Comment by devonkim | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devonkim | Hacker News Reader

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The fundamental truth I've seen is that DevOps (the practices, not the role) is anti-Taylorist organizational design when most corporations are run completely opposite to that. The successes happen only when from top-down the organization has come to the sober realization that they really need to break down barriers and enable individuals in addition to hiring those capable of working across multiple functions (most people used to being coddled with purely focused work and using managers as shields and go-betweens don't work out well in this transition). Most organizations only want to give people just enough to be productive to a certain capacity not just because of least access principles in security but also because of the cargo cult of manager worship that is antithetical to both Agile and DevOps.

Unfortunately, I've also seen plenty of consulting firms selling "Devops Solutions" and productizing everything because their customers look at everything as products and solutions that they acquire and presume that their culture is fine as-is. While I don't doubt that these firms make plenty of money I don't think the practice will be viable long-term because the problems are entirely due to culture rather than tools or even people.

Pardon my ignorance, but I thought Taylorism was primarily about measurement, & standardization of work practices. Could you elaborate on how it views organizational structures? Or do you just mean a mentality where managers end up viewing themselves as scientists and then viewing their workers as various dials to turn?

Sure, Taylorism is indeed about measurements and standardization as well but where it differs greatly from the approach that Deming espoused is in where authority and primary allocators of resources are positioned and housed. In Taylorism, it’s much more centralized and managers are the dedicated resources that decide allocation of resources primarily and need information constantly to make decisions (hence a culture of most corporations constantly asking for reports that are usually outdated / irrelevant by the time corrective actions are enacted). In the approaches toward quality that Deming talked about, much more emphasis is placed upon the end product and responsibilities and authority being granted closer to the work being performed (this is not Communism - quite the opposite!). The infamously centralized US Army has started to abandon many Taylorist principles to help fight in the Middle East against a decentralized enemy force. In a really well done “devops” culture while managers are still valuable, their roles are a lot more limited in scope day-to-day than in traditionally structured organizations. Other approaches include “flat” organizations (fully peer-to-peer network mesh) and holocracy. This, in Deming’s view there are many less managers and you may not need them at the smallest unit of organizational structure (you may report to someone as a formality but you have more autonomy and KPIs attached to you).

Deming’s work was not widely accepted in the US, but his approach was accepted at a place many Americans do recognize for superior quality and consistency - Toyota. Every other devops process of feedback and organizational structure is derived squarely from Deming’s principles. I always thought it’s rather ironic that a society known for being relentlessly individualist adopted corporate practices of conformity and a society known for being conformist took on an organizational philosophy that put more control into individuals. Maybe it was done this way to counter natural social inclinations in wider society? I’m not sure honestly. My gut feeling is that Taylorism is precisely how large militaries historically work and following WW2 this was easier for American workers to adopt.

I've been meaning to read some of his work for quite a while. Could you recommend a book? There seem to be quite a few on Amazon

Out Of The Crisis.

Oh the irony... When someone's proposing that responsibilities should be allocated differently you are the biggest proponent of it unless someone's proposing that your responsibilities should be allocated somewhere else (like I proposed below that engineers could do what devops engs do).

Not that I am surprised when I see hypocrisy. I just like to call it out.

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