Rich Geldreich

@richgel999

Entrepreneur at , Khronos member working on Basis. Ex-Valve/MS,Age1DE,3/Halo Wars/Portal2/DotA2/CS:GO.

Joined March 2011

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  1. 1 hour ago

    With all that said, if you earn enough Company Bucks none of this can matter. Just work on valuable things and make people around you happy.

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  2. 2 hours ago

    The corporate arm and its resources are there to help this process occur organically. If they interfere and snuff-out organic teams they are going against the principles of self-organization. "Overwatch" team feedback is fine, but remember the system is delicate and fragile.

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  3. 2 hours ago

    Central planning doesn't work well, but market principles do. So if enough employees go and form a team to do something, a smart self-organized company will watch the team grow organically and see what happens.

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  4. 2 hours ago

    At a hierarchical firm, as a leaf-node worker or even manager this ability to organically form new teams can be virtually impossible. You would need to engage with the secretive hierarchy and ask for permission and resources, and good luck with that.

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  5. 2 hours ago

    You could say I'm acting as a "Baron". But anybody with the ability to explain the idea and muster the resources can do this. You just do it organically from the bottom-up. It helps to have Sponsor or Baron support, but you don't absolutely require it.

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  6. 2 hours ago

    To grow this team I would just talk to coworkers and convince them to join the new team. It would be an organic process. At each step I would get feedback about the idea. If it's a good idea, people will follow. I would have to be persistent, and good at selling the idea.

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  7. 2 hours ago

    If I was at a wealthy and powerful self organizing company with all the things I now know, I would have to immediately start a team and grow it then attack some important problem. You can organically do that at a self-organizing firm. You can't just do that at a hierarchical firm

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  8. 2 hours ago

    The managers at large hierarchical firms and execs have lots of secret offsites. The managers get special offsite Manager Training as well. Whenever you interact with these people, how they treat you will depend on whether you're in the Club or not.

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  9. 2 hours ago

    And so I learned, the manager hierarchy behaves differently when only among themselves. They treat the leafy workers differently, and there are tons of official secrets. It's a very secretive, elite club.

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  10. 2 hours ago

    When I was younger at one ~100 person hierarchical company I was a leaf-node worker. One day my manager said "Keep quiet and let's go to an offsite. Tell no one else." I was utterly amazed as this meeting was unlike any other I had seen. Managers were yelling at each other.

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  11. 2 hours ago

    At huge hierarchical firms execs and high-level managers are basically like Corporate Gods. They have Official Powers. Leaf-node workers are beneath them. They can talk differently and strangely, and only associate with other Corporate Gods. They are a different breed of worker.

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  12. 3 hours ago

    But I did piss off a bunch of people because I didn't follow the Rigid Hierarchical Company Protocol. Only the CEO was allowed to do those things. Amazingly, at a self-organized company you have many of the powers of a CEO.

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  13. 3 hours ago

    I treated one rigid hierarchical firm like I was at a self-organizing company. I just optimized to Get Something Done. It was hilarious, as I broke every rule in the book to get this one important thing accomplished. I was near the "top" outside the manager hierarchy so it worked

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  14. 3 hours ago

    The satellite offices at these companies can have very different cultures. One office I nicknamed "The Pirate Ship". The workers hated their managers here, and were threatening to walk at any moment. They were particularly mad about the lack of office space.

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  15. 3 hours ago

    One large hierarchical firm scales up by taking a pre-designed Company Office Template and just stamping it out all over the world. New offices can form up around existing small teams that are acquired.

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  16. 3 hours ago

    As a worker inside one rigid hierarchical firm, the tree of relationships was almost impossible to navigate. I was more or less outside the hierarchy, beneath someone very high. But I wasn't part of the manager club. It was a very opaque structure, super resistant to outsiders.

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  17. 3 hours ago

    At one hierarchical firm, I watched as around 10 developers followed around their manager at an event. When their manager said "let's go!", they all followed like a little army following their general. It was totally hilarious: A bunch of full-grown adults following some dude.

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  18. 3 hours ago

    The Peter Principle (people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence") applies strongly at hierarchical firms. Managers can appear like an absolutely crazy concept when viewed through the eyes of a self-organizing firm.

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  19. 3 hours ago

    At one hierarchical firm I had so many new titles assigned to me as I "Climbed the Ladder" that I had a big cardboard box full of little boxes containing updated Calling Cards. New cards had to be ordered as I received new titles.

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  20. 3 hours ago

    When applying for a job at a hierarchical firm, if they really desire you they will hand you some powerful-sounding Official Title. Like "Senior Director of Advanced Mission-Critical Technology". Remember that titles cost a company absolutely nothing.

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