Holacracy is Bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#61

Post by gruseom » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:57 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

You're assuming that it's an efficient market. But irrational ideas can make a market inefficient. This presumably gets sorted out in the long run, but that takes time.

In software, one source of irrational ideas has been the management models that were developed for industrial and manufacturing organizations. Since building software is a design process, not a manufacturing one, these models don't apply. The industry is slowly figuring that out, but that has left plenty of room for an inefficient market in the meantime—middle managers being perceived as more valuable than programmers and all the rest.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#62

Post by thenmar » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:58 PM UTC

cyborgx7 wrote: post #55

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.

How do you begin to open a discussion on these topics with people who not only lack the necessary education to talk about them accurately, but already have a disdain for words like "feminism" and "privilege"?

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#63

Post by hapless » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 5:59 PM UTC

deeviant wrote: post #53

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

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…

Securitized mortgages were priced "accurately" to the extent that there was strong, almost inexhaustible, demand for assets with the right rating from paid ratings agencies. This had unpleasant consequences for many of us.

Markets will never magically produce the socially beneficial outcome. They efficiently allocate resources along lines imposed by incentives on market actors, and the resulting supply and demand. If the demand is insane, so are the market-allocated outcomes.

I didn't make the argument that our current structure is "the best" or that the status quo is perfect. Only that sufficient supply/demand for managers exists vis a vis engineering staff to drive management wages up.

In short: it's clear that managers are more highly-valued.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#64

Post by pron » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 6:01 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.

These aren't pet theories but an excellent starting point for a discussion.

I would have expected a community of smart individuals to sincerely examine these accusations, even if they are not the whole story behind this current scandal, because we could only benefit from such a discussion.

That this article has been flagged by several people only demonstrates a great level of immaturity and that we, as an industry, more than deserve scorn. We can certainly not claim to be open minded and thoughtful after this.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#65

Post by bowlofpetunias » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 6:01 PM UTC

rjknight wrote: post #42

The problem with management isn’t managers, the problem with management is bad managers. So, on the one hand, we have what we might call the Lord of the Flies narrative - that Github's pseudo-anarchic non-management just enables people's worst traits to come to the surface; it doesn't remove power imbalances, it just hides them and makes it harder to challenge illegitimate use of that power because it's harder to ide…

That's a false dichotomy. The only difference between the Milgram experiment and the Lord of the Flies scenario is that in the former the deck was stacked beforehand by putting people with no prior experience in a position of absolute power.

Other than that they are the same, and not opposites.

The opposite would be clear structure and responsibilities, with just enough power assigned to carefully selected individuals.

A good balance is what most organizations already have, no need to reinvent the wheel. Other than maybe improve the criteria for selecting and monitoring managers.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#66

Post by dictum » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 6:03 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #50

grmarcil wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, can you expand on what you are digging at with your "kinda ad hominem-y" line? The technology arm of Obama's campaign was generally viewed in a very positive light, as far as I remember. And not the same thing as the brains behind the Obamacare debacle. So I'm not sure what the dig is. Is it because she is a recruiter rather than an engineer? Still not sure how that would disqualify her opinion in this case.

I read it as someone close to the maximum representative of hierarchy (the President of the whole US) having an incentive to discredit less hierarchical systems.

Exactly.

A second facet of that is that Catherine seems to be arguing[0] that organizations with no hierarchy give the false impression of power for employees and society at large. Doesn't a similar situation happen with democracy: people can vote Obama, Romney or Absolutely Not Viable Other Candidate and get the false impression of being represented[1]. In the same vein, wouldn't democracy be bullshit?

[0]: Both in this reply and the previous one, I'm speculating entirely — the post seems like an intro to a future more detailed explanation of why holacracy does the things this intro mentions it does.

[1]: Many times people will get most of what they want (as happens in a company, holocratic or not). Both my argument and the author's argument concern the exceptions to the rule: the times when people don't get what they want, or are completely run over.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#67

Post by hoodq19 » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 6:04 PM UTC

Waaaaay too soon to be writing off holacracy. Fad or not, it's at the crawl stage (crawl-walk-run). And to compare it to business-as-usual running-- when it's as broken as it is-- is premature.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#68

Post by fleitz » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 6:05 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.

Github is the nerds version of MH370.

People who weren't there arguing about how something they know nothing about actually happened and what can be done to prevent it.

I think to prevent something like this happening again we need to ensure employees can't disable their transponders, either that or make sure we have more power structures in the cockpit.

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#69

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #58

icebraining wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> E.g. who sets the "strategic direction" for the company?

The circle whose focus is strategic direction.

> Who guides the unending governance meetings to decide who the managers will be that day?

Unending governance meetings and "decide who the managers will be that day" both seem like signs of a circle with a poor governance process (probably, one that is trying to force things into a non-holarchic structure.)

Re: Holacracy is Bullshit

#70

Post by leccine » Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

mbillie1 wrote: post #38

Eh. I worked at a reasonably holacratic/flat organization (a high-profile agile consultancy, actually), and when I say it was flat, I didn't know who my boss was, or who to give notice to when I quit. It was honestly very flat, and in no sense did this mean "secretly rich white guys ran the show." It did lead to a bit more cliqueyness than might otherwise have been desired. I think that a holacracy, like most things…

I guess flat organization means that you build the company bottom up but unfortunately companies don't work efficiently this way. Why? My most recent experience with flat organization revealed the fact that people judged by the perception of their merit not the real value or expertise. Since everybody is biased towards certain things, based on your gender, race or background, this makes flat organizations vulnerable of people forming cliques and jinxing other people's work outside their group. Politics get even stronger in such an workplace, now you need to make these groups happy instead of just going to the right manager or exec to get something sorted. These groups can promote broken ideas, screw other other groups and have subpar performance and blame it on other groups. Without management and data collected (how long does it take to deliver a feature, how many support hours the company need to spend on a product they wrote etc.) it can get nasty very quick.

Summarizing: I don't think that flat organizations are any better than hierarchical structures, I have experience with both and I believe that flat workplaces suck more especially above a certain size (200-300+ people).