Why I left iNaturalist • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#141

Post by nkmnz » Fri, Jan 09, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

n8agrin wrote: post #47

WoodenChair wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I'll just say I think the iNaturalist app is great and I've used it before and enjoyed it. I assume he had good intentions when experimenting with non-hierarchical governance, but this wasn't the right organization with which to experiment with them. If it was feeding the poor, maybe "sociocracy" makes sense. But its main goal was to make an app (and although it's a non-profit it maintains a proprietary machin…

With full respect to your right to criticize, I don't understand what differentiates an organization trying to build a social networking app around biodiversity data from an organization feeding the poor, and those organizations' ability to experiment with their governance system. Can you expand that thought or is it rhetorical?

One thing that comes to my mind is the question about what you actually want to achieve, expressed by what outcome you want to measure. In the case of „feeding the poor“, that’s relatively easy: people fed, calories distributed, maybe also health indicators and sociographic factors of the people you reach. For any app, that might be much harder: total installations? Total usage? New downloads? Additional funding raised? Feature X vs. feature Y? You can absolutely bring the „feeding the poor“ to the same level of complexity by involving politics and trying to scale to multiple locations and cities. So maybe the difference is in scale, not in technology vs. non-technology.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#142

Post by Aurornis » Fri, Jan 09, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

WoodenChair wrote: post #18

Business books sometimes get a bad rap on here, but I never read an essay where I more thought "wow this guy really needs to read some basic business books." Even though it was a non-profit, there is so much wisdom in them about management and leadership that was clearly lacking throughout his experience. It's too late now. But maybe if he understood some of the reasons back when they were starting the app why organi…

> He also explicitly gave up his leadership position and then later wanted a say in management's direction.

I've gone back and forth between IC and management. Giving up the influence of being in management can be hard. If you don't agree with management's direction, it's even harder.

Hiring former managers into IC positions can be risky for this reason. A lot of former managers who switch to IC roles are amazing because they understand the management perspective and they're happy to be able to do their job without the responsibility and accountability (and meetings!) of a management role.

The risk is that you get someone who desires all of the control of being in management without the responsibility and accountability. When someone gives up management responsibilities and obligations but still wants to drive the organization, like the vibes I'm getting from this post, it's not going to end well.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#143

Post by Aurornis » Fri, Jan 09, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

patcon wrote: post #35

WoodenChair wrote: post #18

Business books sometimes get a bad rap on here, but I never read an essay where I more thought "wow this guy really needs to read some basic business books." Even though it was a non-profit, there is so much wisdom in them about management and leadership that was clearly lacking throughout his experience. It's too late now. But maybe if he understood some of the reasons back when they were starting the app why organi…

I agree that I can see plainly that he wasn't interested in certain ways of running the organization, but also... Why do startup people get to talk about their fuckups, and we call it wise and honest and we celebrate the failures -- we certainly don't condemn the very idea of hierarchy or capitalism. But when someone doing something interesting or non-hierarchical talks about their fuckups, we talk about how misguide…

> Why do startup people get to talk about their fuckups, and we call it wise and honest and we celebrate the failures

Celebrating failures has become a very confusing concept. When someone shares their stories of trying and failing, the part we're celebrating is that they tried something. We're not celebrating the failure or validating everything they did.

The value in sharing failure stories is that others can learn from them. The person sharing the failure story also gets valid feedback.

If everyone just rolled over and applauded everything that led up to the failure, that's not helpful to anyone. It may feel good for some, but it's really unhelpful. Evaluating the situation and what went wrong is important.

The second aspect is a desire for "blameless" postmortems where we all pretend like the human element was not a factor to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. However, in cases like this, the human factor appears to be at the root of a lot of the discord. I don't think it's unfair at all to discuss that honestly.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#144

Post by emptybits » Fri, Jan 09, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

gilrain wrote: post #116

emptybits wrote: post #65

Enthusiastic Seek-using family here. It works so well for our very simple needs that I admit to never fully looking into iNaturalist's use of data or my ability to export or move my observations elsewhere. I've always fed our observations from Seek into iNaturalist since I though it was the "right" thing to do. Now I'm questioning it. So thank you, Ueda, for sharing this writeup that's clearly from the heart and for…

> I've always fed our observations from Seek into iNaturalist since I though it was the "right" thing to do. Now I'm questioning it. Why? The author explicitly encourages people to keep using and contributing to iNaturalist, both data and donations. What did you read that made you disagree with them?

Yes, he does. And I will. But he also suggests that users organize and that cessation of data or money or "withdrawing your data would be a reasonable form of protest".

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#145

Post by emptybits » Fri, Jan 09, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

jyoung789 wrote: post #123

emptybits wrote: post #65

Enthusiastic Seek-using family here. It works so well for our very simple needs that I admit to never fully looking into iNaturalist's use of data or my ability to export or move my observations elsewhere. I've always fed our observations from Seek into iNaturalist since I though it was the "right" thing to do. Now I'm questioning it. So thank you, Ueda, for sharing this writeup that's clearly from the heart and for…

Ultimately, if your interest is in contributing to scientific biodiversity data collections, I really feel inatuslist is the best tool for the average person to do this. Similarly to programs like eBird[0] or bumble bee watch [1] (both of which are taxa specific), inatuslist contributes its data to GBIF[2]. This is a large database including records from all over the world,and is made up of both modern digital observ…

Thank you for this really thoughtful answer. I'm going to keep using Seek because, as you say, it's streamlined for those of us who want to help researchers with data but also just want a simple answer. I have PictureThis also, but it rarely gets use.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#146

Post by Aurornis » Fri, Jan 09, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #54

WoodenChair wrote: post #18

Business books sometimes get a bad rap on here, but I never read an essay where I more thought "wow this guy really needs to read some basic business books." Even though it was a non-profit, there is so much wisdom in them about management and leadership that was clearly lacking throughout his experience. It's too late now. But maybe if he understood some of the reasons back when they were starting the app why organi…

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…

> 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.

