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.
What problems did you encounter?
Self-organizing = Lord of the Flies
Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’
181–190 of 497 posts
Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’
#182I do sometimes think a self organized hierarchy is better than one organized by fiat. Everyone always will say, "Ah - but then you just get an implicit hierarchy rather than an explicit one" with these types of systems but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. For example, There shouldn't necessarily be one escalation channel for all types of conflict - technical decisions may get resolved differently than intra-personal conflicts.
Or, if you force a team to be under an incompetent leader in a traditional structure, you get a really unhappy unproductive team but in an implicit structure that 'leader' is quickly sidelined when people figure out the quality of their decisions are poor, and if they want to get things done - which most do in a properly incentivized org- they should find another path.
Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been fortunate to have some very good managers. That’s why I find this idea so horrible. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I had to “self-organize.”
>I’ve been fortunate to have some very good managers. Every time I've seen this sentiment and asked for something concrete on what made them good managers I get answered with platitudes or "nice-isms." At this point in my career, the emperor has no clothes. There are no good managers, only good peers.
From my perspective, I've had mostly good managers, in the sense that I've had multiple managers get fired over the years for being more interested in making sure the team had the tools and support that it needed than doing what the org at large wanted that wasn't possible.
To me, the best managers I've had have done a good job balancing what their team was able to do against what the org needed/wanted them to do. Sometimes that was pushing back against the org and doing the hard work of saying things weren't going to happen, and sometimes it was being clear and sympathetic about conveying difficult realities down to the team about what was needed. I've had managers convey things to me that ultimately led to me quitting and finding other work, but I hold them in high esteem because they clearly communicated what needed to be done to meet demands and I decided it wasn't for me and didn't hold it against me.
There are good managers. They're just also good peers who happen to be your manager and fulfill the role of a manager as best they can. Sometimes the system of the company rejects that, but that's also a sign you're maybe working somewhere that wants you to have no peers and no support, and maybe that should prompt some changes for you as an employee.
Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’
#184> 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.
I love Hacker News. So many people here strive to work for FAANG or some other bloated SV tech company with a free-money grow-or-die mindset, and proceed adopt this view of management as if it’s an immoveable, universal truth.
Without me, my team would drown in less than a week. Say what you want about that implying a lack of resilience, or that I’m not teaching a man to fish, but it’s the current reality. I work insanely hard to ensure that they can do their best work, that their best work always gets better, and that they get the most out of their time in my team, distraction-free. I work insanely hard to smooth over organisational politics, communications failures, and so many other things that every day without fail so many people in this community bitch and moan about.
This is an anonymous account, there’s no benefit to me self-promoting. I’d never be this confidently candid were my name attached, no matter who I was talking to.
Maybe you should go find a better team to work for.
Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I’ve been fortunate to have some very good managers. Every time I've seen this sentiment and asked for something concrete on what made them good managers I get answered with platitudes or "nice-isms." At this point in my career, the emperor has no clothes. There are no good managers, only good peers.
I’ve had good managers and bad managers. As an IC, a good manager will shield you from the chaos, infighting, changing priorities and ever shifting timelines. They will ensure that you are aware of what’s going on, and have enough clarity to be able to proceed. A bad manager will most likely try to help by exposing you to all of the above, and cause you get caught up in all of the confusion that comes with it. Just o…
To piggy back on it. A good manager will shield you from other bad managers and outsourcing firms promising the moon.
Quite a sad state of affairs.
Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’
#186Staff get paid by the hour for the most part. They have little reason to hustle.
A startup has incentive for early employees to hustle. Bayer does not.
Much like communism there is just no incentive to individually perform and “for the greater good” of the company or whatever generally isn’t persuasive
Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’
#187I'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.
Not the OP, but generally self organizing generally leads to the person with the most status / soft skills doing the organizing. (Kinda fun when you are that person) It works pretty well when there is a clear task and alignment on why it needs to get done. Unfortunately you still need someone to set expectations and resolve conflicts.
Yea, as someone who is more outspoken and has passible soft skills, I often find myself accidentally becoming team leads in ways that often end up making me a worse engineer. If I'm the only person who understands the work and can express it in legible english, I end up writing all the tickets because the Project Manager can't do it as well as me. I end up leading meetings because I understand the architecture reasonably well and can put it into words. And yet, I end up looking bad on paper because I complete very little technical work because I'm doing half of the job of 3 managers.
Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’
#188> 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.
Managers are definitely needed. The problem is the amount and their tendency to accrue unnecessary "fat" in their teams. It's not an uncommon in big companies to see people who have multiple managers at once and have to report to the multiple people/teams. Or having ridiculously high manager/worker ratio.
Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’
#189Staff get paid by the hour for the most part. They have little reason to hustle. A startup has incentive for early employees to hustle. Bayer does not. Much like communism there is just no incentive to individually perform and “for the greater good” of the company or whatever generally isn’t persuasive
You can have a performance bonus as an incentive. It is often "hacked" by people by doing only stuff that shows well in the performance review instead of the actual job/results, but that's another story.
Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’
#190The WSJ article mentions that the CEO mapped out his plan at a cafe with a McKinsey consultant. No matter how badly this goes, sounds like McKinsey will make out again…
McKinsey had to pay a settlement for their role in the opioid crisis. It’s very possible this will lead to some kind of tragedy related to Bayer medications which will also find McKinsey at fault for their horrible advice.
Theres nothing criminal about bad advice. McKinsey's problem with the opioid crisis was that they were advising Purdue to commit crimes.