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Over my ten-year journey as a co-founder, my partners and I have twice decided to hire "expert" senior managers with proven track records from renowned companie

by tcgv 2y ago

Over my ten-year journey as a co-founder, my partners and I have twice decided to hire "expert" senior managers with proven track records from renowned companies to help us grow. Both times, this not only resulted in a waste of money due to their high compensation but also a waste of time and energy. Onboarding and managing them took significant effort, yet they failed to deliver meaningful results. Eventually, they left, and we realized that while they had been successful in large organizations with thousands of employees, our smaller, 100-person company may lacked the structure they were used to for delivering results. We concluded that they were high-level managers with little hands-on experience, accustomed to having large teams to execute their plans. They were often slow to recognize their lack of progress, or didn’t recognize it at all, and frequently spoke about the need for more "strategic" actions when what we really needed was to focus on executing key priorities. So I related to PG's post.

stonethrowaway 2y ago
> Eventually, they left, and we realized that while they had been successful in large organizations with thousands of employees, […] You don’t really believe that, do you?
- tcgv 2y ago
  You're right that PG's piece suggests they probably weren't as successful or impactful in their previous roles as their references claimed. But we can never be entirely sure. I also don't dismiss our responsibility as co-founders for the decision and how it was implemented under our leadership.
thntk 2y ago
Have you tried hiring or rotating internal people just for solving specific (management) tasks? It is like the "just-in-time" style in Japanese corps.
- tcgv 2y ago
  We haven't tried that yet, but it's an interesting idea. I'm the technical co-founder. Under me, we have three squads. Two of them are led by managers who were promoted internally from individual contributor roles. These managers still do some hands-on coding occasionally when needed, but they primarily focus on delegating tasks to their teams as much as possible. The third squad has a manager without coding responsibilities, whom we hired to test a new squad structure. It's been going really well—his squad is performing excellently, and I've been able to delegate some cross-functional tasks that used to fall on me, like collaborating with the sales team when clients have technical requirements for renewing their accounts or documenting releases and bug fixes to share within the company. So in terms of the technology area of our company, our lower-level managers are performing considerably well. We’re implementing frameworks and routines that are really helping to advance our company’s managerial maturity. We’re also working to apply these practices to other, less structured areas, so your proposal could be very timely.
  - thntk 2y ago
    It sounds like your startup is doing great, good luck.

by tcgv 2y ago

stonethrowaway 2y ago

> Eventually, they left, and we realized that while they had been successful in large organizations with thousands of employees, […] You don’t really believe that, do you?

tcgv 2y ago
You're right that PG's piece suggests they probably weren't as successful or impactful in their previous roles as their references claimed. But we can never be entirely sure. I also don't dismiss our responsibility as co-founders for the decision and how it was implemented under our leadership.

thntk 2y ago

Have you tried hiring or rotating internal people just for solving specific (management) tasks? It is like the "just-in-time" style in Japanese corps.

tcgv 2y ago
We haven't tried that yet, but it's an interesting idea. I'm the technical co-founder. Under me, we have three squads. Two of them are led by managers who were promoted internally from individual contributor roles. These managers still do some hands-on coding occasionally when needed, but they primarily focus on delegating tasks to their teams as much as possible. The third squad has a manager without coding responsibilities, whom we hired to test a new squad structure. It's been going really well—his squad is performing excellently, and I've been able to delegate some cross-functional tasks that used to fall on me, like collaborating with the sales team when clients have technical requirements for renewing their accounts or documenting releases and bug fixes to share within the company. So in terms of the technology area of our company, our lower-level managers are performing considerably well. We’re implementing frameworks and routines that are really helping to advance our company’s managerial maturity. We’re also working to apply these practices to other, less structured areas, so your proposal could be very timely.
- thntk 2y ago
  It sounds like your startup is doing great, good luck.