每日原则：金字塔塔尖上的人应当有管理直接下属的技能和专注力

2023-09-09 01:09

几年前，在桥水，有人曾建议让技术部门主管来同时管理后勤部（由负责楼宇、餐食、办公用品等设施的人员组成），因为技术和后勤两个功能有所重叠（计算机也属于设施，也涉及用电等），但让负责杂务、餐食的人员向技术部门主管汇报是不恰当的，让技术人员向负责后勤的人汇报也同样不合适。这些职能虽然从广义上讲都属于“后勤”，但工作性质完全不同，要求的工作技能也不同。还有一个类似的例子，我们曾讨论把负责客户协议的部门与另外一个负责对手方合同的部门合并，归由一位管理者来领导。那种想法是错误的，因为与客户签合同所需的技能完全不同于与对手方签合同所需的技能。把这两个部门混合到一个笼统的“签合同”名下是不对的，因为这两个部门分别需要不同的知识和技能。

A few years ago, someone at Bridgewater proposed that our facilities group (the people who take care of the building and grounds, food service, office supplies, etc.) should begin to report to our head of technology because of the overlap in the two areas (computers are a facility too, they use electricity, and so on). But having the people who are responsible for janitorial services and meals report to a technology manager would be as inappropriate as having technology people report to the person taking care of facilities. These functions, even if they're considered "facilities" in the broadest sense, are very different, as are the respective skill sets. Similarly, at another time, we talked about putting the folks who work on client agreements under the same manager as those who do counterparty agreements. But that would have been a mistake because the skills required to reach agreements with clients are very different from the skills required to reach agreements with counterparties. It would be wrong to conflate both departments under the general heading of "agreements," because each calls for specific knowledge and skills.