For me, as a perpetual employee that would love to run his own business one day (and is working towards that), this is quite an insight, but I'll bet it's hard

For me, as a perpetual employee that would love to run his own business one day (and is working towards that), this is quite an insight, but I'll bet it's hard to do it another way: ------------------------------------------------------------- The only raises we had were merit raises, as you improved your skills and impact. You were expected to manage your own time, with no set hours, and the only responsibility around vacation time was to make sure that no balls got dropped. Eventually, I hired an employment lawyer to review my draft, and he said, “That’s the most inspiring employee manual I’ve ever read, but I can’t let you use it.” I complained, but I eventually gave in. As we grew, it was harder and harder to maintain our informal processes. (I remember a real inflection point at about 50-60 employees, and another at about 100.) We gradually gave up our homegrown way of doing things, and accepted normal HR practices — vacation and sick days, regular reviews, annual salary adjustments — and bit by bit, I let the “HR professionals” take over the job of framing and managing the internal culture. That was a mistake. -----------------------------------------------------------