
The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee - sachitgupta
http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-myth-of-the-non-technical-startup-employee
======
ericabiz
The situation described at the tradeshow in this article has also happened to
me, repeatedly and consistently. The difference? I AM technical. I just also
happen to be a woman.

I love the tech industry. I've been in it professionally since 1997, and I've
run tech startups as a CEO for the past 13 years. And if there's one thing I
can count on, it's the consistent, pervasive assumption that I'm not
technical.

I hate going to tech events with my fiance (or for that matter, any man),
because people will come up to us, acknowledge me, and then ask him brightly:
"So why are you here?"

I once thought it would be funny to time it and see how long another person
could go talking to only him and not making eye contact with me, even when he
mentioned that he was at the event because of me. Current record? 13 minutes.
13 minutes of not looking at me, saying a word, or acknowledging that I was
there.

Every male that I've ever told this story to can't believe it until they go to
parties and see it in action. It's so consistent, yet it's unbelievable until
you see it.

This is what it's like to be a woman in tech, even when you're a technical
one. It's assumed that you're non-technical. But don't take that into account
and lead with your credentials--whoops, no, that's "aggressive" and you
shouldn't do that. Don't go to tech parties with a guy because you're assumed
to be "the girlfriend." Don't go alone because you'll get hit on. But don't
NOT go to tech parties, because that's where you'll meet investors and other
potential contacts.

Being a woman in tech is like walking through a maze with minefields at every
turn and never knowing which one you'll hit. I'm here because I love this
industry and I couldn't imagine doing anything else. But I hate that my
physical appearance and gender connotes so many (invalid and ridiculous)
assumptions.

~~~
rodly
Find a field that has been woman-dominated for the last 50 years. Now put a
man in that field, who is rather successful (like yourself in technology), and
you will get the exact same result in the contexts you describe. I'm sick of
this paradox where men and women are equal and yet men (and only men) are
capable of making this mistake. It's simple pattern matching, and when the
pattern tells you one thing and it's actually the other you're now a giant
sexist pig. Now if a guy ignores you for more than a few seconds at one of
these events then I agree, the guy needs to wake up, it's 2014.

Also complaining about getting hit on? Really? A person finds you attractive
and wants to talk to you. What a monster.

"But I hate that my physical appearance and gender connotes so many (invalid
and ridiculous) assumptions."

What is ridiculous about an assumption that is 95% correct in today's world?
Perhaps it will be a ridiculous assumption in 5 years, and definitely 10, but
it's not far-fetched to run into guys at these events who don't interact with
women ever in their day-to-day work lives.

~~~
piokoch
True. My coworker's kid goes to kindergarten where on of the teachers is male.
This guy really had a hard time at the beginning. Parents were very suspicious
and worried (why "man" is working in kindergarden???) or took him for a
repairman.

The article's author is simply a victim of statistics. If at the conference
there is 150 "booth babies" and 300 male engineers, but in one booth there is
a female engineer, people make educated guess, based on statistical inference,
that this must be 151 booth baby.

I think nobody is to blame here. And, in fact, articles author might turn that
whole confusion to her advantage (out of 150 other booths, that one surely
will be remembered by potential customers). As a matter of fact it has
happened already, I guess it is not that easy to hit top rank on Hacker News.

~~~
route66
> I think nobody is to blame here

An industry who employs women as _booth babes_ , apparently because staring at
a _booth babe_ sells tech better? Stinks.

~~~
xerophtye
While yes,I am completely against the usage of booth babes (they don't work
anyways[1]) But... I kinda feel weird about just blaming the industry as if it
was a human-trafficking mafia. Booth babes aren't slaves you know... they
CHOSE to work in that role. So they have a share of the blame, no?

