I read an interesting essay by Paul Graham today, You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss. Paul theorizes that humans are meant to work in groups of 8-20. So when you put more than that in an organization, you start to lose freedom in order to keep organization.
A group of 10 managers is not merely
a group of 10 people working together in the usual way. It’s really
a group of groups. Which means for a group of 10 managers to work
together as if they were simply a group of 10 individuals, the group
working for each manager would have to work as if they were a single
person—the workers and manager would each share only one
person’s worth of freedom between them.
He then goes on to explain that working for a large organization is like eating junk food.
The average MIT graduate wants to work
at Google or Microsoft, because it’s a recognized brand, it’s safe,
and they’ll get paid a good salary right away. It’s the job
equivalent of the pizza they had for lunch. The drawbacks will
only become apparent later, and then only in a vague sense of
malaise.
Anyone who has watched a big company struggle to make a decision, or been part of that struggle!, will find themselves nodding at some point. Something to think about.