I have talked to people at all types of companies. I know people who have one office and want another. I know people who work remotely. I know people who have an office in India and a sales office in the United States. All of these company structures are part of the bigger picture of what a business model is. But, I learned a secret from reading blogs and seeing who performs best in real life — and I am going to share this with you.
Bottom heavy
Typical companies in India are bottom heavy. They have lots of workers, but very few managers. Many workers are self-managing. This type of business model could work if you exclusively hire workers who are capable of doing a great job being self-managing. Most people are not self-managing, so I would avoid this business model.
Mixed teams — a winning idea!
But, companies with what I like to call, “mixed teams” seem to work optimally. They have a skill mixture in each team. Teams could even have replaceable members just as rickshaws all use the same parts which you can transfer from one rick to another in seconds. Imagine a team of five people. You have a project manager who is very seasoned, a mid-level worker, and three junior programmers. The grunt work gets done by the lower level workers. The planning and supervision gets done by the project manager. The more complicated work gets done by the mid-level employee. Brilliant and cost effective too! You are still getting cheap labor for the majority of the project paired with the superior thinking skills of a seasoned professional! But, there is more!
If the lower level employees get stuck, they have not one, but two seasoned people to ask for help. But, there is yet another even bigger problem that the mixed level model solves. It is very hard to hire higher level programmers in any country these days. They are systematically gulped up by big companies and seldom available. It is easier to hire inexperienced people since there are so many of them and nobody really values them. So, what is the strategy? If your high level programmer leaves the company after a few years, your mid-level employee will be experienced enough to promote to that higher position in many cases. Internal hiring solves this huge problem of a worldwide shortage of experienced programmers.
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