PS: Not saying all women are to blame! But you smart intellectual ladies gotta
agree that they contribute to the problem (just as the people who employ them)

[1] techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/booth-babes-dont-convert/

~~~
route66
I am probably not smart, maybe not intellectual but most definitely not a
lady.

As for the industry: seemingly the industry thinks that showing ass and tits
on a booth is worth it. That alone says enough. It is not about the ones who
are earning their money there but the ones who think that their industry needs
that. No discussion of "choice" needed.

------
johnhess
This pattern shows up in a great many industries. And not always in favor of
engineers.

Almost always, the divide is right along the profit center/cost center line.
In finance, traders are revered and engineers are their support staff. In the
Air Force, pilots run the show all the way up the chain of command and
engineers -- as critical to mission success as they may be -- are support.
That's okay. Those jobs can be even more rewarding than working in "tech".

Remember, the same reason you might choose to work as an engineer in
$awesome_field is why your ops/admin/qa team came to your company.

~~~
lxt
I can't upvote this enough! It's why I find jobs where what I do (engineering)
is not the core product less rewarding on the whole.

------
theorique
_From the VBScript and complex spreadsheet wrangling required to perform
analysis of key organizational metrics to mastery of numerous different
specialized softwares and systems in order to perform basic functions of the
job ranging from accounting to people operations, non-technical employees must
have a bevy of technical skills at the ready every single day. In fact, I had
to code a sample app using the company’s API to get my job as an operations
manager — and I committed code to the frontend of the marketing site
regularly. I’m not the exception._

That doesn't really sound like a non-technical employee to me. Maybe a
question of terminology, or the primary focus of the person's role, but a
person who is coding sample apps using the company's API sounds pretty damn
technical.

~~~
hobs
That was my immediate thought, irregardless of the gender argument. I work
with plenty of non-technical ops people, ALL of them REGARDLESS of
intelligence, can not code out of a wet paper bag. I have at various points
shown them all how to use basic excel formulas and they still use calculators
that would not look out of place in a grade school.

Are they good at what they do? Yes. Does what they do require that type of
abstract thinking and computer skills? Not that I have seen, they seem
effective at what they do, the lights are on, the place runs smoothly.

~~~
CGudapati
Not to be that guy but regardless is the correct form. Irregardless is
considered as non-standard or incorrect. But if you do know this, please don't
mind this nitpick.

~~~
hobs
I actually didn't know that. I googled and learned that it came into use in
the 50s, interesting. Edited and changed.

Edit: too old to edit! But still, thanks for the info.

~~~
lostcolony
I do not believe this thread just happened.

~~~
hobs
I smiled reading this comment. If you make a mistake and someone corrects you,
I assume you also try to learn from it.

On HN, I believe that people are trying to make a positive contribution when
the post, and while correcting people on the internet can seem pedantic, I
take it to be a positive contribution and an opportunity to learn something.

Hopefully I don't make the same mistake twice!

------
asharpe
Taking aside the blatant sexism (kudos - we need more people raising this
issue), there is a significant 'rolism' in the tech community. I have worked
on the business/product side of tech for more than 10 years. What you say is
inherently true of too many 'developers' and their views.

It harks back to a belief of "Build it and they will come" that pervades the
industry (and yes, I do know the actual quote is "Build it, and HE will
come"). There are many successful products that solve a problem or do
something. If no-one ever knows about it or works out how to pay you for it,
then the business will never be a success. You need all parts of a business
(selling, marketing, ops, banking the cheques, making payroll, taking out the
garbage) for it to work ... the naivety of some devs about the processes that
go on to make that work and their lack of engagement in the wider business is
a wake-up call many need to hear.

~~~
balls187
I agree with you to a point, devs would benefit with understanding "the other
side of the house" and that sales, marketing, and administration are all
important aspects of building a healthy business.

We have different roles to play in the success of an organization; at
different times each role has different values, but as people we're all
valuable.

Of course your side of the house is always out of the office by 5p =)

~~~
melindajb
that kind of response is exactly what i'm referring to above. I'm a non
technical founder and I work literally side by side the same hours as my
technical co founder. Maybe at different times, because he's a night owl and a
lot of business and marketing stuff can't be done at 3am hopped up on red
bull. But the same time. And there was a line of former coworker engineers for
the co founder position, so he's not an outlier.

