The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun
economist.com
economist.com
For instance, he conflates the move to open plan offices, which is seen as increasing communication within teams, but also enables an almost oppressive level of employee monitoring, with googles propensity to space hoppers. These are quite different things, coming from quite different places. Open plan offices have very little to do with happy employees, and everything to do with productivity.
I detect a subtext when he says 'hierarchical is better, managers should think about strategy, Blackberry CEOs are a professional manager and a technician (which is a loaded word, as it means a low skilled technical worker).
I mean, is this a backlash against the increasingly irrelevance of management in flat organizations? If we read an article by an IT worker, explaining that Amazon Cloud might be making him irrelevant, but companies migrating to it are making a huge mistake, then we would see his true motivations in writing that. I wonder if computer enabled flat management is making people like Schumpeter feel under threat.
The idea of risks and experimentation, is that companies like Google are not creating products through a predictable process - they are farming black swans.
You can manufacture software to spec predictably. If you can find developers who will work to spec, remain motivated without personal control of their work, and generally put up with being treated like a production line worker, you can make software on a production line. Infosys do just this.
But you can't manufacture technological progress, the next big thing. Because the creation, validation, and creative implementation of ideas is not something that comes out of a factory. Sony try this. Look where that gets them.
Where I think the article has a good point: - These open offices are incredibly distracting, and it's not just sound, it's not a problem that can be mitigated by putting headphones on alone. In the open office at my workplace, I can see people moving; I can see who's going to meetings; I can see who's talking across the room. I think of this distraction, to use a popular new term, as a dark pattern to productivity.
I'd like to call B.S. on those who think great, creative new products come from chattering with your peers rather than working really hard. Ideas are the cheap and easy part, it's the execution that decides whether they come to fruition or not.
To me the big point about innovation, that I think you touched on and the article is wrong about, is these great ideas only happen when employees have the freedom to work hard on a side project. This is more likely to happen in a flat company, but can happen in a hierarchical one as well. Employees need to know that they can work hard on a gamble side project, and if it turns out well, will also have the freedom to integrate it with the company's product(s). That's where innovation comes from, and an open style office only slows down the work required to make an idea into a real product, and a hierarchically structured company is more likely to not allow such freedom.
Keeping that in mind helps to contextualize nonsense like this.
It's also why the Economist operates the way they do.
What enrages me most is that the "leader" opinion pieces (at the very front of every issue) are so catastrophically bad. I recently wondered if there might be a positive correlation between how bad a political decision has played out and whether or not it had been demanded by "leader".
As soon as it runs out, I'll get a Guardian subscription instead.
Whats on the inside front cover of Make Magazine? That means its probably worth talking about; doesn't mean its necessarily the right thing for everyone to buy all the time.
Look on the bright side, at least the Economist isn't as bad as getting your biz/econ news from CNBC; as a legacy media its pretty good.
This isn't always the case. A lot of new innovating ideas are incorporated into existing systems and products. Whether something stands alone by itself or not is a packaging question- not a judge of how innovating something new is. A key new feature in a complex system can solve large long-standing limitations and have huge impact.
Rather than only working on new interesting ideas as side projects, you can incorporate time to experiment with new ideas during a shipping cycle. Prototypes and answer a lot of questions in a short amount of time, and those answers can be incorporated into planning for new features.
Predictable process doesn't have to stifle innovation- and can create a forum for new innovating ideas to be discussed and executed on well.
Schumpeter won't care, he's been dead 60+ years now. The Economist has a habit of naming their departments after famous people in the field to make a political statement. Schumpeter was kind of the anti-Marx and anti-Keynes of his era. Read into that what you may about the editorial board of the Economist. Somehow I don't think Fox is in any danger of having their "fair and balanced" motto stolen by the Economist LOL
He had his good points and his bad points as an economist. They're probably not all over his biorhythm / astrology based business cycles, although given how crude understanding was at the time, he did push the field forward at least a little. On the other hand he was kind of the first wise old men of technological innovation and the entrepreneurs so on HN of all places I would expect people to at least pretend to have heard of him. I would expect this crowd would not give a pass on someone who had no idea who Turing or Babbage was, so its kinda a bad scene that I seem to be the only person on HN who knows who Schumpeter was.
As for the specific claim about management being replaced, he was of the opinion that in groups people cannot self govern themselves successfully, and they pretty much need a loosely controlled republic at most, not referendums and democracy. So not knowing much about his views on management, but knowing his views on govt, he'd probably find that tool-mediated management is not going to work any better than mass media-mediated government. But who knows, someone who knows more econ than me, might dredge up an essay by the man on this very specific topic.
