[shubb]

I don't... like the author of this piece. He writes like he doesn't really understand what he is discussing.

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.

[Jormundir]

I reject the implications of the dichotomy of command based and montessori based management structures, but I also think you're shrugging off some important negativities that come from open offices and flat structures. (I also really wish people would stop making statements like "they are farming black swans" when talking about these big tech companies. If black swans were farmable there would be no significance to the black swan).

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.

[acgourley]

"If black swans were farmable there would be no significance to the black swan" - this statement does not make sense to me. It seems reasonable to think that they are both significant and can also be sought after more effectively than through random chance. If you mean to imply that if it were possible, it would be happening already then I would just say the experiments need to run another decade before we'll have good data.

[jfb]

Taleb's "black swan" is by definition not a repeatable -- or even predictable -- event. The metaphor loses all novel meaning if stripped of that quality.

[acgourley]

For reference the definition is, "an unpredictable or unforeseen event, typically one with extreme consequences." Let's take truly great works of art as an analog to black swans. I agree you cannot create a formula for churning out more great art, as one struck in a certain direction reduces the greatness and significance of others in that direction. But if some wealthy patron collected a bulk of the worlds great artists, giving them creative freedom, tools and space... I cannot say for sure it would result in more "great art" than would be produced otherwise. But I would not say it's impossible by definition, as you do.

[abawany]

Hear hear, re. open offices. Sometimes, one just wants quiet - not music, not chatter, not white noise. Not to mention the long-term hearing damage that comes as a result of being forced to listen to loud music to drown out the irrelevant chatter when you are just trying to write some code. Sad days.

[VLM]

>is making people like Schumpeter feel under threat

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.

[shubb]

Thanks. I stand by case, addressed at the author not Schumpeter. But feel rather silly.

[coolsunglasses]

Most Economist pieces are written by try-hard underpaid 20-somethings desperate to be taken seriously.

Keeping that in mind helps to contextualize nonsense like this.

It's also why the Economist operates the way they do.

[sentenza]

Oh boy, are you right. I have an Economist subscription which I got after foolishly assuming that the quality of Charlemagne and Bagehot are representative of the whole product.

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.

[abawany]

I too had an Economist subscription (thankfully due to airline points) which I did not renew. Sometimes, it felt like Fox News with an English accent. It was always a good read but the monolithic "insight" started to rankle after a while. Also, I sometimes read a given magazine many months after I received it - it was fun to compare reality vs. what was predicted in the magazine.

[VLM]

I know what you mean, but its all in the interpretation. "Here's the most important PR spin we can present at this time." They usually make the right decision about it being the most important PR message. Being important, influential or loud seems to have little bearing on if the spin is actually correct or not.

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.

[philwelch]

In any case, open plan offices are less about happiness or productivity and more about saving money and accommodating high headcount growth, with some rationalization about communication after the fact.

[overgryphon]

You talk about technological progress and innovation as something contradictory to any sort of predictable process iterating on an existing product.

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.

[walshemj]

Yes I bet the author came from the German system where if your pigeonholed at 14 or so as a "technician" level at school your social mobility is very restricted.