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The biggest challenge you will face is what I think of during interviews as "founder damage." You're used to leading teams, not being on them. You're used to de
by yodon 6y ago
The biggest challenge you will face is what I think of during interviews as "founder damage." You're used to leading teams, not being on them. You're used to deciding what to do, not doing what is decided. A good engineering lead builds and leads teams and makes plenty of decisions, but they do it in a context of "others around me are people I need to listen to" not "I'm only listening to this person because I have to because I had to get a normal job." The best thing you can do to stave off founder damage (which is a lot like hubris, btw) is to make sure you have a co-founder and/or other team members about whom you would say without hesitation "they are so much better at X and Y than I am that I look like a child next to them." Making sure you have people like that around you is how you make sure you keep learning and keep being able to fit into society. If you happen to have read that and think "there isn't anyone I know like that" then the need for those people has already reached critical importance and finding those qualities in people you know is your most important task.
- benjaminwootton 6y agoAgreed. I haven't had a great deal of luck with hiring people from startup backgrounds. They often started butting heads with the team, losing interest early and clearly moonlighting on their next project. Often people like this would keep their business projects on social media but work for us under the radar. It felt like we were the distant 2nd choice as the employer. I've hired lots of people like this who tended to leave or be managed out after 3-6 months.
- xwdv 6y agoNothing wrong with it. A job is an agreement to do some work for a specified rate, no more no less.
- bjornsing 6y agoI guess the problem is hiring managers don’t necessarily see it that way 100%, or at least that there are other agreements to consider. E.g. if I hire someone I know they have a legal right to quit after one month, but I still have a fiduciary duty to try to avoid hiring lots of people who will.
- xwdv 6y agoMaybe they should. Then they could optimize for what they really want.
- staysaasy 6y agoReally well put. Power changes your mindset in unpredictable ways. You can also find this phenomenon in people who've been CEOs who called all of their own shots for a long time. They can't go back to a more "normal" job. When I'm hiring I absolutely love to see founder experience as it teaches so many valuable lessons and is usually a sign of an independent, self-starter personality. I do try to watch out for this "founder damage" (great term!) – some founders get to the point where they simply can't work for someone else ever again. Once I'm over that hurdle I consider it a major positive sign. Congrats to the OP on their success so far as well!
- toomuchtodo 6y agoAs a hiring manager, what signs do you look for to confirm someone with leadership experience doesn’t have “founder damage”?
- staysaasy 6y agoFirst, I always ask ex-founder candidates to tell me about the startup(s) that they ran. This is a chance for them to really shine. At the same time, I look for warning signs that they won't work well with others (random example: look for an extreme ratio between when they say "I" vs. "We"), or signals that being the boss of other people has become an entrenched part of their identity. Unless I expect that it'll be an extremely sore topic, I will typically also just ask them why they want to work with us. I think that some people are shy about the questions you can ask in all sorts of situations. If you ask people they'll often tell you.
- em-bee 6y agothe kind of startup also makes a difference, someone from a b2b startup selling services has experience working with clients, and that's not that much different from working under a boss. if their attitude is to serve their clients then they can work with their new boss too.
- staysaasy 6y ago
- eximius 6y agoI will note that particular phrasing would really turn me off as a hiring manager. "I have a lot left to learn. I know this because I saw room for improvement at X, Y, Z. I'm looking forward to working with experts/professionals/etc more senior than I am to learn from them, etc."
- bjornsing 6y agoHow so? I would probably have seen ”I know this because I saw room for improvement at X, Y, Z” in this context as a red flag, but the rest I would probably just swallowed as the usual “interview talk”. Do we see this differently?
- t0mas88 6y agoI think he didn't mean X, Y, Z as other places but as colleagues / co-founders? So a candidate that is able to tell you something like: "I'm a great engineer, but I really learned a lot from working with Bob who is amazing at building teams and Mary who is the best at finance" demonstrates being a better team player than someone that "can do it all" themselves.
- yodon 6y agoAs there appears to be some confusion here, and as the author of the phrase "make sure you have a co-founder and/or other team members about whom you would say without hesitation "they are so much better at X and Y than I am that I look like a child next to them."" I will reiterate that X and Y are things you feel your co-founder and/or team members are much better at than you, for example "my co-founder is much better at hiring people and writing testable code than I am" or "my first hire was much better at schema design and writing performant queries than I am." X and Y are skills or abilities you respect and acknowledge that others you work with are better at than you, and they are important because remaining aware of other's strengths is how you ward off hubris in yourself as a founder.
- eximius 6y agoThis is kind of funny because now I'm the one being misunderstood. I was referring to 'room for improvement at marketing, time management, etc'. Skills, not locations. I was mostly reacting against the phrasing describing yourself like a child compared to someone.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoAs a former founder, I still struggle with being on teams. The "what do you mean you don't care about X" thoughts haunt me daily. I'm used to it now, but being a team player is a learned skill for me.
- fxtentacle 6y agoI've had bad luck in the other direction. We hired people with presumably lots of experience from working in larger companies, and in my opinion they were behaving like babies. For example, a software license email to one of them didn't arrive. That person started being passive aggressive as if I had done them wrong. Then later, they used the lack of that license as an excuse for unrelated problems. I would have expected a senior developer to be adept enough at problem solving to just ask why they didn't get that license that I had promised. But it appears they were mentally still stuck at being a tiny cog in a huge machine.
- Peteris 6y agoTell them you're looking to join a company precisely to get mentorship, see how a successful company operates, learn to work in larger product lines, etc. That way you're pre-emptively going around the Founder damage issue.
- wingerlang 6y agoSounds like they'll bounce once they learn what they need.
- Grimm1 6y agoWhy stay at a company that's not providing you with anything other than a paycheck?
- wingerlang 6y agoWhy hire someone who’s literally telling you he will leave once he learn X?
- Grimm1 6y agoBecause they're providing you a service and their time for an exchange of money not signing up to your company for life? That person didn't say they'd leave, they said they want to learn something, you took it as they'd want to leave which says more about you and your interpretation of it than anything else.
- wingerlang 6y agoNo, I have specifically told every interviewer that I wanted to learn X and Y during interviews (and I had no intention to leave). To be precise it is more in the context of founders and this text from the message above "see how a successful company operates". Basically if you go there and say "hey I am a founder and I need to learn how X works in a successful company" Anyway I definitely extrapolated this, I doubt anyone would say it this blatantly. Just --if--.