Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 497 posts

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

#241

Post by qznc »

op00to wrote: post #207
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…

Managers want to hire more people because teams are way under-staffed. I’ve never worked on a team that had enough people to do the important things with leeway for sickness vacation and turnover. Maybe there is empire building going on, but I think it’s deeper than that.

At least a contributing factor is that it’s easier (emotionally and politically) to hire additional mediocre people than firing bad ones.

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

#242

Post by sokoloff »

giantg2 wrote: post #128

Self-organizing still leads to bosses, but they just get paid like regular workers. My company does this sort of thing but with dev chapter leads. The chapter leads have no management training and no authority. They don't even really know what you're doing since they're on a separate team and have their own coding work. They're senior devs that have added management responsibilities and are just paid as senior devs.…

Implicit in this is that managers should get paid more than senior devs. Why?

Perhaps senior devs should get paid the same as similar-level managers, principal devs the same as similar-level managers, etc.

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

#243

Post by heisenbit »

Let mr recap the article: Bayer acquired Mondanto, runs into financial trouble, middle managers are not approving things anymore [article does not try to dig deeper here] and middle managers get fired. Time honored shoot the messenger strategy.

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

#245

Post by tsimionescu »

smcleod wrote: post #150
01100011 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I’d argue your team really shouldn’t grow too big if you want to remain effective. 4-8 people seems to be the sweet spot in my experience.

The truly difficult bit is making an organization with 100 or 1000 different 4-8 people teams to build something more complex. There is a vast array of problems that need solving that just can't be tackled by one 4-8 person team.

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

#246

Post by RevEng »

smcleod wrote: post #150
01100011 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I’d argue your team really shouldn’t grow too big if you want to remain effective. 4-8 people seems to be the sweet spot in my experience.

For a single team, sure, but the entire company isn't just one team of 4-8 people. When you start getting multiple teams, and some of them take on common tasks for the rest (finance, recruiting, PR, etc), you need something to tie them all together. It doesn't have to be a manager per se, but a free for all doesn't work either.

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

#247

Post by jbirer »

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…

Well said. There's a Turkish proverb "You are a lord, I am a lord, then who's going to plow this land?"

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

#248

Post by [deleted] »

JSDevOps wrote: post #167
_the_inflator wrote: post #127

I am not convinced. Reading the whole article it seems that Bayer is moving to a system better known as QBR, mixed with OKRs and most likely some sort of agile model. There is no no-hierarchies. Working in a 3 month cadence on an organizational level puts a lot of pressure on all people. Usually QBRs work top down and there is more monitoring along the process. What sounds great is more or less success theatre as wel…

Asking for everyone here. What’s a QBR?

[deleted]

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

#249

Post by palata »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #161
pyuser583 wrote: post #145

Earlier 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.

For years, all my managers were extremely bad to the point where I thought I was the problem. Until I had my first good manager.

My definition is: if my level of stress after a meeting with a manager is lower than before, then it is a good manager.

With bad managers, I carefully select what I share, often downright lie to them just to limit my stress level. I know a bad manager will throw me under the bus to save their ass, so I behave accordingly. I essentially manipulate them as much as I can: it's politics.

With a good manager, I share all I can, reach out when I need their help, and have their back when stuff goes south. It's team work.

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

#250

Post by lukan »

WWLink wrote: post #236
jurschreuder wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is my mantra. Senior Only-Developers are attracted to complex problems and try to make things using as many language from the "advanced" book as possible. That's why I like all-round developers better, they have a bit less to prove by making "smart and complicated" code.

> That's why I like all-round developers better, they have a bit less to prove by making "smart and complicated" code. I thought we all agreed the best kinda code is the stuff you can debug at 3am. While drunk.

For sure, but if you forget to clean up afterwards in a sober state after your drunk session, that code won't stay that clean for long.
Post reply on HN