Holacracy is Bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#51

Post by sanswork » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:51 PM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #8

jsmcgd wrote: post #5

Hierarchy 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.

Jeri Ellsworth's accounts of working within Valve and the issues with the structure there were pretty widely published after her firing. She mentions a fair few more problems then just unsexy bugs being ignored it's worth a listen.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#52

Post by jowiar » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:51 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #31

This is fucking stupid, given we have almost literally no information about what has happened at Github, nor the extent to which any events were due to an absence of hierarchy. I really wish people would dial back on the gloating promotion of their own pet theories and maybe wait until a little bit more information is available before jumping to conclusions.

Regardless of the details, that things escalated to the extent they did can almost entirely be attributed to it being nobody's job to resolve this earlier. Engineers get paid for shipping code. Executives ensure that the company is moving in the right direction, and often the concerns of one engineer are rounding error. People need to be able to say: "If things happen, I will go to this person, whose long-term success at this company is entirely determined by the success of this particular half-dozen of us."

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#53

Post by deeviant » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:51 PM UTC

hapless wrote: post #26

jowiar wrote: post #16

To me, Github's structure is largely an overreaction to the culture flaws elsewhere. Belief that managers are more valuable than doers, and thus paid more. Belief that engineers are infinitely replaceable. Belief that one should be paid proportionate to the number of people below them in the org chart. Management has a purpose - but companies poor treatment of engineers over the years has blinded many engineers to th…

Managers' higher pay isn't some kind of conspiracy squatting in the industry. It's the result of market forces. Those outside pressures will not evaporate simply because we do not like them. Pay grades are telling us things we do not wish to hear: - engineers are more replaceable than their managers - management staff are consistently difficult to find

Would that be the same market that thought they could accurately predict the risk of securitized mortgage instruments?

The same market that produces for more failing companies that successful ones?

The Market, is not some omnipotent, omniscient force. Much like the forces of natural selection, you actually don't have to be "the best" to survive, just "good enough", and most of the time organizations and organizations survive despite themselves rather than because of themselves.

Or said most succinctly, I think you may have bit too much faith in both the accuracy of market forces and our ability to correctly qualify and quantify such forces.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#54

Post by hapless » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:52 PM UTC

jowiar wrote: post #37

hapless wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managers' higher pay isn't some kind of conspiracy squatting in the industry. It's the result of market forces. Those outside pressures will not evaporate simply because we do not like them. Pay grades are telling us things we do not wish to hear: - engineers are more replaceable than their managers - management staff are consistently difficult to find

Is the market saying that? There were higher starting salaries coming out of my CS undergrad than my management masters. That was 5 years ago, and I don't think things have shifted away from engineers since. Look at the acquihire prices engineers are getting these days...

That is another unpleasant lesson: credentials don't make the man.

Your master's degree in management appears to be much less valuable than experience.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#55

Post by cyborgx7 » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:55 PM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #36

"When you allow a power vacuum to emerge someone will fill it, and it’s usually the people who have traditionally held power (rich white men)." Why? If there is a power vacuum, exactly what forces support rich white men filling those roles? Why can't woman or person of a different race fill the role? Near as I can tell, the only thing I can see that supports this likelihood is base rates. A greater percentage of the…

Internalized racism and sexism.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#56

Post by brvs » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:56 PM UTC

tsax wrote: post #44

malandrew wrote: post #36

"When you allow a power vacuum to emerge someone will fill it, and it’s usually the people who have traditionally held power (rich white men)." Why? If there is a power vacuum, exactly what forces support rich white men filling those roles? Why can't woman or person of a different race fill the role? Near as I can tell, the only thing I can see that supports this likelihood is base rates. A greater percentage of the…

Yes, but all such questions can lead to un-PC conclusions, therefore you may want to keep quiet.

Like what?

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#57

Post by eterm » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:56 PM UTC

debacle wrote: post #25

glesica wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...very, very talented people... But what does that mean? People who are very, very good at building software aren't necessarily good at interacting with others or following basic social rules. Same goes for any field (replace "building software" with "practicing law", for instance). Tricky to hire only people who are very, very good at everything necessary for a healthy culture.

But if you aren't in the kind of bind that a company like GitHub is in, or any company that needs to grow quite fast, you can hire and fire at your leisure, creating the team that you need.

> you can hire and fire at your leisure

That's very US centric advice, in many countries you absolutely cannot fire someone "at your leisure".

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#58

Post by mpyne » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #47

mpyne wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't this quite close to the idea that somewhat progressive dictators are good? No, it's quite close to the idea that progressive power structures are good, as opposed to anarchy followed by "obviously everything will end up being progressive now that I've torn down the structure of power".

But isn't that why the people behind the Holacracy concept have a whole structure (with pretty pictures!) that is supposed to replace the managerial layer? http://holacracy.org/how-it-works I have no idea if holacracy is bullshit or not (it does feel like a concept invented to sell training classes), but claiming it replaces managers with nothing is plainly false.

If I'm understanding the linked article correctly, she wasn't claiming holacracy guts management, she was claiming that it introduces a power vacuum. And from what I can tell in that pretty picture you provide, she's probably actually right.

E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company? Who guides the unending governance meetings to decide who the managers will be that day? Who decides which spouses get to work on company property without pay, and which employees are allowed to date other employees?

The way those things get resolved will show you who's really in charge.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#59

Post by icebraining » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

neom wrote: post #11

Not to change the subject: Having just come out of a totally flat org that was pushing hard for 100% Holacracy I have to say if I didn't leave for other reasons it would have been that. It can be incredibly incredibly difficult to get things done in this environment and sadly made me feel like every day I had to wake up and battle my coworkers because everything was by committee. I'm all for collaboration, but I also…

But that's not what Holacracy pushes for. The organization is supposed to have people with power to decide certain stuff and be accountable for it. It's just not supposed to have a single hierarchy that ends in the CEO and which concentrates all power, but a bunch of "circles" that have role-specific powers.

http://holacracy.org/constitution

It seems that everyone is blaming the process without following it. Not that I claim that following it would have good results - I have no idea if it's a good system or not.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#60

Post by jballanc » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

If you say "we don't have office politics at our company" the reality is that you do have office politics and it's completely unrestrained due to the blind eye turned on it by "management".

If you notice that the cars you build tend to rust, and that water causes rust, you might say, "well, we're going to build cars that don't encounter water," and you'd be rightly laughed out of town. Office politics doesn't happen (or not) because the founders wrote it into their business plan. Office politics happens because offices are occupied by humans.