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I found this part amusing: "Charity [company founder] has a more intuitive, spontaneous style, often shines brightest in a crisis, is allergic to checklists". I

• eru 3y ago
  > I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company, and this is true of anyone who started their own companies, including the ones that are now BigCos. Founders don't need any specific qualifications or characteristics to merit their positions. If you are involved in starting a company, you _get_ the position of CEO, CTO, etc essentially arbitrarily. That's initially. After a while you merit your position by not running the company into the ground, but instead making it succeed. Often, that's a much more honest and brutal way of measuring merit, than any evaluation. Big companies need the evaluation, because eg Google is not going to go bankrupt, if they have one lazy and incompetent VP. Compare https://gwern.net/backstop https://gwern.net/backstop
  • mejutoco 3y ago
    I like this take. I would only change "by making it succeed" with "by not running out of money", which in my mind have slightly different connotations.
    • joriskok1 3y ago
      If you look at "by making it succeed" and then you want to define what success is, then you could end up with "by not running out of money" again.
  • mrits 3y ago
    You could run your company into the ground but constantly getting bailed out by investors with sunken theory syndrome.
    • eru 3y ago
      If you can woo investors that much, I'd count that as success. You should probably stop running your silly company, and hire out your skills in investor-schmoozing to other people.
  • marcinzm 3y ago
    >After a while you merit your position by not running the company into the ground, but instead making it succeed. That's not merit for the position but not being a five alarm dumpster fire at the position. There is a difference. As long as the company is lucky or there's enough overall competence in leadership or they hired the right employees that incompetence may not be destroy the company. That doesn't mean they're competent.
    • koheripbal 3y ago
      Most startups fail. You need to be good to succeed.
      • ysavir 3y ago
        You need to be good enough to succeed. People needn't go beyond that to maintain a status quo.
        • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
          > to maintain a status quo Startups are explicitly disrupting the status quo. Yeah, one needs to be good enough to do that but it’s nothing to downplay. That is hard in a world of established actors.
          • 411111111111111 3y ago
            Leadership matters, Apples history is a prime example of this as shown by first faltering without Steve Jobs and then becoming the most profitable company after he rejoined. Nonetheless, you're still attributing way too much to the ability of the leadership. After all, that story is so remarkable precisely because it's pretty much the only well known example of this.
            • paulryanrogers 3y ago
              Even Steve failed with Next, and had to sell it to Apple.
  • sib 3y ago
    If you're a founder of a venture-funded company, then you either merit your position by continuing to do well or the VCs will remove you, before you run the company into the ground. Assuming you did not have enough negotiating leverage upon fundraising to put yourself into a non-removable position, a la Zuckerberg.
• deleted 3y ago
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• halfmatthalfcat 3y ago
  Yep, I completely agree. A huge amount of people have been brainwashed into the American corporate chain of command and there is so much assumption that because people have X title, they're actually qualified for that title. Title inflation is everywhere and anecdotally, titles are just used as vehicles for pay increases and tenure recognition, not meritorious. edit: didn't mean to say this is an American-specific thing :)
  • oblio 3y ago
    > A huge amount of people have been brainwashed into the American corporate chain of command LOL. This is not American specific in any way, lest you think the US invented the military, too :-p
  • chadash 3y ago
    You say this is an American thing. Is there a country you are thinking of that has this less engrained? My experience working with foreign cultures is often that organizations are more hierarchical, not less.
    • piva00 3y ago
      Probably it's all very hierarchical but it definitely differs in level and degree between cultures. Anecdotal examples: - Brazil (~10 years experience): very, very hierarchical, your manager/boss is up on the totem pole, societal status, etc. In non-tech environments you can expect to be berated, chastised, and generally abused as an underling. There are good bosses, of course, but using a dumb generalisation the culture is "I'm better than you because I'm higher in the hierarchy". In the end underlings will be bad mouthing the boss at any opportunity behind the boss's back but will pay lip service in front of them, politically-heavy work environments. - USA (limited experience ~1-2 years), very hierarchical, politically-heavy, bosses can demand stuff from you and it's expected to bow down to their whims. - Sweden (~10 years experience): not so hierarchical, consensus-based approach for decisions, a manager is a different position (more laterally viewed than upwards), challenging bosses decisions/opinions in a respectful way is encouraged, someone higher in the hierarchy forcing underlings to their will is very badly viewed (and usually a "failure of leadership" because you couldn't convince people on your vision).
