You weren't meant to have a boss (2008) • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by interludead » Sun, May 31, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

voakbasda wrote: post #53

antipurist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 genera…

Don’t stop with work. Governments need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Local first, with taxes flowing there first, and only then do they start to trickle up to the county, state, regional, or federal levels. Central governments should be emergent properties of local systems working together, not a choke point of all power and taxation revenue. The current system is completely backwards, if democracy and representa…

The more interesting question is whether you can make higher levels of government depend more explicitly on lower levels, instead of the other way around

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

#72

Post by germinalphrase » Sun, May 31, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

phyzix5761 wrote: post #17

Working for a large corporation feels like being a small fish in a big pond. Your actions make as much of an impact as a tiny leaf rustling in the Amazon forest. I've worked at, both, startups and large mega corporations and I can tell you the difference is night and day. I'm completely self taught as a software engineer. Since I started I had a passion for writing code every single day. My ideas at first were huge a…

Someone created that environment within which you thrived. What is preventing you from doing the same for some other small group, early in their careers?

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

#73

Post by faidit » Sun, May 31, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #60

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…

You know, you know how communism was supposed to be this nirvana where a central authority would collect all the information and dictate all operations for the good of the people? I.e. centrally planned economy? And in practice it didn't work out because of corruption and information bottlenecks and such? I wonder if a corporation type org could actually make this work by going all in on AI deeply integrated into eve…

USSR tried to digitize economy (OGAS) under Khrushchev but project was killed by pen and paper bureaucrats scared for their jobs. They barely would have had the resources to set it up though. Chile under Allende tried a similar short-lived socialist computer economy project called Cybersyn before the coup.

Marx apologists often point out he did not believe Russia could bypass capitalism on its own, without help from more advanced socialist countries formed by revolutions in the industrialized West. He also said the cotton gin was the engine of revolution and new technology has to come first before a new social system. The well known failures of command economies aside, arguably it did work with the right policies, especially when compared to other developing countries, it just didn't grow as fast as Western capitalism. The USSR didn't so much collapse as it was shut down by decree bc the leaders looked at the numbers and decided to give up.

Maybe the hypothetical bossless corp will be accidentally created by capitalism as more and more management positions are eliminated to save money.

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

#74

Post by interludead » Sun, May 31, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

zkmon wrote: post #9

I don't think the analogies of animals in the wild or groups of hunter-gatherer is correct to the modern companies. A better analogy is the teams who built pyramids or armies who empowered Alexander or the medieval peasant settlements who regulated societies. It's not about acting on your own or achieving something for yourself. It's about building something which is only possible with collective effort of hundreds o…

I think the pyramid/army analogy works for some kinds of work, but maybe not for the kind of work the essay is mostly talking about.

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

#75

Post by rglullis » Sun, May 31, 2026, 6:42 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #63

rglullis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think of what processes and management was used for pyramid building For what, a glorified tomb? 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.

See "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Rhodes. https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/... Also, the Apollo lunar landing. 400,000 people worked on it.

We covered that below in the thread. The Apollo Program wouldn't exist if it wasn´t for the Cold War. The Manhattan Project also surely classifies as "effort that only get to be done because of War".

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

#76

Post by dangus » Sun, May 31, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

rhines wrote: post #44

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.

Ironically [1], a lot of ycombinator founders would set themselves up for a lot more financial independence, work life balance, and personal freedom if they skipped the low success rate founder’s grind and just joined stable large companies with good stock award plans and focused on FIRE.

[1] or maybe that’s not the right term

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

#77

Post by rexpop » Sun, May 31, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

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…

Instead of massive, centralized corporations, consider the highly successful family firms in Emilia-Romagna[0], as a model. These businesses have thrived for generations in a highly competitive global market not through rigid corporate chains of command, but through decentralized networks of mutuality, adaptability, and a highly skilled and committed workforce.

Even massive capitalist firms like Goldman Sachs or Exxon-Mobil essentially operate "communistically" internally to get anything done, ie when someone needs a wrench, a coworker hands it to them without asking what they get in return.

0. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-30/from-f...

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

#78

Post by weakfish » Sun, May 31, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #56

antipurist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 genera…

That is making a big assumption that is completely counterfactual. That a cooperative can hire a person who measures the value generated per worker/item and agree upon compensation readjustment. Humanity tried that with Gosplan. It worked pretty terribly. We've had plenty of intelligista think that it would just go perfectly we followed their 'rational' plans. It has been without an exception an exercise in hubris. T…

Someone should coin a law that any time something vaguely cooperative or worker-focused is proposed, someone will inevitably reply that it will fail because the Soviet Union did something sort of maybe similar once.

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

#79

Post by rexpop » Sun, May 31, 2026, 6:46 PM UTC

antipurist wrote: post #50

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 genera…

"a person who measures the value generated by each worker/team" seems... impossible.

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

#80

Post by YZF » Sun, May 31, 2026, 6:48 PM UTC

antipurist wrote: post #50

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 genera…

Want to find out? Start a new company with this idea. I worked at a tech company where the founders wanted to do things differently so they did. Not exactly what you describe but generally more power to the individuals vs. management. It worked reasonably well until the company grew large, acquired another large company, and was eventually acquired by yet another company.