Ask HN: How do you manage and structure a team?
We are a small team that has recently created. As such, we've been given a fair amount of control over how the team are structured. This involves everything from how we work, how we progress in our careers and how much we are paid. While this is a really nice position to be in, it raises a number of concerns.
In an ideal world, I believe that a flat structure would be best. We are all technical people, working on a series of short (months in length) projects that tend to be self contained. There is no immediate need of a hierarchy. But in this case, how do you define “progression”?, both how people are paid, and their “title” within the group.
To get around this, the obvious answer is a well defined “hierarchy”. Progression and pay are well defined ahead of time and everyone knows how it works. The problem is that we have only just been created, and as such the variance of the pay within the group is big. Initially this isn't an issue – we all agreed to be here for the amount we are paid, but over time it can become an issue: without well defined progression, this issue of separate pay will become an issue and half the group will leave.
Another problem (and a separate one, one that we will also need to address) is that judging the direct merit of each others work is hard. Mostly because the work is a spectrum between “core” work, that is required, and “new features” which can bring in a large profit (or fail), and disentangling the two is hard.
There has to be somewhere in between these two position. And we can't be the first to find ourselves in this position, and I'd like to here from others who have been here: - What worked well? - What worked badly? - What would you have done differently?