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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a no manager company. This is a "few manager" company. They still have managers -- the cofounders.

Reading through this series it looks like they basically just consolidated all of the management decisions to themselves. I'd love to know how a truly no management company functions, if such a thing exists for companies more than 5 or 6 people.

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You're conflating leadership with management. While leaders will usually end up managing, and vice versa, these are all too often treated as one and the same role. Management is more about driving day to day goals and ensuring everyone is 'productive' and working towards a specific set of objectives set down by the leadership. In this case, it sounds to me like everyone is more or less self-managing and leadership is painting broad strokes about where the company is headed.

His other point is still true however, being able to have 5-6 people self manage is much easier than even having 25 people self manage. Just because getting that many of the same kind of people is difficult if nothing else.

My main counter-example is how they do compensation. Everyone does a peer review, and then the founders sit in a room and decide everyone's salary. That doesn't feel like self management to me. I think a self-managed way to do salary is to either say everyone gets the same thing, or everyone in the company decides and agrees on everyone else's salary. Neither of which seem very tenable.

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