I question the title. It doesn't sound like engineers are in charge, instead, it sounds like smaller operating units will be in charge. That is a very different thing from having the inmates running the asylum.
I have yet to see a large company that successfully treats software as a creative endeavor instead of a production line that still manages to be able to focus on solving customer problems. I really hope that Larry figures this out because, if he does, that will (IMO) be his greatest legacy.
What I think will happen, though, is Google will focus even more on technology and care even less about actual users.
Not even smaller operating units, it just sounds like things will be organized according to product rather than function. Other HN articles recently have mentioned how Google has a bunch of centralized organizations that report all the way to the top and are not responsible to any product group (Launch, Site Reliability, UX, Product Management, etc).
What's different about Android is not that Andy Rubin has an engineering background; many of Google's senior managers do, even in the big functional orgs. What's different is that Android is a product unit which largely does not depend on these external functional teams and has all its resources built in.
I agree that the article does seem a little tabloid, but I think speculating on what will happen to G as a complete outsider is to a very high degree a gamble..
There would be so many issues at play here.. How well can Larry get buy-in from various levels of the organisation? How well will the Google culture evolve around his proposed changes? What will they do to ensure Quality of service goes up?
At the end of the day, Google right now is a one trick pony. General consensus in this thread is that Android is successful within Google right now. I don't buy into that though primarily because it's a business unit that does not make any money...
I think there's a long way to go and a lot of forces at play
This is a big story. I'm both an engineer and a manager (to which engineers will say "management!" and managers will say "developer!"), and I haven't seen this pendulum swing back and forth so much as be ripped in half and pulled in opposite directions. Google's obviously got very smart folks in both engineering and management, so it's going to be very interesting to see how this is handled.
I can't imagine a Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc going through this exercise, so I'm seriously rooting for Google. It'd be lovely for this change to produce some real knowledge on how to run a modern, big, high-speed tech company without getting trapped in the argument over engineering-vs-management.
I think both have their merits, but I think engineers should be the ones building projects/companies, and management should be the ones who run it. I don't think non-technical management should fundamentally be involved in development unless it's a manager who is also an engineer. In a sense, a traditional non-technical manager should be in charge of the monotonous, boring stuff and that only... stuff like QA, ops, marketing, etc... Basically maintenance-mode autopilots.
I'm a big fan of engineers turned manager though, after working with several different projects at my last company. The only problem with that is when their manager isn't an engineer and you end up with the same disconnect that you would normally get at the dev/manager level. It sounds like Google is, in reality, trying to eliminate that disconnect entirely, with managerial engineers the entire way up to CEO.
I could see something happening like at Yahoo where different groups of people end up developing the same thing, both with different benefits, and have to kill one off.
It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful. It has always seemed to me that management is an important but overemphasized skill (as a fundamental trait of the way large organizations work) and it's really refreshing to see this happening.
Can someone who works at Google chime in with what the organizational temperature is like at Google? Does this whole 'party time's over for the managers' thing we're hearing about have any real weight to it?
I'd like to ditto this; the linked article is very speculative, and without a G-employee response, it seems rather foolhardy to extend said speculation.
It's also similar to how Berkshire Hathaway is run; and how Christensen advocates nurturing disruptive businesses - smaller units can get excited about smaller sales that are a rounding error to Big Google (new markets start small); independent units are free to customize their business model and how they do things to what fits the opportunity (instead of fitting in with the parent's model and processes - which has compelling economies, but only early).
e.g. it seems highly unlikely that advertising is the ideal revenue model for every business Google is in. The appropriate fit might be sales, renting, monthly charge, pay-per-use, royalty, per-developer, per-other-metric. It's not necessarily about extracting more money from customers, but revenue that makes sense for customers - that they prefer, that makes sense in the competitive set, that motivates the business to improve along the right dimensions.
Ever since "management" and the dedicated "manager" were invented, we have been told, increasingly in recent decades, that they, rather than talents in other roles, are the key to business success. With the increasing importance and accelerating pace of innovations in our time, it's time to test if to what degree such doctrine would still hold true. Good job Larry. That's some risk worth taking.
This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company).
It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and look after the org's interests) - what's the role of the future manager?
It sounds inevitable that senior Engineers will double up as managers for their group as and when required (working with marketing etc.) instead of it being a dedicated managerial position.
One of my ex managers said that his role was to attend the meetings,shield the developers from the politics of getting projects approved and other institutional overhead so that we could focus on delivering product.
