5 ms·

> I think it's not as much as the office setting than the organization structure Yep. It is the flattest it can ever be. There are also psychological dynamics

> I think it's not as much as the office setting than the organization structure Yep. It is the flattest it can ever be. There are also psychological dynamics in the average basement startup: Things are usually informal, meritocratic, ambitious. Crunching together in such a setting will also usually create very strong camaraderie even among personalities that in a larger organization would just keep away from each other. > you need to divide up things between people so you don't know what everyone is doing all the time anymore Even with perfect information/openness - just the fact that there's now an "us" and "them" starts being.. divisive[1]. Apply enough times and you can't keep up with how many "thems" there are to an "us". When you've been there since the company was 4/8 people in a large room, it would be strange not to feel nostalgic. [1] I self-nominate for platitude of the year 2015. It's early, but I'm ambitious.

jhildings 12y ago
Yes the "us" and "them" feeling is hard to handle, it's the same in every kind of organization(sports, hacker group etc) where some people have been around for quite long and invested much time in different things even if the formal roles are different
- digi_owl 12y ago
  I find myself reminded of a claim that a issue with the early leadership of Jobs at Apple was that he was instigating competition between project teams. In particular surrounding Macintosh and Lisa. While the Apple II (with Woz) was off in a corner, keeping the ship afloat.
angersock 12y ago
This is why I fucking hate it when, at one company I was at, the language in all the communications and meetings was "Management has decided...", "Talk to your supervisor..." It's like, "Dude, there're less than ten of us, and half of us are building product, and the other half are sucking at sales. You aren't managing shit." Little us-vs-them bullshit like that hurts everyone. :(

jhildings 12y ago

Yes the "us" and "them" feeling is hard to handle, it's the same in every kind of organization(sports, hacker group etc) where some people have been around for quite long and invested much time in different things even if the formal roles are different

digi_owl 12y ago
I find myself reminded of a claim that a issue with the early leadership of Jobs at Apple was that he was instigating competition between project teams. In particular surrounding Macintosh and Lisa. While the Apple II (with Woz) was off in a corner, keeping the ship afloat.

angersock 12y ago

This is why I fucking hate it when, at one company I was at, the language in all the communications and meetings was "Management has decided...", "Talk to your supervisor..." It's like, "Dude, there're less than ten of us, and half of us are building product, and the other half are sucking at sales. You aren't managing shit." Little us-vs-them bullshit like that hurts everyone. :(