Google Sold Its Engineers on Management (2013)

>From 2010 through 2012, UFS and TMS median favorability scores rose from 83% to 88%.

Consider me unimpressed. 5% isn't all that impressive of an increase.

> The UFS and the TMS depend on employees’ goodwill.

They never actually posted what the response rate or coverage was like with these surveys. Self-selected surveys like this would probably tend to favour those managers that are very liked.

> When the process works well, it can yield extraordinary results.

Extraordinary? 5% increase is "extraordinary"? Okay.

What's funny about this is that they did not include any kind of analytics or statistics about why their attempt at horizontal organization failed. They go on and on about how well their system currently works, and correctly point out that it probably has to do with the already very horizontal structure, but make no effort to compare to the performance during the horizontal experiments.

All we got were anecdotal stories of executives being bombarded with questions about pay and HR. HBR is just an MBA-honeypot so no wonder they are trying to sell the importance of managerialism, but I would still like to see some actual investigations into this.

To me it just seems like most experiments at horizontal structures failed simply because people who were formerly in-charge complained loudly enough to executives because no one was listening to them without question. Since managers tend to be the social / charismatic types who are friends with upper leadership, then their complaints about "inefficiencies" probably had the same statistical backing that is driving RTO today (i.e. zero) and is more to do with comforting egos.

People forget that there's an extensive history of modern managerialism only really coming out post-WW2 as a phenomenon, with most of that influence coming from people's experiences in the war serving in the military. People tolerated hierarchical organizations simply because they were used to them, and as time went on and there were less traumatized people in the workforce, the less that sort of thing was valued.

>High-performing knowledge workers often question whether managers actually contribute much, especially in a technical environment. Until recently, that was the case at Google, a company filled with self-starters who viewed management as more destructive than beneficial and as a distraction from “real work.” But when Google’s people analytics team examined the value of managers, applying the same rigorous research methods the company uses in its operations, it proved the skeptics wrong.

As summarized in the article, the research actually seems to have addressed a slightly different question: "Do good managers add more value than bad managers?".

> And as the company grew, the founders soon realized that managers contributed in many other, important ways—for instance, by communicating strategy, helping employees prioritize projects, facilitating collaboration, supporting career development, and ensuring that processes and systems aligned with company goals.

And has anyone asked what happens when the manager fails in doing all this? For example, what happens when the manager ensure processes and systems are aligned with their OWN goals instead of company goals?

> Google now has some layers but not as many as you might expect in an organization with more than 37,000 employees: just 5,000 managers, 1,000 directors, and 100 vice presidents. It’s not uncommon to find engineering managers with 30 direct reports. Flatt says that’s by design, to prevent micromanaging.

In my company, the ratio is 1:5. Micromanagement, JIRA story points, agile and performance ratings based micromanagement flourishes at the expense of engineers.

> The lowest-scoring managers improved the most, particularly in the areas of coaching and career development. The improvements were consistent across functions, survey categories, management levels, spans of control, and geographic regions.

In my company, the lowest-scoring managers simply retaliated by rating the identified employee lower.

Imo, the manager system can work if and only if the power of performance reviews and firing is taken away from individual managers. This doesn't mean that the power goes upwards to another manager. Instead, perf reviews should be done by technical leaders, firing should be a last option only after serious consideration. Without these safeguards, managers are just bosses that retaliate when someone reports them.

Just having the infrastructure in place where employees can review managers is huge. At most places I've worked, this was not the case, and there was no process in place for employees to provide feedback on management. It was in fact frowned upon; the hierarchy was top down by design.

Also, this article feels so dated now, 10 years later. I wonder how much of it still applies to the current Google.