

Startup Skill Set #6: The Startup Manager - rw140
http://swombat.com/2012/3/19/startup-skill-set-management

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jedc
One of the best definitions of management that I ever read was just four
words: "allocation of scarce resources".

Resources are time, money, people, and it's not easy to make the decisions
required to allocate them wisely. Strip away all the bullshit that managers
do, and those four words should be left.

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j_baker
On behalf of everyone who has worked in a startup under a wannabe Steve Jobs
or a do-it-yourself manager, let me thank you for this post. Far too many
people forget that managing people is a valuable skill that is much more
difficult to learn than it looks. A good manager is worth their weight in
gold.

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MattRogish
I'm often surprised at reading about some startup that says "We don't have any
managers!" And then I ask them, who buys the coffee? Pays for the servers? Who
issues offer letters? etc.

And almost always there's one or two people who are doing the annoying
busywork that any organization needs to do. And that's great!

But sometimes, it is distributed down to the developers themselves. And this
really sucks. Developers are highly skilled, super smart, highly motivated
people whose expertise is bringing their giant brains to bear on hard
problems. Trolling Amazon for coffee, etc. is a waste of their time.

My style of management is very much in support of developer happiness. I'm the
guy that makes sure we have the best coffee, that our internet is superfast,
and if your computer breaks, I've got a replacement waiting for you.

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jpdoctor
1/2 of a nice article.

Anyone here hire management consultants? Here are the issues that I've found:

1\. Sometimes they are hired to solve a problem. For this case, they do not
have to live with the mistakes that they made which arise after they're gone.

2\. Sometimes they're hired for political cover. When they recommend tough
medicine, the existing management team thinks they have confirmation about
tough decisions, or worse, lessened guilt. Run, do not walk, from such teams.

I'm trying to think of a third reason why they get hired, and can't come up
with one.

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swombat
Worth pointing out I was talking about managers, not management consultants,
which are a whole different kettle of fish.

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jpdoctor
Was your background not management consulting?

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swombat
Sure, so? That doesn't mean that I'm conflating the two terms.

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jpdoctor
Do you think your background is interwoven in the article content and
recommendations?

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swombat
Of course it is. I was lucky to have several managers that I would call
"good", and even a couple of "great" ones, so that before I jumped into the
startup world I got to see what a "good" manager does for a project. Those
were sometimes Accenture people, sometimes people who worked to the client.
The fact that they worked for a consultancy was irrelevant, but the fact that
they were managers was obviously relevant.

How could my background not be "interwoven" in the article content and
recommendations? Are you suggesting I should make things up instead of basing
them on experience?

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jpdoctor
> _Are you suggesting I should make things up instead of basing them on
> experience?_

No. I am saying, now explicitly, that the shortcomings of the article are
directly related to 1 & 2 in my original comment.

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swombat
You never specified what those alleged shortcomings are. Nor have you
established a believable link, since, once again, the article is not about
management consulting, but about management. I'm not going to continue this
game of cat and mouse with comments. If you can't express yourself clearly and
concisely, I have better things to do with my time than try to decipher your
criticism.

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porter
FYI, the recommended books are much cheaper on Amazon.

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samstave
I think that the risk of poor management is something that will be dealt with
at any company where your employees are all young; startups have a younger
employee base - and you get a lot of people re-inventing the wheel.

There is a lot to be said for the companies, especially in silicon valley,
that are large, established and older - they will have a range of good
managers.

If you're only out looking for rock-stars, ninjas or other witty adjectives
your employee base maybe younger and lacking experience in some of the more
esoteric aspects of running a company.

When I was interviewing at Twitter they mentioned they had ton of internal
chaos where a lot of the young employees, having had maybe only one prior
company as an experience point only had that company's culture for reference -
and this was a problem for them.