• oblio 3y ago
  > I've always felt that hierarchical, subservient thinking is strange I'll tell why several reasons this happens: 1. In many cultures this beaten into kids from an early age. There is no wide range of free will, just the family/tribe/clan/group hierarchy. 2. Hierarchies are... safe. You're part of a group, you roughly know where you stand. 3. Humans are social and inherently hierarchical :-) We've been like this for possibly millions of year, you're working against lots of brain machinery trying to fight this. It's probably doable but far from easy.
  • lapcat 3y ago
    > We've been like this for possibly millions of year, you're working against lots of brain machinery trying to fight this. I think my brain is wired differently. Maybe that was a birth defect; it wouldn't be the only one. > It's probably doable but far from easy. That's certainly true.
  • ddq 3y ago
    First two points, yes, though on point three I strongly disagree that modern mass hierarchy has existed on an evolutionary timescale. Neither Homo sapiens nor our ancestors ever had hierarchical groups larger than a village until we shifted from hunter-gatherer to agrarian around 10,000 years ago. The core concept is "natural" at a tangible, real scale where it can be seen as an extension of the parent->child form, but nothing in my research has yet refuted the idea that we're actually working against our brain machinery to scale up hierarchies orders of magnitude that defy visualization, though I can see the lizard brain appeal of submission to executive individuals. People can understand a president, CEO, captain. Parental figures. But a parent to thousands or millions, with dozens of steps between you and them? Seems like alienation would be a natural response. Of course, this is all appeal to nature, but still an interesting perspective to consider.
• kasey_junk 3y ago
  First, I didn’t read that at all as a remark about someone’s qualifications. It seems a straightforward and friendly admission of where 2 different styles exist. Acknowledging those style differences is a _good_ and healthy thing and not a tacit appeal to hierarchy. Second, your whole comment is littered with implicit reinforcement of the hierarchy. You use terms like underling, bosses, and equate the founding of the company with founding of a hierarchy. If you, who claim to be skeptical of the hierarchy, can’t stop doing that how can you expect those around you who are trying to model their behavior off of you? In knowledge industries managers aren’t leaders, they are support staff. The best software managers and executives know this and do everything in their power to make it easy for the actual leaders and experts, the IC doing the work (yes including that intern you just hired) to get on with it. But one of the support functions of the executive team is to set that expectation by example.
  • switch007 3y ago
    > In knowledge industries managers aren’t leaders, they are support staff. The best software managers and executives know this and do everything in their power to make it easy for the actual leaders and experts, the IC doing the work (yes including that intern you just hired) to get on with it That’s just lip service. Who goes to the annual offsite, the quarterly planning, manages or sets the budget, decides on initiatives. Not the ICs Why in companies that espouse this servant leadership nonsense does it take 3 months to get approval for a new monitor? This whole “servant leadership” crap is just PR. Every year there is a new orange coloured book about Leadership and some new cult-like idea filters down the layers. But companies are the same hierarchy they have been for hundreds of years.
    • halfmatthalfcat 3y ago
      Completely agree and in my specific company they have this concept of "Highest Performers" who get to go to an annual offsite/party for a week. Guess who only gets picked? Directors and VPs. It's almost satirical how unaware leadership is or the optics they emit.
      • 3y ago
• yard2010 3y ago
  Yes. This hit right in them feels. Our world is a lie and it's full of people who believe the opposite and go out of their way to prove you wrong
• starcraft2wol 3y ago
  Even though currently less popular, I think Zuckerberg is a great example of this. He went from a college kid to a top 20 CEO with no formal training, except running his company.
  • playingalong 3y ago
    He might have received some subset of formal education along the way. He could've hired some private tutors, etc.
    • starcraft2wol 3y ago
      Almost certainly. But it he didn't first become qualified as a CEO, and then get the job.
  • no_wizard 3y ago
    Perhaps, but never discount someones background. His parents were successful executives and there were plenty of opportunities for him to be exposed to executive leadership (via Harvard, familial connections etc) Not like he went from nobody to somebody here, his background certainly allowed exposure to things many others would not have. I honestly would put Steve Jobs as the best example you can find of someone who went from "nobody" to CEO
    • strikelaserclaw 3y ago
      I think he would be pretty close to someone who went from nobody to a great CEO and founder but i don't think anyone in this world truly starts off on equal footing. Steve Jobs birth parents were both advanced degree holders, he got adopted by a blue collar family who lived in prime real estate bay area during the first rise of tech. Ultimately it is useless to compare people, we should judge people by their output regardless of where they started.
