创业与商业paulgraham.com
你本不该有老板
You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (2008)
2008 — 2020，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
Paul Graham 2008 年的经典文章，论证人类在演化中习惯于小团体协作，而大公司的层级结构和老板制度是人为产物，对程序员尤其有害——因为编程的本质是创造新事物，而大公司会不可避免地趋于保守和僵化。文章鼓励有野心的人选择小团队或创业。
为什么经久不衰：它触及了组织规模与个人创造力之间的永恒张力，十几年来反复登上 HN 首页，对每个在大公司与小团队之间做选择的人依然有启发。
HN 评论精选
大公司僵化源于保守主义而非层级结构本身，且在大公司做增量创新也有意义
作为管理过 2 到 40 人的大厂经理，我认同小团队工作更自然轻松，但想补充：大公司变慢未必是树状结构的必然结果，更多是赚钱大公司天然形成的保守主义。另外“造新东西”的定义值得商榷——在大公司现有系统里做出让百万用户满意的关键新功能，同样很有价值。
jqcoffey查看英文原文
So I'm a manager in a large engineering org (~600 devs) and I've managed from 2 (and was therefore an IC) to ~40 people. I can definitely relate to this blog post and if the author's intent is to say that working in small groups is easier and more natural than working in large ones, then I agree wholeheartedly, but I think there are a few other things to keep in mind. > One is that companies will inevitably slow down as they grow larger, no matter how hard they try to keep their startup mojo. He goes on to say that this is a consequence of the tree structure, which may be technically correct, but I think this is actually a consequence of the natural conservatism that develops at a large company making lots of money and paying lots of salaries. This doesn't change the validity of his message, but I think it's worth pointing out the motivations of a large company. > The restrictiveness of big company jobs is particularly hard on programmers, because the essence of programming is to build new things. So this is also, on it's face, completely valid. The only exception I take with it is that "new things" is ill-defined. If he means to say, "building entirely new systems from scratch is nearly impossible at a large company," then yes. That is 100% true. If in that he includes, "building critical new functionality into an existing system that will make hundreds, thousands or maybe millions of users insanely happy," then, as you can probably read from my phrasing, I think he's wrong. I personally prefer doing the second than the first. I think it's a harder challenge to work within legacy systems and make them adapt than to be a full-time greenfield engineer. (sidebar: If any of my colleagues are reading this they may be rolling their eyes given a project we have in motion at the moment because it's perceived as greenfield--come see me I'll do my best to convince you it's not :D) > But a programmer deciding between a regular job at a big company and their own startup is probably going to learn more doing the startup. Implicit in my previous comment is that, because it's harder making things move in Big Corp one tends to learn more, both as an engineer and as a human. Finding the right technical path through a heavily used, critical system is an interesting challenge, and evolving legacy systems, or spawning new work in a large org requires lots of communication, as well. All that said, I do fully agree that working in such a large corp generates a different sort of stress than working in a small company (I've worked in many). In a small company you're worried, fundamentally, about the company's viability and therefore your paycheck. In a large company I think the major stress is knowing whether you still have a voice that carries any weight. Anyway, it was a great post and I thank the sharer of it :).
大组织需要管理层级，且员工在大公司里仍可主动争取自由和决策权
我们本来也不该用电脑。要造庞大复杂的东西，就需要庞大复杂的组织，而老板制恰好是组织运转最有效的方式。其实在大公司里你的自由比你想象的多，只是要主动争取：别盲从流程，去理解并改进它。把老板当合作伙伴而非上级，你是解决问题、做决策的人。
GuB-42查看英文原文
We aren't meant to have a boss. We also aren't meant to use computers, let alone build them. Big and complex organizations are required in order to build big and complex things. And it turns out that it works best by having bosses. Now, I work most of the time for large companies and what I notice is that you have much more freedom than you might think. But you have to work for it. You may not get to choose a framework, you may have to follow a process, but you still need to make decisions, even if they are on a small scale. You may be handed over procedures and recipes, don't follow them blindly, try to understand them and maybe improve on them. No matter where you are working, you are not a robot. You are the human, the problem solver, the decision maker, the repetitive tasks are for the computer. As a programmer, there is always a way to make a boring job more interesting in a way that benefits the company. And if your boss is competent, he will appreciate it. As for what a boss is, I always see my boss as a partner, not a "superior". My boss works for me, he looks at the big picture, meets with customers, and feeds me work. I work for my boss by doing the work he wants me to do.
这篇文章本质是 YC 的营销材料，目标读者是那些不适合大组织的人
人们总是过度解读这篇文章，其实它就是 Y Combinator 的招生宣传。在大型组织里幸福高效生活的人一直很多，但对感到不满的那部分人，这篇文章也许正是促使他们寻找更适合自己的路的火花（顺便 YC 可以为他们提供资金）。
imgabe查看英文原文
People have always read way too much into this essay instead of looking at it for what it is: marketing material for Y Combinator. It doesn't speak to you? Ok. That's fine. You aren't the target audience. Obviously there have always been millions upon millions of people who live perfectly happy, productive, successful lives working for large organizations. However, some subset of people have always felt dissatisfied in this arrangement. For some of those, this essay might be the spark they need to look around and find something that suits them better (and maybe Y Combinator can fund them.) I'm feeling old that the average HN reader anymore doesn't seem to know who Paul Graham is.
