Comments on: Who's the Boss?

Who's the Boss?

scalefree — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:22:21 -0800

Introducing the Forbes corporate org chart wiki (beta). Forbes magazine is conducting an experiment in Web 2.0 to collaboratively map the org charts of corporations including Intel, Apple, Google, & Microsoft. Everyone is encouraged to pitch in, add names or make corrections. And if your company's not already on the list you can always add it.

By: slogger

slogger — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:32:19 -0800

Neat concept. Would like to see it filled out more thoroughly, both within companies, and additional companies.

By: scrump

scrump — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:36:18 -0800

No vetting of entries? This will certainly wendell!

By: dios

dios — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:36:29 -0800

I guess this is an "experiment," so there's that value. But this really seems to me to be something that doesn't need to be collaborative wiki-ish. This seems to be a good time to resort to good ol' fashioned journalism: call up HR, review Corporate Documents, and review disclosures. For the most part, what do 99.999999% of the population have to add about the corporate organization of Mircosoft? The people who work there know it, and people who go and research can figure it out (which goes back to the old journalism issue). But collaborative things have to off-set the detriment of bad reporting and gaming of it by the masses through the utility the collaborative process brings. Or in other words, what is the value to the system you bring beyond your ability to delete it when I put myself as Bill Gates' boss? In short, I don't get the utility of this (beyond the experimental value). It doesn't strike me as something that benefits from collaboration from the whole world.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:38:49 -0800

What a bizzare interface. I think people would be more interested in contributing if it wasn't for all the flashing, flickering advertisements.

By: chimaera

chimaera — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:42:43 -0800

I love how their decision to make the interface flash quite handily makes it impossible to just pop the links into a bunch of new tabs for easy comparison and perusal. I hate buzzwords as much as the next ex-Web Producer, but come on, Forbes. AJAX is years-old tech.

By: churl

churl — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:42:56 -0800

Interesting. A little like They Rule, from a different perspective.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:43:25 -0800

I wonder how to connect Woz with Apple?

By: Zinger

Zinger — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:43:35 -0800

I know nothing about US privacy laws, but surely this violates something, somewhere?

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:46:56 -0800

I know nothing about US privacy laws, but surely this violates something, somewhere? Isn't most, if not all of this public record?

By: davejay

davejay — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:47:34 -0800

My company is on there, but I'm not important enough to be charted (and not foolish enough to chart myself.)

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:48:22 -0800

This seems to be a good time to resort to good ol' fashioned journalism: call up HR, review Corporate Documents, and review disclosures. What disclosures? This isn't a lawsuit. Any position below vice-president is likely not publicly available, and calling HR isn't going to help considering HR's job is to make sure this never gets out. And I definitely see the value in this. Once you learn who some support drone reports to three levels up, you can call the switchboard and ask for that person directly. This could force companies to become much more responsive to customer complaints.

By: abulafa

abulafa — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:50:03 -0800

I'm sure Mayor McCheese will be happy to transfer you to Grimace in accounting... (not wikiist)

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:51:27 -0800

needs more metafilter.

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:51:56 -0800

Interesting. A little like They Rule, from a different perspective. posted by churl at 4:42 PM on May 7 They rule is excellent. I just realized that the fatness of the directors icon represents how many boards they sit on.

By: dios

dios — Mon, 07 May 2007 14:02:22 -0800

What disclosures? This isn't a lawsuit. Corporate disclosures. For public companies. No need to jump at everything I say. It's not all controversial.

By: adamms222

adamms222 — Mon, 07 May 2007 14:06:55 -0800

Steve Jobs = Big Fucking Cheese

By: Zinger

Zinger — Mon, 07 May 2007 14:27:09 -0800

I know nothing about US privacy laws, but surely this violates something, somewhere? Isn't most, if not all of this public record? I don't know, that was kind of what I was asking. How far down the org chart is/can be public knowledge? Thinking of Walmart for example, although I doubt every single "associate" would be posted there anyway, could/should they be?

