Looks like an interesting headline but unfortunately I am pay walled out. Can anyone provide a summary of the article? Personally I have grown tired of flat organizations and I’m glad to see that the idea is coming under scrutiny.
What was your experience with these companies? I've only spent seven months in a supposed flat structure and in reality it was anything but flat. Barely literate juniors conducting internal "interviews" and wielding actual power made me run like hell.
Open office and Flat company structure always felt better to me when I was a manager than a dev. If there's no doors or walls I can always go grab an IC and get a quick 1:1 for whatever I need. And if everyone is my IC, how efficient am I?! I'm glad that's past. Being an IC is more individually stressful, but I feel more like a part of the solution.
It's all explained pretty well in Paul G's Maker Schedule vs Manager Schedule.
I'm sorry but this just sounds like some propaganda piece. First it talks about Valve's "issues with diversity" without establishing a clear link between the flat structure and that. Then the article tries to apply guilt by association, by basically saying "Theranos was bad, so flat structures are bad".
It also implies a company being diverse is a mandatory thing, and non-diverse firms are somehow inherently bad or non-desirable.
In the end, I don't really see any real arguments against flat hierarchies in the article, it's basically a propaganda piece made to convince those who don't read beyond buzzwords.
From the documentary I've watched, Theranos was a very dictatorial organization that had strictly enforced knowledge silos and spied on its employees. Their fraud wouldn't have been possible otherwise, but the article's "expert" claims the opposite. Also, quoting what Elizabeth Holmes said as evidence for anything is really beyond stupid at this point, yet it's exactly the logic of the article.
The article feels like it was written on a tight deadline by sleep deprived journalist trying to get something out.
Theranos is a case of a place that calls itself flat when it really isn't. If anything the moral issue presented here is more significant in hierarchies than in flat structures. In a hierarchical structure a few bad actors can do a lot without anyone even knowing about it. For this reason, more explicit hierarchies typically have a series of checks to try to curtail this issue. The lack of these checks at Theranos is less about being flat and more about the fact that it was a heirarchical org that refused to act accordingly.
I get that, but that's just stupid given how the story actually played out. When people talk about flat organizations and mean it, they also mean transparent, cross-functional teams that understand the full context. If that had been allowed at Theranos, every employee would have puzzled together the fraudulent behavior in 5 minutes. Someone would have leaked it years earlier.
I re-read the portion about Theranos but can’t follow his argument. Elizabeth Holmes once said her company had a flat structure, Theranos ended in scandal, therefore flat organizations are more prone to scandal? There are as many examples of successful flat companies as unsuccessful companies mentioned in the piece.
>It also implies a company being diverse is a mandatory thing, and non-diverse firms are somehow inherently bad or non-desirable.
In a way, it's astonishing how much work has been done over at least the past one or two decades to renormalize racism and discrimination.
And for those who don't quite get what I mean: "Diversity" at least in the political sense is a racist concept, you can't be "diverse" without explicitly considering someone's race.
Sure, but whenever someone says "diversity" they definitely do not mean the diversity of thought. They mean diversity in immutable attributes (sex, gender, race, nationality, etc.)
The original point of increasing diversity was to improve decision-making by not having basically an opinion bubble where everyone thinks the same way. So, companies tried to have non-traditional hires which would think differently than the existing employees. It only warped to what we know as "diversity" today later.
Diversity in the sense that people from various walks of life provide diverse(!) opinions is a very good thing. Getting stuck in thought bubbles is a very easy mistake to get into.
"Diversity" in the sense that people explicitly of a given race or sex be placed in a given seat to satisfy some "diversity" quota is not a show of diversity, it's just plain old discrimination.
That's an old argument that doesn't hold water. Sure if you misconstrue everything the worst way, you can convince yourself.
To pursue minority candidates who are qualified, is in no way discrimination. Unless you assume they are less deserving intrinsically, then it's fair to include them in a search.
Why would those candidates be excluded? Because white guys might suffer? That's a bankrupt argument at the core.
