I bet most large tech companies could have a fairly accurate map of the network in less than a week if they really wanted it. Simply look at every email and chat reply between two people and build a graph whose nodes are people and with edges whose strength is the number of those interactions. Done.
Of course, there are a lot of scary privacy implications and I'm sure there are a few execs who wouldn't want anyone to discover that, wow dude_in_power_x sure does sent a lot of chats to cute_indirect_subordinate_they_have_no_reason_to_interact_with.
But if and organization really did want a better sociological understanding of their workforce, they could build it.
I did all this as an individual contributor. We called them "internal open development" and had developed an entire model around it. You can basically create "parallel" hierarchies within organizations. It's not that different from the "build something people want" idea, but it actually makes those people part of it.
There were several other projects like this.
As an remote introvert, I do this sort of thing over Slack, instead of at the watercooler, not via docs.
There is always 2 different orgs: the organization that is formally stated for legal/insurance reasons, and the REAL organization that is messy and ad-hoq.
You have to account for both.
You can’t just find some idea and do things. There are road maps and promises made to manager and product.
What incentivises your manager to just agree to let you work on your own projects?
* You have someone whose job or as part of their job is to it is to discover these kinds of internal organizational efficiencies and automate them. Something that organically comes up like this gets assigned to that person.
* Managers are not incentivized to stick to a rigid schedule or metrics based on an inflexible roadmap.
* Flexibility and autonomy is built into developers' schedules so they can work on things outside of just their rank-ordered task list.
There are strict timelines that span months if not years, often optimised to a large extent. There is little room for spontaneity and organic projects to come up.
What incentivizes you to ask permission?
Now that I read the current post, maybe that should be a Slack feature out of the box!
An organic team is a group of individuals that forms spontaneously within an organization based on informal communication networks and interpersonal relationships rather than formal directives or predefined structures. Such teams typically emerge in response to a specific need or opportunity and are composed of members from various departments who collaborate based on shared goals and complementary skills. Unlike traditional teams, their existence is not documented in official organizational charts, and their composition can be fluid.
