The problem is that "crap political work" exists at all.
The normal way organizations try to decrease the amount of crap political work is to hire someone who just works on that crap all day. Managers.
Instinctively, you would think- this person produces nothing, adds nothing to the product, they should serve the actual workers. But this isnt usually the case.
Long term planning usually gets lumped into a manager's work load because its not something that needs to be done to get today's work completed. Because they are involved with planning future work, they end up owning that work later, hiring the people who do it, etc. There are also fewer of them in number and are more outspoken, so they end up being the one guy the bosses talk to.
Here is an alternate reality. An engineer comes up with a good idea for a new feature. He talks to his buddy DBA and SysAdmin. They think its a good idea so they agree to help out when they can. Engineer asks fresh out of college designer to help. Designer respects the reputation of the engineer and joins the team. A sales guy hears about the new feature and it sounds similar to something customers have been asking for so he tells them he can sell it. The bosses see a cluster forming in the corner and walk over and ask what they are up to. The feature is actually already implemented and being tested. Boss says it looks good, asks an analyst to see what its affect on factor x would be, walks on to a different cluster he sees forming across the room.
As their work on the feature is wrapping up people keep their ears open for the next project they'd like to work on. Everyone moves on to other ideas. People with good ideas become the nucleus for new clusters. People with good skills become members. From time to time the bosses look at the islands- the people always sitting by themselves. Either they are genius uber productive people or they are people who will probably be gone soon.
In a system like this, who is going to do maintenance tasks? How do you keep people from just working on the fun things? Why would you expect an developer to have any insight into future market conditions? What happens when a customer says "I need this feature" and the account manager comes back and says "guys we need this feature" and no one wants to implement it?
This structure is great for a very specific type of company (B2C, creating cutting edge products that are fun to work on and interesting enough that they can hire the best talent [aka Valve]).
In most types of companies this would just result in the crappy work never getting done.
IMO you can look at this from an evolutionary standpoint. If this were such a great way to run a company don't you think you'd see more successful companies doing this besides Valve?
Believe it or not there are people who like doing the maintenance tasks.
>How do you keep people from just working on the fun things?
Why would you?
>Why would you expect an developer to have any insight into future market conditions?
I wouldnt. Although, if they are familiar with a product and its users they probably have as good of an idea as say, random account manager.
> What happens when a customer says "I need this feature" and the account manager comes back and says "guys we need this feature" and no one wants to implement it?
In my example the cluster formed around a developer. A cluster could just as easily form around a sales guy, an exec, the guy who makes sure the vending machine is always full.
The customer says I need feature x, the sales guy starts building a team while doing whatever work he can- taking requirements, etc;
It is the job of the bosses to build a good HR process and
provide leadership and vision. If they are good at what they do and respected, when they say, "now we will move in this direction", the new ideas will start to gravitate in that direction. If not, there has to be a process to get execs who can do that.
> If this were such a great way to run a company don't you think you'd see more successful companies doing this besides Valve?
Heirarchy is something that has been firmly established in human culture for a long time. New ideas about how to organize humans are emerging and old ones are being revisited.
Having said that, the Gore company makes products for use by industry and has had a nontraditional organization for the last 50 years.
In the U.S. most non-hierarchical businesses are small local coops in the form of bakeries, coffee shops, etc- people experimenting. But there's no reason it couldnt work for a company that sells software or information.
As much as the world needs ditch diggers there are people who need jobs digging ditches. You dont have to force them to do it.
Crap political work is necessary in any complex cooperative human endeavor.
Communication is complex, and no matter how careful at scale there will be misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and bruised egos.
Resources are limited, and reaching a decision, if not a consensus, is an important part of successful engineering.
Time is valuable, and at times for survival a feature must be cut and a product direction abandoned. The handling of the removal of responsibilities and resources is necessary, but never something that is happily accepted by everyone.
The normal way organizations try to decrease the amount of crap political work is to hire someone who just works on that crap all day. Managers.
Instinctively, you would think- this person produces nothing, adds nothing to the product, they should serve the actual workers. But this isnt usually the case.
Long term planning usually gets lumped into a manager's work load because its not something that needs to be done to get today's work completed. Because they are involved with planning future work, they end up owning that work later, hiring the people who do it, etc. There are also fewer of them in number and are more outspoken, so they end up being the one guy the bosses talk to.
Here is an alternate reality. An engineer comes up with a good idea for a new feature. He talks to his buddy DBA and SysAdmin. They think its a good idea so they agree to help out when they can. Engineer asks fresh out of college designer to help. Designer respects the reputation of the engineer and joins the team. A sales guy hears about the new feature and it sounds similar to something customers have been asking for so he tells them he can sell it. The bosses see a cluster forming in the corner and walk over and ask what they are up to. The feature is actually already implemented and being tested. Boss says it looks good, asks an analyst to see what its affect on factor x would be, walks on to a different cluster he sees forming across the room.
As their work on the feature is wrapping up people keep their ears open for the next project they'd like to work on. Everyone moves on to other ideas. People with good ideas become the nucleus for new clusters. People with good skills become members. From time to time the bosses look at the islands- the people always sitting by themselves. Either they are genius uber productive people or they are people who will probably be gone soon.