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Ask HN: What's been your experience working with management at startups?

• hashkb 11y ago
  I have found a lot of what you describe. Part of the job is managing that. Or, you can quit, start your own company, and try not to become it.
• twunde 11y ago
  Management mistakes can be found across all companies big and small. What you're seeing in particular is that a senior dev has been promoted to be the CTO or equivalent and has little prior management experience. This is pretty common. In a corporate job, that person might have a training program or someone to mentor him/her but in a startup they just have to learn from their mistakes. So what can you do? Be proactive. Talk to management, set up 1-on-1s. Depending on the problem, it might be something they haven't thought about or it might be something they're aware of but haven't had the time to do something about. And of course you could always aim to get into management to do something about it.
  • throwaway_606 11y ago
    I try to be honest and discuss issues I'm having when they occur. The hell of it is that most of the time the issues stem from something they've implemented (code or culture), and thus they take it personally. On the occasions where it's been a mutual gripe it works out well. There's just a lot of ego on the line and it really screws up the whole process. As for getting into management - that'll have to wait a few more years. I want to check a few more boxes as a developer before I make the leap. I think if I went for it now, there would be a good chance that I'd end up emulating some of the bad tendencies I see due to a lack to more comprehensive experience.
• tedmiston 11y ago
  I think it's one of the biggest growing pains a startup has going from a couple people to double digits. My particular comments are from Cincinnati's startup ecosystem, where I've been an engineer for a few startups and hang out with founders around our local accelerators and incubator regularly. I think Chicago's is comparable in some ways -- the biggest differences being you have a more mature ecosystem and more funding, and some huge startups which we definitely don't have. I've seen management-level people come in without background experience that handle the managerial parts of their job well. I've seen some people get promoted from head of whatever to their first management position and become not good at both. However, managers with prior management experience at a startup seem to be the best bet. Sometimes skilled management that has a background outside of startups does well; sometimes I think they hurt the early- to mid-stage culture. I've also seen, at the early stage, CEOs that have never done project management or managed developers before and they are bad at one or the other. Honestly, I think this just varies widely by company. It's never been something that's affected my choice to (not) work for / stay with a company though. Personally, if traction is good and you enjoy the team, I tend to just have confidence the founders and management will figure it out while I mostly stay heads down on engineering. Perhaps that's a little vague and not the most helpful answer, but it's a reflection on my startup experience.
  • throwaway_606 11y ago
    It's not vague; it just highlights a personality difference. For me, after having a succession of short-sighted (and often borderline disastrous) decisions made at higher levels it's hard to keep faith that the founders/management have a reasonable chance of fixing the issues. I actually admire your ability to keep your head down and focus on the work.
• csixty4 11y ago
  Both my experiences with startups were the same. Big egos, no management skills, mediocre technical skills. Immature brats who think they're hot because somebody gave them money and a foosball table. Pretty sure I'll never work for a startup again unless it's my own. I worked for a startup in River North for a year or so. My manager (later VP) insisted we use his custom ORM. Fine. I needed to join two tables. I ran out of memory trying to process the result sets in memory. I needed a database join. Every morning's stand-up, same story "I'm blocked until the ORM implements joins. Want me to implement them?" "No, I don't want you touching that code." So him & his minion would pace around and scribble on a white board all day, then go out for drinks. Next morning, same thing. So after two weeks of surfing the web because I'm blocked on everything I'm supposed to be working on, I just write a SQL query with a join and finish my damn component. He sees my commit, makes everybody stop working while he chews me out in front of everyone for not using the ORM. "Does it do joins yet?" "No, BUT IT'S GOING TO!". It's so much easier to berate your employees than have a solid architecture, use existing libraries, write unit tests, or have any sort of plan. Say you "move fast and break things" to the press, then scream at someone that "this isn't a game" when things break. I'm a manager myself now, and I make it a point to have the kind of environment where failures become learning experiences and the first place I put blame is on our process. I've seen average developers become stars by being honest about how they screwed up, then sending them down the right path. But I'm in my late thirties now. My management style comes from studying leadership and almost two decades of development experience under good & bad managers. These startup managers were all in their mid-twenties. I wonder what training, what mentoring they had. I sometimes think they were just copying every stereotypical boss they saw on TV.
  • throwaway_606 11y ago
    This is very similar to what I've experienced. My first job was with a multi-national where most of the decision making was taken away from the developers and we were only meant to implement mandates made outside the team (senior devs as well as junior). This left a really bad taste in my mouth, so I decided to go the startup route. I am really curious about what makes working for a non-startup more attractive and better fit for you. It's something I've been kicking around, but hence prior experience I've been hesitant to pursue. Do you find that you are able to exercise meaningful choices? Is there real adherence to standards? Does the work/life culture allow you to leave work at work more often? (Sorry for the barrage of questions, it's just you seem to have headed in the direction I'm most curious about)
• atmosx 11y ago
  What are the management you expect to find to a non-startup corp?
• sjg007 11y ago
  Companies that succeed do so irrespective of management. Basically, the product and momentum is great enough that you can lose money or have not quite inept management that you do well anyway. Think of it the other way: You can have the best management money can buy but if you can't sell anything or keep your users, you are toast.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• Salvator3 11y ago
  Good God. I joined a startup this year after over a decade at Fortune-500s. It is eye-opening. The founder convinced us to hire our friends as contractors, then constantly pushes out payments. One time, he tried to have me talk to my friend "we're doing you a favor by paying you both payments at once (at the date of the later payment) -- now you only have to go to the bank once." The unethical nature of management is a problem, but trying to get me to sell the snake oil is even worse.