Holacracy is Bullshit
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Holacracy is Bullshit
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Re: Holacracy is Bullshit
#2>In the wake of this, I’m starting to think all of the problems we’re seeing with Silicon Valley these days—the ineptitude at politics, the clumsiness with handling inequality in SF, the lack of gender and racial diversity in the industry—are actually rooted in a systemic failure to understand how power works
I'm completely lost here: so the way to solve the problem of people with a lot of power oppressing people with little or no power is to replace the oppressive people with power with better powerful people?
Isn't this quite close to the idea that somewhat progressive dictators are good?
EDIT — Kinda ad hominem-y: "Until November 2012, she ran the Obama campaign's technology office in San Francisco where she recruited technology volunteers to build software for the campaign."
Re: Holacracy is Bullshit
#3evil rich white men article though an evil rich woman was the power vacuum filler.
github can keep their managerless system, they just need to adopt a shop steward system like unions have. This is somebody who can advocate for employees during disciplinary meetings with management, arbitrate petty disputes that don't need heavy handed management involvement with threats of termination, and anonymously bring problems to management if the grieving employee doesn't want to be identified. This person is elected and wields zero power.
It's the only thing I remember liking from being in a union once and would work for github. This girl could have gone to the steward, then the steward could complain about the founder's wife harassing employees to HR without identifying the employee to management for silent discipline, when they try to get rid of you for complaining or whatever personal vendetta (it can happen).
Re: Holacracy is Bullshit
#4Holacracies still have a vested management power structure.. Basically you still have owners / top-tier management who's goals may not align with workers.
Want to be a really progressive start up.. become a COOP.
Re: Holacracy is Bullshit
#5Hierarchy may be superior but I think it might be a bit early to declare holacracy a failure. Presumably there are a multitude of successful holacracies that we aren't hearing about because they are actually working.
Re: Holacracy is Bullshit
#6I think that a "no managers" system can work either with a very small number of employees (The "GitHub Debacle" seems to be more an issue of a lack of professionalism and an unwillingness to confront serious problems (a bully non-employee spouse in the office creating trouble for what sounds like a good employee) before they came to a head.
Re: Holacracy is Bullshit
#7> When you allow a power vacuum to emerge someone will fill it, and it’s usually the people who have traditionally held power
I've never really given this issue much thought, but it sounds reasonable. Illusions can be dangerous, including the illusion of equality.
I was instantly reminded of the famous commandment in Animal Farm : "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". It now seems almost naive to pretend that there wouldn't be people in the organization with vastly more power than others.
All that said, until very recently I was someone who admired GitHub's flat hierarchy from afar. If they were being naive, then so was I.
Re: Holacracy is Bullshit
#8Hierarchy may be superior but I think it might be a bit early to declare holacracy a failure. Presumably there are a multitude of successful holacracies that we aren't hearing about because they are actually working.
Valve is a prime example of this.
Though, I'm guessing Gabe Newell has a ton of defacto power, and you hear plenty of complaints from people that minor bugs and issues go unhandled because they aren't sexy to work on.
Re: Holacracy is Bullshit
#9>In the wake of this, I’m starting to think all of the problems we’re seeing with Silicon Valley these days—the ineptitude at politics, the clumsiness with handling inequality in SF, the lack of gender and racial diversity in the industry—are actually rooted in a systemic failure to understand how power works I'm completely lost here: so the way to solve the problem of people with a lot of power oppressing people wit…
Managers aren't powerful people. Their job is to see powerful people's will is done, in a way that will minimally piss off the workers. So a good manager is one that can pull the wool over your eyes enough that you do the things those in power want.
Re: Holacracy is Bullshit
#10They definitely need to work on things, but I don't think that this debacle means GitHub's decentralized model is invalid. They experienced rapid growth and there are bound to be some aspects that slip through the cracks, doesn't mean they should give up trying to retain a flatter hierarchy as they expand. I hope they don't anyways, it's a core reason GitHub is one of my favorite tech companies.