~~~
balls187
I expect all founders to work hard. My 5p comment was a joke. I'd be very wary
of a founder of an early stage startup that bolted that early.

If you want to compare two sides of a founding partnership, the facts is the
technical cofounder, early on, is more valuable member of the founding team.

Two non-technical co-founders, vs two technical co-founders. Which will have a
higher outcome of success?

"I've built a prototype, I need help getting customers." "I've got customers,
I need help building a product."

Even in just market terms--how many people will try to recruit the non-
technical founder vs the technical founder for a position?

As a techincal co-founder, I could do the non-technical portion: get
customers, do market validation, read termsheets, talk with investors,
recruit, manage payroll _AND_ do my job: build awesome product. There isn't a
hard science to being the non-technical founder--Y Combinator is what, a
3-month bootcamp to teach founders what they need to know about running a
startup. Try learning everything you need to know to be a technical cofounder
in 3-months.

You can learn a lot about being the non-technical founder by trying your hand
at starting a company. The same is not true about writing product.

Again, the founder relationship is important, and you need _both_ halves to
succeed, but if you want to pick who is more valuable to the organization, and
who has the harder job, it is the technical co-founder.

This rant assumes the non-technical person has little to no coding abilities,
and these are "first time" founders with no prior successful exits.

~~~
melindajb
>If you want to compare two sides of a founding partnership, the facts is the
technical cofounder, early on, is more valuable member of the founding team.

Hmm. Let's try this on: "if you want to compare two sides of a marriage, the
facts are that the wife early on in the more valuable member of the founding
team." Nope, doesn't work. There are way, way too many dead "great products"
for me to buy that argument.

>-Y Combinator is what, a 3-month bootcamp to teach founders what they need to
know about running a startup.

If Y combinator were doing such a fantabulous job of giving technical co
founders the basics, their success rate would be much, much higher.

>You can learn a lot about being the non-technical founder by trying your hand
at starting a company. The same is not true about writing product.

You can learn a lot about running a company by running one. But you're going
to waste a lot of time and money if you've never done it before.

There are also a lot of YC graduates looking for heads of marketing because
they've completely cocked it up. If you only knew the kinds of basic dumb ass
questions about marketing they don't understand.

I'm not saying it's not possible to do both or that business can't be learned.
I am saying the lack of respect towards anyone not a programmer will be the
end of the silicon valley species. That's what pushes all new blood out, and
what will cause your own downfall.

If you think you will continue to have market power, given that pretty much
every VC is begging the government to fix immigration (aka hire more cheap
labor), you're delusional. Perhaps having a business co founder who
understands economics might be useful at that point.

~~~
balls187
"We need more non-technical founders."

\- Said by no one, ever.

------
gatsby
Are these really commonly held beliefs?

\--You only take a job in business operations if you aren’t smart enough to be
an engineer (or designer, or product manager, or…)

\--If your role isn’t technical, you don’t actually understand the product.

I don't think many people actually say or believe this. Maybe these were
common thoughts in 1999, but as an SF-based ops guy, I've never heard this.

In fact, I would argue that good business operators have it just as good, if
not better, than most engineers right now. Startups like Uber, Postmates,
Airbnb, Dropbox, etc. are killing it, and they all have really talented (and
highly paid) people in sales, ops, marketing, support, etc.

