Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge • Hacker News Board

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#11

Post by kenjackson » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 4:35 PM UTC

joebadmo wrote: post #6

It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful. It has always seemed to me that management is an important but overemphasized skill (as a fundamental trait of the way large organizations work) and it's really refreshing to see this happening.

In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). Even at places like IBM and Intel you generally have engineers running the show at every level of the engineering org.

I think what Google will see is that the real problem is the board and shareholder accountability. This creates a special type of short-term malfunction in organizations which often looks like a management problem, but really isn't.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#12

Post by aridiculous » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

Ideally, but power still seems to be centralized to dealmakers (probably a function of human nature), whether they're specially skilled or not. Managers are essentially low-level dealmakers.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#13

Post by dman » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 4:44 PM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

One of my ex managers said that his role was to attend the meetings,shield the developers from the politics of getting projects approved and other institutional overhead so that we could focus on delivering product.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#14

Post by kenjackson » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 4:45 PM UTC

aridiculous wrote: post #12

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

Ideally, but power still seems to be centralized to dealmakers (probably a function of human nature), whether they're specially skilled or not. Managers are essentially low-level dealmakers.

Ppl who can make win/win situations out of lose/lose situations are important. Isolated technical decisions are often the easy ones. The tough ones are getting two people or multiple groups to come to an agreement on technical decisions w/o any feeling like they were just burned or stabbed in the back.

This is basically Steve Jobs. Steve is the consumate manager. Not an extremely nice guy, not a designer, not all that technical. But people value and respect his opinion. And even more importantly people want to deliver what he wants.

You know a great manager/dealmaker because he's the person who when they change groups, you want to go with him because you feel like he'll take care of you and your projects.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#15

Post by sachinag » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 4:45 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #11

joebadmo wrote: post #6

It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful. It has always seemed to me that management is an important but overemphasized skill (as a fundamental trait of the way large organizations work) and it's really refreshing to see this happening.

In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). Even at places like IBM and Intel you generally have engineers running the show at every level of the engineering org. I think what Google will see is that the real problem is the board and shareholder accountability. This creates a special type of short-term malfunction in organizations which often looks like a management problem, but…

Hell, Exxon is run by an engineer.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#16

Post by tomjen3 » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 4:46 PM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

The goal of management is essentially the same as the goal for any kind of political structure: remove issues which couldn't have been dealt with in a cheaper way.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#17

Post by aridiculous » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 4:49 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #14

aridiculous wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally, but power still seems to be centralized to dealmakers (probably a function of human nature), whether they're specially skilled or not. Managers are essentially low-level dealmakers.

Ppl who can make win/win situations out of lose/lose situations are important. Isolated technical decisions are often the easy ones. The tough ones are getting two people or multiple groups to come to an agreement on technical decisions w/o any feeling like they were just burned or stabbed in the back. This is basically Steve Jobs. Steve is the consumate manager. Not an extremely nice guy, not a designer, not all tha…

Agreed. Good post. I probably shouldn't have said "ideally", because that makes it look like I don't see value in dealmaking.

I should have said, "ideally (for you)"

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#18

Post by joebadmo » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 4:50 PM UTC

dman wrote: post #13

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

One of my ex managers said that his role was to attend the meetings,shield the developers from the politics of getting projects approved and other institutional overhead so that we could focus on delivering product.

Sounds familiar. As a USMC fire team leader, my job was mostly to protect my Marines from all the shit that rolls downhill. It's generally a very difficult job to do well, because of the way the explicit incentives are set up, but somewhat easier for me as I was basically apolitical and had no career plans in the Corps.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#19

Post by Silhouette » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 4:55 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #11

joebadmo wrote: post #6

It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful. It has always seemed to me that management is an important but overemphasized skill (as a fundamental trait of the way large organizations work) and it's really refreshing to see this happening.

In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). Even at places like IBM and Intel you generally have engineers running the show at every level of the engineering org. I think what Google will see is that the real problem is the board and shareholder accountability. This creates a special type of short-term malfunction in organizations which often looks like a management problem, but…

> In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized).

The thing is, in a lot of larger tech companies, I suspect it's the other way around: management is under-rated because the engineers have taken over the asylum.

It's easy to point to huge, successful companies with a very pro-engineering culture like Facebook and connect the culture with the success, but how do we know they succeeded because of the culture and not in spite of it? Certainly Google has produced a string of flops in recent years that would have killed most companies without the core search engine and arguably now mail and Android groups to prop them up. Facebook succeeds because they got a couple of basic things right in the early days and the networking effect is a massive barrier to entry for any potential competitor, not because all their engineers keep coming up with great ideas that lure people away from the competition.

I wonder how robust these companies really are, and how much their management structure (or relative lack thereof) will influence that robustness if in future they meet heavyweight competition or, more likely, disruptive competition that moves the market.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#20

Post by blinkingled » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 5:01 PM UTC

dman wrote: post #13

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

One of my ex managers said that his role was to attend the meetings,shield the developers from the politics of getting projects approved and other institutional overhead so that we could focus on delivering product.

There's a bit of irony in there that these are mostly people created distractions and the org throws more people at it in the hope of solving it!

I think there will still be need for excellent managers to get a diverse group of people to do stuff together, to keep the vision coherent and to motivate people to deliver their best. It's just that it's a lot to ask of one single person and the position is vulnerable to Engineers grasping those skills and having a huge advantage in actually understanding the low level stuff much better.