I don't... like the author of this piece. He writes like he doesn't really understand what he is discussing.<p>For instance, he conflates the move to open plan offices, which is seen as increasing communication within teams, but also enables an almost oppressive level of employee monitoring, with googles propensity to space hoppers. These are quite different things, coming from quite different places. Open plan offices have very little to do with happy employees, and everything to do with productivity.<p>I detect a subtext when he says 'hierarchical is better, managers should think about strategy, Blackberry CEOs are a <i>professional</i> manager and a <i>technician</i> (which is a loaded word, as it means a low skilled technical worker).<p>I mean, is this a backlash against the increasingly irrelevance of management in flat organizations? If we read an article by an IT worker, explaining that Amazon Cloud might be making him irrelevant, but companies migrating to it are making a huge mistake, then we would see his true motivations in writing that. I wonder if computer enabled flat management is making people like Schumpeter feel under threat.<p>The idea of risks and experimentation, is that companies like Google are not creating products through a predictable process - they are farming black swans.<p>You can manufacture software to spec predictably. If you can find developers who will work to spec, remain motivated without personal control of their work, and generally put up with being treated like a production line worker, you can make software on a production line. Infosys do just this.<p>But you can't manufacture technological progress, the next big thing. Because the creation, validation, and creative implementation of ideas is not something that comes out of a factory. Sony try this. Look where that gets them.
The author is describing an office culture that is completely unconnected to actual Montessori schooling under Montessori methods.<p>Montessori actively encourages children to develop the capacity to disagree reasonably within teams while preserving civility. The classroom environment and curriculum encourages solitary inquiry into subjects of great personal interest. Providing quiet spaces for individual students to carry out work is a high priority in Montessori classrooms. And, in marked contrast to a hierarchical, command-and-control style education, Montessori allows a student to choose to spend hours of the school day away from the noise and bustle of the classroom and their peers working on his/her project.<p>Aside from considering what Montessori "actually" is, the whole premise is blown by one fact: traditional, hierarchical education systems put students in the classroom, a completely open, depersonalized space that explicitly encourages surveillance and strips away individual privacy. So, tell me again, what does the model for open-space offices most closely resemble?<p>I've read some excellent critiques of open-plan, non-hierarchical office culture and management styles; this was not one.
We're open plan at Blekko and it has its plusses and minuses. Rich (our CEO) had the experience of taking an open plan group to a mix of offices and open plan that went very badly as communication dried up. At Google quad cubes were the norm, doubles were the minimum (even for VPs who in theory would need to be talking at times about material things).<p>The benefit is it is easier to communicate, and the downside is that it is harder to get away. We give everyone a pair of noise cancelling headphones as a way of shutting out the office noise. Its not as solid as an office but its better than nothing, and culturally if you're typing away with your headphones on its very similar to working with your door closed.<p>That said I don't think it is the ultimate answer, there is still stuff to be done. Maybe rolling desks around so you can move them into an office when you need to concentrate? Or perhaps some partitions for groups but not cubicals explicitly.<p>Definitely a work in progress.
Some choice quotes from this:<p>"It is rather absurd for a technology firm to provide slides for staff to play on, and to let them wear silly propeller-hats"<p>"Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers (who thought about strategy) and chains of command"<p>It always amuses me to read these lofty articles from academics and journalists about how multi-billion-dollar companies are doing it wrong.
I think what we're doing here is confusing a particular model with all things new. Yes, no doubt Montessori had a big impact back in the day -- it's still being felt now. But I doubt that this explains all of the changes we're seeing. More likely is that things that seem to work are copied.<p>Models are always faulty in some way, but using them appropriately can be a good thing. The problem many of these corporate styles addresses is that <i>it's very easy to overconstrain your solution space without realizing it</i>. This turns out to be extremely important in creative tasks. Not so much everywhere, but in places where teams are supposed to be both creating and radically optimizing their work streams? Makes a huge difference.<p>We're also seeing the emergence of a personal corporate brand, where companies are supposed to have personalities, like people. Employees are encouraged to get Twitter accounts. Everything that faces the public is supposed to look like "Hey! We're having a blast here, and we can't wait to help you out." The majority of the corporate submarine pieces we see on HN have this subtext.<p>These are major changes. Perhaps you can lay it all at the door of the Montessori style, but I kinda doubt it. Instead, I think the author is just making a blanket assertion, creating a bit of a straw man in order to set it on fire. As long as it encourages critical thinking about these things, that's not a bad thing.
> <i>Both companies have pragmatically mixed progressive ideas with more traditional ones such as encouraging internal competition and measuring performance.</i><p>Apparently the author and his editors failed to notice that he has already disassembled his straw man before he starts attacking it...
It seems like the author is mixing the idea of an open floor workspace with a casual atmosphere at work.<p>I'll be the first to rail against a lot of contemporary Silicon Valley/tech culture, but running your business like 1950s IBM has nothing to do with producing a quality software/hardware product. If you don't have a public facing job, then does it matter if you wear a t-shirt and jeans to work, and have video games in the break room, etc?<p>"Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers (who thought about strategy) and chains of command. Now many model themselves on learning-through-play “Montessori” schools."--What do you bet that the author of this piece has never served in the military?
I think this is an interesting idea to discuss, but the article is confusing to the point of being misleading.<p>Specifically, the first half of the article is about "Montessory-style" business leadership. The second half cites a survey or two that criticize excessive collaboration within teams and open-plan office layouts.<p>It seems intended to mislead the reader into conflating these two criticisms of very specific issues with criticisms of the entire so-called "Montessory-style" business approach. But I don't think the article contains any actual evidence of the backlash claimed in the title.
> "Morten Hansen of the University of California, Berkeley studied 182 teams who were trying to win a contract on behalf of a professional-services firm. He found that the more time they spent consulting others, the less likely they were to win a deal. This shows, he says, that collaboration has costs as well as benefits."<p>This quote is everything that's wrong with science journalism. I'm sure there are some narrowly defined conclusions to be drawn from the study, but "collaboration had costs as well as benefits" is a truism, not a finding.<p>And I'm highly skeptical that Hansen said any such thing (that the results somehow say something new about the scale of costs relative I benefits of collaboration). Though if he did he and his reviewers bear some responsibility.
I agree about the open-plan thing, but for the rest, doesn't it just depend on the kind of work being done? The author mentions a study about how collaboration hurt deal-making, but that's a totally different endeavor than programming.<p>This always happens on these "it depends" questions. People see one thing that works and try it everywhere. Then people see that it doesn't work everywhere, and just assume it's bad. This author fell neatly into the trap.
My (non-tech) workplace has individual offices for the engineers. Every engineer, even fresh grads, gets an office with a door (though windows are reserved for the senior guys). It sounds like a privilege at first, but with our lack of email it's pretty isolating. We can always get up and walk to each other to talk one-on-one, but sometimes I miss the collegial feel of 3-4 people hashing things out while at their desks.
Well it seems to me that backlash against Montessori management is Montessorian in nature since no where in the article does the author imply an extreme negative pull. You know, the phrase, "Anti-Montessori management on the upsurge". Where is it? You can't be midway off midway.<p>Ah, just ignore me if I don't make sense .Kumbayah!(that's right just one Y)