By: blacklite

blacklite — Mon, 07 May 2007 14:30:05 -0800

This is ugly and dumb and pointless. ... Sorry, but, yeah. Informative post though. The interface sucks, I don't think it will be used for reference since you can't bring in other companies to the same chart (like with TheyRule), it's information that's already available, and... who cares? Oh well.

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 07 May 2007 14:44:09 -0800

Well, you can vandalise it I guess. That should be 5 minutes of fun for someone.

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 07 May 2007 14:46:18 -0800

Also is almost-but-not-quite-Google-Maps the best interface for this kind of thing? After about five minutes of trying to ue it I would say not.

By: jeffamaphone

jeffamaphone — Mon, 07 May 2007 15:28:50 -0800

The MSFT one is very wrong.

By: Muddler

Muddler — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:04:14 -0800

I was the wikiCEO of wikiEnron years ago making millions of wikiDollars until they uncovered a wikiScandal and now I'm in wikiJail. It's all true, just look it up on the web.

By: jeversol

jeversol — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:30:32 -0800

I know that my customer and my employeer both specifically state their org chart is confidential. Besides, what good is it going to be to anyone to know what managers report to what senior managers? All anyone really cares about are the CxO and VP level roles. Seems like a waste of programming effort to me.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Mon, 07 May 2007 17:33:43 -0800

boo_radley writes "needs more metafilter." Your wish is my command.

By: hangingbyathread

hangingbyathread — Mon, 07 May 2007 18:15:56 -0800

Under the Apple section, Dr. Eric Schmidt's title is listed as 'Vagina'. Makes me wonder about the validity of the site, interesting as it may be.

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Mon, 07 May 2007 18:21:20 -0800

My org chart: When Jerry's not here, you do what I say. It goes from God to Jerry to me.

By: MarvinTheCat

MarvinTheCat — Mon, 07 May 2007 18:28:55 -0800

Jonathan Ive is five steps down on the Apple chart, and reports under the iPod division? I find it hard to believe that's accurate. And their second tier execs seem really heavily weighted toward iTunes/iPod. This is definitely more Wiki and journalism.

By: zippy

zippy — Mon, 07 May 2007 19:39:14 -0800

The biggest problem with this is that, as far as I can tell, there's no version history. The beauty of the Wikipedia is that it's easier to revert an edit than it is to make one, which means that it's easy to undo garden-variety bogus edits. Wake me up when it has a version history with undo.

By: who squared

who squared — Mon, 07 May 2007 19:44:44 -0800

Fun for about five minutes. Flash was annoying.

By: Kibbutz

Kibbutz — Mon, 07 May 2007 20:39:23 -0800

To make an unconnected employee the boss of someone already on the chart, drag the boss over the employee and wait for the flash. Once it flashes, move the boss above the employee and release. That's exactly how you do it in real life, too.

By: drstein

drstein — Mon, 07 May 2007 22:05:03 -0800

It's already completely full of silly entries and spam. Wow, that didn't take long.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 08 May 2007 08:18:41 -0800

That's a, uh, very vertical management structure Microsoft's got.

By: undercoverhuwaaah

undercoverhuwaaah — Tue, 08 May 2007 08:27:17 -0800

So what kind of education do you think Jeff Robbin needed to become "VP boobs" of Apple?

By: dios

dios — Tue, 08 May 2007 08:46:31 -0800

After thinking about it long and hard, I can't decide if I like "VP boobs" or "VP of boobs" better. They are both great in their own way.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 08 May 2007 08:55:58 -0800

Bill Gates, Shadow CEO of Apple?

By: dbolll

dbolll — Tue, 08 May 2007 13:24:33 -0800

Goro certainly is busy these days.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 08 May 2007 14:56:00 -0800

Microsoft seems to have given up on the vertical management approach and gone horizontal.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 08 May 2007 14:59:48 -0800

dbolll writes "Goro certainly is busy these days." Are you talking about Regional Manager Goro, or Four-Armed Miniboss Goro?

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 08 May 2007 15:06:33 -0800

Man, that's a bizarre UI they have: it doesn't take the characters I send it down the wire, it looks at what key I pressed, and uses the character it has assigned to that key. So if you use a non-US keyboard, special symbols (like @,',(,),&,%) come out all mixed-up.