Fairness, the the privileged, looks like discrimination every time.
It's not about purposefully excluding anyone based on immutable traits, it's about not giving anyone preference based on immutable traits. The point is hiring people who are competent and can work together, "pursuing minority candidates" doesn't achieve that. I wouldn't want to be a "diversity hire" myself either, that's a bad position to be in, since everyone makes you feel that you are only here due to the policy, not because you have qualified in the proper way.
> "Diversity" at least in the political sense is a racist concept, you can't be "diverse" without explicitly considering someone's race.
The idea that anything that considers race is racist is either naive or foolish. We currently exist in a society that was built on white supremacy at its core. People of color are still actively being harmed by it, and white people are still benefiting from it to this day. To ignore that history and it's current and lasting effects is complacency in a racist system.
Consider this: if all were truly equal, companies of sufficient size would be diverse by default, being essentially a truly randomized subset of a diverse population. DEI initiatives would be a noop. Why is that not the case?
> First it talks about Valve's "issues with diversity" without establishing a clear link between the flat structure and that.
It quotes some professor who says it's related because “you’ve still got middle-aged, privileged white men making decisions at the top” due to a lack of safeguards.
> Then the article tries to apply guilt by association, by basically saying "Theranos was bad, so flat structures are bad".
It quotes another professor who says that the lack of structure is what allowed theranos to avoid having controls that would catch things.
> It also implies a company being diverse is a mandatory thing, and non-diverse firms are somehow inherently bad or non-desirable.
Not so much implies as takes as a given, I think. That's been pushed hard for several years now, to the point I often see it treated as axiomatic.
> It quotes some professor who says it's related because “you’ve still got middle-aged, privileged white men making decisions at the top” due to a lack of safeguards.
Sure, but that's not sound logic. It doesn't actually prove it, it just tries to extrapolate bad behaviour from race and gender (which is what racism and sexism is)
> It quotes another professor who says that the lack of structure is what allowed theranos to avoid having controls that would catch things.
How is that exclusive to flat organisations? This logic can be used almost verbatim to hierarchical organisations as well - a strong hierarchy is what allowed Company X to avoid having controls that would catch things. (Because no one dared to say anything to the leadership)
> Not so much implies as takes as a given, I think. That's been pushed hard for several years now, to the point I often see it treated as axiomatic.
This is either propaganda or plain misinformation. I don't accept it in any way, it's definitely not an axiom.
It's a news article, not a research paper. It's kind of expected that they'd find (friendly) experts to rely on for appeal-to-authority and not be picky about questioning "common knowledge" (that the article isn't specifically written to question).
It doesn't seem particularly worse than I'd expect a minor news article to be. Also, have you heard of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect?
Just because you don't expect them to do any better, that doesn't mean this is not just plain propaganda. The correct response to propaganda is not accepting it or saying "well it's expected from them" but to challenge it.
> It's a news article, not a research paper. It's kind of expected that they'd find (friendly) experts to rely on for appeal-to-authority and not be picky about questioning "common knowledge" (that the article isn't specifically written to question).
In this case I think they could have done a better job providing the context and reasoning of the experts. That would not change the point of the article and hopefully give readers an idea, not all of the details, of why the quote experts think what they think.
As it is I do no think I can use the article to change my point of view, even incrementally, or better understand what and why others are thinking on the topic.
There are quotes from external sources offered as evidence, but they do not stand by themselves or help support the article other than reference an external source. They do not show that flat organization results in the bad outcomes they mention, only show it is possible and has happened, but that is also true for non flat organizations too.
The external sources may stand well by themselves I can not tell from these quotes.
> It quotes some professor who says it's related because “you’ve still got middle-aged, privileged white men making decisions at the top” due to a lack of safeguards.
This does not seem to depend on whether or not you have a flat structure or not. The article also includes:
> The companies may reflect the same biases as society, without safeguards to avoid them.
which is as close to a justification as the article comes to, which does not seem to apply more to flat organizations than not.