I think most of us are aware that it takes more than engineers to build a
company:

[http://blog.42floors.com/year-operations-
startups/](http://blog.42floors.com/year-operations-startups/)

[http://www.cdixon.org/2014/03/15/full-stack-
startups/](http://www.cdixon.org/2014/03/15/full-stack-startups/)

[http://justinkan.com/exec-errands-post-mortem](http://justinkan.com/exec-
errands-post-mortem)

~~~
wpietri
I don't think they're commonly _stated_ beliefs. I think that people commonly
behave as if they believe those things, though.

My first technical job was working for my university. I learned early on that
the admin people were the backbone of the place. They were smart, competent,
and hardworking, and a lot of people treated them like furniture. They were
used to it, but I found it rage-inducing.

I've definitely seen a lot of stuff like that here. A number of times I've had
words with fellow engineers who apparently thought they were too good to get
their hands dirty. I've had engineering managers explicitly tell me that
engineers were too expensive or important a resource to do anything but code.
It doesn't take a lot of that for an implicit caste system to develop.

------
jacquesc
Very well written article. Operations people are driving a new wave of real
world/tech hybrid companies and I think they need a lot more respect for their
contributions.

One nit, you admonish (rightly) people for thinking just because you are a
nontechy that you don't understand the product. But then you make a similar
mistake by accusing the young nerdy male engineer who is devouring the beef
jerky of not being street wise enough to be able to order lunch.

Simpler explanation: you've set up the expectation that he can eat on the
company dime so he's going to take full advantage of that. He can order lunch
just fine he just doesn't want to pay for it.

Give him the company credit card (or a company seamless account) and 'problem
solved'. Except it's not really a problem since it's better for the company if
you can have him working around the company catering times.

------
mattlong
I was fortunate enough to work with the author at the startup she mentions.
And I don't use the word "fortunate" lightly; she was absolutely a key player
on the team. I'm happy to see that she had a positive experience with the rest
of the (male) team!

Maintaining a good company culture™ was very important to me and the other
founders and we were very aware of how much our early hires would contribute
to it. An important part of that culture was only hiring the best and smartest
people (yes, it's cliché, I know). It did not even cross our minds to hire an
operations manager (or any other role) who could not understand and
comfortably explain our product, for instance. I think that did a lot to set a
tone that no one should have lower expectations set for them nor was somehow
in a "second-class" role.

P.S. In my defense, it was darn good beef jerky.

EDIT: English is hard.

------
richliss
TL:DR - You pure development guys are more likely to have success if you
realise you have a need for people with other complimentary skills, and you
need to have respect for them, their intelligence and their role.

I've seen this so many times its tragic, and it comes down to largely one
thing IMHO... the arrogance of extremely intelligent people with specialties
in maths/physics or other numeracy focused backgrounds over other people.

How about an office move where developers sat around and bitched because
network cables hadn't been moved across yet? Young office admin girl shows
initiative and drives to old office and gets all the network cables. They now
see her as their runner as they know that she's paid less so therefore its
optimal.

Its crunch time and a ScrumMaster who goes and gets coffee for the team before
a release so they stick to working is then perpetually told "We're busy,
coffee needed", and is slowly reduced to Team Mom, or worse Janitor.

A startup's CTO and part shareholder overrules the Head of Marketing and lead
designers on their design choice because he's read an article saying how Arial
is optimal for reading, and then gets involved in every decision. Only once
the CTO is moved on does the sales and marketing team really start performing
and the company is saved.

I've seen numerous friends who are extremely technically capable Java
developers create excellent technical solutions in the finance space to
problems that people won't pay for, or don't need solving, or that they don't
know how to market or keep running 24/7\. They see MBA's as a waste despite
their MBA friend saying "Look at the market segmentation, and consider your
positioning to see if you can compete" \- A valid point that could have
answered the question before the £80K in lost wages.

I've had conversations where I've quoted a previous stand-in lecturer who was
worth £110m from 3 different startups who told of the importance of a well
rounded team including sales, finance etc. to young developers who think that
DHH is basically a prophet, they only need tech guys and if you build it they
will come, and their answers to me were words to the effect of "I disagree
because HN said so".

I'd rather put £1000 of investment money in the hands of a proven sales guy's
startup than a proven back-end developer, as I've seen first hand that a great
sales guy can sell crap and make money.

------
rdl
I guess I've mainly worked in environments where it's "operations manager" and
an entire ops team, and where they handle things related to revenue or
technology (logistics, travel, facilities, equipment, security, etc.), but
I've never really seen the operations role as female. Probably less female
than any other department with the possible exception of some parts of
engineering.

(In my experience, HR is the vastly-female role, and always-useless to
employee; sometimes useful to companies for compliance reasons, but rarely.
HR's worthlessness has nothing to do with female employees; in dev and product
roles where some companies have 20-30% females, they're generally in the upper
half of contributors, and in design, which is often somewhat majority female,
they're often the key to a company's success. Actual receptionists are also
usually female, but rarely do I see those in <100 person tech companies,
unless provided by the building management.)

Generally I've just seen founders handle most of these things (taking out
trash, ordering lunch, etc.) at the early stage, and then contract it out
entirely (use a meal delivery service, office cleaners, etc.) This might be
specific to silicon valley tech startups; the other environment I know about,
USG/DOD/DOE, has 10x as many people for any role in general, and a clear
hierarchy for who does what, but it's based on overt rank or grade, and not
gender, age, whatever.

