I've only got experience of one flat structured company. There, the 'flat' structure is almost entirely fantasy. The company is very hierarchical, but hierarchical on the basis of the way individuals command (and collect) influence and power. One employee described it as 'who's got the biggest dick'.
Which means that people who are naturally political end up with all the power, even if they don't make good decisions, and they aren't held accountable for their management activities, because the fantasy is that they're not managing anyone. And introverts or people with alternative ideas (especially ideas that threaten the alphas) tend to be dumped on, badly peer reviewed and fired.
Although this company receives praise inside and out for its flat structure (even the CEO is just one of the team, don't you know!) All it has done is replace professional management* with management by popularity, from what I can see.
[Edit: It has already been mentioned in other comments as an amazing example of wonderful flatness! :D It's PR is good, I'll say that!]
There is more than a little of the high school atmosphere, to be honest. Not somewhere I wanted to work (I was there as a consultant for a month).
I'm curious if it is very different elsewhere.
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* I acknowledge that 'professional management' is hardly universal, btw! No lack of realism from me on either extreme.
Informal power structures exist everywhere, and they're usually considered bad. One of the reasons humans developed formal hierarchies is to minimize the influence of these informal power structures. Doing so allows an organization to set consistent patterns that can vastly increase efficiency over more arbitrary and capricious systems.
Flat organizations emphasize informal power structures and you'll find that surveys of employees in flat organizations point to consistent and repeatable problems.
Summary of most of the surveys: for the most part, any employee who hasn't made it to the "in" clique (which will be most of them) is in for a miserable time.
A non-scientific bit of insight can be gained from looking at the employee reviews of notable flat/structure-less companies on glassdoor.
>One of the reasons humans developed formal hierarchies is to minimize the influence of these informal power structures.
This is a bizarre assertion. Humans developed formal hierarchies because people with swords thought they were an efficient way to steal surplus wheat from peasants. The fact that after millennia of living under hierarchies, people don't have good skills for living without them doesn't mean we chose those hierarchies in the first place.
"Doing so allows an organization to set consistent patterns that can vastly increase efficiency over more arbitrary and capricious systems."
You've simply stated what I stated while claiming to disagree with it, while using a perfect example of why it's true.
What you miss at the end is that humans will always organize into hierarchies. Informal hierarchies are something built into us as a species, and instinct to organize our social groups. But brains often beat instinct, and our ability to use our brains to build more efficient social structures than our ad-hoc instinctual ones has demonstrated to be better over the long run.
The reality of the human condition is that many people want to be "under" someone. Having complete freedom is both time consuming and exhausting. We already spend an inordinate amount of time making choices, it's nice to have many of them already made for us (or at least having our selection limited).
Yes, you're right, this is why people are always saying things like, "I love my boss," "I really like other people telling me what to do all the time," and "I'd really hate to be able to work for myself."
I did no such thing; you just totally missed my point. People did not adopt hierarchies; they were pushed on them by violence. People fucking abhor hierarchies. That's why "the boss" is a universally despised figure.
"Which means that people who are naturally political end up with all the power, even if they don't make good decisions, and they aren't held accountable for their management activities, because the fantasy is that they're not managing anyone. And introverts or people with alternative ideas (especially ideas that threaten the alphas) tend to be dumped on, badly peer reviewed and fired."
This pretty much describes my experience of traditional management everywhere I've worked, minus perhaps the line "because the fantasy is that they're not managing anyone". How have you seen things be different in a company with traditional management?
Thanks for the response. Sorry to hear that's been your experience.
I've been into quite a few companies in the same industry as the one I mention, that are roughly the same size (a few hundred people) and most aren't as toxic in that way. There is more HR, policies, feedback on performance, less (but not zero) patronage.
Tech people like to rag on managers. But I think good managers are worth multiples of bad managers. It puzzles me that more companies don't take technical management more seriously as an independent skillset, and instead let it be a kind of fiefdom for little Napoleons or a step in the career progression for a programmer.
> Which means that people who are naturally political end up with all the power
I am socialist/anarchist and that's exactly why I am against flat structures. The solution is so simple - democracy. It's pretty much a one rule, which is prescriptive - everyone gets the same amount of power. So it doesn't matter what you do, if you do politics, or do something technical, useful or not, at the end of the day, we clean the tables and have the same amount of power again. Then there is not much point in politics, if you can't amass power.
I wish more honest technical people (or those who don't want to be involved in politics) understand that. I don't know, sometimes I tend to think that majority of people simply want politics and the power hierarchies.
Which means that people who are naturally political end up with all the power, even if they don't make good decisions, and they aren't held accountable for their management activities, because the fantasy is that they're not managing anyone. And introverts or people with alternative ideas (especially ideas that threaten the alphas) tend to be dumped on, badly peer reviewed and fired.
Although this company receives praise inside and out for its flat structure (even the CEO is just one of the team, don't you know!) All it has done is replace professional management* with management by popularity, from what I can see.
[Edit: It has already been mentioned in other comments as an amazing example of wonderful flatness! :D It's PR is good, I'll say that!]
There is more than a little of the high school atmosphere, to be honest. Not somewhere I wanted to work (I was there as a consultant for a month).
I'm curious if it is very different elsewhere.
---
* I acknowledge that 'professional management' is hardly universal, btw! No lack of realism from me on either extreme.