Montessori actively encourages children to develop the capacity to disagree reasonably within teams while preserving civility. The classroom environment and curriculum encourages solitary inquiry into subjects of great personal interest. Providing quiet spaces for individual students to carry out work is a high priority in Montessori classrooms. And, in marked contrast to a hierarchical, command-and-control style education, Montessori allows a student to choose to spend hours of the school day away from the noise and bustle of the classroom and their peers working on his/her project.
Aside from considering what Montessori "actually" is, the whole premise is blown by one fact: traditional, hierarchical education systems put students in the classroom, a completely open, depersonalized space that explicitly encourages surveillance and strips away individual privacy. So, tell me again, what does the model for open-space offices most closely resemble?
I've read some excellent critiques of open-plan, non-hierarchical office culture and management styles; this was not one.
The benefit is it is easier to communicate, and the downside is that it is harder to get away. We give everyone a pair of noise cancelling headphones as a way of shutting out the office noise. Its not as solid as an office but its better than nothing, and culturally if you're typing away with your headphones on its very similar to working with your door closed.
That said I don't think it is the ultimate answer, there is still stuff to be done. Maybe rolling desks around so you can move them into an office when you need to concentrate? Or perhaps some partitions for groups but not cubicals explicitly.
Definitely a work in progress.
Can't you just rent a 1950s vintage office building somewhere cheap and give your people the option? C.F. Claude Shannon (who stayed in a city centre building when his employer moved to the suburbs)[1].
I agree with others that the OA is confusing several issues (office layout and corporate goofiness).
I really wonder if we've lost something by not having more spaces in our life like libraries where the cultural norm is to be silent and to enforce silence in the space so it may remain a sanctuary from noise.
[0] ironically, I've also made more as the models I bought appreciated in value significantly, so yay!
The two that I owned were:
-- Joe Grado HP-1000 HP-1 (bought@ $700 , sold@ $1700)
-- AKG K-1000 (bought@ $750, sold@ $1250)
Both were amazing headphones. I especially loved the experience with the K-1000, but I never used them enough to justify them because I amped them with a pair of monoblock power amps which were normally connected to floorstanding speakers. The effort to change the cables coupled with the risk of burning out components if you wired something up loosely and one power amp was driven with no load lead me to rarely switch the floorstanders for the K-1000s.
Now I use a Denon D7000, which surprisingly works great unamped, but I'll be getting an amp in a few months probably.
For me, headphones would help but wouldn't be enough. I hate having people moving around behind me. I could have my back to a wall, but there's still a potential problem of visual distraction. I haven't had the chance to try that, but next time I'm in an open plan I'll ask for a back-to-the-wall seat.
Can you say more about the challenges of people moving behind you? I felt similarly but it had more to do with whether or not people would correctly interpret what I was doing / not doing. So for example I'll read something from a different subject to pull my brain out of an endless loop when I am not making progress on a problem. Is that goofing off? Sure it might look that way if you didn't ask but if you did ask you would get the full story. So can people own up to asking? Or do they run with their assumptions?
As a manager I like to know that folks are making progress against the things they are responsible for. Sometimes they have milestones, sometimes not, so I spend some time trying to understand that progress. If there is little progress and a lot of web surfing, that is a useful conversation to have (trying to be more productive). But if someone is spending their days checking in excellent code and leaves TMZ up on their monitor I'm totally fine with that too. It reminds me of an anecdote.
So my daughters had this tendency to do their homework in front of the television. At first glance it looked like more "TV watching" than "studying" and the conversation we had was about results vs consequences. I didn't care one way or the other if they spent time watching television, as long as the priority was to get their work done. The consequences of not getting that work done occurred whether I approved or didn't approve. But I was also quite clear that it was their choice and so there aren't any excuses for poor work if it is done while watching TV, its just the indicator that you can't really do both and expect to do good work. Conversely if you do both and your work is fine, then that is totally fine.
If I can develop a level of trust with someone that they realize what I care about is that they get done what they say they will (and that getting done both a reasonable amount of work and at good quality levels) then they also understand I have no issue with them apparently "goofing off."
If some people had offices and others didn't, I can totally see how that would cause issues. In my ideal scenario everyone has some hidey-hole, at least. Do you think that would work better, as long as there are other ways they are encouraged to communicate?
True. But, as with all things that have pros and cons, if your culture doesn't respect that you have headphones on it's not at all like working with your door closed. There is no barrier to a tap on your desk or shoulder with 'a quick question.' This happens quite often where I work and I find myself guilty of doing it as often as it is done to me. Speaking for myself, a cultural barrier is much less inclined to stop my behavior than a real physical barrier be it a cube with walls or even better an office witha door.
I have worked in a variety of situations the past 10+ years some cubes, once I had an office to myself and open floor plans the past several years. I think my optimal preference would be the shared office approach, with 2 or three individuals in the office. In a small group, it's much easier to request and establish a smaller customized set of things related to mutual respect for differences in how we all work.
