The negative side of no-manager companies

http://ryancarson.com/post/73639971628/the-negative-side-of-nomanager-companies

by Nimi • 13 years ago

4 2 13 years ago

Nimi• 13 years ago

Curiously, I found some of these negative to be true for "managed" companies as well, certainly when the company is large enough:

1.Lots of chaos - yep. "It’s not entirely clear what’s happening, but there is a lot of activity and eventually large structures/tunnels get built. I know for a fact that we have Projects that were started and eventually abandoned because another Project was conflicting or duplicating their work". All this seems to hold true for the last company I worked for (MegaCorp, you'd easily recognize the name).

2. Coordination is very hard - yep. "it’s up to individuals to take time to communicate what’s happening on their Project and how it affects others" - absolutely.

3. Starting Projects can be slow - well, I hear a lot of MegaCorps have entirely abandoned the notion of starting projects, and simply rely on acquisitions, either consciously or in practice.

4. I can’t make people do things - boy oh boy, please ask your friends working at MegaCorps about people who are "the only ones who know how this works". Delightfully funny stories, really.

5. It takes longer to understand what’s going on - I simply got the impression no one really understood what's going on. When high-level managers spoke to me about the status of my project/component, they were routinely misinformed, although it was clear they cared and have spent time trying to get informed.

6. Harder to hire people - OK, maybe this is true :-)

BTW, apparently there are citation-like watermarks when copy-pasting from the blog post - this isn't a big deal, but I don't see any particular benefit to anyone from this... Ryan, if you're reading, may I humbly suggest you reconsider this?

ryancarson• 13 years ago

I hadn't thought about how these cons might also apply to large traditionally managed companies. Thx.

BTW, apparently there are citation-like watermarks when copy-pasting from the blog post - this isn't a big deal, but I don't see any particular benefit to anyone from this... Ryan, if you're reading, may I humbly suggest you reconsider this?

Nimi, I think Tumblr does that. Sorry.

The negative side of no-manager companies

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