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> employees simply doing what was best for them No leader should expect anything different from their people. It is your job to align the incentives so that wh

> employees simply doing what was best for them No leader should expect anything different from their people. It is your job to align the incentives so that what is best for the employee is to do those things that are best for the company. If you are relying on people to do what is not best for them out of loyalty to a corporation/startup/vision, you do not have an accurate pulse of the modern work force. And yes, when a leader or company looks like it is going sour, sometimes employees act in bad faith for their own self-interests. When that happens, question why -- what is it that makes them think bad faith actions are more beneficial than helping the company. Don't just fire and forget... do some self-critique to find out why someone who was smart enough to be hired in the first place lost faith in your leadership. There are likely important lessons there.

mihaic 2y ago
I'm sure you mean well, but this is exactly the the non-founder response I'm talking about. And maybe things were different 20 years ago, I don't know. There's always something better I could have done as the person in charge, obviously. I've done a lot of reflection and self-critique, please believe me, and I realized I've made a lot of mistakes, from which the situations could have been recovered though. Putting my faith in employees, expecting them to do maybe 80-90% of what I was doing as an employee 10 years earlier created an almost unrecoverable situation, that burned the entire runway to unscramble. Yet if I say that my biggest lesson was never to put trust in employees, as it's most likely impossible to create a good incentive system for them, most people won't believe me, as I'm sure you won't either. I've come to think that the burden is no longer on anyone to create incentive systems, it's on society to reintroduce some morality. Only a limited amount of businesses have the luxury of aligned incentives.
- __turbobrew__ 2y ago
  I can be incentivized by money, but it has to be in the 7 figure range. The reality is that tech workers with a little bit of work can clear 400k/yr at BigCo with much higher job security and much lower variance than any startup. Why would I grind at a startup where the best case scenario I am getting a payout I could get at FAANG without any of the risk? I have been through a successful exit as a SWE and you can be sure that the founders did everything in their power to maximize their own payout and minimize my payout. In a company of 40 the founders got a payout of 100x any other individual at the company, even those who were there early on and stayed until the exit. I got a (taxable) payout of ~300k and the founders got 40mil. The money was life changing for the founders, but for everyone else it was just a nice bonus. Now I just work at BigCo and make 400k/yr, every year.
nlitened 2y ago
> > employees simply doing what was best for them > No leader should expect anything different from their people But then there are generals who lead soldiers to die so that a war is won. So at least there exists another mode of leadership not covered by your statement.

mihaic 2y ago

I'm sure you mean well, but this is exactly the the non-founder response I'm talking about. And maybe things were different 20 years ago, I don't know. There's always something better I could have done as the person in charge, obviously. I've done a lot of reflection and self-critique, please believe me, and I realized I've made a lot of mistakes, from which the situations could have been recovered though. Putting my faith in employees, expecting them to do maybe 80-90% of what I was doing as an employee 10 years earlier created an almost unrecoverable situation, that burned the entire runway to unscramble. Yet if I say that my biggest lesson was never to put trust in employees, as it's most likely impossible to create a good incentive system for them, most people won't believe me, as I'm sure you won't either. I've come to think that the burden is no longer on anyone to create incentive systems, it's on society to reintroduce some morality. Only a limited amount of businesses have the luxury of aligned incentives.

__turbobrew__ 2y ago
I can be incentivized by money, but it has to be in the 7 figure range. The reality is that tech workers with a little bit of work can clear 400k/yr at BigCo with much higher job security and much lower variance than any startup. Why would I grind at a startup where the best case scenario I am getting a payout I could get at FAANG without any of the risk? I have been through a successful exit as a SWE and you can be sure that the founders did everything in their power to maximize their own payout and minimize my payout. In a company of 40 the founders got a payout of 100x any other individual at the company, even those who were there early on and stayed until the exit. I got a (taxable) payout of ~300k and the founders got 40mil. The money was life changing for the founders, but for everyone else it was just a nice bonus. Now I just work at BigCo and make 400k/yr, every year.

nlitened 2y ago

> > employees simply doing what was best for them > No leader should expect anything different from their people But then there are generals who lead soldiers to die so that a war is won. So at least there exists another mode of leadership not covered by your statement.