Comment by trjordan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trjordan | Hacker News Reader

Contrast to Apple, which uses a fully functional model: https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovatio...

I find this evolution fascinating. It makes sense to me that the GM model worked for so long. If much of a company's advantages were cultural, you could put together teams that could out-compete startups within a large organization. Procter and Gamble needs to enter new markets with new products to grow -- there's only so big a market for soap or razors or drills.

But lots of tech companies today have a significant scale advantage. Google ads is most of their revenue; Netflix has a single product. Functional expertise that drives a 2% gain across the entire business is possible and valuable.

So ... why does Twitter want to go to a GM model? Are they watching Meta have success diversifying from Facebook? Or is there something else?

Netflix isn’t quite a single product anymore. They have a huge studio/content arm who likely knows or cares very little about the streaming side - and there are several of them per continent. From a consumer perspective, it may come off as one company though.

> If much of a company's advantages were cultural, you could put together teams that could out-compete startups within a large organization.

Only if you can make that small team culturally independent from the parent company, which IMO is unlikely, not least because first you have to create the team and hire or find (internally) people for it, both of which tend to imprint the parent culture, and then management has to be sufficiently hands off, which again could happen but what are the odds?

Avoiding the humiliation of senate subpoenas seems to be motivating the most recent rash of FAANG restructurings. No founder, deserved or otherwise, would willingly subject themselves to the indignation of senators making names for themselves. Google saw the stitches on the fast ball and had Pichai prepped and ready go, but apparently Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Zuckerberg were far more confident, and the results of their testimony spoke for itself.

"the indignation of senators making names for themselves."

Or maybe just doing their job.

Nobody elected the leaders of big tech and its more than reasonable to hold them to account.

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