      • the_sleaze9 3y ago
        I'm a huge proponent of origin stories, especially the true ones. Musk, Mozart, John Coletrane and Christiano Ronaldo, everyone has a story you can learn from.
• brandall10 3y ago
  This is all true until a board w/ a enough voting power to impact C level hiring/firing decisions is installed.
• md_ 3y ago
  Half agree. Successful founders get to remain CEO (or CTO, or whatever). Unsuccessful ones don't: their investors push them out, or the company tanks. Along the way to obtaining any position, there's a lot of partially correlated signals you have to send, and they're different between different paths. To become CEO at an established company, you might have to show prior experience, know how to wear a suit and tie, etc. To become CEO of your own startup, you have to show investors or customers something else, but I'm not sure those signals are less bullshit: you might find that wearing shorts or playing League of Legends during investor calls somehow convinces people you're a super genius. Basically, there's always an element of bullshit, because we're humans, and our judgment is tempered with all sorts of irrational biases. I don't think that means that an essay on "what it takes to do $job" is inherently bad, though.
• indymike 3y ago
  > These are all written by people whose minds have been thoroughly corporatized, true believers in the hierarchy with an inner need to justify it. This is really the truth, especially in giant corporations. It's really fun when you are part of a startup and sell to a big company and they realize that not one member of the startup would have been hired by HR, and suddenly, the team members from the startup getting the promotions over the HR approved, pedigreed bigco employees.
• Scubabear68 3y ago
  > I've always felt that hierarchical, subservient thinking is strange, and I honestly never considered my former bosses to be "better" than me. It is generally always about politics. I have been through many re-orgs, various people go up and down in esteem like the tides based on whatever the prevailing sentiment is this year. Position in the hierarchy reflects that along with personal relationships with the right people, and a big dollop of luck. There is little correlation of ability to your level, of course. Success often depends on who is under you, and how you can spin their output (good and bad).
• lmeyerov 3y ago
  Startups are almost inherently messy, so agreed, I think it helps dispel a myth of perfection that some folks have. Founders have the most context across the engineering, product, marketing, sales, customers, partners, team, etc. They do need to change gears as the company hits progressive phase changes, but someone who has already managed a few transitions and has that rare context is a strong candidate for the next. A big part of the job becomes hiring & delegating... Including checklist ppl. Ex: Why you see technical CEOs with COO/CRO/COS that can help manage the business ops sides that are very checklist driven.
• lordofmoria 3y ago
  You’re forgetting that companies need both Visionary AND Execution focused leaders at the very top. I’m an execution through and through guy, but I learned early on that my co-founder’s ideal traits are the opposite of mine, and that’s what you’re seeing here. What’s being described is a classic Visionary - spontaneous, jumps around and can be distracting, yes - but crucially, is also an amazing innovator and motivator of people. In a successful startup, you need both Visionaries and Execution people. I recommend Rocket Fuel - https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Fuel-Essential-Combination-Business/dp/1942952317 https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Fuel-Essential-Combination-Bus...
  • danielvaughn 3y ago
    I was founding engineer ("CTO") of a startup a couple years ago, and I completely agree. We had the CEO who had domain expertise in our market, but who had never ran a tech company and was not technically proficient. I on the other hand was technically proficient, but I also never ran a tech company. This lack of execution expertise doomed us; we really needed a strong operations role. We made good progress on the product itself, but hit a wall when it came time to ask for money from investors.
    • icedchai 3y ago
      I was in a similar position, working as CTO under a first time CEO where we built a small team, product, got some limited traction, but follow-on execution completely failed. It was incredibly hard. It depresses me to this day, thinking about where it all went wrong. I probably won't ever do it again.
      • danielvaughn 3y ago
        It’s very difficult. I spent almost 2 years without income, supporting myself with my savings. It’s a tough pill to swallow.
  • lapcat 3y ago
    > You’re forgetting that companies need both Visionary AND Execution focused leaders at the very top. I'm not forgetting. And I'm not claiming that this promotion was a mistake. I am raising questions about the narrative that the author is telling/selling. Consider how you'll likely not see such a long-winded post from company founders explaining in detail why they chose themselves for their own jobs. They founded a company because they wanted to, and they didn't care whether they had exactly the right experience and qualifications. The narrative is about slowly making your way up the corporate ranks, gaining experience, working hard, achieving qualifications, and deserving your promotion. The author feels that this kind of story is encouraging, uplifting, that is shows you too can make it to the top, but I actually think it's kind of a disservice, an attitude that can hold people back. The company founders suddenly made it to the top at the very beginning without any of that, without "deserving" anything. If you think you have to "earn" your position, you've already bought into the myth of the hierarchy. The best reason to be ambitious is the realization that the people above you are just as flawed as you are. If anything, competence is often overlooked in promotions. For example, from the article: "I didn’t get promoted right then (it wasn’t the right time) but we also stopped looking for an external hire." Why wasn't it the right time?
