For those of you who don’t follow tech, there’s a huge debacle that blew up this past week around a company called Github and some very poor gender practices. Summary is here:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/16/github-julie-ann-horvath-response/

The reason I mention it is that some of you have expressed interest in holocracy, and the Github founders had a strong interest in the topic. I roll my eyes whenever I hear this, not because I think holocracy is a bad concept (it’s not, and it’s also a very old one), but because the current groundswell of interest around it feels so naive.

Two friends from Code for America wrote some excellent blog posts on this matter this past weekend:

http://cbracy.tumblr.com/post/79876957198/the-github-debacle-why-holacracy-is-bullshit
http://mike.teczno.com/notes/on-managers.html

I wrote my own commentary on this several months ago:

The Real Importance of Networks: Understanding Power

I didn’t mention holocracy by name, but you might notice my subtle references to it in the piece.