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Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

> But it seems like at least part of the problem in endemic in our view of organisations. People often want management positions because they are paid more, are more secure, or have more power. Maybe if we shifted our view of management as "just being a different skill set" and not always being higher paid then we'd find people without the required skills wouldn't try and obtain those positions and would focus on what they are good at.

Some tech companies have started to do that with technical seniority tracks. I think one bit that's still missing remains the ability to move people back into previous positions without loss of face or income if they don't fit in the new one.

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The problem, which I worry is unfixable, is that managers are the people who decide which jobs are most stable and paid the most. Unsurprisingly, they give themselves the majority of the spoils.

It's interesting too that democracy is lauded in the west but companies are never run that way.

Democracy isn't democratic either. Why else would concepts like seniority exist in the US Senate? Or sub committees... How is the US Senate in line with the concept of one person one vote? If we want our vote to count more, we should move to Wyoming (which gets two senators the same as California)?

If we have each employee one share each, I'm sure many would simply turn around and see if they can sell it. How can we retain one person one vote in a company? Make shares non transferable? Do we allow proxy voting?

That's because the US government is not organized as a democracy, but rather as a republic. The Senate is not intended to be democratic, it is intended to be a deliberative body of representatives who come to consensus on legislative questions. It's quite a large deliberative body, so its method of consensus is superficially akin to democracy in that many questions are answered through voting, but it isn't, and was never intended, to be democratic in the pure sense. Along the same lines, it is only recently that we began democratically electing Senators.

None of this is by accident, and was done this way for similar reasons as companies have for running themselves un-democratically.

> That's because the US government is not organized as a democracy, but rather as a republic. The Senate is not intended to be democratic, it is intended to be a deliberative body of representatives who come to consensus on legislative questions. It's quite a large deliberative body, so its method of consensus is superficially akin to democracy in that many questions are answered through voting, but it isn't, and was never intended, to be democratic in the pure sense. Along the same lines, it is only recently that we began democratically electing Senators.

How often is there a consensus in the Senate? It seems like almost everything happens along party lines. Who are senators supposed to represent?

I've heard this "a republic, not a democracy" so many times. Don't get me wrong. I am very grateful for a nation of laws. However, it doesn't seem that being a republic, not a democracy is what is protecting the rights of the minority or the rule of the law.

It just feels like the purpose was to prevent wild swings but I'm afraid what is supposed to protect us from abrupt, wild swings will make it near impossible to correct a slow swing.

Party line votes were historically more rare (under 50%). That has changed dramatically over the last few years and is a belleweather of the deep divisions in the country.

There were always divisive issues but there are also a lot of boring and mundane work. 90% party line votes are evidence the parties feel it's not politically safe to be seen agreeing with others on any issue regardless of how mundane. That isn't something you'll fix short of changing the electorate or getting rid of elections.

In the period between the New Deal and now they were usually rarer because the New Deal Coalition broke the old party alignment and it took a long time before the parties each had a coherent ideological position again; that was a naturally unstable position.

It had little to do with boring, mundane work, it has to do with the fact that liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats—when neither of those meant centrist, they meant more to the left or right than the center of the other partt—used to exist, significantly, in both the electorate and elected office.

This was always an unstable condition, and the trigger for accelerating it's inevitable Denise was Johnson's civil rights position. But it still took a few decades after that for the realignment to complete.

Except that the current increase in partisan voting began in the 2000s. The 50s were closer in the mid 70% but for the period since partisan voting was under 50%

It's a democracy and a republic. The UK is a democracy but not a republic.

The administration of the US government has no elements of direct democracy (that I can think of). It is a republic with democratically elected representatives.

“A republic with democratically elected representatives” (like “a monarchy in which practical authority is durably assigned to a body of democratically elected representatives”) is an example of a representative democracy, which is not only a kind of democracy, it's by far the most common kind of democracy.

Bah, this part of the thread is stuck in the weeds debating definitions; my real point is in my initial comment.

