Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’ • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

consp wrote: post #333

robertlagrant wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good way of getting the best team(s), which is what you want in a company. Maybe not so great for the emotional development of children, of course, but it's hard to say.

> It's a good way of getting the best team(s) You get the teams with people who 'get along' not the best for the company. Mediocrity with friends in high places gets far further. That's not any form of meritocracy.

Well, low effect teams are much easier to spot than low effect individuals. So on this case, management actually has a way to solve the problem.

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

#392

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:08 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#393

Post by RoyalHenOil » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:10 PM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #358

karaterobot wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gone the other way! I used to be strongly against managers. I drooled over that Valve manual describing the flat hierarchy, etc., and I would have honestly said that managers in general were a parasite that had latched on to the software industry. That's honestly what I felt. Now I work at a place with not enough managers to go around, and my team basically has 25% of a PM's time, and no dedicated department hea…

> So, on the whole I am pro manager, so long as they are very very very good at it. That is a big "if" because most of the managers I have seen are on the spectrum of "ok" to "very bad"; the really good ones are rare and usually move up leaving spoiled employees that have to endure being managed by the norm of "ok" to "very bad".

I wonder why that is. My experience has generally been the opposite. Every manager I have ever had has been, at worst, pretty OK — and most have been really fantastic.

In nearly all of my workplaces, it's the upper echelon that has typically been painfully incompetent (poor financial strategy, too much micromanaging in areas they don't understand, etc.), and I've been mystified how they managed to hire and retain such talented middle managers. I'm sure it is survival bias, though, because a company can only scrape by with bad upper management if middle management is unusually good.

Thankfully, my current and previous job were both at companies where the C-suite actually know how to do their jobs well. Even though I've some had fantastic managers at otherwise poorly-run companies, that's not enough to keep morale high. No matter how much your manager supports you and encourages you, it feels like you're wasting your life when you feed your most productive working years into a company you don't believe in.

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

#394

Post by bjornsing » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:22 PM UTC

duped wrote: post #221

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…

> When you apply for your next job as a manager they will ask you “How big was your team?” My father used to tell me he preferred to ask 'what did you build' or 'what did your team accomplish' instead.

You do get those questions on occasion. But more in the Bay Area than where I live in Sweden.

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

#395

Post by minkzilla » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:22 PM UTC

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.

I have had a good manager and here are some concrete examples. He thought it was important to deliver what we promised so he would work with us to get good estimates and would then bring those outside our team and argue for a reasonable time/scope. He would deflect stupid requests (add AI to our project that had no reason for it). In my four years working under him he got us two off cycle inflation adjustments by going to HR and telling them to retain good talent in software we need to pay more.

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

#396

Post by stonemetal12 » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:23 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #242

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.

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

Nope, not sure where you got the idea. Senior dev is paid the same as senior dev + manager responsibilities. There is no mention of pay for manger responsibilities without senior dev responsibilities.

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

#397

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:23 PM UTC

stonemetal12 wrote: post #396

sokoloff wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Implicit in this is that managers should get paid more than senior devs. Why? Nope, not sure where you got the idea. Senior dev is paid the same as senior dev + manager responsibilities. There is no mention of pay for manger responsibilities without senior dev responsibilities.

I read that from this: "They're senior devs that have added management responsibilities and are just paid as senior devs. Fuck that."

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

#398

Post by georgeecollins » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:24 PM UTC

aorloff wrote: post #222

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…

The counteracting force is to align business ownership with headcount So if you handle $$$ worth of book, you get $$$ worth of headcount to keep that going

That's a great idea. Or just keep your people / sales Coming at this problem from the manager / owner point of view: If your company is bootstrapped or hasn't raised a lot of money headcount can be a first guess at valuation. Or how seriously another partner in business takes you. Companies that balloon in size tend to be taken very seriously while small profitable ones get less attention. So the pressure can go both ways.

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

#399

Post by commandlinefan » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:30 PM UTC

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.

I've had good managers. They always get outplayed and outmaneuvered and ultimately fired and replaced by sociopaths who spend all their time successfully playing politics and never doing anything significant.

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

#400

Post by eitally » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:31 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #98

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.

Yeah, no. Well, perhaps if the role is just to manage it becomes somewhat relevant, but I have personally never experienced this in any interview (and have been in people manager roles for the past twenty years, at companies including F500 industrial, FAANG, and consulting).