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Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

fortune.com

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Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#91

Post by exe34 »

throwaway74432 wrote: post #81
salad-tycoon wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s even worse than that. Bayer is infamous for its letters that survived of it negotiating to buy 150 Jewish women for experiments. They were on good condition, they all died from the experimental sleeping pill. They also tested vaccines. Also its parent company made zyklon B. Example of the letter: “Received the order for 150 women. Despite their macerated condition they were considered satisfactory. We will keep…

And people are flabbergasted at the healthy skepticism towards pharmaceutical companies, when they literally treat people like expendable cattle at every chance they get.

That's just corporations though. Maybe we should think about alignment...

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#92

Post by reactordev »

csnover wrote: post #47
huytersd wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who checks on if you’ve completed your assigned work. This can only be possible in an academic/non profit environment where there are no deadlines or fixed client commitments.

By the time someone has entered the workforce it should not be necessary to be ‘checked on’ by some surrogate parental figure. In a functioning workplace, everyone agrees to do their work because it is part of the social contract of working on a team. They don’t need to be told what to do. If someone is falling behind, they’ll talk to other team members and work together to get back on track. You are there to help yo…

>”By the time someone has entered the workforce it should not be necessary to be ‘checked on’ by some surrogate parental figure.”

Hire some recent grads and then make that statement. Not all require checking in on, but often entry-level, junior folks do. Don’t ignore them and don’t hold it against them. You, I’m sure, had someone checking in on you when you first started. Not in a “Are you at your desk” way but a “Are you able to complete the tasks? If not, how can I help you?”

Sadly the last few years with remote work and layoffs have made it so companies get rid of those who are “just doing the job” and keeping those that are “always the job”. Brutal.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#93

Post by 01100011 »

smcleod wrote: post #12

I’ve worked in an environment where there are no managers for 4 1/2 years and it’s been fantastic. Here’s to getting rid of them in most (but certainly not all!) places.

It's no secret that small teams of experts do not need managers. But if the team grows, you will either have to sacrifice producer productivity to coordination and management tasks or hire someone to offload those responsibilities. Many orgs struggle as they undergo a "phase change" from one type of team to another, as it requires a different set of skills, strategies and expectations along with dramatically higher staffing requirements. There is probably a way to compartmentalize some larger projects so you are an aggregation of smaller teams but I personally haven't seen it so I can't comment on it.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#94

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #5

I've been in one self-organizing department, and it was one of the worst experiences of my career. I expect they're going to regret this.

Yeah, I saw the "self organizing" bit, and I thought "good f'ing luck". E.g. I don't see many folks touting Zappos' notorious "holacracy" structure these days.

Reducing unnecessary levels of middle management, particularly in a bloated company, is usually a great idea. But I've found that the vast majority of people are not interested in "self organizing". They just want to come to work, feel that they are supported doing great work, and have a strong sense that the work they are doing matters to the company.

That's why as a former manager I felt like my most important job was to "block" for my team. I.e. there is always a bit of chaos and change at the upper levels reflecting to change in the business and competitive landscape, but as much as possible I tried to protect my team from this unnecessary churn. I've often said "coders are happiest when they're coding", so I tried to have product plans and priorities laid out as much as possible so folks could come in and do great work.

This doesn't mean "hiding" the broader corporate machinations from folks, but most people just don't want to be affected by that day-to-day. I've never seen this "self organizing" approach work, and Ive seen lots of cases where it was deemed an abject failure.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#95

Post by currymj »

hilbert42 wrote: post #61

"Bayer, the 160-year-old German company known for inventing aspirin, has been stuck in a rut:..." More accurately that should read: "Bayer, the 160-year-old German company known for inventing aspirin and co-inventing then widely commercializing heroin (diacetylmorphine), has been stuck in a rut:..." Bayer's chemist Felix Hoffmann synthesised heroin just short of two weeks after that of aspirin in 1897. Bayer thought…

this pattern continually repeats itself.

at this point everyone knows oxycontin was marketed by Purdue Pharmaceuticals as a less-addictive substitute for morphine and heroin.