~~~
test1235
QA, design and management is where I've noticed a greater proportion of women
outside of HR. What is it about those roles which makes them amenable to women
but not tech?

~~~
rdl
QA seems really split (even in other industries) between non-technical/non-
quantitative QA ("we'll react to faults when identified, handle customer
communications, etc.) and highly technical, highly quantified QA (the whole
TDD crowd, SEI, etc.)

Even in stuff like pharma, you have people who want to do manual physical
inspection and handling recalls, vs. people who want to build statistical
controls. Somewhere in between there are human-executed procedure development.

Design seems like a clear case of the "designer pipeline" not having big
roadblocks to women anywhere from birth to being a competent designer, unlike
(until the past 10 years) some more math-based fields. Pure print design and
art are fairly gender balanced, so there was a pool of people there when
computer design became a thing; it's probably more likely a great generalist
designer early in career would learn about computers and become a computer
designer, vs. a math programmer becoming a designer.

Manager, no idea.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Technical people are hard to find, whereas I can get about 100 non-technical
ops resumes in 5 minutes from liberal arts majors at top ten schools, who will
kick ass at ops.

There are a lot of smart people you can groom into good ops people. There are
also a lot of seasoned ops people looking for jobs, if you look outside
silicon valley and bring someone here from a business in another city.

Whereas, we can't for the fucking life of us get good mobile developers,
programmers with machine learning experience, or robotics experience ...
unless we pay large sums and offer great perks.

That's why nobody talks much about, or pays much attention to Ops.

I've been an Ops guy.

------
mwetzler
This related post "Tech companies, stop hiring women to be the Office Mom"
describes "empathy work" and how it has almost always been significantly
underpaid.

[http://qz.com/47154/tech-companies-stop-hiring-women-to-
be-t...](http://qz.com/47154/tech-companies-stop-hiring-women-to-be-the-
office-mom/)

I like the reference to the fact that for a large part of history, many women
worked completely without pay doing empathy & ops work full time (mothering
families and running ops for households and community groups). As a culture
maybe we have some residual beliefs about this type of work (and women's time)
being basically free/cheap.

------
doktrin
> _I was repeatedly asked if an engineer was around to explain the product
> before I had a chance to say more than hello._

> _let 's focus on the other assumption: that because a person has a non-
> technical role, she is fundamentally incapable of assessing whether she is
> able to answer your question._

> _While we’re at it, I’d like to dispel the notion that people in non-
> technical roles don’t have technical skills. From the VBScript and complex
> spreadsheet wrangling required to perform analysis of key organizational
> metrics to mastery of numerous different specialized softwares and systems
> in order to perform basic functions of the job ranging from accounting to
> people operations, non-technical employees must have a bevy of technical
> skills at the ready every single day._

It's difficult to recognize what you don't know. As an engineer, I feel like I
didn't understand jack a year ago. A year from now, I'll feel the same way
about my current level of understanding & skill. Between now and then, I'll
speak with confidence about topics I _think_ I understand but probably don't
fully grok.

Earlier in my career, I was "semi-technical" with more [technical] experience
than the OP. Looking back, I really didn't understand the product to the
extent I thought I did.

A little knowledge can be dangerous. YMMV.

edit : if you down voted, care to explain?

------
natrius
_" Yet the myths we hold so dear — the noble engineer, sleeping under his desk
to get the product out on time; the company that cares for its employees’
every need — exclude and marginalize an entire class of people whose
contributions to these startups make their success possible."_

I'm not sure I can empathize with this. People within the company should be
grateful for the work being done by office managers, but why would anyone
outside the company be particularly concerned about it? Some work is
glamorous. Some isn't. That's life.

------
hibikir
The problems described here aren't just limited to startups: Support personnel
is often neglected in large companies too. A couple of years ago, I was
working at a very large company that was also suffering from high turnover.
Calls were made first by business analysts, who really didn't understand what
the heck was going on, and implemented in some fashion or another by
developers like me, who were far removed from the realities of the software.
With all that turnover, nobody that was actually working on the software
understood what the real use cases were, so if a decision actually matched
what a user wanted, it was probably by accident.

Having worked at better shops, I realized this was only going to lead to
dismal failure, so I started asking around for real information on what was