Personally I've always seen the organizational structure of film and TV units as being a natural model for software development [1]. They've been doing the somewhat-controlled production of fundamentally creative product by small, focused and often-times transient teams for quite some time.
And in that model, the current manager type is less like the director [2] and more like a producer.
That is: a person who primarily manages logistics and external requirements.
e.g. arranging the times to get the necessary people together to review builds and such. keeping statuses up-to-date. keeping an eye on tasks and deadlines. keeping their finger on consultants. etc.
[1] Far more natural than the manufacturing model that corporate America is trying to fit things into.
[2] I'm sure managers would like to imagine themselves as directors. But they're typically ill-suited due their not understanding the creative nor technical sides.
But in a world where people ..., have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and look after the org's interests) - what's the role of the future manager?
I don't know if there's as many people who have these abilities as you think there are.
Microsoft has done this all along. Managers are programmers, they divide their time between programming and managing. The feeling within Microsoft, was how can someone who is not a programmer, manage programmers?
I think many (middle) managers are afraid of Scrum and other agile development because their role is sidelined. As "individual contributors", engineers are generating actual business value. Engineers can self-organize in "quasi-communist" Scrum teams (as they own the means of production ;) and collaborate with product management who work with customers to derive and prioritize product requirements.
In this scenario, what is a "people manager" supposed to do?
I don't know of many engineers who would want to double up. I do agree that a well managed company could get by with far less management than most currently have, but don't think that just having really smart people in place will solve the problem magically. I've worked at a company full of incredibly smart people who couldn't get anything useful done because they were all so busy proving how smart they were, often at odds with others in the group.
Ideally, but power still seems to be centralized to dealmakers (probably a function of human nature), whether they're specially skilled or not. Managers are essentially low-level dealmakers.
From the "Dear John" letters of people departing Google (Dennis Crowley for example) it seems like in the absence of a large political institution, the major political currency at Google is your ability to attract developers.
Given that, it seems like what a manager can provide a group of developers and designers is "workforce maintenance". That is, they will attend to the needs of the team, make sure people don't leave, and make sure they attract more people when they need them.
In other words, HR. The central HR department at Google has no reason to really care about the success of your unit over another, so your manager becomes the person who takes responsibility for the human resources of the unit.
This frees the engineers/designers to be able to focus on creating a great product. And as a side benefit, they happier and their jobs are easier because the manager is doing what it takes to keep them in the unit.
The goal of management is essentially the same as the goal for any kind of political structure: remove issues which couldn't have been dealt with in a cheaper way.
The reality of a large corporation like Google is nowhere near as simple an engineer-vs-manager dichotomy as many of the comments on this thread would make it. Products need to be developed, but they need to be supported and sold too. Which of these functions is most important depends on your world view and your tolerance for angels-on-a-pinhead debate, but it's undoubted that each of them are crucial.
An engineering mindset of automation and solution-by-algorithm gives us the miserable customer service that Google is famous for; a realisation that people are tricky and messy gives us something more like Zappos. The people who are good at support and managing support teams are not like engineers, and the people running sales are an entirely different breed. Rare is it to find someone who can successfully manage all three. Indeed, I would go out on a limb and say - as an engineer myself - that it's easier to find a non-technical person who can make a positive impact in product development than it is to find an engineering who can significantly improve sales or support.
Seems to work pretty well for Honda. They innovate and everyone still copies their designs and products, but they also have great financial results magically with innovative products. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/112.html [2006]
I hope this is a trend in America, Google can set a great example (as all companies early on do) on keeping innovators in charge with a startup culture/meritocracy.
Before the recent change in CEO, I felt Google was getting too suits focused and simply competing on a byline/reactionary technique. Bring it back Google.
BTW: I understand that Honda used to be very innovative in disruptive ways, creating entirely new categories of products (e.g. they invented the off-road recreational motorbike) but, like Sony, have instead only made sustaining innovations to existing product categories for the last two or three decades. Are my facts right? (I'm going by Christensen).
[I'm guessing merely sustaining innovations is the very thing Larry Page wants to avoid (and separate business units helps with that, because then they're free to fit themselves to the market need - like a startup).]
This may finally lead to outright combat between the ChromeOS and Android groups.
Chrome the browser itself is fairly successful, as are Android phones. But Chrome OS vs. Android...that is a huge showdown. ChromeOS is a minimalist OS, whereas Android is a fat client. Philosophies are totally different.
Attitude within Google right now is "let the market decide". Only a company with the free cash flow of Google could build two operating systems intended for mobile devices and take that kind of approach.