very early on in the discovery of morphine, there was some hope that it would be a less addictive alternative to opium.

these drugs are so powerful at relieving immense suffering that people desperately want a version with no downsides, and are willing to fool themselves about this. (that these various pharmaceutical companies were willing to encourage this wishful thinking is still despicable.) i expect it to happen again with some new type of painkiller in another generation.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#96

Post by morkalork »

salad-tycoon wrote: post #62
hilbert42 wrote: post #61

"Bayer, the 160-year-old German company known for inventing aspirin, has been stuck in a rut:..." More accurately that should read: "Bayer, the 160-year-old German company known for inventing aspirin and co-inventing then widely commercializing heroin (diacetylmorphine), has been stuck in a rut:..." Bayer's chemist Felix Hoffmann synthesised heroin just short of two weeks after that of aspirin in 1897. Bayer thought…

It’s even worse than that. Bayer is infamous for its letters that survived of it negotiating to buy 150 Jewish women for experiments. They were on good condition, they all died from the experimental sleeping pill. They also tested vaccines. Also its parent company made zyklon B. Example of the letter: “Received the order for 150 women. Despite their macerated condition they were considered satisfactory. We will keep…

Apparently the author of the above letters got eight years imprisonment after the war. Then after release returned to the board of directors of multiple chemical companies. Unbelievable, should have been hanged.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#97

Post by boznz »

bertmuthalaly wrote: post #42
bjornsing wrote: post #34

> Stewart Butterfield, former CEO of Slack, recently described a dynamic within tech companies behind much of the over-hiring. He noted on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast in late May that when there’s no real constraint on hiring, “you hire someone, and the first thing that person wants to do is hire other people.” The reason is that “the more people who report to you, the higher your prestige, the more your power in th…

This is the thesis of Bullshit Jobs!

Bullshit jobs infect the whole stack from the board of management down, but "middle-managers" are probably the most over-represented.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#98

Post by paulddraper »

bjornsing wrote: post #34

> Stewart Butterfield, former CEO of Slack, recently described a dynamic within tech companies behind much of the over-hiring. He noted on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast in late May that when there’s no real constraint on hiring, “you hire someone, and the first thing that person wants to do is hire other people.” The reason is that “the more people who report to you, the higher your prestige, the more your power in th…

This is 100% the first question asked by any management interview.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#99

Post by nine_zeros »

bjornsing wrote: post #34

> Stewart Butterfield, former CEO of Slack, recently described a dynamic within tech companies behind much of the over-hiring. He noted on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast in late May that when there’s no real constraint on hiring, “you hire someone, and the first thing that person wants to do is hire other people.” The reason is that “the more people who report to you, the higher your prestige, the more your power in th…

Management is an utter bullshit job that is all about headcount and promo documents at this point. Society and companies can live without this.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#100

Post by 7thaccount »

bjornsing wrote: post #34

> Stewart Butterfield, former CEO of Slack, recently described a dynamic within tech companies behind much of the over-hiring. He noted on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast in late May that when there’s no real constraint on hiring, “you hire someone, and the first thing that person wants to do is hire other people.” The reason is that “the more people who report to you, the higher your prestige, the more your power in th…

It's called "empire building" and is also part of the principal-agent problem where the manager is the agent and is assumed to have the firm's best interests in mind, but in reality doesn't. As a result, the principal (for example an owner) has to come up with methods to keep their management honest (example... tying most compensation to stock price - although I think this just makes management short sighted).

I was once in a meeting where an IT manager was told his group would have to handle the install for a piece of software that like 2 engineers used. The guy asked for 3 additional head count and my jaw dropped. If someone has ever seen the Avatar Airbender show, I was like Prince Zuko speaking up at his father's meeting. You see I was there as a courtesy and tried to point out that even one headcount seemed like a lot for something that should take less than a week of work for a single employee. At the time I didn't understand that the manager understood this, but was playing for more staff to build their own importance. I didn't understand the games they play. As part of the game...you always say your people are swamped no matter what...or refer to a massive backlog of work even though that backlog is all super low priority and existing employees can be reprioritized.

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