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’

#401

Post by randomdata » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:33 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #390

randomdata wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the teams designing the 3D engine need to communicate with the teams building the game engine and the game designers themselves and the artists to achieve a cohesive whole. Sure, just as they need to communicate to the farmer what food needs to be grown in order to ensure that the right food shows up on their dinner table. These are solved problems, though. We already know how to do incredibly complex things at sca…

No, it is nowhere near like that. Food is a particularly bad example, as the food industry is extremely wasteful overall, with a huge percentage of all food produced being thrown away at all levels of the production chain all the way to the final consumer. In addition, most companies that package food in various ways, including major restaurants, either own or contract farming business for specific quantities of spec…

It's told to be not like that and a bad example, but then we learn how it is exactly like that and how it is great example... Intriguing.

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

#402

Post by eitally » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:34 PM UTC

_heimdall wrote: post #227

_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…

I'm been really frustrated by OKRs specifically. The whole system does a great job of appearing to empower a bottom up approach while actually being implemented as a top down, authoritarian system. It sounds great to be metric and goal driven, allowing employees to decide for themselves how to best reach those business goals. I've never seem it implemented this way though. Instead, I've seen leaders define goals and…

I always found it really interesting at Google that OKRs generally seemed to make sense at the CEO & PA level, but massively broke down somewhere between VP->Dir->Team level, to the extent that for the majority of teams it was nearly impossible to identify clear OKRs for themselves that trickled down (or flowed up) to the OKRs that should have been inheritable by their management chain. Some orgs manage to get to the Director level, but in others the break happened at the VP level, which just meant that entire large groups of Type A, highly productive people were mostly rudderless -- not to mention being at risk of poor performance reviews if their management chain weren't able to provide adequate air cover.

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

#403

Post by downrightmike » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:37 PM UTC

_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…

Steam is a flat org and they only do things they want. Still no Half-Life 3 though.

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

#404

Post by _heimdall » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:38 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #352

_heimdall wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why this article bothers attributing this insight to the former Slack CEO, this dynamic is nothing new and was a problem well before Slack or the current round of tech companies were around.

If they'd picked some older quote from someone else saying similar, someone still would complain that the idea predates them, right back to Socrates. I don't see it claiming it's some deep novel insight, it's just someone prominent who said something recently that's salient to the point.

I may just being nitpicky here. With such a commonly understood, and old, concept it doesn't need ant attribution. Name dropping a random CEO just feels like a cheap addition to get eyes on an article.

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

#405

Post by mrguyorama » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:39 PM UTC

iteria wrote: post #308

silvestrov wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on if you are managing people or you are micromanaging people. It should be possible to manage 22 employees if you are good at setting directions and explaining why those directions have been chosen. You can have 22 people in one room and do functional group discussions, this is like a good size for a school class. 1 CEO -> 22 level A managers each level A manager -> 22 level B = 22 * 22 = 484 level B each le…

22 is so many direct reports. If my supervisor had 22 direct reports. I'd just check out mentally because I know I wouldn't get any real face time with them to discuss issues. Skip manager attention? Forget it. With 22 direct reports, you're not there to add your expertise and make the process better, but to be a cog in the machine.

22 is a reasonable class size for childhood schooling, and every single teacher ever has a clear and everpresent understanding of which kids "get it" or are gifted, and which kids are the problem. They are usually able to get face time with the kids that need it, and they do that to nearly entirely new kids every single year. Good teachers have a strong rapport with their students, and a tangible relationship with each and every one.

Why can't managers do what teachers do at a tenth the cost?

Like.... this isn't even the teaching part of teaching.

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

#406

Post by alwaysbeconsing » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:40 PM UTC

master_crab wrote: post #316

silvestrov wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on if you are managing people or you are micromanaging people. It should be possible to manage 22 employees if you are good at setting directions and explaining why those directions have been chosen. You can have 22 people in one room and do functional group discussions, this is like a good size for a school class. 1 CEO -> 22 level A managers each level A manager -> 22 level B = 22 * 22 = 484 level B each le…

I forgot where I read it, but a study years ago said something along the lines of 3-7 is the optimum number of direct reports someone can have.

