Feedback doesn't scale
another.rodeo
another.rodeo
This is definitely a rare exception, but at my first job, my boss's boss's boss (basically the #2 in the engineering organization, although probably only like 2/3 of it was under his purview) somehow seemed to have an unfathomable ability for knowing not only everyone under him the org tree, but details about what they were working on. I think it must have been at least 150, maybe even 200 people, and as far as I could tell he could recall every single person's name, project, and the general status of their work without needing anyone to remind him before talking with them. Maybe he did just really studiously review notes or something before any meeting or even chance of an ad hoc conversation in the halls, but I never really saw him typing at meetings or writing stuff down to keep track of later, so at the very least he'd need to have been able to retain a lot of information long enough to accurately record it later. Witnessing this firsthand for a few years was easily one of the most impressive mental feats I've ever observed.
If so, do you think it would have played out similarly if the organization had had an equally effective "glue person" who wasn't in charge (therefore didn't have any authority to delegate or divide most tasks) and was required to manage upward [sic] to coordinate things for people?
I also like toying with variants of where "essential elements" can live, sometimes in odd places :)
https://x.com/patcon_/status/1963648801962369358
> I have an idea for a quirky event experimenting with the "minimum viable feeling of community", but need to explain some context first. Bear with me...
> [...]
> So here's the event idea: what if someone ran an event where the 2nd rule was "NO INTRODUCTIONS", but only because the 1st rule was "you must arrive having fully memorized ONLY everyone's name and face". Beyond the strange entry requirement, what would such an event feel like?
> And what strange sorts of intimacy might be created by this minimal scaffold of "knowing everyone"... & being in community together? I suspect it might feel like a warm event full of friends, but where everyone had mysteriously forgotten everything they knew about one another :)
Maybe the genuineness that it seemed to come from really is what made the difference in the long run; I obviously don't know how everyone else felt about it, but in other jobs I haven't found it particularly difficult to notice when the general perception of higher-level managers is a lot more positive or negative than my own, so my instinct is that most people probably also liked him, and I do think that makes some amount of difference. Having a "glue" person who is more detail-oriented is probably fine if the reason the actual authority figure doesn't retain the details is just not having that particular skill, but if it's because they genuinely think that the people beneath them in the org chart are just resources they can use to solve problems rather than actual people who will work better in the long term if treated well, then no, I don't think it would be as effective.
My last CTO was hired after me, the org was hyperscaling. When i was interviewed I was told that the company is banking on JS and that's what we were doing on both ends [1]
When CTO was hired he made a walk through the office, greeting every team, he stopped at our cubicle and asked what we were doing - I told him basics - and he said "you should be doing that in Java".
Few weeks later he had a townhall presentation. He came to a room full of people, plug in his computer and the screen started playing a pornhub flix.
He didn't got fired. I was.
I think it is sour grapes that new CTO didn’t know shit and even did full embarrassment on display - yet tech guy who knew his job was let go most likely with his team just because CTO thought whatever they were doing should be in Java.
javascript coder joined taking the company's statement in good faith "everything will be javascript, the front and back end both" and happily did it
New CTO joins, warmly visits all, dude who joined in good faith parrots his understanding of what we're doing to the CTO. CTO reacts "NO IT MUST BE JAVA" and this is a flex new CTOs love to do -rewrite everything- often to failure
javascript coder now arguably may no longer be needed if he's not a java programmer, maybe CTO is bringing in their own guys, gets canned.. gets canned by a clown who (a) is watching porn during work and (b) shows it to everybody and (c) leadership above the CTO saw this and did nothing
They knew everyone in the school (ebery teacher and about 500+ student names), and what happened in every class. It took time and talent to do it, but it made them a lot less insulated.
Claiming you can't know 100-200 people - your high school teacher wrote 100 reports. Now obviously they aren't 100% on the ball, but they have some idea (I hope).
There's an old story about how Bill Gates once took a call in tech support. A far larger organisation, and he still was willing to dive deep and see what was going on at the least glamorous part of the coalface.
There's a difference between trying to micromanage everything, and micromanaging enough that you're not out of touch.
Feedback is a two way street. It both let's you know what is happening, and let's the people below know that you actually care. Even if you can't (and arguably shouldn't) be everywhere at once, it has its place.
Now yes, it's drive by management and isn't the main tool that a manager should use, but being overly scared that your trusted expert juniors will be destroyed by a senior checking up on them is maybe a bit silly, and if a senior manager is such a tool that they do cause havoc just by looking over someone's shoulder and giving them a bit of feedback you're already in trouble.
