from Gergely Orosz | by Gergely Orosz

I have talked with multiple people working at startups with some form version of holocracy in place (no managers, basically delegating management responsibilities to all employees on some rotational basis). The irony is they all have problems managers would have solved already.

Typical problems: 1. Hidden hierarchies that are usually tenure based (it’s dangerous to give a low performance review to an old-timer) 2. Oldtimers feeling stuck in their career path 3. “I keep getting amazing performance reviews, whatever I do” - form an early employee (see #1)

4. Decision paralysis for most org-related changes 5. Inability to hire senior talent from the outside - and rightfully so. Most seniors run from self-governing places 6. Sr engineers are almost always in the trap of the premature senior - via @mipsytipsy t.co/UoA1s7odYa

7. Performance reviews gamified by old-timers (“you help me, I help you”), and at the same time a huge waste of every employee’s time 8. Either firing good performers early (thanks to no real managers/good feedback & perf reviews biasing for tenure) or poor performers too late

Almost all these startups have founders who have not been managers before & have the theory “a bad manager can destroy a team. Let’s solve for that.” Instead of the occasional bad -but accountable - manager, you now *only* have bad/inexperienced/untrained/unaccountable managers.