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Comment by imchillyb | Hacker News Reader

> The changes include moving to a "General Manager model" for teams in the product and technology organizations, which will mean having one person lead the work in those divisions. "This will allow us to operate more cross-functionally and enable faster, more informed decision-making," the spokesperson added.

In other words:

We now have an Overseer role. Individual contributions no longer matter to management. Overseers will ensure the company's decisions are followed through at every level of employment. Now even the design teams will 'be on board' with the changes, or be gone.

No more dissent. No more questioning of the leadership. No more discussions.

The Overseer's word is law, people!

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Many larger b2b companies operate with a GM model. Why? Their businesses are a portfolio of products that essentially need a CEO rather than a PM. True P&L accountability and control.

Different products within the company will have different needs at different times. Without a GM the Twitter Blue team ends up head to head with the Ads team during planning, and you can guess who wins.

Small products will get overly influential GMs who can move mountains within the company to get them what they need. It's less overlord and more political air cover, if done right.

GMs are almost always the first to get fired as well. It's a sort of end-stage of your career at a company. Few GMs can become CEO, so once you take that GM role you are on borrowed time.

I’m genuinely confused how you arrived at that? I just read it as “there’s now one person in charge of each of these divisions”, which seems like a pretty standard way of organizing things? Do you have a specific reason you think this would shut down discussion?

This is such a weird take and makes me question if you've ever worked in a large company to begin with? I think ICs would much rather be part of a cohesive team with an engaged leader that is advocating on behalf of the product the IC is involved with. That's a hell of a lot better than the typical dysfunction in large orgs/companies where ICs are just lost in a sea of confusion and politicking with no clear higher-level management structure to support the projects and products they are involved with.

I’m not sure if I agree that the take is “weird” or not … but one thing did stand out to me about your comment: the idea that this would result in helpful structure and clarity for ICs.

We don’t know the complete extent of the reorg, but my experience at large companies and living through multiple reorgs (10? 15? I’ve lost track) is that they usually don’t actually mean much for ICs on the ground.

The reorg usually is limited to VP level folks - they get moved around, but usually their teams stay with them. It’s usually not a big day to day difference for the folks at the bottom of the org chart.

Edit: I’ve also never experienced reduced confusion or politicking as a result of a reorg. Those things seem inherent to large power structures.

As a sidenote, "This will allow us to operate more cross-functionally and enable faster, more informed decision-making," is just completely devoid of substance. Do the people crafting these corporate statements actually believe that people don’t see straight through them? Nobody is going to read this and think, “Oh, thank god, they’ve assured us that the change isn’t going to communication worse and decision-making less informed, this is good stuff!”

It's the emperors new clothes. Nobody wants the be the guy saying "But what the hell does that really mean?" so everyone pretends it means something.

I'm not sure it's completely devoid of substance. Obviously there's no detail provided, but it is stating the goals/benefits of a general manager model for those who aren't familiar with it.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Twitter employees are getting a taste of what has been dished out on Twitter users for years.

If that is the case then I would actually encouraged by it, Twitter social activist employee's are a problem for the platform.

sadly though I dont believe this will be the case,

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