Inulation isn't the answer IMO, just accepting that yes you don't need to know everyone and everything to the same level as if it was a small team.
While leaders can't know everyone they should make it a priority to have those random connections outside their inner circle. If they don't, they become in danger of hearing only the info that their inner circle wants them to hear.
As quality issues become fewer, the odds increase that inspecting a small number of products at random will lead to you thinking that there are zero quality issues. Have your inspections procedure scale and adapt to the relative proportion of quality issues you have reason to believe exist. And if you believe you truly have zero quality issues, then you need to switch to an immediate feedback procedure (such as an anonymous tip line, or a non-anonymous one for customer feedback).
I think there's a good point to be made here that this isn't micromanaging, it's bypassing feedback layers that have a tendency to filter out critical or important information. That information may or may not be withheld intentionally, but being Bill Gates and seeing that a crucial tool to help a customer doesn't work very fast, or is missing information, or relies on "hacks" (tribal knowledge on how to bypass restrictions or flags) to keep the support process going would be something that wouldn't filter upwards easily.
Definitely a balance to be had though for sure.
I rather have her not talking to me, because it's much worse knowing she fakes her openness, than actually just not showing up.
In the worst case, they only want to present as open to feedback, while they are using that feedback to build the list of detractors who will be laid off, not promoted, etc. And this kind of personal feedback can really trigger this sort of person.
This seems like a concrete example of why this logic is flawed.
To me I believe it more useful to start with the premise of: I'm already communicating and leading trillions, how do I actually do that?
A common issue is that we hold thoughts, logic and language as a type of universal gold standard, while ignoring that most of our communication isn't even verbal to begin with. It's context, observation, pattern recognition, a self-serving goal which aligns with the collective, because we're all wanting the same things. What feels good, what's expansive, what's beautiful etc. These are the reward functions for healthy communication in the human body, the more that we align and work with these, the better the results.
Well, yeah, that feedback scales perfectly because your cells don't have free will.
I think there are plenty of real-world examples of large-scale projects where feedback scaled well, for similar reasons... though I doubt we want to use those as a guide.
They are still independent cells. If they stop cooperating with the rest of the body, they become literally cancer.
Edit: in fact, this "negative space" is probably underappreciated as the force defining the concept of a "living organism" itself. The fact that we can't just swap cells or pieces of cells around, that there is no universal, general-purpose cell that can be a skin cell today, a muscle cell tomorrow, a brain cell next week - is what makes nature be composed of organisms, instead of just being one big soup of cells.
Most people who live in a city want the city to function well, and actively do their tiny little bit to see this happen. This doesn't stop them from flipping each other off on the freeway.
More broadly I think you're missing the point of the article. A single person can command a military of millions, but that single person can't ensure that everyone in that military have all of their needs met, personal emergencies dealt with, or just plain care enough to not half-ass it. Much less hear and respond to everyone's ideas on what would make things better, or what's making things worse.
Our individual cells have very simple needs in order to keep our larger structure functioning, and even then sometimes things go catastrophically wrong.
You're not, not in this sense. There is no body-wide feedback at all at the cellular level, any single cell is disposable and nothing will notice if it dies. Any meaningful feedback exists between and within functional units of the body.
There is, however, the other, original form of feedback that allows the body to exist - the one that allows you to not have this commonly understood "feedback" in the first place. That is, feedback loops, the control theory concept of systems that self-stabilize or self-amplify. This, not some top-level control, is what's keeping the body together.
The body is a perfect example of a naturally hierarchical system. Society is another. That's what scales.
Rather than trusting the same principles used for scaling the doing side of the business. Things like empowering people to make decisions [1] or being clear about what/how/why you make certain types of decisions [2]. Working on staying aligned with your closest team, which then spent energy on staying aligned with their teams, etc. Sample randomly from the whole org, but mostly at your pace.
The biggest mistake I've made was that I've pulled myself (for legitimate reasons, it seemed) from having a true conversation with every single hire before they've gotten an offer, when we were around 70. 30 minutes is typically enough, but I feel you need a singular person as a gatekeeper for the final values-fit check. Partially thinking that 70 is already good enough, but later I've come across people talking about, like, 500 people before pulling out [3] :)
[1]: https://www.bobek.cz/decisions/ [2]: https://www.bobek.cz/work-principles/ [3]: https://mastersofscale.com/reed-hastings-culture-shock/
I would not say it this way; it is too simplistic. In fact, I generally caution against the dominant metaphor here of comparing feedback to scaling. It falls apart quickly.