>> Then the article tries to apply guilt by association, by basically saying "Theranos was bad, so flat structures are bad".
> It quotes another professor who says that the lack of structure is what allowed theranos to avoid having controls that would catch things.
The quote from the article is:
> “meant that these companies don’t have to do the difficult and tedious process of putting into place all the systems and controls you would normally find.”
This is not particular to an organization being flat though. Flat does not me you do not have systems or and controls. If there is the a definition that makes it so I have not seen it used in the article or elsewhere.
There are trade offs between flat and non flat organizations, but I would not recommend this article form someone looking to read up on the topic.
> The companies may reflect the same biases as society, without safeguards to avoid them.
which is as close to a justification as the article comes to, which does not seem to apply more to flat organizations than not. »
There's been a fair bit of noise about needing HR departments in order to enforce safeguards (which depending on who you ask will look like standardized interview processes or quotas or whatever). That's hierarchy and structure.
« Flat does not me you do not have systems or and controls. »
Something that's nominally flat may not actually be flat in practice, yes. That's actually the main idea presented in "The Tyranny of Structurelessness".
> There's been a fair bit of noise about needing HR departments in order to enforce safeguards (which depending on who you ask will look like standardized interview processes or quotas or whatever). That's hierarchy and structure.
> « Flat does not me you do not have systems or and controls. »
> Something that's nominally flat may not actually be flat in practice, yes. That's actually the main idea presented in "The Tyranny of Structurelessness".
You seem to be assume that flat organizations have zero structure and hierarchies. I have never seen the term used that way. 'flat' as in in flat organization is a coined term/phrase as far as I know so 'flat' is not 100% literal.
I have only see flat organization to mean less hierarchy relative to the standard. Often meaning there are fewer layers of managers between the ceo and the typical employee. I assume the term was coined to contrast the more pyramid like structure of managers that exist in some companies.
> It quotes some professor who says it's related because “you’ve still got middle-aged, privileged white men making decisions at the top” due to a lack of safeguards.
Said professor looking very pale and mature is a lifelong academic bureaucrat who would love to sell you an online MDA about the topic.
With over 30 years’ experience as an academic, Cliff has held positions at Queen Mary University of London, University of Leicester, King’s College, University of London, and Westminster University. He has also worked as an HR manager in local government.
Cliff’s research interests include the application of aspects of discourse, dramaturgy, tropes, narrative, and rhetoric to the study of organisations and organising.
The thing that I think was pretty stunning about this article is that it pretty much lays bare that, in some people's eyes, "diversity" is the only goal. That is, the title says that "Flat hierarchies rarely work", yet its only argument really for "not working" is that these companies aren't diverse. Nothing about business results, employee satisfaction, nada. Just "it's not diverse", and even then it doesn't really add much concrete evidence for its point, just some anecdotes from some people that "it felt like high school". The inclusion of Theranos is just flat out dumb: to attempt to try link Theranos' collapse to their org structure (as opposed to, say, their outright fraud and the fact that their tech never worked and was physically impossible) is laughable.
I honestly wonder if a story like this, which basically consists solely of conjecture and the author's point they want to make, would ever have been greenlit at the NYT if it wasn't specifically pushing this "approved" narrative.
Hence my point literally 2 sentences down that including Theranos in an attempt to link org structure to business performance/propensity for scandal is ridiculously stupid.
Not to mention how many non-flat companies fail this diversity check? How many large companies have black women at the helm? I guess hierarchical structures rarely work either! Damn we seem to be in a conundrum! NOTHING WORKS!
> The thing that I think was pretty stunning about this article is that it pretty much lays bare that, in some people's eyes, "diversity" is the only goal.
Some people think incorrectly on all topics in wild ways. This article does not(edit) provide evidence that '"diversity" is the only goal' for some people. I am sure you can find people like that, but this article is not good evidence for it or that they that they are a significant force in the work place.
Archive's catchpas are useless and absurd so I will comment without reading the article.
