Semco – Insanity That Works

Ricardo Semler's is indeed a true visionary, he started applying the principles of democracy and trust to industrial production decades ago, his first book Maverick[1] was written in 1995, it is full of interesting anecdotes on how he implemented his ideas in his father's business. I find his methods very similar to what is now being called Holocracy [2].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Ricardo-Semler/e/B000APW260 [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=holocracy&sort=byPopularity&pr...

I worked for a brief time for a company which was very inspired by Semler. Autonomy! Great! Wrong. Phone calls at all times of day and night and working from home in NYC where my room was also necessarily my office left me burnt out super quick.

Also, plenty of meetings I didn't need or want to be at (unneccesary context switches constantly) as an engineer conducted over google hang outs because of the "flat" hierarchy.

In the end the openness of seeing the companys finances didn't work for me because in the end, what do I care?

I burnt out quick there and moved on.

That being said this was a super small start up suffering growing pains and working across major time zone differences, so in the end, YMMV, and I'm sure as they continue to work out the kinks and can pay their engineers in NYC an engineer in NYC's salary (in Amsterdam software engineers don't appear to make as much, which is where they were primarily based), the experience for their workers will improve.

And trying to work through the NYC summer in a room with no air conditioning is just awful and I don't recommend it. The lack of meaningful social interaction, your body sticking to your chair with sweat. An office set up fund needs to be provided for all remote workers at the end of the day, and that was not the case here (to be fair, they liked the idea and once funding and the bank account were both fuller I'm sure they'd do it).

The two founders worked for a year without salary to get it going so there were definitely people with skin in the game.

Now I have a strict 9-5 with a nice office in Midtown. I get the requisite amount of social interaction required for my neurons to maintain a happy state and the quiet of an office for when I want to get into the zone and get things done.

My coworker is pretty uninspired... But that's a story for another day.