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Holacracy and other 'flat' structures, as far as I'm aware, don't claim to get rid of management (the verb). My understanding is that they aim to distribute decision-making to the front lines so either get rid of management (the noun) or in the case of Holacracy define a constraining structure to take the whim out of management. It seems a bit like the way a constitution iterates the powers of goverment to empower the citizenry.

One of the popular references in this area is the USMC's book Warfighting (free PDF, Google it), which lays out their doctrine of Manoeuvre Warfare, i.e. that by optimising the speed at which your force can react and manoeuvre you can overload your opponent's command structure. To do that they distribute decision making to the greatest feasible extent under the premise that a squad leader on the front lines has the most accurate information, so must be empowered with the right amount of context and self-determination within their orders. Rather than "take that hill" it's more like "we need to advance to X, and the mortar on that hill is preventing us".

Anyway, the main point is that nobody to my knowledge is suggesting we get rid of management (the verb), and nor is anyone saying that we should ignore the power structures inherent in hiring/firing/remuneration.

Thanks richmarr for paying attention to the details instead of swallowing the press' simplistic statements :)

I suspect the dumbing down of news says more about the state of the news industry than it does about the capacity of the public to understand.

> Did somebody hire you? He's your boss. Can somebody fire you? He's your boss. Can they tell you to show up at work at certain times, or prevent you from taking the afternoon off to take your kid to the doctor? He's your boss. Can someone control whether or not you get a raise? They're your boss.

What are you talking about? In the flat-managed places I've worked in, a group a peers periodically voted on everyone else's performance. If you had to leave the office for something, you announced it (but never asked permission for it ) on the group mailing list.

> Does somebody extract the excess value from the of the labor you provide, and claim the right to do so by more efficiently organizing the workplace so as to produce value most efficiently?

The one I'm talking about was a publicly traded company, so no. The technical "owner" of the company had little to no say in the management. Maybe this place was not the typical employer. It was in a field where talent is extremely valued. The employees ruled.

If you ask me, it's quite a bit harder to brown-nose 20 of your peers, than just one boss. The dynamics were vastly different than a non-flat, 1-boss system.

>> Does somebody extract the excess value from the of the labor you provide,

> publicly traded company, so no.

Er, yes. The shareholders get your excess value and are ultimately in control. Ford v. Dodge is your constraint. I'm sure they take no active part so long as you're successful, but when you're not, what happens then?

You've cut off the part of the sentence that I was replying to.

That would be claim the right to do so by more efficiently organizing the workplace so as to produce value most efficiently?

The self-organisation described is not pure mutuality, it's just delegation from the shareholders, who currently trust that the organisation's self-organising will most likely give them the best return. Ultimately they have the right to reorganise you.

I'm not overly convinced by the current "no management" things either. But, I pretty much disagree with you from this on.

I think this outlook is either very semantic or are overlooking how much human organisations vary geographically and historically. We have had tribes, clans, nations, hoards, navies, divinely mandated empires, amateur field hockey teams, political parties, a diverse range of associations wherein people wear uncomfortable clothes and vow celibacy... An "organisation" is just a group of people a memoplex of human culture. We have had all sorts.

A limited liability company is just one of these. We are going to keep inventing more of them. I don't think it's far fetched to expect that one or two of them will produce camera drones, video games, or medicines.

If you think these are all the same, because the abbot is the manager or something along these lines, that's what I mean by very semantic. Otherwise, change is always possible.

The parent commentor's point was about access to capital. Yes, there are lots of ways to structure groups of humans. But in today's world only the VC-funded startup gets a relatively unaccountable huge upfront cash injection to build a unicorn.

Well, the EU is preparing to invest 315 billion euros, and they chose a software startup to illustrate the kind of business they want to invest in.

By the way, for reference, VCs invested $48 billion (~= 44 billion €) in 2014, which was the top year since 2000.

http://europa.eu/workingforyou/en/content/eu-launches-€-315-...

What does $foo expand to for St. Louis?

'Silicon Prairie' is the one I've heard tossed around.

I've heard that name applied to a bunch of places -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Prairie seems accurate -- St. Louis is a new one to me. But I've probably just missed it, only taking note when I happen to hear such things nth hand (my extended family is from around St. Louis and I grew up/went to school in Illinois). Taking note, thanks for heads up! :)

My guess would be that this may drive engineers to the Midwest, with its lower cost of real estate and already-entrenched culture of cooperatives (in agriculture and some industries) and worker-led structures like labor unions. Places like Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, or maybe even college towns like Madison and Ann Arbor (where housing cooperatives are very prevalent and widely-accepted) would be where I would look for this kind of change first. Current "'Silicon $foo' where $foo != 'Valley'" type cities (St. Louis, Austin, etc) may be a good bet too.

Interesting theory. (Let me add Minneapolis to your list.) The Midwest gets a lot of bad press on the Coasts ("flyover country") but what's missed is that if you control for urban-versus-rural or for density, it's probably the most educated and liberal part of the country (perhaps tied with the Pacific Northwest). The East Coast, for example, isn't notably cultured (to any degree that's hard to find in other parts of the country) outside of certain neighborhoods in Boston or New York (which are getting expensive and inaccessible anyway).

The real cultural tension in the U.S. isn't South vs. North or "Red States" versus "Blue States". You might call it "urban versus rural", but there are so few farmers (and most farmers I know are actually quite educated; you have to be smart to compete with agricorps) that it's more of an urban versus suburb dichotomy (with the distinction depending more on lifestyle and outlook than whether the location is technically part of the incorporated city).

So yes, I agree. I don't know that we need more talent coming into the Midwest (although it won't hurt); we just need to stop losing the talent that we have to the Bay Area (where young engineers are still paid better after adjusting for cost-of-living; once you get older, the Midwest starts to win because it's more like 140k vs. 170k than 70k vs. 120k). Obviously, most of those talented people don't stay in the Bay Area (they get older, need space for families) but there isn't a clear "next" destination for them. Do they go to Seattle? Chicago? Portland? Austin? Somewhere else? Perhaps this is a good thing, though, because it's probably better for the country to have talent spread around than to try to replicate an aberration (SV's concentration of economic activity, which congests it and deprives the rest of the country).