structure that's suitable to your current size.
Although this article idealizes the romantic picture of a small creative, innovative startup that disrupts large behemoth-like businesses, the fact is that most game-changing startups these days are, in fact, middle-to-large companies. Facebook has over 2000 employees. LinkedIn, 1000 in 2010. Groupon reportedly has over 3000 people in 29 countries [1]. The exception here is Twitter which only has about 450. If you want to be big, you got to grow big, and once that happens you got your teams, and bosses and so on.
But I disagree with the statement that big companies necessarily stifle your creativity. Google, for example, is a great example of a company that actually fosters creativity. As for not being able to learn as much working in a large company as working in a startup.. Well, I'd say it really depends on the company and people there. I learned a lot from my mentors at my first job working as an intern at a large company, and I would definitely say that, if anything, it made me a better developer.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/3000-people-in-29-countries
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big organizations are needed for big problems. The jury is still out on that one. The trend lately has been in the other direction.
What to you is a "big problem"? I find myself thinking of SpaceX, which is tackling a real challenge and "big problem". They have, according to Wikipedia, more than 1250 employees.
It use to be that you required larger teams to build software as a solution to problems before. As software tools get better and infrastructure tools get cheaper, it's more and more feasible to solve problems with software with a smaller and smaller team.
That, along with the trend of software being used to solve more and more problems (more stuff is being solved by computers), it would seem like that eventually, even something like spending people to space would only take a small team, as infeasible as that seems right now.
To farmers of yore, it would seem laughable that we are able to produce a lot of food with so little farms. To builders of yore (like pyramids), it seems laughable that we're able to build taller buildings with much less people.
Given that technology and pace of innovation keeps accelerating, we should be able to solve larger class of problems with less effort and less man power.
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big organizations are needed for big problems. The jury is still out on that one. The trend lately has been in the other direction.
By "big" I mean problems that require many distinct, intelligent decisions. These problems always has and always will require very large groups of people working cooperatively. For example, the Apollo program at it's peak employed 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 contractors [1]. This is really a point of semantics though, not really worth debating. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
We only need that many people because our tools weren't sufficiently advanced at the time. We had to invent a lot of things on the fly there.
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#67You weren't meant to have a boss. You also weren't meant to read, work on computers, drive cars, fly, or even practice agriculture. Its very easy to criticize any modern institution on the grounds of, "Our H. Erectus ancestors didn't do it, so it must be unnatural." Rather than snark about how the phenomenon is bosses is somehow unnatural and antithetical to human existence, why don't we work on creating institutions…
why don't we work on creating institutions that preserve the advantages of having a boss while ameliorating the disadvantages?
What are the unique advantages of having a boss?
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#68Really? I know plenty of people that aren't meant to be bosses and need someone else to guide them.
Not everyone is cut out to be a CEO or President, etc.
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
By "big" I mean problems that require many distinct, intelligent decisions. These problems always has and always will require very large groups of people working cooperatively. For example, the Apollo program at it's peak employed 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 contractors [1]. This is really a point of semantics though, not really worth debating. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
We only need that many people because our tools weren't sufficiently advanced at the time. We had to invent a lot of things on the fly there.
So today this could be done by 2 founders without bosses? (the topic of this thread)
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, but you use your computer, your books, the plane, and the plow...but I'm afraid that it is the boss that uses you most of the time.
Maybe I'm just the odd one out (ok, I KNOW I'm just the odd one out in general, but still), but I find that I use my boss too. First off, it's hard to play good cop, bad cop to get someone to change their mind if someone isn't willing to play the bad cop. Second, my boss has been at the company a number of years, and so can tell me what my sponsor is going to be looking for, and any political landmines I might run in…
It really sounds like the roles of your boss sound more like an assistant than a boss.
And I don't think anyone would question the usefulness of "general politics person" and "general team sanity person". The problem is, the roles are convoluted with "the ruler," and the question is, is "the ruler" really necessary, and even if the ruler is necessary, is this really the same person as the "sanity" and "politics" people.