zlacker

>>thecal+(OP)
The reasulting reality of the managerless approach hasn’t been good. As the they say, “if you don’t have any managers you have politics”.

I have several friends who used to work at Valve none of them hate the place, they still have friends there, etc. But they tell similar stories as to why things that normal companies do successfully are impossible at Valve. Perhaps it’s best summed up by something one friend said about her year and a half at Valve: “I first learned who my boss was on the day she fired me.”

Google tried this, notoriously dense grating and then firing basically all the managers at an all-hands. That didn’t work out well at all... And now they have over-steered in the opposite direction!

>>gumby+54
It's hard - I'd say impossible for most people - to be simultaneously excellent at the organization and (yes,) politics that go into managing the output of a company, and the execution that goes into developing and operating the systems of a company. They both take effort because they are both real jobs.

Add a bit of arrogance in the mix and you get devs thinking their managers are worthless and managers thinking their teams are useless.