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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’

#341

Post by osigurdson »

arkh wrote: post #260
whoknowsidont wrote: post #161

Earlier 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.

A good manager is simple to see: success is the team's, failure is their fault. If it is not the case, you have a bad manager.

What is so amazing about someone who throws themselves under the bus? Shouldn't a manager increase the probability of success?

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

#342

Post by incrudible »

Draiken wrote: post #312
incrudible wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that this approach outperforms? If you rest on a cash cow, basically any methodology that doesn't literally slaughter the cow is going to work out.

Isn't the fact that they're the market leader in what they do proof enough? Would they have created/found this cash cow if they were a traditional company? People try to poke holes in their ways, yet they have made legendary games, amazing hardware and absolutely dominate the game distribution market. Basically all of their competitors use the traditional management style. What other evidence would you expect?

A sample of one isn't enough, and in any event their success is not reproducible. They had a major title in Half Life 2, convincing people to install Steam, but that was their last major title and it is not clear that they used this process at the time.

Going forward: Someone else created Counter Strike, someone else created DoTA, someone else created Portal, someone else created Team Fortress, someone else create Left 4 Dead. Valve took these projects on and polished them, but they didn't really create something new until Artifact - which failed in the market.

What you also don't see is all the unannounced projects that went nowhere, because that's what you get when people just get to play around on their own, indefinitely.

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

#343

Post by osigurdson »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #109
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…

Most companies will have a counter force, the 'cutter'. The 'cutter's compensation is tied to how much they cut. Of course, they will also need a team, to more efficiently cut other teams. And they in turn will also be incentivized to grow their team, the manager of the cutting team isn't immune to wanting to grow their team. But then it gets up to CEO, who has someone reporting to them who's only goal is cutting. Th…

So, just an endless cycle of non-economic activities?

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

#344

Post by cyanydeez »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #65
csnover wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds disconnected from reality. And it’s not the workplaces fault, it’s human natures fault.

Its amazing how much people think orgs like the church, government, business are some naturally malevolent or benign thing.

Just because they have been given some set of rights and social power.

Weve seen how they organize and adapt are what classifies the innaye "good"

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

#345

Post by cyanydeez »

boznz wrote: post #102
huytersd wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t realistic thinking. The above doesn’t exist anywhere.

small teams generally self-organise under a single leader, eg sports teams and it is often the other members of the team who self-check as they have to take up the load for anyone who does not perform.

Uunfortunately, few.projects.exist where.these pods can remain isolated.

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

#346

Post by bluedino »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #290
op00to wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well managed BigCorps are overstaffed 2x. Badly managed BigCorps are overstaffed 3x (or more). If there is insufficient manpower, it is often because they are building things they shouldn't. At least this was my experience.

> Badly managed BigCorps are overstaffed 3x (or more).

I never knew what a corporate intranet was for until I worked at a huge company. It's for clicking around on, going back and forth, when you have nothing else to do but need to look busy.

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

#347

Post by Drakim »

cyanydeez wrote: post #340
TulliusCicero wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the issue with social power is that it can't really be created or destroyed, just reorganized. Similar to how if governments get too weak, you end up with warlords/gangs just taking their place, power abhors a vacuum and all that.

You mean businesses, not warlords.

potato, potahto

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

#348

Post by lordnacho »

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…

> But sadly there just is no counteracting force

Does nobody get tired of managing a huge army? Or do they just all assume they can delegate it, like an HR pyramid scheme?

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

#349

Post by stuff4ben »

matwood wrote: post #326
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well managed BigCorps are overstaffed 2x. Badly managed BigCorps are overstaffed 3x (or more). If there is insufficient manpower, it is often because they are building things they shouldn't. At least this was my experience.

Bingo. I find that limiting headcount is a great forcing function for only doing what's important. The classic example is Google making X different chat apps. That doesn't happen unless a company is severely overstaffed.

To me that really just screams lazy and incompetent management. Being overstaffed is just a coincidence. A good mgmt structure would have prioritized that roadmap and gotten the cats herded to work towards a singular goal/chat app. I say this as a "cat" myself who has to be reminded to not get distracted by the next shiny thing.

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

#350

Post by greatpostman »

lordnacho wrote: post #348
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…

> But sadly there just is no counteracting force Does nobody get tired of managing a huge army? Or do they just all assume they can delegate it, like an HR pyramid scheme?

The big secret is managing a bunch of people is easier than doing grunt work
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