<story><title>Valve&apos;s flat management structure &apos;like high school&apos;</title><url>http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/09/valve-management-jeri-ellsworth</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Zarkonnen</author><text>Ah, the tyranny of structurelessness: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessnes...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seriously - in the absence of formal power structures, informal ones will always form, and they are often less accountable and fair than formal ones.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>msutherl</author><text>Almost all of the jobs I&amp;#x27;ve had have been with small &amp;quot;non-hierarchical&amp;quot; groups. In all of them, the founders have insisted that there was no hierarchy where clearly there was. When I&amp;#x27;ve tried to explain this to them, they&amp;#x27;ve been incapable of perceiving it.&lt;p&gt;Even at my current corporate job, it&amp;#x27;s the same situation, but by now I&amp;#x27;ve learned that you just need to &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;take power&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;. The one source of legitimate power you do have as an employee, especially in our industry, is the power to leave.&lt;p&gt;These days I cultivate a kind &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t give a shit&amp;quot; attitude that works pretty well.</text></comment>
<story><title>Valve&apos;s flat management structure &apos;like high school&apos;</title><url>http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/09/valve-management-jeri-ellsworth</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Zarkonnen</author><text>Ah, the tyranny of structurelessness: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessnes...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seriously - in the absence of formal power structures, informal ones will always form, and they are often less accountable and fair than formal ones.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tfgg</author><text>Was Valve ever &amp;quot;structureless&amp;quot;? My impression from reading the handbook was that power structures were recognised but not enforced, i.e. if you wanted someone on your project, you had to persuade them. This is not great if you can&amp;#x27;t get people to work on your pet project, but that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean the system isn&amp;#x27;t working.&lt;p&gt;Personally, having seen Jeri&amp;#x27;s AR project video, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have joined it. It seemed like a rather weak and non-transferable technology that didn&amp;#x27;t solve fundamental problems with AR and that had limited gameplay possibilities.</text></comment>