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’

#481

Post by jncfhnb » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 8:47 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #468

jncfhnb wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Org structure should not be a function of number of heads. If you follow some logic that each manager should have n reports you’ll make an idiotically tall structure. It’s basically the stupidest thing you can do. Which many organizations do. Most large orgs have a terrible design. It’s difficult. Effective org design is about properly delegating authority. If you need to get your boss’ permission to do things, you’r…

Congratulations, you've avoided providing any useful details about your suggestion again. I'll ask a different way. If your plan is to just add more managers in a single level above the bottom, how do you expect the CEO to deal with the hundreds of managers that would report directly to them, that they would need to relay the company direction to and get feedback from? Very specifically, without a tree structure, how…

I’m not saying don’t use a tree structure. I’m saying only create vertical tree cuts at functional junctions were the type of work is different between boss and subordinate. Do not ever make vertical boss where your subordinates are just supposed to be shittier extensions of yourself. Only one person should be in charge of tactics. Only one person should be in charge of strategy.

Not every decision should roll up to the CEO. Not in terms of decision making (obviously) but honestly not even on the org chart.

If your job is assembling little PowerPoints to pitch decisions to your boss then you’re an impediment to getting things done. You should have the authority to do what you want without your boss’ approval.

This is the natural, shitty outcome when you made X and then made Y, and don’t have time to do both, so you think you should be promoted to manage a manager for X and Y each. No. Bad. That’s selfish prioritization and the cost of the org. You should pick one and do it well and accept that you do not have capacity to reap the rewards of both. When everybody plays the game, everyone loses. Prisoners dilemma of org design incentives.

> Are you just assuming that it's not a problem and therefore doesn't need to be addressed?

Fucking hell dude. Fuck off with this unnecessary passive aggressive bullshit

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

#482

Post by sowbug » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 9:46 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #422

sowbug wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common miscommunication in an R&D organization is asking another team to do a task, and getting the reply that they're willing to do the task if you provide headcount. You're not asking them to grow their team in perpetuity. You're asking them to reprioritize their existing work to accommodate one request. (I know this isn't really a miscommunication. It's misaligned incentives leading to an exasperating kind of lo…

This seems impossible to fix in a divisional org structure, where each division owns their P&L. If I'm in division A, and division B wants something from us that won't make a difference on my P&L (or will just add costs [headcount]), why would I be incentivized to help? If they pay for it though, that's a fee for service. Seems fine. It's all internal accounting anyway, so it's mostly fake.

It can work if the unit of currency is sufficiently divisible. Headcount often isn't.

(Also, headcount is more a rate of spending than a unit of currency. I want to buy some work from your team, not subscribe to it!)

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

#483

Post by Draiken » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 10:26 PM UTC

incrudible wrote: post #418

_zamorano_ wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Aren't those games Valve orginals since the beggining?

In the sense that these games were conceived by teams working at Valve, using this management structure, the answer is: No, none of them are. Most of them have their origin in community mods, some already having gained substantial traction on their own.

Sure, the original idea might've already been there, but they built the game all the same. Saying it "wasn't them" is misleading. They built it from scratch, with existing concepts from mods.

Maybe their ideas department isn't the greatest, but their execution on these games was very good in the long run. They popularized hats and make absurd amounts of money from it.

Let's not forget the Steam Deck. Early on still, but an excellent product in a whole different area.

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

#484

Post by _heimdall » Wed, Apr 24, 2024, 3:08 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #469

_heimdall wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wanted OKRs to be flipped to a bottom up approach. Let every employee or manager define what's most important to them, or their team, and how they'll measure success. As it goes up the chain, managers and ultimately the CEO are responsible for taking all those goals rolling up to them and craft it into a plan or business direction. Effectively crowd sourcing your business from all of your employees. Of cours…

That also just doesn’t make sense to do because most employees don’t understand the business and are terrible at defining OKRs.

They probably aren't good employees then, honestly. My scenario here is entirely dependent on leaders trusting their reports, if that isn't possible then at best they can try to force objectives down from the top.

I'd argue that still won't work, and in my experience it hasn't. Id your employees don't understand the business or aren't good at defining goals, you've failed them as a leader. Maybe they shouldn't have been hired, though I'd argue they have been poorly managed and put into roles that don't fit their skills and interests.

The model I was talking about here would be flipping the script entirely though. There wouldn't he a chance for someone to misunderstand the business. Leaders' entire task is taking what their reports' priorities are and unifying a vision and business plan from that (recursively until you reach independent contributors). Employees can never misunderstand, leadership can only misunderstand their employees.

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

#485

Post by doktrin » Wed, Apr 24, 2024, 4:29 AM UTC

fuzzfactor wrote: post #319

doktrin wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my current company, management is an entry level position that recruits fresh grads. It’s essentially secretarial work under a different name. So certainly in our case there’s no justification for a manager out earning any individual contributors (but they still do, because manager).

>managers should get paid more than senior devs. Why? Bureaucracy rules. If almost nobody is going to be getting anywhere anyway, why not? In a very high technology field, regardless of whether it has anything to do with computers or not, sometimes what is needed is a team of individual high-performers. Where each member could have the same high degree of expertise in the same relevant area, or at the other end of th…

You might have responded to the wrong comment.