Open floor plans with offices are among the most caustic I've ever encountered as everybody jostles and resents those that get offices. Inevitably some criteria for office assignment will get set and then you'll run out of offices and some various persons who've worked long and hard to "earn" an office won't be able to get one and now you have a senior disgruntled bad apple in among your rank and file.
Open floor plans are terrible too, but a step down from open with offices. They often backfire in weird ways as well. In one place I worked the dev area was an open office with breakout conference rooms. The unwritten culture was that it had to be as quiet as a tomb. Which also meant there was no communication happening...so it was pointless as a communication mixer. People stopped checking their email and communication deadlocked.
"It is rather absurd for a technology firm to provide slides for staff to play on, and to let them wear silly propeller-hats"
"Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers (who thought about strategy) and chains of command"
It always amuses me to read these lofty articles from academics and journalists about how multi-billion-dollar companies are doing it wrong.
What are you trying to say here? Are you suggesting that if someone has a multi-billion dollars company, they are clearly "doing it right?"
I'm trying to say that Google in particular is "doing it right" in the sense that they're providing a fun environment for existing engineers and one that's attractive to many potential engineers, and that the revenue numbers reflect this (in part).
I'm saying that calling propeller hats "silly" (they're a Noogler thing; silly is the point) and bemoaning the fact that Google doesn't "model themselves on the armed forces" (whatever that means) suggests to me that these journalists and academics have no idea how things work in the real world, or at least in the Valley.
Models are always faulty in some way, but using them appropriately can be a good thing. The problem many of these corporate styles addresses is that it's very easy to overconstrain your solution space without realizing it. This turns out to be extremely important in creative tasks. Not so much everywhere, but in places where teams are supposed to be both creating and radically optimizing their work streams? Makes a huge difference.
We're also seeing the emergence of a personal corporate brand, where companies are supposed to have personalities, like people. Employees are encouraged to get Twitter accounts. Everything that faces the public is supposed to look like "Hey! We're having a blast here, and we can't wait to help you out." The majority of the corporate submarine pieces we see on HN have this subtext.
These are major changes. Perhaps you can lay it all at the door of the Montessori style, but I kinda doubt it. Instead, I think the author is just making a blanket assertion, creating a bit of a straw man in order to set it on fire. As long as it encourages critical thinking about these things, that's not a bad thing.
Apparently the author and his editors failed to notice that he has already disassembled his straw man before he starts attacking it...
I'll be the first to rail against a lot of contemporary Silicon Valley/tech culture, but running your business like 1950s IBM has nothing to do with producing a quality software/hardware product. If you don't have a public facing job, then does it matter if you wear a t-shirt and jeans to work, and have video games in the break room, etc?
"Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers (who thought about strategy) and chains of command. Now many model themselves on learning-through-play “Montessori” schools."--What do you bet that the author of this piece has never served in the military?
I think it can. I've had a couple of jobs where I needed to wear a suit to work (or at minimum, dress shirt, tie, and slacks) even though my job was not customer-facing. It had its annoyances but in some ways I think I took everything a little bit more seriously when I was at the office. Probably for the same reasons that uniforms are found to decrease behavior problems in schools that require them. There's sort of a mental switch that is thrown when you put on your suit, you switch into "work mode" and then when you take it off at the end of the day you switch to "not at work mode" and it actually can help with work/life balancing.
But not all people have such preferences. I know people that are quite happy and productive while working from home. And personally I come to work in slippers and tee-shirt during the summer, with no effect on my seriousness with which I treat work.
Specifically, the first half of the article is about "Montessory-style" business leadership. The second half cites a survey or two that criticize excessive collaboration within teams and open-plan office layouts.
It seems intended to mislead the reader into conflating these two criticisms of very specific issues with criticisms of the entire so-called "Montessory-style" business approach. But I don't think the article contains any actual evidence of the backlash claimed in the title.
This quote is everything that's wrong with science journalism. I'm sure there are some narrowly defined conclusions to be drawn from the study, but "collaboration had costs as well as benefits" is a truism, not a finding.
And I'm highly skeptical that Hansen said any such thing (that the results somehow say something new about the scale of costs relative I benefits of collaboration). Though if he did he and his reviewers bear some responsibility.
This always happens on these "it depends" questions. People see one thing that works and try it everywhere. Then people see that it doesn't work everywhere, and just assume it's bad. This author fell neatly into the trap.
What?! An office of the size for 1 person, without a window? That sounds awful. Is it like a big closet with bright-lighting?[1] How many people on HN would like to work in the room pictured in the below link?:
http://jonnyh.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/kar-server-room-pa...
The room in your photo would look a lot better to me just by replacing the overhead fluorescent lighting with some incandescent lamps and putting some art on the walls.
Ah, just ignore me if I don't make sense .Kumbayah!(that's right just one Y)