going on. And guess what: There was a support team, 90% female, who nobody
actually consulted for anything, and was paid peanuts. And yet, they actually
had more information about the practical uses of the application, and where to
take it, than the PhD totting analysts. After a few weeks talking to said
support team, and explaining how to actually make sense of what we were doing,
I was seen as some kind of Messiah by management, when all I actually did was
actually pay attention to the people that had the actual knowledge.

As far as sexism, yes, it's very sad that most of us view so few females that
are even put in a position to succeed that it's easy to make assumptions about
people's knowledge. I've been lucky to have worked with a couple of extremely
good female programmers, and about a dozen women doing support work, so that I
am at least not astounded when a woman at a user group isn't just a recruiter.
But that doesn't mean I won't make wrong assumptions. The best most of us can
do is recover quickly, and remember that while there are few women in the
industry, their skill and knowledge is no different than the one of men.

------
jonwachob91
I think the author has mistaken what her role in the company is. If you want
to answer technical questions than become a tech employee. The same way you
don't want a random tech employee trying to handle the complicated operations
pieces, you should let the tech employee's answer the tech questions.

I co-founded an engineering startup that works on high-heat machinery. I have
degrees in mathematics and information analysis, I fully understand the
technical aspect as I contributed to a lot of the work, yet I refuse to answer
tech questions. I serve in an operations role right now and don't spend my
entire day developing the technology; thus I am not the best qualified to
answer any tech questions.

You are right that tech companies can only afford to hire the smartest, but
that doesn't mean you have to be a jack-of-all-trades - that applies to co-
founders. Do the job you were hired to do and do it better then any one else
can.

------
fleitz
I don't know how people put up with this kinda stuff, I hear a C-suite say
something heteronormative and I'm already pretty much on my way out the door.

------
chris_mahan
I'm just going to link to Don't rely on "Magic Happens Here" from the O'Reilly
book "97 Things Every Programmer Should Know".

[http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Don%27...](http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Don%27t_Rely_on_%22Magic_Happens_Here%22)

Then I'm going to ask the programmer/engineer to flip the model around and ask
that they look at Operations in the same way they wish management see them.

------
mwetzler
Understanding your company's product, marketing, financials, hiring, and
business strategy makes you an _incredibly_ valuable employee (though perhaps
difficult to describe with a job title).

An employee like that shouldn't be spending much time ordering food and
cleaning. Those things can be outsourced to people who can do them at scale
for many companies at once, at a much lower rate.

At my startup we've used ZeroCater (Food for events), HomeJoy (Cleaning),
TaskRabbit (Odd tasks), Zirtual (Scheduling meetings, booking flights), and
Advsor (Accounting & Billing).

We also have a full time remote assistant that does things like coordinating
team outings, ordering new tshirts, researching stuff, spreadsheet jocky-ing,
etc, etc. They would also order food for us if we didn't have it provided at
our co-working space.

I hope this comment was helpful and not condescending. I do some business ops
work myself in addition to writing code and consulting. As the longtime only-
female, I too had to deal with the assumptions about my role (outside the
company, not inside).

All of these tasks are important and need to happen for a company to run
successfully, but they don't all need to be done by an "Office Manager" just
because that's how it works at some startups.

------
xivzgrev
People are resistant to change. But change is in the air - self awareness of
this issue is growing. The people who are aware, men and women, will rise in
rank and create new cultures / new companies with friendlier atmospheres.

It's only a matter of time until the tech industry is a much more women-
friendly place. And frankly I can't wait - there's a lot of pain in the world,
and we need the brightest minds on them.

------
jmduke
For another -- largely concurring -- perspective on this issue, Alexis Ohanian
writes about being a proud nontechnical cofounder:

[http://alexisohanian.com/on-being-a-proud-non-technical-
foun...](http://alexisohanian.com/on-being-a-proud-non-technical-founder)

------
distracteddev90
I guess I have just been lucky since every startup I've worked for has had
exceptional operations staff that are widely respected and included in all
company activities.

------
antonapa
There are a lot of very provoked males in these comments. Could this possibly
correlate to the article which is based on experiences from someone not being
a male in tech? It seems easier for most to get into lengthy counter arguments
about why it isn't like the article states, rather than acknowledge that there
might actually be a real problem here. How come so many female tech people
seem to share these same experiences if it isn't structural?