Representative democracies are democracies as well. Everybody voting on everything isn't the only way to organise a democracy.

We've entered pretty pedantic territory now IMO, but I think it's much more useful to consider the US government itself a republic because that's how its day to day operation is conducted. Thinking of it as a democracy leads to questions like the thread starter, for instance about un-democratic committee and leadership structures, which are actually non sequiturs because it's not a democratic system.

I'd do it just the opposite - folks don't all want to be involved, but want somebody who they respect to do it for them. Freely allow proxies to be assigned, to anybody, not just to 'elected officials'. Those with proxies could reassign the whole wad to another person, and so on.

Is it ok to be reimbursed for giving someone proxy?

In a free society, yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy

Companies in the west are democratic, but the voting rights are held by the owners of the company. If you are a citizen, it is your country and you get a vote. If you are an employee, it is not your company.

Not necessarily true. Many companies including Google have different classes of shares where they have more voting rights than thier share of ownership.

Not many public companies are structured like this, and for a while it was a requirement of some exchanges that one share be one vote. I know that people on Hacker News (high concentration of founders) like the idea of a public listing without one share one vote, but I think it is better for companies in the long run to have their board seats elected by the shareholders. It may seem good now to have Mark Zuckerberg to have total control of FB, but will it seem like a good idea for his children to have more control than the actual owners? This is the kind of trouble companies like Viacom have gotten into by giving their founders too much control.

That's not many companies actually but rather a tiny minority of firms that are exploiting their ability to make unusually huge profits to get investors despite poor and risky terms.

But... aren't they? It's one share one vote, not one employee one vote, but I think that still qualifies as democratic. Then, there are elected board members (the representatives) who hire the CEO (the prime minister?), etc.

That wouldn't fit most definitions of democracy (which would be variations of "every person gets a single equal vote"). Most companies are more of an oligarchy.

Neither is the US. The US is a democratic republic: we vote in congress, the senate, and the president who then make decisions for us on our behalf. Public companies are similar: shareholders vote in board members, who then elect a CEO for the company on our behalf.

That is assuming that there's only one share class. Companies often have different classes of membership/shareholder which have different voting powers (or none).

Try to start a democratic company (or run a thought experiment about doing so) and you will probably find the reasons why democracy works better as a way to manage a society than a single company.

It's not like it's unheard of, but it doesn't fill the pockets of the selected elite.

There are worker cooperatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

Workers' self management: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management

And serious economists who advocate for such a system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branko_Horvat

We did. And though I am not sure it would work for every line of work, so far it has been extremely successful for us.

https://www.fountstudio.com/blog/yes-we-have-a-pirate-code-1...

It does happen. Both the largest supermarket chains in Switzerland are cooperatives.

However, small competing firms in a market where people vote with their wallets is already pretty democratic. The voting takes place at a different level - people choose companies rather than leaders or direct policies, but it works well enough.

Also capitalism ends once you’re in a company. It becomes a miniature command economy with all the same inefficiencies.

If you're curious to hear postulated explanations then a good search keyphrase is "The theory of the Firm"

I work at a company where at least on the technical side, this is not true. ICs and managers are on similar pay scales. And manager jobs are certainly less stable than IC positions. Additionally, "failure" as a manager often means returning to an IC role.

Can ICs fire managers?

Directly? No. By definition firing people isn't in an IC job description.

Can an IC get a manager fired? Yes. Skip-level reviews and 1:1s usually paint a clear enough picture for upper management that the correct course of action is to fire the manager. The more senior the IC, the more weight their review carries.

Can a manager fire an IC? Not unilaterally. Again, skip-level reviews and 1:1s are there to help upper management evaluate how well the manager is doing their job. Feedback from other ICs is also a big part of it. Senior ICs are generally involved not just in the decision but as part of ensuring the underperforming IC is getting sufficient support so they can be fairly evaluated.

I'm sure systems like this have broken down at other companies, but it seems to work well enough where I've worked.

That's not true where I am. HR decide pay scales based on market pay levels in our sector.