This doesn't seem all that different from the way car companies run multiple makes. Chevy vs Saturn. Philosophies are totally different (or at least they were) but the market is the same. This way the company does well whichever approach wins out.
This is such a good move! It gives Google the nimbleness, hunger, and guerilla mentality of a start-up in new areas it wants to explore through these small mostly-autonomous teams, while simultaneously allowing it to defend the already captured beachheads (search, gmail etc.) - all funded by the deep, deep, Google pockets.
In any innovation-oriented org, curious engineers and inventors need to be able to play and push the boundaries, but even large organizations with strong financial backs are so defensive when it comes to innovation, so afraid to fail, or waste resources on experimenting. Google has always been okay with this "waste". If you go back before year 2k and try pitching to a goliath sw company to let 20% of dev time be spent on employees’ projects of choice you'd get assaulted by the CFO. Google was okay with this "waste", because they knew if you let the right players roll the dice, every now and then you’d hit jackpot. And they did! Many of their most successful products came out of the 20% project.
Organizations today have split the vision and execution aspects of building something. The vision comes from management and the execution from engineers – this is straight from the defensive playbook - ‘engineers can execute with minimum risk, and managers are close to the customer therefore know what will sell for sure’. This kind of thinking will work when you want to improve marginally (like Henry Ford said something along the lines of 'If I asked my customers what they wanted they’d say a faster horse'), or if you are the market leader, but it will never cause disruption or let you make headway in uncharted territory. It is very important to know when to play offence and when to play defense.
The average investor went to the same school as the MBAs whose power may be diminished if this is true.
Management ideology includes the idea that a good manager can manage anything; that management is a context-free science that should be left to professionals. If you believe that then you believe that this article says Google will be turning over management to amateurs. Naturally you might be suspicious.
The problem with Google is that it is sized to deliver big brands, big scale and big projects.
First. Google today cannot deliver small brands because failure is very expensive. Every Wave, Buzz, Knol costs Google because future enterprises are less likely to want to try their products.
Startup culture could no longer exist in Google, because the salary means that the people will be taking risk with other people's money, and it doesn't work for early stage projects.
Secondly, Google cannot deliver small projects. I can relate this to my past history working at a large mining company, there are some mineral deposits that they may not develop but sell off because it is too small for a company their concern. The management overhead is simply too big.
Finally, to deliver large projects require specialist departments. The functional structure is there to deliver this. The alternative would be a matrix structure where there will be a lot of confusion as to who reports to whom, or serious duplication.
Good point ! Balance is key in everything. There is no one right way, and this is exactly why those in management should have a mature outlook in handling the allocated power.
A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to infighting with Windows 7.
This brings to a head the interesting situation of the modern tech company. Unlike companies in almost all other industries, the average developer at Google (and a lot of other companies) needs to be much smarter to do the job than the manager.
So the skill pyramid is actually inverse compared the "military corporation" model. It's also true that many, perhaps even a majority, of the deveopers would be "even better" at management, marketing and strategy etc, than those normally filling these roles.
This situation really does beg for a solution beyond what the typical corporation/MBA paradigm has come up with so far. Kudos to Mr. Page for taking a shot at it.
In the case of Microsoft, no. The Office and Windows division are mutually-supporting rivers of gold. Everything else is the spaghetti cannon approach they've pursued since the 90s, with the possible exception of the Xbox.
Most of what Google does is not actually directly profitable and thus not ideal for spinoffs.
I don't think they should be letting Managers or Engineers run things. I think they need to have... I'm not sure of the title... lets call them Vision Carriers. In the video game industry we call these people Creative Directors.
These vision carriers need to understand the product they are building and the people who will use it.
They don't need to be good a managing people or budgets, they don't need to write code. They need to understand what is good and what is bad and they need to be able to clearly communicate it to the team.
(Aside: I think the original article does not understand that product managers aren't "managers" in the traditional sense of the word. Much of this discussion should be predicated on this fact!)
I love when companies move back to their purer roots. I don't know where this puts Google's progress as a company over the next few years, but it definitely means we won't be seeing the innovation slowdown that Microsoft experienced after their years of explosion. As long as our tech superstars arn't just turning into company gobbling monsters, but rather are constantly iterating, innovating, and developing their product line like a company should.
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|15 years ago|reply
I have yet to see a large company that successfully treats software as a creative endeavor instead of a production line that still manages to be able to focus on solving customer problems. I really hope that Larry figures this out because, if he does, that will (IMO) be his greatest legacy.
