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You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

paulgraham.com

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Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#41

Post by samrus »

lazy_afternoons wrote: post #39

I once worked for a unicorn (1B valuation) company where there were there were No mangers, no product managers, no appraisal (30% hike or out) The rule was "I will treat you like an adult and you have to act like one" Easily the best company I worked for and best Colleuges. But I have seen this model hiccup once it reached ~70 engineers. May be because of the structure or may be it's difficult to hire more such engin…

Man its amazing when you have that high trust environment. You get treated like an equal, your opinion gets respected, and you can really make a difference in the company's prospect. Its addictive

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#42

Post by [deleted] »

lazy_afternoons wrote: post #39

I once worked for a unicorn (1B valuation) company where there were there were No mangers, no product managers, no appraisal (30% hike or out) The rule was "I will treat you like an adult and you have to act like one" Easily the best company I worked for and best Colleuges. But I have seen this model hiccup once it reached ~70 engineers. May be because of the structure or may be it's difficult to hire more such engin…

[deleted]

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#43

Post by antfarm »

antfarm wrote: post #18
debo_ wrote: post #8

[flagged]

I had the exact opposite reaction. Around 2006 I came across two of his OSCON Talks on the IT Conversations Network and totally loved them. I must have listened to them hundreds of times and forwarded them to a lot of friends and colleagues. They fundamentally influenced my self-conception as a software developer. http://web.archive.org/web/20130729210111id_/http://itc.conv... http://web.archive.org/web/2013072923153…

Unfortunately, the download links on those pages are broken.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#44

Post by rhines »

dangus wrote: post #24

This whole subject is very annoying coming from a wealthy capitalist of this type. If PG thinks we weren’t meant to live this way, I’d like to see him out there fighting for universal housing, universal healthcare, universal education including no-tuition college, higher tax rates for billionaires and upcoming trillionaires, abolishing excessive wealth (e.g., we should tax all wealth and assets over $999 million 100%…

The goal is to encourage people to join ycombinator, not advocate for a healthier world.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#45

Post by samrus »

debo_ wrote: post #8

[flagged]

I have felt that he does push his agenda and can be subtle in doing so, which is disconcerting. But i do actually like his essays alot. Once you identify and subtract his biases from it, his observations are very intelligent and always resonate with things ive seen in my life. And i dont even fault him his biases guven that they arent that bad, the man just loves entrepreneurship and thinks everyone should do it. Even if hes wrong, there nothing wrong about believing so

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#46

Post by nine_k »

lordkrandel wrote: post #3

If I hear the argument of "naturality" and "natural design" I explode. We are "naturally" meant to die at 21, after getting whatever illness, never to move with massive transport, not even speak. 'cause all we naturally are is monkeys, right? AaaaaRGHHHH This argument makes me nuts

"Natural" is something that happens "by itself", for free, without your having to exert an effort to produce it. If it happens to be something beneficial, it should be incorporated and used to your advantage.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#47

Post by rco8786 »

lazy_afternoons wrote: post #39

I once worked for a unicorn (1B valuation) company where there were there were No mangers, no product managers, no appraisal (30% hike or out) The rule was "I will treat you like an adult and you have to act like one" Easily the best company I worked for and best Colleuges. But I have seen this model hiccup once it reached ~70 engineers. May be because of the structure or may be it's difficult to hire more such engin…

It's a coordination problem. 70 amazingly responsible adults still need to coordinate amongst one another. Ad hoc coordination and communication always breaks down eventually.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#48

Post by rglullis »

airstrike wrote: post #37
rglullis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moon landing is definitely a fruit of war efforts. Wikipedia is the opposite of a top-down process. Aqueducts and railroads: responded on a sibling comment. LOTR films: I don't even know how it relates to the point, but it's funny that you bring a cultural landmark that it's an adaptation of the works of a single individual.

You're moving goalposts. You literally said > I fail to find anything in history that advanced the sciences or the arts through "collective effort of hundreds or thousands of humans". > It's only for war or to consolidate power in the hands of the ruling class, never for the benefit of society at large. I'm breaking it up into two statements because sufficient evidence has been provided to contradict the former, and…

> But is it only for war?

No, but without it wouldn't come to existence. You can call it "moving the goal posts" if you want, my point is these efforts are not primarily motivated for the good of society and whatever advances we have are accidental, secondary effects.

> Your original statement didn't say it had to be a top-down effort.

I am responding to someone giving the example of the pyramids as something that could only be achieved due to "hierarchy, management and process", do I have to say it?

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#49

Post by stephbook »

The naturalistic fallacy needs to die. Then a metaphor about food without any expertise and "programmers are special" sprinkled in. Holy lord, what a wild ride of an article.

Guess what? People weren't meant to live in stone houses and get cancer treatment either. Gathering berries all day sucks, that's why everyone abandons that lifestyle as soon as possible.

Life in a big company is very well-paid for very little work. You're pretty safe and can work part-time, raise kids, work-from-home.. and when you're on the office, are you really doing more than doodling during meetings and drinking coffee?

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#50

Post by antipurist »

dentemple wrote: post #34

Without a firm proposal of what a company can or should do instead, this just becomes another example of complaints being easier to make than actual solutions. We all know that large corps are structured in a way that eliminates individual initiative. So what can we do about it? I've heard of "hierarchy-less" company structures being attempted before. I've also heard that each and every one of those attempts always e…

I'm not aware of any relevant research, but to answer the "So what can we do about it?" question I have a wild idea: invert the power structure, with cooperative of workers hiring their managers instead of managers hiring workers. And no, this doesn't automatically lead to the same tree, just inverted, it could form a much flatter structure.

I imagine that a cooperative can hire a person who measures the value generated by each worker/team, and then the cooperative members agree upon compensation readjustment.

Then each person/team can hire a manager to help them generate more value if they can't keep track of what's going on within the cooperative without that help.

This way you might get a completely flat structure where each IC decides if they need someone to boss them around or not, and to what extent. Or it might devolve into a typical hierarchy if every IC fully delegates their decision-making, priority-setting, and coordination to their manager, but that devolution will be a bottom-up process, not a result of top-down pressure.

Can this work? No idea.

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