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(This is only somewhat related, but I'll try asking here, apologies if it seems offtopic.) Does anyone know of any good books, blogposts, podcasts, etc. about

(This is only somewhat related, but I'll try asking here, apologies if it seems offtopic.) Does anyone know of any good books, blogposts, podcasts, etc. about how to set up a management structure for your startup? Like how you even decide to have Eng Manager and People Managers and Team Leads? I'm curious about the different ways people have tried organizing relatively small (10-50) teams of high-performing individual contributors. There are books like this one (I think, can't buy it yet), Will Larson's, and some of the others referenced in the episode notes which are all about how to make a specific structure work, but I haven't yet found information on other kinds of structures.

setr 5y ago
I imagine it’s like a b-tree. You simply have more reports, until it becomes untenable — it takes more time to coordinate them than you have. So your tree splits — you pick a couple nodes to continue directly reporting to you, and all others now report to your direct reports. As your reports gain more resources, they’ll do the same. Your children count probably maxes around 7. The new resources get a title from their level in the tree, along with some arbitrary suffix signifying their responsibility scope. This is also the same with responsibilities. As you gain too many, eventually you’ll force a split and push the responsibilities onto your children resources. If there’s none available with time/ability to do it, you pull in a new resource directly reporting to you. As that new resource takes more responsibilities, he ends up creating his own tree.. And then for top-down titling (eg appointing a CFO in a company of 5), it’s mostly a matter of fluff/marketing. You want customers to think you brought in the big guns. In a mid-size company, it’s more about solidifying the future. People don’t question the positions existing before they joined. They question the promotions after, the promotion of a peer to the big boss of their group. So it’s a bit of a power play, though responsibilities and importance aren’t all there to really justify the titling.
- peter_l_downs 5y ago
  Thank you for your perspective, much appreciated.
  - buro9 5y ago
    I'd go further... the average number of direct reports is likely 7-8 people, but as you want to cluster direct report by team/squad to a manager sometimes they are unbalanced as the team/squad size isn't neatly divisible by that. What you want to do is have the smaller teams/squads be the place where new managers can cut their teeth, and have the larger teams/squads be the home for managers looking to become directors. Assuming your statement about growth startup is correct the manager will eventually manage more people and the directors will have to deal with splitting the team, re-org and potentially then managing managers. I'd add another thing to all of this: Why have managers? The answer isn't the reason you think. It's not project planning, co-ordination, etc. Books like "Turn The Ship Around" or "The Effective Engineer" show how engineers can more fully own their role and not need micromanaging, and the benefits of that. The reason for managers is different: Let's say that every 3 years a person has a life event. A life event is defined as something big, traumatic, emotional... both the ups and the downs: Birth, marriage, divorce, death, home move, home renovation, moving country, etc. In your startup of 10 people 3 such events will happen this year... and as a leader you can get involved and help support people. This leads to better retention, no loss of institutional knowledge, improved morale, improved loyalty (we're all human and when someone looks out for us we look out for them). What happens when you have 100 people? ~30 such events this year. But each is large, will last many months and need a lot of support. Potentially you're now going to have 20 concurrent life events to manage. At 500 people? ~160 such events to manage each year. Managers and the People team aren't critical to your success, but their absence or a poor setup is absolutely going to be a large factor in the demise of your startup. The earlier you can structure the organisation to absorb these life events and really support people, the more likely none of this impacts your startup. Then... once you have managers in place, great... there's a lot of spare capacity there to do more than just wait for the life events to occur. Now you can look at books like "An Elegant Puzzle - Systems of Engineering Management" and look to be a value-add to your team, supporting your engineers on a daily basis to be happier, healthier, more effective. Managers now can help nurture and grow senior engineers, help juniors find traction within their career, etc.
    - haraball 5y ago
      Thanks for your perspective. This approach could be useful to present to companies where reluctance to managers and structure are prevalent.
personjerry 5y ago
You can check out a book called INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. It's focused on product management, but it incorporates ideas from Silicon Valley management, which should drive the structure at your early stage.
- peter_l_downs 5y ago
  Thank you, I'll check it out.

setr 5y ago

I imagine it’s like a b-tree. You simply have more reports, until it becomes untenable — it takes more time to coordinate them than you have. So your tree splits — you pick a couple nodes to continue directly reporting to you, and all others now report to your direct reports. As your reports gain more resources, they’ll do the same. Your children count probably maxes around 7. The new resources get a title from their level in the tree, along with some arbitrary suffix signifying their responsibility scope. This is also the same with responsibilities. As you gain too many, eventually you’ll force a split and push the responsibilities onto your children resources. If there’s none available with time/ability to do it, you pull in a new resource directly reporting to you. As that new resource takes more responsibilities, he ends up creating his own tree.. And then for top-down titling (eg appointing a CFO in a company of 5), it’s mostly a matter of fluff/marketing. You want customers to think you brought in the big guns. In a mid-size company, it’s more about solidifying the future. People don’t question the positions existing before they joined. They question the promotions after, the promotion of a peer to the big boss of their group. So it’s a bit of a power play, though responsibilities and importance aren’t all there to really justify the titling.

peter_l_downs 5y ago
Thank you for your perspective, much appreciated.
- buro9 5y ago
  I'd go further... the average number of direct reports is likely 7-8 people, but as you want to cluster direct report by team/squad to a manager sometimes they are unbalanced as the team/squad size isn't neatly divisible by that. What you want to do is have the smaller teams/squads be the place where new managers can cut their teeth, and have the larger teams/squads be the home for managers looking to become directors. Assuming your statement about growth startup is correct the manager will eventually manage more people and the directors will have to deal with splitting the team, re-org and potentially then managing managers. I'd add another thing to all of this: Why have managers? The answer isn't the reason you think. It's not project planning, co-ordination, etc. Books like "Turn The Ship Around" or "The Effective Engineer" show how engineers can more fully own their role and not need micromanaging, and the benefits of that. The reason for managers is different: Let's say that every 3 years a person has a life event. A life event is defined as something big, traumatic, emotional... both the ups and the downs: Birth, marriage, divorce, death, home move, home renovation, moving country, etc. In your startup of 10 people 3 such events will happen this year... and as a leader you can get involved and help support people. This leads to better retention, no loss of institutional knowledge, improved morale, improved loyalty (we're all human and when someone looks out for us we look out for them). What happens when you have 100 people? ~30 such events this year. But each is large, will last many months and need a lot of support. Potentially you're now going to have 20 concurrent life events to manage. At 500 people? ~160 such events to manage each year. Managers and the People team aren't critical to your success, but their absence or a poor setup is absolutely going to be a large factor in the demise of your startup. The earlier you can structure the organisation to absorb these life events and really support people, the more likely none of this impacts your startup. Then... once you have managers in place, great... there's a lot of spare capacity there to do more than just wait for the life events to occur. Now you can look at books like "An Elegant Puzzle - Systems of Engineering Management" and look to be a value-add to your team, supporting your engineers on a daily basis to be happier, healthier, more effective. Managers now can help nurture and grow senior engineers, help juniors find traction within their career, etc.
  - haraball 5y ago
    Thanks for your perspective. This approach could be useful to present to companies where reluctance to managers and structure are prevalent.

personjerry 5y ago

You can check out a book called INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. It's focused on product management, but it incorporates ideas from Silicon Valley management, which should drive the structure at your early stage.

peter_l_downs 5y ago
Thank you, I'll check it out.