What I think will happen, though, is Google will focus even more on technology and care even less about actual users.
[+] [-] othermaciej|15 years ago|reply
What's different about Android is not that Andy Rubin has an engineering background; many of Google's senior managers do, even in the big functional orgs. What's different is that Android is a product unit which largely does not depend on these external functional teams and has all its resources built in.
[+] [-] wh-uws|15 years ago|reply
and have a comparative level of custom service
will have created something truly great
[+] [-] argus|15 years ago|reply
There would be so many issues at play here.. How well can Larry get buy-in from various levels of the organisation? How well will the Google culture evolve around his proposed changes? What will they do to ensure Quality of service goes up?
At the end of the day, Google right now is a one trick pony. General consensus in this thread is that Android is successful within Google right now. I don't buy into that though primarily because it's a business unit that does not make any money...
I think there's a long way to go and a lot of forces at play
[+] [-] CoffeeDregs|15 years ago|reply
I can't imagine a Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc going through this exercise, so I'm seriously rooting for Google. It'd be lovely for this change to produce some real knowledge on how to run a modern, big, high-speed tech company without getting trapped in the argument over engineering-vs-management.
[+] [-] shin_lao|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juiceandjuice|15 years ago|reply
I'm a big fan of engineers turned manager though, after working with several different projects at my last company. The only problem with that is when their manager isn't an engineer and you end up with the same disconnect that you would normally get at the dev/manager level. It sounds like Google is, in reality, trying to eliminate that disconnect entirely, with managerial engineers the entire way up to CEO.
[+] [-] cellshade|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gscott|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aloisius|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joebadmo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aridiculous|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aboodman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Laments|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6ren|15 years ago|reply
e.g. it seems highly unlikely that advertising is the ideal revenue model for every business Google is in. The appropriate fit might be sales, renting, monthly charge, pay-per-use, royalty, per-developer, per-other-metric. It's not necessarily about extracting more money from customers, but revenue that makes sense for customers - that they prefer, that makes sense in the competitive set, that motivates the business to improve along the right dimensions.
[+] [-] asknemo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blinkingled|15 years ago|reply
It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and look after the org's interests) - what's the role of the future manager?
It sounds inevitable that senior Engineers will double up as managers for their group as and when required (working with marketing etc.) instead of it being a dedicated managerial position.
[+] [-] dman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roc|15 years ago|reply
Personally I've always seen the organizational structure of film and TV units as being a natural model for software development [1]. They've been doing the somewhat-controlled production of fundamentally creative product by small, focused and often-times transient teams for quite some time.
And in that model, the current manager type is less like the director [2] and more like a producer.
That is: a person who primarily manages logistics and external requirements.
e.g. arranging the times to get the necessary people together to review builds and such. keeping statuses up-to-date. keeping an eye on tasks and deadlines. keeping their finger on consultants. etc.
[1] Far more natural than the manufacturing model that corporate America is trying to fit things into.
[2] I'm sure managers would like to imagine themselves as directors. But they're typically ill-suited due their not understanding the creative nor technical sides.
[+] [-] mikeryan|15 years ago|reply
I don't know if there's as many people who have these abilities as you think there are.
[+] [-] GoldenMonkey|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpeterso|15 years ago|reply
In this scenario, what is a "people manager" supposed to do?
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aridiculous|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|15 years ago|reply
Given that, it seems like what a manager can provide a group of developers and designers is "workforce maintenance". That is, they will attend to the needs of the team, make sure people don't leave, and make sure they attract more people when they need them.
In other words, HR. The central HR department at Google has no reason to really care about the success of your unit over another, so your manager becomes the person who takes responsibility for the human resources of the unit.
This frees the engineers/designers to be able to focus on creating a great product. And as a side benefit, they happier and their jobs are easier because the manager is doing what it takes to keep them in the unit.
[+] [-] tomjen3|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microcentury|15 years ago|reply
An engineering mindset of automation and solution-by-algorithm gives us the miserable customer service that Google is famous for; a realisation that people are tricky and messy gives us something more like Zappos. The people who are good at support and managing support teams are not like engineers, and the people running sales are an entirely different breed. Rare is it to find someone who can successfully manage all three. Indeed, I would go out on a limb and say - as an engineer myself - that it's easier to find a non-technical person who can make a positive impact in product development than it is to find an engineering who can significantly improve sales or support.