Here’s a counter point. In many scenarios and settings, relationships provide transitive benefits. For example, if a leader builds trusted relationships with other leaders, a significant amount of trust can flow through that relationship.
To build a better understanding, I suggest building diverse models. Try to answer the question: What kind of qualities do relationships confer and why?
There’s also a generational aspect here. I started my career in the 2000 tech boom and bust. I’ve seen a lot of up-and-down cycles in the industry. I’ve seen lots of management styles and organizational cultures. People that had formative years during peak social media and/or COVID often have a different kind of socialization and this affects their default expectations. I won’t attach normative judgments without research, but there are significant differences.
When I think of the most impressive collaborations I’ve participated in with amazing results, relatively few of them involve tech organizations.
Building a scalable culture over various company sizes feels hard in the sense that generalizing prescriptive advice is tricky. A two person start up is cake because you only have to manage one internal relationship (a pair). People know great culture when they see it, but that is nothing like growing it.
Though I agree with the larger point, there is a critical way to overcome that. The second line of leadership must own the culture at their team's level. This only works if you have direct access to the larger group. An open-door policy where anyone can schedule time with you is essential.
You might not understand their struggle, but you can hear and route it to the right people. Sometimes the best way to show empathy is simply to listen.
In my experience, open door policies are necessary but not sufficient. If the policy is to wait for feedback to walk through your door you will only hear from the set of people motivated, willing, and trusting enough to do that.
You have to go out and ask everyone one by one the appropriate questions and also be willing to listen. I’ve been in some companies where feedback was requested but then the immediate reaction was to argue and deny any feedback given, which is a fast path to ensure people stop providing feedback.
At the same time, accepting and acting on feedback is a skill in its own right.
That level of feedback can be done with individual managers and their reports, with occasional skip-level check ins.
I don’t actually thinking open door policies where, for example, the CEO of a large corporation is open to scheduling time with anyone who wants it could work for very long in an organization with 1000 people. I worked closely with the CEO of a company of that size that was growing. The number of ICs who attempted to send him emails and unsolicited reports trying to curry favor, get him to take their side in office politics, take credit for things, or even get their mangers in trouble was surprising to me. He made the mistake of publicly thanking a few people for bringing things to attention, which opened the floodgates for people seeing direct messages to the CEO as the highest leverage thing they could do in the office.
The direct feedback skipping too many levels just doesn’t work because the person receiving feedback doesn’t have the context necessary to interpret it. The reporters know this and will start twisting facts and details to fit the narrative they want to deliver.
I've read somewhere that company politics is necessary. Whether that's true, I'll probably never know.
* that the interaction with a peer _is_ the problem. I know we should all be grown up and able to talk about these things in a mature and effective way, but I can't cope with conflict in any shape or form, so if someone says Boo to me I cave in which doesn't get me any further
* because peers aren't the people that need to hear some of the things I've got to say, it's layers above me that need to hear itThey are political beasts, and unless you have some political capital with the Manager.
Long story short - if the other guy is seen by the manager as more valuable, you speaking up will get you a one way ticket to the door
Why would you live this way?
Do you think all people have the same innate capacities for all skills?
(That's not to say that training can never improve capabilities, but those with a fundamental handicap will always be disadvantaged, as with the blind, deaf, paralysed, amputees, etc. And psychological limitations.)
> It's layers above me that need to hear it
Most workers socialized under capitalism feel this way, that the power rests at the top of the hierarchy and IF ONLY THEY KNEW, they could FIX THINGS. Well, guess what? Your job is to keep them from knowing. You, as a leaf-node of the hierarchy, operate "the sharp end of the system" where "all ambiguity is resolved."[0] You exist to DO the WORK, and that includes the "theory building"[1] from which the owners of the business pay you to be insulated.
However you interpret that on a moral level, practically speaking it means that YOU and your peer practicioners are actually the ones with the power and the (sometimes merely implicit) mandate to enact whichever policy you think the "layers above" ought to impose.
If you REALLY need something from the higher-ups, the only real way to get it is to march on the boss and, with sufficient leverage, demand it as a collective. You're going to have to talk to your peers to organize that, or we'll slide further into thisbdystopia in which "we fear our neighbor’s opinion more than we respect our own freedom of choice."[2]
To effect lasting change, one must act with consistent commitment alongside one's peers, rather than waiting for a moment of grace from the "layers above."
"Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it."[2]
0. How Complex Systems Fail
1. Programming as Theory Building, Naur
2. The Dispossessed, LeGuin
One extreme counterpoint is all the cases where human activity is “abstracted away” (e.g., the gig economy).
Indeed even in less extreme cases, in a traditional role, sometimes you feel to be not given the knowledge that you need to be better at theory building. How does one deal with that?
Which is really "We don't document our implicit hierarchy, screw with it at your own risk
You are still 100 people short to know 200 people, but I got the idea.
The 100 people limit is already know by most of teachers. Having more than 3 classes, it is mostly impossible (very hard) to have a "deep" follow up of each student. Having more than 6 classes and it is strictly impossible to follow them even in the best conditions.
It is really important to recognize that it is the perception of an attack that triggers certain responses. For a counter example, watch how puppies play. It can very rough at some level but at another the intent is clearly benign.
There are ways to shape and modify perceptions! Culture. Norms. Timing. Technology. Inclusion and exclusion criteria. Information architecture.
Never assume that the technology or protocols you use have been designed for your core values. Often you have to redesign it for your purposes. Please do.
Feedback *can* scale if one carefully defines protocols to suit particular goals. We are not helpless even if it seems we are hapless. Leaders and designers (often social scientists) must step up and show better ways.
Computer scientists and software engineers must show curiosity and intellectual humility here. Better to draw broadly from other fields: social work, negotiation, psychology, anthropology, public policy, and more.
Good luck with that.
In most cronytocracies (typical, at the top levels of most companies), you get who you get. They may be really good engineers and "first line" managers, but suck at anything else.
A big problem is that companies don't have career tracks that match people's skills. The Peter Principle[0] applies.
Bad managers hire and promote other bad managers. Highly skilled engineers can often be terrible managers, but want to be managers, because that is the position they equate with "success," at an organization.
A Principal Engineer should be just as valued and well-treated as a CTO. Most companies fail to do this, so everyone wants to be the CTO. Establish a career track, where technical people aspire to technical positions.
And hire good managers; not ones that don't make the CEO uncomfortable.
I spent my whole career avoiding engineering management and trying to grow in the pure technical leadership direction. One day I realized that for every staff engineer there are 10 managers, for every principal there are 5 senior managers, etc.
Turns out management is not so bad and companies seem to appreciate that kind of help a lot more
edit: also as a manager you get to work on all those pesky “It’s a people problem, actually” parts of engineering which is pretty fun. Every time in technical leadership where it felt like “Well we’ve got the plan now we just gotta incentivize doing the plan” you’re the one doing the incentivizing yay!
I hated it, but was actually pretty good at it (I worked for a company that didn't suffer slackers, and they kept me for almost 27 years). I mainly kept it, because I couldn't trust anyone else to do the job correctly.
But my heart has always been in the tech, and I did side projects, that whole time. Since leaving, I ran screaming back to being a technical implementation person, and am almost deliriously happy.
A good manager is actually fairly hard to find. It's been my experience that a majority of highly-talented developers, don't make good managers.
I think the best managers are people who will even do management if that's what it takes.
100%. I’ve had to fight to build a real IC track at my last three companies - I don’t care if HR wants to call everyone a manager, or differentiate with “staff”/“principal” or whatever else, but there has to be a viable promotion track for everyone, and it has to be equitable.
This view of things can easily be used as an excuse to behave poorly, or otherwise, opaquely, with no transparency and accountability, and claim that there is no problem.
Theoretically, yes, but in practice those 10 don’t really know 10 people. And if you don’t hire well and don’t have everything you need to keep them motivated, some of your 10 won’t even care about their 10 people or may actively be sabotaging you, peers, and/or their subordinates.
(Hierarchy and bureaucracy can of course have many other issues, but structuring flows isn't generally one of them.)
I like the Jason Fried-ism of: If something really matters, you’ll hear it again. If you have to write it down to remember it, it’s probably not important.
it usually takes very little time. Much less than serious consideration.
From the bottom of the article.
Going and seeking out the feedback you want does not stop scaling.
I'd say it scales pretty darn good!
I agree this is a necessary cost of being at the top of a large organization.
But I am very suspicious of the kind of people that seem to have no trouble at all being misunderstood and disliked by many. Yes, decent people can be in those positions. But it's often a honeypot for sociopaths.