~~~
lmm
> How come so many female tech people seem to share these same experiences if
> it isn't structural?

Selection bias. Women who have ordinary experiences don't write angry blog
posts about them, or don't get upvotes.

~~~
antonapa
Or they don't write blog posts because they don't want to have to endure the
flame war that follows.

------
mw67
_Unfortunately, when it comes to the tech industry at large, it can also mean
a constant battle to justify your intelligence, your value, and your very
existence.

If your role isn’t technical, you don’t actually understand the product._

We should remember that some great founders like Steve Jobs were also not
writing any code and still added lots of value. IMHO understanding the product
mostly mean understanding how users interact with it, not understanding how to
code it.

------
rainmaking
If you're not killer at tech, you better be killer at sales and marketing. If
you're neither, what exactly are you complaining about?

------
dleskov
That's crazy life you live in the Valley. We are nearly as remote from SF Bay
Area as a place on Earth can possibly be (18 hour net flight time with two
stops) and do not have many perks, but I would be very surprised to hear about
a non-technical person being deprived of something because of being non-
technical. Has do to something with our not-so-distant Soviet past, perhaps.

As far a job titles go, I read an article a day ago where the author suggested
that when it comes to salary negotiation and you are not quite happy with the
monetary part of the offer, you should at least demand a title that would show
progress when put on your resume.

------
hifier
This is not unique to operations in tech startups. It also happens with "IT"
employees in insurance companies and banks. It is what happens to people whose
roles are considered peripheral by the core parts of the business. It is
natural and to some extend it is valid, within limits. I'm not saying that
overt disrespect and dehumanizing behavior is valid, however let's not be
naive. Not all roles are as important to the business as others and if respect
for your role is a primary motivator for you, I would suggest finding a
business where your role is central to the core product.

------
ameister14
Running an office is hard to do and a good office manager or HR manager is
incredibly valuable. I think you'd be foolish not to recognize that as a
founder.

I'm sorry that they haven't captivated people the way a rogue engineer can,
but an ops or HR person isn't likely to start a company from a dorm room,
garage or basement that makes its way to a multi billion dollar IPO.

As to the office mom thing; I haven't encountered that much, maybe it varies
from office to office. I don't doubt it exists, I've just never seen it
personally. Anyone know if that's a really common thing?