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

#486

Post by kbenson » Wed, Apr 24, 2024, 4:31 AM UTC

jncfhnb wrote: post #481

kbenson wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, you've avoided providing any useful details about your suggestion again. I'll ask a different way. If your plan is to just add more managers in a single level above the bottom, how do you expect the CEO to deal with the hundreds of managers that would report directly to them, that they would need to relay the company direction to and get feedback from? Very specifically, without a tree structure, how…

I’m not saying don’t use a tree structure. I’m saying only create vertical tree cuts at functional junctions were the type of work is different between boss and subordinate. Do not ever make vertical boss where your subordinates are just supposed to be shittier extensions of yourself. Only one person should be in charge of tactics. Only one person should be in charge of strategy. Not every decision should roll up to…

> Fucking hell dude. Fuck off with this unnecessary passive aggressive bullshit

That wasn't meant to be passive aggressive, it was meant to solicit an answer to the specific question I was asking. I interpreted you point differently than what you apparently meant, either from a misunderstanding on my part, a poor explanation or your part, or some combination thereof.

I thought I was sufficiently clear a few replies back when asking how your solution scales to larger groups of people while I pointed out problems of scali g that I was looking for your thoughts on that, and then you proceeded to talk about entirely different things.

Honeatly, I'm aware my ostrich comment was a bit rude, and was trying to tone it down and honestly ask here. It's not that I think it's impossible or stupid that s along might hmbe ha fled a different way. "Flat" management strucutes claim to do so, and while I'm very sceptical of them in reality, I would love to hear from someone in the trenches about how they thought it worked or failed in practice, and so thought (along with interpreting your earlier comments as "extra levels are unneeded" instead of "they should provide different things") that you might actually go down that route and have a take on it.

For what it's worth, I don't think I actually disagree much with what you're advocating for, but I'm not sure it makes sense in the pure form you're describing in reality. It's great to want every level of.management to bring their own special bit to the picture, but sometimes when you have tens of thousands of employees, I think some levels will necessarily be present just to deal with the scale. Playing around with Dunbar's law and modern management studies means that for a large company you start getting quite a few management levels deep unless you expect people to be managing a hundred people under them each.

That in essence, is the main critique I have of what you've said and was trying to get you to address. Given a company of 20,000 people, explain how many levels of management you expect them to have and what special sauce each level could even theoretically bring and how many people on average each level would be directly responsible for managing. I suspect it will be hard to justify some levels other than the need to provide stable relationships between the people involved.

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

#487

Post by anticensor » Wed, Apr 24, 2024, 5:44 AM UTC

fuzzfactor wrote: post #320

andrekandre wrote: post #175

> work together on projects of their choosing for 90 days, before regrouping for their next project. am i crazy or does intuitively this sounds like a recipe for disaster? how do you provide long-term value (never mind complete a new drug?) if everything changes every 90 days?

>how do you provide long-term value You don't. Once you get to the point where a single financial quarter is in the same order-of-magnitude ballpark as the number of remaining quarters that could be sustained without re-capitalization, it kind of makes sense to operate everything with the same 90-day degree of granularity. It might help to better track the ratio of expected remaining quarters to actual remaining quar…

> Everything on the vehicle doesn't have to last as long as a 5-year warranty if the company is not going to be around in 5 years anyway.

In product warranties, there is usually a chain of liability. It is not just the producer.

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

#488

Post by matrix87 » Wed, Apr 24, 2024, 6:16 AM UTC

jurschreuder wrote: post #148

rqtwteye wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for technology used. You won’t get much credit for keeping costs down and keeping things simple. The real money is in developing super complex systems. That will give you respect.

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.

the benefit of complicated is that it filters out the people who suck so they can't fuck up the code

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

#489

Post by sdiupIGPWEfh » Wed, Apr 24, 2024, 11:57 AM 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…

We're explicitly given top-down OKRs, which we're required to align our own "bottom-up" OKRs to, and then we're not empowered to meet our own OKRs, because product management alone steers the ship.

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

#490

Post by jncfhnb » Wed, Apr 24, 2024, 3:02 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #486

jncfhnb wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying don’t use a tree structure. I’m saying only create vertical tree cuts at functional junctions were the type of work is different between boss and subordinate. Do not ever make vertical boss where your subordinates are just supposed to be shittier extensions of yourself. Only one person should be in charge of tactics. Only one person should be in charge of strategy. Not every decision should roll up to…

> Fucking hell dude. Fuck off with this unnecessary passive aggressive bullshit That wasn't meant to be passive aggressive, it was meant to solicit an answer to the specific question I was asking. I interpreted you point differently than what you apparently meant, either from a misunderstanding on my part, a poor explanation or your part, or some combination thereof. I thought I was sufficiently clear a few replies b…

You can have many vertical levels. It’s the role design that you want to solve for. The flattening is a side effect. Managers hiring more managers because they don’t have capacity to manage all of their subordinates is a cancer that grows. Do it two times and you now have three managers that all view themselves as managing the same individual contractor at different levels of specificity. And inevitably one guy in the middle becomes nothing but a gatekeeper for talking to the bigger boss. It’s countercultural but productive for people’s scope of work to go down every now and then.

The number of direct reports should scale with the level of tactical involvement. Call center employees -> huge team. Dev work -> small team.

Team of tech leads each running their own project and teams independently? Probably pretty darn big team. You can manage a lot of tech team leads so long as you do not go into the weeds.

As discussed elsewhere, the operational sides of the US military are a pretty good example of effective organization and delegation. This is in part because the critical real time, limited communication nature of military operations forcing the organization to adopt a structure that cuts out the wasteful managerial cruft you often see in the business world.

Russia operates its military more like a U.S. corporation and you can see how it fails them daily.