Flat structures aren't flat. When they work, there is always a single strong leader who everyone defers to in a hub/spoke pattern, and what makes the person exceptional is they can get people to work together. The necessary condition is ownership.
Where I have seen most flat structures fail is the moment when either that leader leaves and the ensuing vaccuum leaves a power struggle to re-establish an order, or the central person's role is diluted by another source of power like a marquee customer account where someone else emerges and becomes the cargo cult broker of, "well I'm not responsible, but the customer wants X, are you going to argue with the invisible customer?"
A successful flat org has a concept of "us," and the failed ones use the concept of "you." The worst pattern is when someone is granted some positional authority but has zero charisma, vision, or ownership, and delcares a flat organization, and then just uses it as a reason to micromanage and veto, while enjoying the attention of people having to vie for their mercurial approval. These kind of managers are just avoiding ownership and responsibility. The incompetent neglect creates a power struggle on the team that rewards the worst in people, and you get a low trust, sabotaging, gossipy, hyper political environment.
High ownership is the quality you are probably looking for, a flat organization is probably just low responsibility management.
This is it. Flat structures aren't totally flat and there is some depth, but it's all about 'us' and there is strong leadership and ownership. People can wear multiple hats to get things done. Essentially, everyone is 'on the same page' for the better of the business.
>Essentially, everyone is 'on the same page' for the better of the business.
So they're essentially unworkable as a company gets beyond maybe 50-100 individuals as that is maximum for a unified human social group taking into account that people have social connections outside of work as well?
Ive seen flat structures also fail to be able to actively address issues. For example the leader has decided they actively dont want hierarchy and the things they see it bringing with such ability to sack low performers, deal with hr issues, define company policies for the most basic things, etc.
Company structures make sense depending on the products, and there is no universal standard. All kinds of company structures have been demonstrated to work, and they have to be derived backwards from the product development needs.
And makes it hard(er) for them to do anything tyrannical. Although I doubt your argument holds any more water compared to non-flat institutions when there's the tyranny of lousy upper management that shows up so frequently. Nor am I sure why you think it would make them easier to hide if you're essentially in the trenches with everyone else instead of hiding through the proxy of layers of lower level managers.
Check out the Mondragon corporation if alternative models interest you. It is fascinating, both by its size, the scope of the individual businesses and the structure.
This article is not very good. It is riddled with non-sequiturs and irrelevant facts/opinions that doesn't really get into a lot of the subtleties and nuances around org structures.
Flat vs hierarchical structures exist on a continuum where neither end point is ever reached. The success of an organization is not just a matter of the structure but how people act within that structure. Different kinds of organizations need different kinds of managers. Sundar Pichai would be a nobody at Apple, and Tim Cook would be pulling his hair out if he were at Google. It's not that one structure is better than the other. What matters is the people.
Flat structures are prone to a lot of problems, but in my experience a lot of the most common issues with 'flat' orgs originate from the fact that the org is not actually flat and people are lying about what roles and responsibilities actually are.
The structure is less important than what the structure dictates. If I can email a question to the ceo and it’s no big deal, but there are three layers between us, I’d argue the hierarchy isn’t much of a hindrance. I think sometimes the hierarchy has a chilling effect on candor.
Did not read because I am not a NY times subscriber; but I think it would be pretty obvious that different org structures work well or are awful at different stages of a companies development, size and goals.
The org chart of any organization often doesn’t reflect the set of relationships that emerge to run and evolve the enterprise. I think many workspaces are defacto flat but maintain a hierarchy in order to meet traditional career progression expectations.
56 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadhttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/business/flat-structure-c...
It's all explained pretty well in Paul G's Maker Schedule vs Manager Schedule.
In the end, I don't really see any real arguments against flat hierarchies in the article, it's basically a propaganda piece made to convince those who don't read beyond buzzwords.
Does the traditional media even employ journalist's anymore? Seems to be most organization are very lacking in journalistic standards
In a way, it's astonishing how much work has been done over at least the past one or two decades to renormalize racism and discrimination.