~~~
spinlock
I think that's the author's perspective on it (which I don't think is wrong).
The way I see this is that lots of geeks are absolute slobs and they leave
dirty dishes, food, etc.. on their desks (and their neighbors desks). I
regularly see - female - office managers clean up after the slobs by doing
their dishes and throwing out their trash. I've never really considered the
"mom" aspect of this before. I just view co-workers like that as disgusting
and self centered (the bugs they attract into the office impact everyone not
just them).

------
anauleau
If you need an engineer to describe your product it is too complicated.

------
h1karu
for those who think these type of office manager roles are essential I'll just
leave this here:

[https://37signals.com/remote/](https://37signals.com/remote/)

~~~
bri3d
The article lists many things that "operations management" people in early-
stage startups do that would be applicable to a remote company as much as an
in-person one: taxes, accounts payable, hiring management, equipment
management / basic IT, various accounting and finances, travel planning, and
so on.

Having someone manage operations is just as essential in a remote company as
it is in an in-person one.

I do agree that the crappy snacks management / trash organization facet goes
away to a large extent in a remote environment, but I certainly don't think
that makes the role described in the article any less essential.

~~~
h1karu
fair point.. although I personally lump accountants in with lawyers as
something you can't live without but hopefully don't need full time. Hiring is
much easier when you're remote for the reasons already mentioned in the book
and for many organizations it's something a small team of developers can
handle themselves.

------
spiralpolitik
A good office manager or PA is worth their weight in gold. Especially one that
goes the distance to make sure that everything keeps running smoothly and the
business moving forward despite any strange issues. After all I'm sure finding
lost luggage or locating mandolin strings in the middle of Austin is a job you
want to be troubling your engineers with.

Ask yourself this question. Do you really want to be the one that has to call
the building manager every time the toilet gets blocked ?

------
mooreds
Loved the refreshing different view of the startup world. I'm technical and
not in SV, but I've seen this behavior in other scenarios. (Not so blatant,
however.) It seems like every company has a class of employees, typically
either sales, executives, or technical in my experience, that are valued just
a bit more than everyone else.

Even though it is everybody putting their shoulder to the grindstone every day
that really moves the company forward.

------
cyphunk
I appreciated the criticism of the article but it largely depends on the
company i guess. I know that as a technical person having worked in large
companies and startups the office managers were perceived as magicians. They
also seem to hold a privileged status in many cases. For one, execs depend on
them heavily so they wield influence. In some cases, with startups, they
appear to advise the CEO.

------
stbarnes
> You only take a job in business operations if you aren’t smart enough to be
> an engineer (or designer, or product manager, or…)

The article claims that this is false. But in fact, it's pretty obvious that
the average non-engineer is less intelligent than the average engineer. See
for instance this table of IQ by college major:
[http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-intended-
colle...](http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-intended-college-
major/)

(And, yes, IQ tests do quite accurately capture what is meant by
"intelligence".)

~~~
mjmahone17
1\. No, IQ tests capture what a certain type of people mean by intelligence.
This is especially true, given that I can consistently perform less well on,
for example, the spatial portion of an IQ test than the logical portion.
Unless you're willing to say that there is not any other important component
(such as say, oratory intelligence) to someone's ability to perform, or be
intelligent. My skepticism says it's likely that, in fact, there is a positive
correlation between how good you are at manipulating objects and math and your
IQ score, whereas there's little to no correlation between emotional acuity
and IQ. But if, due to your social skills and emotional abilities, you're not
able to cut it in the arts or humanities, you're more likely to become an
engineer. Which tells you nothing of what types of majors "roundly"
intelligent people (i.e. those with relatively equal IQ and non-IQ
intelligence) choose.

2\. Your source doesn't even support your assertion, at least if you're
claiming non-engineers, in the same companies as engineers, are on average
less intelligent. Mathematicians, Philosophers and Economists are
overwhelmingly non-engineers. CIS gets the same IQ as "Other Humanities and
Art".