[+] [-] drawkbox|15 years ago|reply
I hope this is a trend in America, Google can set a great example (as all companies early on do) on keeping innovators in charge with a startup culture/meritocracy.
Before the recent change in CEO, I felt Google was getting too suits focused and simply competing on a byline/reactionary technique. Bring it back Google.
[+] [-] 6ren|15 years ago|reply
[I'm guessing merely sustaining innovations is the very thing Larry Page wants to avoid (and separate business units helps with that, because then they're free to fit themselves to the market need - like a startup).]
[+] [-] ramanujan|15 years ago|reply
Chrome the browser itself is fairly successful, as are Android phones. But Chrome OS vs. Android...that is a huge showdown. ChromeOS is a minimalist OS, whereas Android is a fat client. Philosophies are totally different.
Attitude within Google right now is "let the market decide". Only a company with the free cash flow of Google could build two operating systems intended for mobile devices and take that kind of approach.
I'll get my popcorn.
[+] [-] cbr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abbasmehdi|15 years ago|reply
In any innovation-oriented org, curious engineers and inventors need to be able to play and push the boundaries, but even large organizations with strong financial backs are so defensive when it comes to innovation, so afraid to fail, or waste resources on experimenting. Google has always been okay with this "waste". If you go back before year 2k and try pitching to a goliath sw company to let 20% of dev time be spent on employees’ projects of choice you'd get assaulted by the CFO. Google was okay with this "waste", because they knew if you let the right players roll the dice, every now and then you’d hit jackpot. And they did! Many of their most successful products came out of the 20% project.
Organizations today have split the vision and execution aspects of building something. The vision comes from management and the execution from engineers – this is straight from the defensive playbook - ‘engineers can execute with minimum risk, and managers are close to the customer therefore know what will sell for sure’. This kind of thinking will work when you want to improve marginally (like Henry Ford said something along the lines of 'If I asked my customers what they wanted they’d say a faster horse'), or if you are the market leader, but it will never cause disruption or let you make headway in uncharted territory. It is very important to know when to play offence and when to play defense.
[+] [-] dennisgorelik|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacques_chester|15 years ago|reply
Management ideology includes the idea that a good manager can manage anything; that management is a context-free science that should be left to professionals. If you believe that then you believe that this article says Google will be turning over management to amateurs. Naturally you might be suspicious.
[+] [-] brown9-2|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teyc|15 years ago|reply
The problem with Google is that it is sized to deliver big brands, big scale and big projects.
First. Google today cannot deliver small brands because failure is very expensive. Every Wave, Buzz, Knol costs Google because future enterprises are less likely to want to try their products.
Startup culture could no longer exist in Google, because the salary means that the people will be taking risk with other people's money, and it doesn't work for early stage projects.
Secondly, Google cannot deliver small projects. I can relate this to my past history working at a large mining company, there are some mineral deposits that they may not develop but sell off because it is too small for a company their concern. The management overhead is simply too big.
Finally, to deliver large projects require specialist departments. The functional structure is there to deliver this. The alternative would be a matrix structure where there will be a lot of confusion as to who reports to whom, or serious duplication.
[+] [-] spydertennis|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] currywurst|15 years ago|reply
A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to infighting with Windows 7.
[+] [-] sunstone|15 years ago|reply
So the skill pyramid is actually inverse compared the "military corporation" model. It's also true that many, perhaps even a majority, of the deveopers would be "even better" at management, marketing and strategy etc, than those normally filling these roles.
This situation really does beg for a solution beyond what the typical corporation/MBA paradigm has come up with so far. Kudos to Mr. Page for taking a shot at it.
[+] [-] rwmj|15 years ago|reply
If your company got as big as Microsoft or Google, would you split it up, spinning off subdivisions as separate companies?
And (in the case of MSFT/Google) why haven't they done that?
[+] [-] jacques_chester|15 years ago|reply
Most of what Google does is not actually directly profitable and thus not ideal for spinoffs.
[+] [-] jay_kyburz|15 years ago|reply
These vision carriers need to understand the product they are building and the people who will use it.
They don't need to be good a managing people or budgets, they don't need to write code. They need to understand what is good and what is bad and they need to be able to clearly communicate it to the team.
[+] [-] jlees|15 years ago|reply
(Aside: I think the original article does not understand that product managers aren't "managers" in the traditional sense of the word. Much of this discussion should be predicated on this fact!)
[+] [-] endlessvoid94|15 years ago|reply
Glad to see it's moving in the right direction.
[+] [-] gms|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donnyg107|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdaviesa|15 years ago|reply