亲身经历印证了小团队更高效，扩张到 20 人反而降低利润且难以管理
我的网络公司 10 人时赚的钱比 20 人时更多。我一直出于惯性觉得越大越好，到 20 人时管理已经完全失控，最后选择卖掉公司。文中描述的超过 10 人后的开销我每天都感同身受，重来一次我会尽量保持在 10 人以内，优先重视联结和利润而非营收和人数。
everdev查看英文原文
> groups of 8 work well; by 20 they're getting hard to manage; and a group of 50 is really unwieldy I made more money at my web agency when I had 10 employees than when I had 20. I kept growing the business through inertia and the thought that bigger was better. I decided to sell with 20 employees rather than drop back down to 10, but by 20 it was unweildy for me to manage on my own. The overhead described in the article from growing beyond a group of 10 I felt everyday. If I had to do it over I'd stay at 10 or less for as long as possible and prioritize connection and profits over revenue and headcount.
一个真实案例：混乱但充满活力的内部竞争结构被收购规范化后，创新随之枯竭
我曾就职一家 3000 人的国防公司，创始人信奉创业精神，内部是 PG 说没见过的自由竞争结构：不同团队抢同一份政府合同，胜者拿巨额奖金，没营收的整个团队被裁，团队间斗殴和偷 IP 屡见不鲜。但他们做出了当时令人惊叹的技术，垄断了高利润市场——直到被收购。收购后一切井然有序，却 7 年没做出任何新东西，市场份额自由落体。牛仔们都走了，我去了创业公司。
uuilly查看英文原文
I used to work for a defense company that eventually got bought by a mega defense company. It was ~3000 people in various parts of the country and it was started by a man who deeply believed in the power of the entrepreneurial spirit. It had that free for all structure that PG says he'd never seen in a tech company. It was the wild west. We had different groups competing for the same government contracts. Managers and hackers alike got whopping bonuses for beating out other groups and they got to decide which contracts they wanted to bag. Entire groups were fired if they didn't bring in revenue. Fist fights, rancor and IP theft between teams were commonplace. But with all that they created some truly mind expanding tech for their time. They owned every angle of a highly lucrative market and showed no signs of slowing down... Until they got bought. The good news is, the fist fights, duplicate (and sometimes triplicate) efforts were stopped and everyone is one big happy family that hasn't done anything new in 7 years. Their market share is in free fall but they say it's fine b/c they are moving away from products in to large scale integration which is too boring to even type about. All the cowboys have gone to other places and I went to a startup. It was fun while it lasted.
平庸招聘的第三重伤害是逼走优秀员工，并推荐 Semco 作为反层级管理的案例
平庸的员工伤害你不止两次，而是三次：产出少、让公司变大，第三是优秀的人无法忍受平庸的同事而离开。巴西的 Semco 是少数运转良好的反例，推荐看 Ricardo Semler 的《Leading by Omission》和他的书《Maverick》。
prakash查看英文原文
"Mediocre hires hurt you twice: they get less done, but they also make you big, because you need more of them to solve a given problem." I would say Mediocre hires hurt you THRICE. Twice for the reasons you mention, and the third one is all the good folks leaving since they can't stand mediocre people. One big company that seems to do well, at least from the outside is Semco in Brazil. Watch Ricardo Semler's "Leading by Omission": http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/308/ and read his book "Maverick": http://www.amazon.com/dp/0446670553. This is of course an anomaly since most companies don't work this way.
戈尔公司证明大公司也可以通过拆分小团队来规避层级，寻求亲历者验证
W.L. Gore（戈尔公司）是一家努力避免层级结构的大公司：Bill Gore 废除了规章制度，几乎没有级别和头衔，坚持一对一直接沟通，把公司组织成一堆小任务组，连工厂也限制在 150-200 人以内，小到大家能互相认识、知道谁能帮上忙。有在 Gore 工作的人愿意谈谈实际情况吗？
crasch4查看英文原文
W.L. Gore and Associates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WL_Gore_and_Associates) is a big company that appears to try hard to avoid hierarchical structures. From a 2004 FastCompany article (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/89/open_gore.html): "So Bill Gore threw out the rules. He created a place with hardly any hierarchy and few ranks and titles. He insisted on direct, one-on-one communication; anyone in the company could speak to anyone else. In essence, he organized the company as though it were a bunch of small task forces. To promote this idea, he limited the size of teams -- keeping even the manufacturing facilities to 150 to 200 people at most. That's small enough so that people can get to know one another and what everyone is working on, and who has the skills and knowledge they might tap to get something accomplished -- whether it's creating an innovative product or handling the everyday challenges of running a business." Anyone who works for Gore care to comment on the actual practice?
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