• deleted 3y ago
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• wpietri 3y ago
  Totally agreed with this: "I've always felt that hierarchical, subservient thinking is strange" On the one hand, we are social primates. And primates gonna prime. But I personally have very little interest in hierarchy; it mainly seems irritating and counterproductive to me. Obviously, looking around at the world, I'm a outlier here. But perhaps the strangest thing to me is how often neurotypical people can't even talk about the power dynamics that they are clearly participating in. You see it in big things, of course. But also in the small, as when the stated purpose of a meeting (e.g., "stand-up meeting") is wildly different than the actual purpose (a sit-down meeting where the manager gets to feel important and reestablish dominance over those lower down in the power hierarchy).
  • systemvoltage 3y ago
    I think it was Marc Andreessen who said it that you’d rather be upfront with hierarchy than to pretend it doesn’t exist and have it form chaotically and without control. I remember reading about some flat team structure at Gore Inc. in the 90’s and it was an epic failure. Military relies on it more explicitly when you really need to get things done. In abstract sense, the military is more similar to companies than being different.
    • wpietri 3y ago
      Yeah, you might enjoy reading "Tyranny of Structurelessness". But there are other options besides "controlling hierarchy", "secret, denied controlling hierarchy", and "chaotic failure". Just as an example, consider a party. When I host, I am very definitely in charge. It's my space, it's my party. Friends will often help, serving as an intermediate hierarchical layer. But this hierarchy is mostly supportive, not controlling. I may slip into control mode when, say, I have a bad guest who needs to be ejected. But most of the magic happens not because I'm in charge, but because I've created a space for more dynamic interactions to arise without interference.
• epups 3y ago
  Do you promote people at your company based on the same principles you declare as universal? Or do you at least try to promote the more efficient/useful people?
• spencerchubb 3y ago
  You don't "just" become the CEO of a big company. You become the CEO of a small company (typically 1 to 3 people) Then you make a boatload of money, and the market decides whether you get to become the CEO of a big company.
  • lapcat 3y ago
    Everyone knows this. It's unclear why you felt the need to say it.
    • spencerchubb 3y ago
      The parent comment says: "I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company, and this is true of anyone who started their own companies, including the ones that are now BigCos. Founders don't need any specific qualifications or characteristics to merit their positions."
      • lapcat 3y ago
        Yes, I'm aware of what I said. You have copied and pasted the quote without fail. But it's still unclear what your point is supposed to be.
        • spencerchubb 3y ago
          The parent comment seems to believe that BigCo founders have no qualifications. This is wrong because BigCo founders attain that position by winning in the market.
          • lapcat 3y ago
            > The parent comment seems to believe that BigCo founders have no qualifications. This is a misinterpretation. I said, "Founders don't need any specific [emphasis added] qualifications or characteristics to merit their positions." In other words, there's no specific list of "Must have X, Y, and Z in order to become a founder." That's not the same as saying founders have no merit, which I'm not claiming.
• opportune 3y ago
  Really disagree with this - a lot of process-oriented checklist-following managers are actually terrible leaders. You don’t need to be particularly skilled to do that. As a CEO you can bring a lot more to the table than that, and delegate it if you need to - it’s not an uncommon skill - to focus on adding value by setting direction, fighting fires, focusing on whatever is currently the most important problem or project. Obviously you can start your own company to reset the hierarchy according to your wishes. That doesn’t mean this CEO is unqualified though.
  • lapcat 3y ago
    > That doesn’t mean this CEO is unqualified though. I didn't say they were unqualified. I said, "the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position."
• mattgreenrocks 3y ago
  > I've always felt that hierarchical, subservient thinking is strange It is deeply weird: it is perfectly reasonable to lead/be led without believing that the leader is somehow better. > These are all written by people whose minds have been thoroughly corporatized, true believers in the hierarchy with an inner need to justify it. This sounds very teenage edgelord, but I really think a majority of the population acts as if a primary motivator for them is outsourcing as much risk/hard things as allowable. To do so entails buying into false/constructed realities to justify their own passivity. Thus, job titles attain a status of Real Enough, because everyone’s play acting that they’re real, and that bootstraps them into actual reality. Collective result of sunk costs by the faithful.