I've worked in several "flat" startups and one big company.

None of them were actually flat. There's always a hierarchy. There's always an understand chain of command.

> Toyota famously gave (gives?) everyone on the assembly line the power to stop production, and they were (are?) considered the pinnicle of automotive manufacturing.

This is a good example of how "flat" companies aren't really flat. Assembly line workers can stop production because the assembly line is part of their job. They can't fire anyone or give their peers raises, though. If you ask anyone in the comapny, they can point to the person who can fire them and can give them raises. That's the hierarchy. It always exists.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#147

Post by miningape » Fri, Jan 09, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #130

WoodenChair wrote: post #18

Business books sometimes get a bad rap on here, but I never read an essay where I more thought "wow this guy really needs to read some basic business books." Even though it was a non-profit, there is so much wisdom in them about management and leadership that was clearly lacking throughout his experience. It's too late now. But maybe if he understood some of the reasons back when they were starting the app why organi…

My anecdotal experience with folks who gravitate towards ideas about unstructured organizations (of any kind) ... also very much expect the output of that organization will just naturally be what they want. I sometimes wonder how their personal mental human simulator works in those cases as to me it is obvious that such an org will (among a lot of other things) not necessarily output what I want or even be predictabl…

> My anecdotal experience with folks who gravitate towards ideas about unstructured organizations (of any kind) ... also very much expect the output of that organization will just naturally be what they want

Got that exact impression from this article. No doubt the leadership has issues, but I also get the feeling he wouldn't have been happy with this direction even if a group elected it - although, to his credit, it sounds like he probably would've stuck with it longer.

Also not knocking the author, I hope he finds something more fulfilling to work on - and he's probably awesome to work with.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#148

Post by mrguyorama » Fri, Jan 09, 2026, 6:25 PM UTC

PunchyHamster wrote: post #85

Earw0rm wrote: post #63

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 fiefdoms emergin…

> 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 emerging without people having the mental framework to even identify that they exist. But that's just how it works in typical normal hierarchy. The normal hierarchy just makes it easier to "pick a target" you need to please The fallin…

You specifically need a culture that considers "Unskilled labor" to be an oxymoron. Where a literal assembly line worker feels like they have enough expertise to say "No, this is a problem worth stopping production over".

American car companies for example have always preferred to just keep the line moving and have a later QA step fix up the problem, or literally push the problem onto the dealer.

You need to treat even your low employees as not replaceable cogs in a machine.

This is the opposite of what American business school culture has taught for decades, which is why Toyota was unable to teach GM how to do what they were doing.

Not only did GM managers not do a good job of respecting their employees, but decades of that lack of respect meant that the employees didn't trust management enough to play along with the system in good faith. Everyone was "Defecting" and it makes everyone worse off.

Yet Japan DOES have a strictly hierarchical work culture, where openly countering something your boss says isn't exactly welcome. So I wonder how this sort of "Trust your employees to have good ideas" thing came about.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#149

Post by specialist » Fri, Jan 09, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #54

WoodenChair wrote: post #18

Business books sometimes get a bad rap on here, but I never read an essay where I more thought "wow this guy really needs to read some basic business books." Even though it was a non-profit, there is so much wisdom in them about management and leadership that was clearly lacking throughout his experience. It's too late now. But maybe if he understood some of the reasons back when they were starting the app why organi…

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…

I've used the group coordination technology of democracy in the workplace. It was both awesome and burdensome.

Awesome, because social cognition and personal empowerment are force multipliers.

Burdensome, because change is hard, empowerment means accountability, some people would rather complain than contribute.

I'd never advocate leaderless, flatness, whatever pseudo anarchist mumbo-jumbo. Doesn't work. Tyranny of Structurelessness, If We Burn, and all that.

I threaded the needle by creating an org chart comprised of well defined roles. And (most) every team member served in (most) every role, over time. So the person serving in the QA/Test role dutifully executed the QA/Test playbook. And next release they might represent the Engr, TechSupp, etc role.

Otherwise known as cross training, but with better support and culture.

YMMV, obv. Different efforts require different structures. There's a cornucopia of group decision making tools, skills, techs. Use what works best for the task and context at hand.

--

I'm very intrigued by how Oxide Computers is running things. Just from their podcasts, radically open seems like it's working for them.

Re: Why I left iNaturalist

#150

Post by specialist » Fri, Jan 09, 2026, 6:52 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #124

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…

There is the famous Tyranny of Structureless essay https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm which describes issues that people struggle with to this day. When it comes to activism I think the most effective organizations I've been in have been "structureless" like that with a few people who lead because they are dedicated and have time and energy. Personally when it comes to structure and the issues Jo talks abou…

The purpose of RRO assumes majoritarianism while ensuring the minority is heard.

As you know, there are light weight versions, for boards and committees. But nothing I'd advocate for product development.

> the most effective organizations

As a fellow recovering activist, you might be interested in Vincent Bevins' If We Burn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_We_Burn Connected some dots for me. Things I experienced but wasn't smart enough to sus and articulate.