Mashup of Dunbar's Number with "The Magical Number 7 Plus or Minus One"

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

#407

Post by eitally » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:42 PM UTC

silvestrov wrote: post #354

iteria wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

22 is so many direct reports. If my supervisor had 22 direct reports. I'd just check out mentally because I know I wouldn't get any real face time with them to discuss issues. Skip manager attention? Forget it. With 22 direct reports, you're not there to add your expertise and make the process better, but to be a cog in the machine.

Maybe there is a cultural difference here. I see repeated 1:1 sessions as micromanagement, like being treated as a kid that needs their hand held. I don't want to discuss work items on 1:1 with the manager, I want to discuss them in a group setting because it is the group as a whole that solves the tasks. I also want the input from other members in the group instead of only the managers view. In my country we do pers…

No, there isn't a cultural difference.

1. If you want to discuss work items in a group setting with 22 people, it's an inefficient use of time.

2. If a manager has 22 direct reports, it becomes nearly impossible for them to do anything but manage, which make the whole team less efficient.

3. A manager ought to be expected to, and have time to, mentor their employees. This is impractical with such large teams, and the manager will always end up preferring just a couple at the expense of the rest.

4. Micromanagement is inefficient and unappreciated, but in such a large & flat team, it's very hard to ensure streamlined horizontal communication such that optimal decisions can always be made by ICs (or above them, managers).

5. There are two reasons organizational layers exist. The first is to allow domain specific experts to focus on their specialties in areas of the business that required dedicated staffing. The second is so the organization is setup to continuously mature over time. If you have a completely flat org almost entirely composed of IC SMEs, attrition will end up killing you because of the disjointedness and lack of corporate tribal knowledge creation you miss when you don't have functional teams. Note that the second piece almost always introduces some functional inefficiency in the org, but it is a reasonable risk mitigation practice for most companies.

Personally, I think "how is everything going" should be discussed at least every month, and with more casual check-ins that are more frequent than that, and task-based. I have high expectations for managers, and do expect that a significant portion of their time should be spent helping the people beneath them learn & grow.

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

#408

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:45 PM UTC

organsnyder wrote: post #363

silvestrov wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there is a cultural difference here. I see repeated 1:1 sessions as micromanagement, like being treated as a kid that needs their hand held. I don't want to discuss work items on 1:1 with the manager, I want to discuss them in a group setting because it is the group as a whole that solves the tasks. I also want the input from other members in the group instead of only the managers view. In my country we do pers…

> I see repeated 1:1 sessions as micromanagement, like being treated as a kid that needs their hand held. There's space between viewing employees as children needing to be coddled on the one side and viewing them as completely rational automatons on the other. I worked for three years for a "flat" company where we were all expected to independently define our own goals, schedules, and get support when needed. When ev…

> Without a reporting chain—or official support structure of any kind—I didn't know where to turn

I really don't know where you are coming from. The OP stated a clear hierarchy where you'd have a single and well known manager that you can just go and talk to.

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

#409

Post by jayd16 » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:48 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.

Well I've had good managers but you're right in that they were peers more than emperors.

As for something concrete, I can think of managers fighting for my bonus allocations, fighting for comp days after a crunchy deadline, things like that. Estimation was earnest and not pushy. Problems were handled in a solution oriented way, not a blame game. You could argue that's just maintaining combat readiness but I'll take it.

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

#410

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 3:48 PM UTC

silvestrov wrote: post #354

iteria wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

22 is so many direct reports. If my supervisor had 22 direct reports. I'd just check out mentally because I know I wouldn't get any real face time with them to discuss issues. Skip manager attention? Forget it. With 22 direct reports, you're not there to add your expertise and make the process better, but to be a cog in the machine.

Maybe there is a cultural difference here. I see repeated 1:1 sessions as micromanagement, like being treated as a kid that needs their hand held. I don't want to discuss work items on 1:1 with the manager, I want to discuss them in a group setting because it is the group as a whole that solves the tasks. I also want the input from other members in the group instead of only the managers view. In my country we do pers…

Even the idea of routinely scheduled 1:1s i dreadful.

People that do that one certainly will also do routine scheduled meetings by project, and routine scheduled meetings by department. You'll quickly get more than 10 hours/week of just those useless meetings, and your manager will be completely unavailable for any real work at any time.