• marcosdumay 3y ago
  > As far as I've seen, corporate ladder climbing is essentially political. At a minimum, it's a kind of specialization that measures a different kind of qualification then expected from ICs.
• brightball 3y ago
  > They choose themselves for leadership, and then they choose their friends as the first employees. Could probably change that to "choose people they trust as first employees"
• jarjoura 3y ago
  I guess that's kind of true. However, once a company involves funding and builds a board of directors full of industry leaders, those same leaders are now on the hook to provide company value in the same way as any other company. In fact, companies have a legal responsibility to not drive it into the ground, or they face potential lawsuits from its investors. Investors do not need to be VCs, and could just be the founders themselves. However, I do agree with you on another point. At the companies I've worked at, it's the people in the middle of the hierarchy who have impressed me the most. The have incredible hyper fast minds with intimidating levels of reasoning skills. I've always found them to be the true heroes of companies in my mind. They aren't usually there at the beginning and either were hired for their skills, or quickly rose up from the bottom and earned their place.
• antonvs 3y ago
  > These are all written by people whose minds have been thoroughly corporatized, true believers in the hierarchy with an inner need to justify it. This seems to miss the fact that what’s needed in a startup tends to be very different than what’s needed in a larger, more mature organization. Hierarchies in larger organizations exist to organize things, and I’ve never encountered an organization other than an early stage startup that has somehow managed to avoid this. Even in flat organizations (which are invariably fairly small), there are plenty of articles out there about how these tend to involve hidden hierarchies and agendas. A few example links: https://www.getflow.com/blog/flat-will-kill-you https://www.getflow.com/blog/flat-will-kill-you https://getlighthouse.com/blog/flat-organizational-structure-fails/ https://getlighthouse.com/blog/flat-organizational-structure... https://workforce.com/news/hidden-hierarchies https://workforce.com/news/hidden-hierarchies
  • lapcat 3y ago
    > This seems to miss the fact that what’s needed in a startup tends to be very different than what’s needed in a larger, more mature organization. I wasn't talking about how companies should be organized. I was talking about how one should think about hierarchies: > No matter how much you want to believe [emphasis added] that hierarchy is a "meritocracy", the founding of the hierarchy was undoubtedly chaos. > I've always felt that hierarchical, subservient thinking [emphasis added] is strange, and I honestly never considered my former bosses to be "better" than me. As a practical matter, hierarchies are difficult to avoid, as you've said. But they're only a means to an end. The point is to avoid internalizing hierarchical values and making your personal sense of worth depend on your place in them.
• nradov 3y ago
  The notion of being allergic to checklists seems so bizarre to me, like being allergic to tying your shoes or brushing your teeth. Does anyone actually think that way? Everyone I have worked with or done sports with has been willing to use checklists where appropriate.
• anchochilis 3y ago
  > In other words, the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position. I find this to be an odd take, given context in the article. It sounds like the writer is simply contrasting her own leadership style with her boss's, as an example of how they complement each other. Hierarchies make us uncomfortable because they challenge our egos. I've noticed this particularly in classic programmer personalities: smart, introverted, highly skilled. Many of us spend our entire careers as ICs, as leaves on the corporate tree. It's easy to become cynical. "The VP sits around chatting people up all day and droning about OKRs while I just shipped a million dollar feature / resolved an expensive outage / built a tool that will dramatically increase engineering efficiency. What value does _he_ bring to the table?" Unfortunately this is an enormously unproductive attitude that will kneecap your career. No org is a meritocracy -- but what does meritocracy even mean? We sort everyone by IQ? Or "performance", measured by lines of code committed per week? On a final note I'll add that hierarchies get things done. Imagine working for a company that functioned as a democracy, with all the attendant discourse, campaigning, checks and balances. I would personally find the inefficiency intolerable. Better to work for a single idiot than a committee of a dozen geniuses.
  • lapcat 3y ago
    > It sounds like the writer is simply contrasting her own leadership style with her boss's, as an example of how they complement each other. I agree, that's likely the author's intention. > Unfortunately this is an enormously unproductive attitude that will kneecap your career. You're getting to the heart of the matter, but not in the way that you think. To avoid repeating myself, I'll refer to what I wrote in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36724073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36724073 > No org is a meritocracy -- but what does meritocracy even mean? That was actually my point. > On a final note I'll add that hierarchies get things done. Imagine working for a company that functioned as a democracy My comment was not about how companies should be organized. That would be a misinterpretation.