Okay, so your company delegates the decision to managers in other companies. The effect is the same.

I'm sure this is how it looks from the outside, but it's very much not the way things actually work. Except in very limited cases (like, owner of a small private company), your boss does not set his own salary without oversight. And even then, the best way to increase his own salary is for the company to grow, so he's incentivized to run a proper business and not a sweatshop.

The problem has multiple issues. Managers getting paid more is certainly an incentive for people who aren't qualified to want to become managers.

Managers having power is another issue. It's possible for a manager to have less power. Their job being to facilitate and coordinate rather than direct.

Managers have power on multiple levels as well. Some have power over people, who does what, but they also often have power of decisions, what gets done, what to make, where to focus.

In other words, to fix the incentives that pull non-qualified people into management positions it seems like all of those issues need to be separated from the manager position?

In other words someone might not be a people person so isn't good and facilitating and coordinating between people and or other teams but they could be good at one or more kinds of team level decision making and want that responsibility.

One partial solution to having a single power hierarchy is having multiple power hierarchies. Then no one person is the boss of me, and when someone wants something done, they can't just order me to do it. They can't be a jerk to me or they might find their work assigned to my lowest priority.

It can go horribly wrong, too ("I have eight different bosses, Bob!"). I don't think there's any power structure which can prevent selfish or malevolent people from harming the organization: "The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery."

This works only if ICs get to evaluate performance of managers and have inputs into their remuneration. I haven't come across such an org yet.

I think the article mentions the core problem. It’s not necessarily the people can’t move down (although that would be good) it’s that we don’t take into account the skills of the job the person is GOING to when deciding if they should be promoted to it.

If that was the criteria used maybe this problem wouldn’t exist in the first place.

> I think one bit that's still missing remains the ability to move people back into previous positions without loss of face or income if they don't fit in the new one.

Don't know where you are at but my manager literally did just this by switching back to an individual contributor role and retained the same level. Also, managers and individual contributors make the same amount per level so he didn't lose any income.

At my employer, senior technical roles are bonus-eligible at rates similar to line management. Salaries are similar as well. And I know a few employees who have dabbled in management and later returned to senior technical roles without lasting negative impact.

At my company the levels for technical engineers (traditional engineering btw, not software) is: Engineer 1, 2, Senior, Lead, & Principal where Lead is supposedly equivalent to a Supervisor & Principle a manager. In reality we have only a few leads and no principals. So there is very little incentive to go technical as you'll never make more than a Supervisor and Supervisor has at least 4 more levels above it.

Part of the company is similar to the Peter principle, but where I am, all the smartest and most technical people go into management which creates a different problem. They're often sub par at managing people and the administrative side of things. It also creates brain drain where we constantly have a lack of know-how in the less senior ranks. On the good side is that things generally work better with highly technical management as they tend to almost always make superb decisions and don't have to constantly consult about things. My last manager could listen to work being done and know exactly which processes it impacted and why due to the specific SQL tables involved. They can also direct subordinates in the knowledge they took with them too. These managers tend to be more focused with getting the job done quickly and properly with minimum impacts rather than political infighting.

A technical manager without political skills can hurt the team. They can’t get raises for them, resources, or recognition. A non technical political manager can easily outmaneuver a technical manager. It’s good to have a technical manager to get things done and learn, but expect to have to change jobs to get ahead.

Agreed in some cases, but again, I've been pleasantly surprised.

Technical managers understand what needs to be done...etc and enable high performing teams and make it well known during bonus discussions. When your department is responsible for major success each year, the technical manager can push promotions...etc fairly well. At this rate I'm avoiding the other departments like the plague.

Ah, well failure to use positions that exist is a bit strange. My test engineer is a “senior principle”. Losing her to a management role would be a blow to both my team and the broader product-line (ERP, many dev teams). Of course, I was a principle dev and moved into management for a change of pace and new challenges, so title and salary are no guarantee that tech talent stays in tech roles.

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