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Why I left iNaturalist

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Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#131

Post by ghaff »

hobofan wrote: post #127
DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has opinions on how the company should be managed, what the product should be, and how to interact with the community... but he abdicated all the responsibility, didn't provide leadership, and is now complaining it didn't turn out how he wanted it. This is personality problem and business books won't help.

> but he abdicated all the responsibility He abdicated the responsibility as he from the beginning didn't have any power (always the single dissenting vote). There also isn't much leadership to provide if everyone else in the "leadership circle" is on a different frequency, or otherwise you are just a rogue actor that will quickly get kicked out. If anything the time for him to leave would have been when he stepped d…

Sometimes it makes sense, if you fundamentally disagree with leadership (or peers who outvote you), it makes sense to just move on. Otherwise they just annoy you and you them. If you've made your case, both parties will be happier apart.

I stepped out of a non-profit board for a time because what was obvious to me needed to happen wasn't going to--although it did over time after my departure and I rejoined at some point.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#132

Post by mmooss »

Earw0rm wrote: post #63
mmooss wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one view of how to structure organizations but hardly the only one. Much of SV was built using non-hierarchical organizations, often bragging that nobody had a title. The greater corporate world embraced flat organizational structures for 1-2 decades and did very well. Toyota famously gave (gives?) everyone on the assembly line the power to stop production, and they were (are?) considered the pinnicle of autom…

Am sure you're already aware, but for others in the thread: Absence of titles does not mean absence of hierarchy. Absence of formal hierarchy doesn't mean absence of social power. At their best, flat hierarchies do as described. At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of cults together with all the worst aspects of high school. Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying favour, autocratic fiefdoms emergin…

Agreed. As another example, many managers say their 'door is open', they welcome negative feedback, etc. Only a few are serious enough about it to understand how to do that (including managing their own emotional response).

> in a more formal org, people with "manager" in their title are at least subject to a minimum amount of vetting, training and oversight.

Often they are people with connections or money, or high technical skill and complete incompetence as a manager. That's one reason people go to flatter structures - the workers do better on their own.

Organizing people toward long-term goals is a challenge. There is no way to make bad performance, incompetent or malicious, into good outcomes; no organizational design will save you.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#133

Post by mmooss »

Earw0rm wrote: post #82
cycomanic wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am sure you're already aware, but for others in the thread: > > Absence of titles does not mean absence of hierarchy. Absence of formal hierarchy doesn't mean absence of social power. > > At their best, flat hierarchies do as described. > > At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of cults together with all the worst aspects of high school. Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying favour, autocratic fi…

The difference in a hierarchical org is that the structure is laid out on paper for everyone to see. The power dynamic is explicit rather than implicit. (At least, it's supposed to be. You do get weird inversions from time to time, when a weak manager is put in charge of a domineering empire-builder, but it's rare - and even in that case, the rest of the org can see the anomaly - as they have a frame of reference to…

There are more differences: A formally structured org isn't a flat org with titles attached.

> "Humans are complicated" => that is my uncertainty caveat. We're not absolute-hierarchical nor absolute-flat

yes

> when we build organisations which try to deny hierarchy, it has a habit of sneaking in thru the back door.

The same happens when we try to deny freedom. Empowering everyone, through freedom and universal equality and human rights, is the foundation of the very successful modern world.

As I said upthread, I think the focus on hierarchy and power is really an outgrowth of current anti-democratic politics, even if people don't explicitly think of it that way. That doesn't deny all hierarchy or power - it's a matter of degree: The history of modern democracy is to lean heavily toward individual freedom (for essential moral reasons too).

