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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)

#131

Post by WalterBright »

rglullis wrote: post #75
WalterBright wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

The Apollo program was not a weapons development program.

The Manhattan Project resulted in nuclear power plants.

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

#132

Post by rramadass »

wavemode wrote: post #10

None of what pg writes here is factually wrong per se, but he is obviously making a bigger deal out of a lot of these things than they really are (that is, he was obviously writing this to convince more people to start and join startups - hopefully at YC). Some people (most people?) are perfectly happy with just working a stable job within a giant corporation. Either because they are capable of still finding fulfillm…

Yeah, PG's essays are rather simplistic and not that insightful.

A far better approach is to start with theories from Psychology and Sociology and use them effectively.

One relevant theory is Self-Determination Theory (SDT) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory) which is about the intrinsic needs of an individual viz. 1) Autonomy 2) Competence 3) Relatedness. As long as an organization provides the individual with a position in which to express and exercise those needs, it does not matter whether it is a large/medium/small one. Since each individual has different combinations and intensities of the above three needs, their preferred environment will vary accordingly.

For an introduction to SDT see; Why we do What we do: Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward Deci. Highly recommended reading for everybody (especially managers/leaders). A review can be found at - https://thorprojects.com/2020/05/04/book-review-why-we-do-wh...

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

#133

Post by aleqs »

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…

I believe something like this is the future... fully open and cooperative organizational structures, where members fund projects and all decision making and financing is fully transparent. Also no idea whether it could actually work, but I don't see why not. The open source movement/community shows us a lot is possible.

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

#135

Post by fragmede »

WalterBright wrote: post #131
rglullis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

The Apollo program was not a weapons development program. The Manhattan Project resulted in nuclear power plants.

The Apollo program wouldn't have happened without Sputnik and against the backdrop of the Cold War. Getting to the moon is cool and all but the subtle hint to the Soviets is "we have ICBMs".

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

#136

Post by dukeyukey »

rglullis wrote: post #16
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…

> 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.

NASA? JET? CERN?

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

#137

Post by rainsford »

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'd be curious if there was research in the opposite direction able to prove that hierarchy is necessary in large organizations if you want to do BigCorp scale things. Intuitively it seems like this might be both a reasonable and a provable conclusion.

No matter how smart they are or how well-intentioned, it seems improbable that 10,000 individual contributors running around doing whatever they think is best will ever result in engineering a new airplane, for example. Even setting aside the thousands of integration points and schedule dependencies such a project requires, some person or small group of persons needs to decide what kind of airplane they're designing and force everyone to stick with that decision.

I think the solution, such as it is, might be in looking for the minimum amount of hierarchy necessary for the scale of what you're doing, and being honest with yourself about that scale. And that goes in both directions. Small startups shouldn't try to organize like big corporations, and big corporations should stop pretending they can behave like small startups while trying to conquer the world.

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

#138

Post by rainsford »

marssaxman wrote: post #68
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…

> So what can we do about it? For starters, you can understand that working for a large corporation will make you miserable, and choose to work in a small organization instead.

That might be a valid solution on the individual level, but it seems problematic if we want the kinds of things only a large organization can realistically produce. In addition to small organizations that can act as a source of employment for people who absolutely can't stand a corporate hierarchy, we also need large corporations that don't suck, or at least suck the minimum necessary amount to attract people less averse to having a boss. At least if we want things like airliners and what not.

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

#139

Post by DoctorOetker »

Thlom wrote: post #97
lstodd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people keep suggesting solutions that were tried and failed of course other people will point that out. 1930-s Gosplan, 1950-s Gosplan, OGAS, Cybersyn, they all failed. Come up with something new maybe?

Cybersyn was an experiment and we don't really know if it would have worked or not because the USA arranged for a military coup to destroy it ...

I think people could try social experiments and compare the productivity differences resulting from different management styles on LLMs instead of humans.

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

#140

Post by [deleted] »

kys11 wrote: post #130
LordGronk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also that, with the current system, a person who is young, talented, and ambitious who is interested in public service has little to no reason nor incentive to work outside the beltway or a state capital, leaving local governance to retirees and incompetents.

[dead]

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