I just want to call out Oliver's post here as extremely valuable, and this bears repeating:
A "flat" org structure is not a panacea when you don't have a level playing field, and the playing field's never as level as we like to think it is. Google up some discussions on the subject of 'meritocracy' and you'll find talk about all kinds of inequalities in the power dynamics in free/open-source software and similar online cultures, as well as many engineering/"high-tech" organizations in general. I won't go into more here now, but I think it's something we need to seriously think more about, especially since we're at the intersection of many different cultures. -- brion On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 10:34 AM, Oliver Keyes <ironho...@gmail.com> wrote: > I would like to clarify a fairly major premise of this conversation: > namely, the comment I made that Yuri quoted in the very first message. > > When I say that the hierarchical organisation of the Foundation is > something that is preventing us from doing better, I was not thinking > of how we develop software. Indeed, I suspect that peoples' tendency > to bring things constantly back to "does it improve the measurable > speed at which we right code" is symptomatic of the problematic > dynamics here. What I was thinking about was how we pay attention to > organisational hiring, to how we promote, to how we treat people, what > empathy we have and how we value empathy. > > I have consistently found the Foundation to lag in all of these > regards. It is not good at making sure that the recognition of > employees is fair and treated equitably (be that who gets called out > in presentations, who gets given opportunities, or who gets raises). > It is not good at making sure that how we hire is fair. It is not good > at making sure that concerns of employees are given weight. All too > often the people marginalised by our approaches are the people > marginalised outside the Foundation, as well; women, people in > "non-technical" roles, people in roles that we code as "support work" > (and guess what tends to correlate with a role being coded as support > work?) All too often the work marginalised by our approaches is the > work that Doesn't Product Code (again: guess who tends to do the heavy > lifting on things like organisational health and process and > structure?) > > As an organisation I have found the Foundation overly rigid and > resistant to the most conservative change around these problems; > particularly I think of efforts to improve unintentional bias in our > job descriptions. Basically, unless you as an employee go out and do > the damn work yourself, for free, with 0 recognition of the emotional > and temporal cost of that work, it doesn't get done. The organisation > as a whole is not interested. > > Switching to a flat organisational structure does not, in any way, > solve for this problem. In fact, in some way it makes it worse, > because it makes us *think* that we have solved for the systemic and > hierarchical power dynamics that make it difficult for low-level or > marginalised people to get things done, or people doing marginalised > work to get things done, when we have only shifted them. > > To pick on someone, I pick Trevor (sorry Trevor. For reference this is > an entirely hypothetical example and Trevor is lovely): Trevor's voice > is given a lot more weight in the organisation than mine. Trevor has a > lot more influence than I do. Trevor has a lot more influence than > most WMFers do! > > Crucially: this *isn't because he's management*. This was the case > even *before* he was management. Because: > > 1. He's been here a really really long time and so knows everyone. > 2. He's an Engineer, and we give engineers more weight and cachet than > we do, say, administrative staff or people in "support" roles, even > though those people are both as-smart and have an equal interest in > the organisation's success; > 3. His background matches what we strongly correlate with Authority Voices. > > If we switch to a flat organisational structure where nobody has a > title, or..whatever, all of these things will still be true. We will > switch pronounce systemic biases or uneven power dynamics Done, and we > will have achieved something that's actually worse than not doing > anything at all. Because now, we still *have* all those problems, we > just think we're done and don't have to put any work in and can't talk > about it, and nobody has the responsibility for continuing to fix > things. > > The Foundation I would return to is not an organisation with a flat > structure. In fact, it could be an organisation that looks a lot like > this one, because I don't believe reporting lines or titles have as > much of an impact on dynamics as we think they do. What *does* have an > impact is how we recognise the value of emotional labour, how we > recognise our implicit biases and advantages, and how honest we are > with each other: not just in terms of what we *say* but in terms of > how we *listen*. In other words, the litmus test for me is: what > happens when the socially and politically weakest person in the > organisation has an idea? > > Anyway; I don't particularly want to go into a long drawn-out > conversation, just correct the initial, fundamental misunderstanding. > Hopefully I've provided a bit of food for thought along with that. > > On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 3:50 AM, Pau Giner <pgi...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > >> > >> If I remember correctly, I think that's how the Content Translation > project > >> started -- it was someone's personal project, which got more people and > >> attention because it's a great idea and showed real success. > > > > > > That is not accurate. I think Content Translation is a good example of > > bottom-up and design-driven project, though. > > > > The Language team identified that users frequently were asking for better > > support for translating Wikipedia articles, and decided to learn from > > existing translators (and their heavily manual efforts) without a > > predefined idea of how the solution would look like. After many > iterations > > of design, prototyping and research the team started building the tool > > iteratively and driven by user behaviour (based on metrics and more user > > research). I wrote a more detailed piece about this some time ago if > anyone > > is interested in more details: > > http://pauginer.com/post/116536135010/the-design-of-content-translation > > > > So while this project didn't came from top-down roadmap, it was also not > a > > solo "cowboy-style" personal project. > > I definitely think it followed a good pattern for more projects to > consider. > > > > Pau > > > > > > On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 4:40 AM, Andrew Lih <andrew....@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > >> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 7:53 PM, Yuri Astrakhan < > yastrak...@wikimedia.org> > >> wrote: > >> > >> > > >> > And that got me thinking. WMF, an organization that was built with the > >> open > >> > and community-driven principles - why have we became the classic > example > >> of > >> > a corporate multi-level hierarchy? Should we mimic a living organism > >> rather > >> > than a human-built pyramid? > >> > > >> > This may sound naive and wishful, but could we have a more flat and > >> > flexible team structure, where instead of having large teams with > >> > sub-teams, we would have small self-forming teams "by interest". For > >> > example, someone decides to dedicate their 20% to building support for > >> > storing 3D models in wiki. > >> > >> > >> So glad to see this being discussed in the open with smart folks like > >> Brion, Dario, et al. > >> > >> 3D support would be most welcome – we’re in a holding pattern with > >> Smithsonian 3D GLAM projects in DC because of that shortcoming in > Commons. > >> It was never known whether anyone was paying attention or going to put > 3D > >> on the radar screen. (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T3790) > >> > >> At my keynote talk at Wikiconference USA, I said one of the things WMF > >> “must do” is multimedia and interactivity. Your work on the interactive > >> graph is a great step. Brion, myself and others have been working on > >> collaborative video. Brion’s ogv.js work is a great example of > skunkworks > >> type projects having a huge impact. > >> > >> And if 3D is given a priority, the three areas would be a great > collective > >> step towards Wikipedia continuing its revolutionary work. Best of all, > they > >> would be technologies developed in service of content and community > needs, > >> and not simply created for tech’s sake. > >> > >> An organism reacts to the change of its environment by redistributing > >> > resources to the more problematic areas. Would small, flexible, and > more > >> > focused teams achieve that better? > >> > > >> > >> Yes, and in a recent meeting you mentioned Bell Labs as a model. As > someone > >> who worked there, it’s a very good ideal to shoot for. > >> > >> > >> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/2016-02-16_Discussing_Knowledge_Engine_with_Lila > >> > >> Thanks for opening up this discussion. > >> -Andrew > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > >> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > >> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > >> > > > > > > > > -- > > Pau Giner > > Senior User Experience Designer > > Wikimedia Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