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#134

Post by mmooss »

hluska wrote: post #111
mmooss wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one view of how to structure organizations but hardly the only one. Much of SV was built using non-hierarchical organizations, often bragging that nobody had a title. The greater corporate world embraced flat organizational structures for 1-2 decades and did very well. Toyota famously gave (gives?) everyone on the assembly line the power to stop production, and they were (are?) considered the pinnicle of autom…

Perhaps, but the writer removed themselves from leadership. They can have a whole lot of novel or even good ideas but if they’re not in a place to implement them they’re not going to succeed. Leaving leadership was a terrible decision that any business text would have advised against. You can’t beat a hierarchy unless you’re part of it.

An organization has serious problems, and incompetent leaders, if only leaders' ideas are implemented. (That doesn't necessarily disagree with what you said.)

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#135

Post by glenstein »

WoodenChair wrote: post #55
doctorpangloss wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the two mix it doesn't always go well (see Mozilla). you've written more than 20 paragraphs of comments but I stopped here, because if you think this way about Mozilla, a very successful company and philanthropy, you probably are not making generalizable judgements about others

> you've written more than 20 paragraphs of comments but I stopped here, because if you think this way about Mozilla, a very successful company and philanthropy, you probably are not making generalizable judgements about others I mean yeah, if you think Mozilla has been well managed over the past two decades, then yeah we're on different planes of understanding the world. - The only product it makes that anyone cares…

If success was really determined by a pitch perfect combination of browser development, catering to users with features they most want, being ahead of the curve on mobile and devices, and being flexible and creative with financing.... then we would all be using Opera.

Back when memory management actually was critical, Opera had a light footprint, had a portable executable you could stick on a USB stick. They partnered with mobile vendors to get on phones very early (ahead of the iPhone!), had advanced tabs, an extensions ecosystem, "widgets", Unite (the most impressive browser idea ever imo even to this day), had clearer ideas of what the start page could be, offered to retrieve compressed pages to save data (again back when that mattered), built in ad blocking very early on, and an extremely customizeable user interface

But even they had to give up on Presto (RIP), sold the company to overseas investors, shared user data with ad brokers and develop based on Chromium. If doing everything right is what works, then what happened to Opera?

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#136

Post by calvinmorrison »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #88
calvinmorrison wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought the relgious Agile was kind of kooky when it met the real world, but I really think kanban / theory of constraints is very good and real for the business world.

as long as managers don't start slapping KPIs on it

Which is why agile falls apart... ToC/KanBan is

- prioritize - work on top item - goto 1

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#138

Post by kayo_20211030 »

I read the piece. Who exactly, or what, is "Leadership" in this piece? (Always capitalized). A board? Upper-management? Other management? It's hard to understand it in full when "Leadership" seems to be reduced to an unnamed player - an anonymous villain.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#139

Post by justincormack »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #80
WoodenChair wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One that would've helped is "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days" which is a collection of interviews with startup founders by Jessica Livingston. Even though this was a non-profit it effectively sounds like it was a tech startup (he was building an app that was based on, at the time (late 2000s), cutting edge machine learning technology). I think by hearing other founders' stories building other tech p…

Why not a book about making co-operatives work, or managing direction in non-hierarchical orgs, management structure in public interest companies/charities, or establishing scientific organisations? It sounds like he learnt lessons about the need for inclusion of users, need for strong information flow, what doesn't work (from his perspective) in hierarchy.

I read Maverick by Ricardo Semmler a long time ago and loved it about non hierarchy in business. Must re read it

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#140

Post by mistersquid »

From Ken-ichi Ueda's remarks in the OP, after graduating from Berkeley he moved into a role that resembled the loosely-structured organizational patterns of an undergraduate team collaborating on a term project. Of course, such a gloss oversimplifies the complexities of the relationships and outcomes of people working together in what would become a non-profit, but even tone of the OP seems characteristic of someone still in the mindset of high-achieving baccalaureate: laissez-faire governance, aversion to hierarchy, prioritization of intellectual freedom, etc, none of which are bad or good in and of themselves.

Anyhow, Ueda's 2024 commencement address (especially the opening) bears markers of just such a mindset. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AECD7qfFAV0

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