And for those who don't quite get what I mean: "Diversity" at least in the political sense is a racist concept, you can't be "diverse" without explicitly considering someone's race.
The original point of increasing diversity was to improve decision-making by not having basically an opinion bubble where everyone thinks the same way. So, companies tried to have non-traditional hires which would think differently than the existing employees. It only warped to what we know as "diversity" today later.
Diversity in the sense that people from various walks of life provide diverse(!) opinions is a very good thing. Getting stuck in thought bubbles is a very easy mistake to get into.
"Diversity" in the sense that people explicitly of a given race or sex be placed in a given seat to satisfy some "diversity" quota is not a show of diversity, it's just plain old discrimination.
To pursue minority candidates who are qualified, is in no way discrimination. Unless you assume they are less deserving intrinsically, then it's fair to include them in a search.
Why would those candidates be excluded? Because white guys might suffer? That's a bankrupt argument at the core.
Fairness, the the privileged, looks like discrimination every time.
The comment you are replying to is saying that having demographic quotas is bad.
There's an implied disagreement about what is (what companies are actually in practice doing), but I don't see any disagreement about what should be.
The idea that anything that considers race is racist is either naive or foolish. We currently exist in a society that was built on white supremacy at its core. People of color are still actively being harmed by it, and white people are still benefiting from it to this day. To ignore that history and it's current and lasting effects is complacency in a racist system.
Consider this: if all were truly equal, companies of sufficient size would be diverse by default, being essentially a truly randomized subset of a diverse population. DEI initiatives would be a noop. Why is that not the case?
It quotes some professor who says it's related because “you’ve still got middle-aged, privileged white men making decisions at the top” due to a lack of safeguards.
> Then the article tries to apply guilt by association, by basically saying "Theranos was bad, so flat structures are bad".
It quotes another professor who says that the lack of structure is what allowed theranos to avoid having controls that would catch things.
> It also implies a company being diverse is a mandatory thing, and non-diverse firms are somehow inherently bad or non-desirable.
Not so much implies as takes as a given, I think. That's been pushed hard for several years now, to the point I often see it treated as axiomatic.
Sure, but that's not sound logic. It doesn't actually prove it, it just tries to extrapolate bad behaviour from race and gender (which is what racism and sexism is)
> It quotes another professor who says that the lack of structure is what allowed theranos to avoid having controls that would catch things.
How is that exclusive to flat organisations? This logic can be used almost verbatim to hierarchical organisations as well - a strong hierarchy is what allowed Company X to avoid having controls that would catch things. (Because no one dared to say anything to the leadership)
> Not so much implies as takes as a given, I think. That's been pushed hard for several years now, to the point I often see it treated as axiomatic.
This is either propaganda or plain misinformation. I don't accept it in any way, it's definitely not an axiom.
It doesn't seem particularly worse than I'd expect a minor news article to be. Also, have you heard of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect?
In this case I think they could have done a better job providing the context and reasoning of the experts. That would not change the point of the article and hopefully give readers an idea, not all of the details, of why the quote experts think what they think.
As it is I do no think I can use the article to change my point of view, even incrementally, or better understand what and why others are thinking on the topic.
The external sources may stand well by themselves I can not tell from these quotes.
> It quotes some professor who says it's related because “you’ve still got middle-aged, privileged white men making decisions at the top” due to a lack of safeguards.
This does not seem to depend on whether or not you have a flat structure or not. The article also includes:
> The companies may reflect the same biases as society, without safeguards to avoid them.
which is as close to a justification as the article comes to, which does not seem to apply more to flat organizations than not.
>> Then the article tries to apply guilt by association, by basically saying "Theranos was bad, so flat structures are bad".
> It quotes another professor who says that the lack of structure is what allowed theranos to avoid having controls that would catch things.
The quote from the article is:
> “meant that these companies don’t have to do the difficult and tedious process of putting into place all the systems and controls you would normally find.”
