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No. Most people would advising avoiding an office manager for awhile. The idea is that the company should only be doing important things and important things ar
by pbreit 10y ago
No. Most people would advising avoiding an office manager for awhile. The idea is that the company should only be doing important things and important things are worth doing by the key people.
- gl338 10y agoCompletely agree. It took us to 15 people before we hired an Office Manager. Silly in hindsight, but not obvious at all, and we debated it quite a bit.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- atemerev 10y agoAll right, but who will be doing "less important" and perhaps boring things, which can lead to many problems in the future in case of neglecting them? I got bitten by this pretty badly. But perhaps bureaucratic load in Europe is much harder than in the US. And for me, it was never a question of need — the need for designated operations/administration employee was obvious from day 1 after incorporation, I just thought I can't afford it. Well, I was wrong. I couldn't afford not having such a person. Some people say the same about lawyers.
- pbreit 10y agoWhat are some examples of less important things that left undone/underdone can lead to many problems? (I'm not sure that something that can compromise your business can be considered "less important")
- jstandard 10y agoThat seems a pretty romantic view of running a business. An office manager provides leverage for key people to focus on doing their MOST important things, without spending as much time on the operational realities of running a company. Office managers typically help with a mix of accounting, HR, coordination, and dozens of other operational tasks. In many cases doing a better job than key people who were overloaded with them before. While I suspect that Suster is making an exaggerated conclusion to drive page views, it doesn't sound that off the mark to me. After raising an A round, you're going to want your key people spending as much time as possible on scaling the core business. An office manager is a great way to help them do that.
- pbreit 10y agoWhat typically happens is two-fold: the person is on staff and so make-work is created to keep the person busy. And important things formally handled by the CEO, like invoicing, get shifted to the manager.
- jstandard 10y ago> "what typically happens is..." This is a very broad conclusion about what is typical. From where are you drawing this statement? Also, why shouldn't the office manager be put in charge of important things? They're a paid employee with specific skills.
- pbreit 10y agoLots of experience and a bit of intuition. If the office/ops mgr can work on customer or product development, that's a different story.
- HelloNurse 10y agoIn practice, "only be doing important things" is a completely unrealistic principle. Administrative tasks and bureaucracy are caused by the mere existence of a business, so having someone that takes care of them is even more urgent than hiring productive employees and doing actual work. Administrative personnel should be treated as a sunken cost: one generic secretary allows many other employees, including the "key people" who would otherwise need to solve problems, to work without trouble and without non-business distractions.
- pbreit 10y agoWhat are some examples of such unimportant tasks that must get done?
- HelloNurse 10y agoTaxes, payroll, rent, buying all kinds of supplies, contracting and directing plumbers and the like, answering the phone, going to the bank and the post office, discussing invoices, daily accounting... by the way, I didn't say they are "unimportant" tasks: they are merely not profitable ones.