This is not particular to an organization being flat though. Flat does not me you do not have systems or and controls. If there is the a definition that makes it so I have not seen it used in the article or elsewhere.
There are trade offs between flat and non flat organizations, but I would not recommend this article form someone looking to read up on the topic.
> The companies may reflect the same biases as society, without safeguards to avoid them.
which is as close to a justification as the article comes to, which does not seem to apply more to flat organizations than not. »
There's been a fair bit of noise about needing HR departments in order to enforce safeguards (which depending on who you ask will look like standardized interview processes or quotas or whatever). That's hierarchy and structure.
« Flat does not me you do not have systems or and controls. »
Something that's nominally flat may not actually be flat in practice, yes. That's actually the main idea presented in "The Tyranny of Structurelessness".
> « Flat does not me you do not have systems or and controls. »
> Something that's nominally flat may not actually be flat in practice, yes. That's actually the main idea presented in "The Tyranny of Structurelessness".
You seem to be assume that flat organizations have zero structure and hierarchies. I have never seen the term used that way. 'flat' as in in flat organization is a coined term/phrase as far as I know so 'flat' is not 100% literal.
I have only see flat organization to mean less hierarchy relative to the standard. Often meaning there are fewer layers of managers between the ceo and the typical employee. I assume the term was coined to contrast the more pyramid like structure of managers that exist in some companies.
Said professor looking very pale and mature is a lifelong academic bureaucrat who would love to sell you an online MDA about the topic.
With over 30 years’ experience as an academic, Cliff has held positions at Queen Mary University of London, University of Leicester, King’s College, University of London, and Westminster University. He has also worked as an HR manager in local government.
Cliff’s research interests include the application of aspects of discourse, dramaturgy, tropes, narrative, and rhetoric to the study of organisations and organising.
https://online.bayes.city.ac.uk/courses/global-mba/teaching-...
I honestly wonder if a story like this, which basically consists solely of conjecture and the author's point they want to make, would ever have been greenlit at the NYT if it wasn't specifically pushing this "approved" narrative.
Nothing about political, socio-economic, geographic, cultural, educational, or 100's of other factors.
I don't think diversity is the main reason they brought up theranos.
Some people think incorrectly on all topics in wild ways. This article does not(edit) provide evidence that '"diversity" is the only goal' for some people. I am sure you can find people like that, but this article is not good evidence for it or that they that they are a significant force in the work place.
Flat structures aren't flat. When they work, there is always a single strong leader who everyone defers to in a hub/spoke pattern, and what makes the person exceptional is they can get people to work together. The necessary condition is ownership.
Where I have seen most flat structures fail is the moment when either that leader leaves and the ensuing vaccuum leaves a power struggle to re-establish an order, or the central person's role is diluted by another source of power like a marquee customer account where someone else emerges and becomes the cargo cult broker of, "well I'm not responsible, but the customer wants X, are you going to argue with the invisible customer?"
A successful flat org has a concept of "us," and the failed ones use the concept of "you." The worst pattern is when someone is granted some positional authority but has zero charisma, vision, or ownership, and delcares a flat organization, and then just uses it as a reason to micromanage and veto, while enjoying the attention of people having to vie for their mercurial approval. These kind of managers are just avoiding ownership and responsibility. The incompetent neglect creates a power struggle on the team that rewards the worst in people, and you get a low trust, sabotaging, gossipy, hyper political environment.
High ownership is the quality you are probably looking for, a flat organization is probably just low responsibility management.
Set reader mode and refresh. Or at least that seems to work for me, on Firefox on both mobile and desktop.
So they're essentially unworkable as a company gets beyond maybe 50-100 individuals as that is maximum for a unified human social group taking into account that people have social connections outside of work as well?
As a paid subscriber, I used the tool to share w/o paywall in the link I posted to HN, to avoid need for archive.is link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/business/flat-structure-c...
It seems HN stripped that, sorry.
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm